I'm Neil Patterson. Welcome to the Sky News Daily, and a happy Wednesday to you all. Well, perhaps not for Richie Sunack. He had a pretty poor outing at Prime Minister's questions for reasons which we will be discussing in just a sec. A little later, though, potentially, potentially, a very important day for those affected by the epilepsy drug valproate and the surgical tool, pelvic mesh. Guys, Jason Farrell will be joining us to discuss those. But let's focus on what exactly happened in the Commons chamber, our political correspondent, Amanda Hacasse, joins us once again. Good to see you, Amanda. Punch and Judy politics, that's what people say about Prime Minister's questions. This is on an entirely different level. Explain exactly what happened.

Wednesday at Midday, it's always the time for PMQs. It's This is a political rough and tumble. We always have pretty ugly jabs delivered by both leaders towards each other. They've got their own pre-prepared lines that we've heard them trot out again and again and again. But today was really, I think, a moment where the ugliest side of that really came into view because some of the lines delivered by the Prime Minister just became deeply uncomfortable and in fact led to cries of shame in the chamber. Have a listen.

Mr. Speaker, we are bringing the waiting list down for the longest waiters who are making progress, but it's a bit rich, Mr. Speaker, to hear about promises from someone who's broken every single promise he was elected on. I think I counted almost 30 in the last year. Pensions, planning, peerages, public sector pay, tuition fees, childcare, second referendums, defining a woman. Although in fairness, that was only 99% of a U-turn. The list goes on, but the theme is the same, Mr. Speaker. It's empty words, broken promises, and absolutely no plan. Here, Mr.

Alma. Of all the weeks to say that when Brianna's mother is in this chamber, shame, parading as a man of integrity when he's got absolute Absolutely no responsibility.

Absolutely. I mean, we have a mother, morning her daughter's death, a judge who in the Brianna Jai case said that the fact that she was trans was a factor. We had Sirkir Starmer, even before this exchange between the two of them, referencing the fact that Esther Jai was in the public gallery, and still the Prime Minister felt that this was something appropriate to say.

I mean, it really took everyone's breath away. I think it really shows the danger of some of these pre-prepared lines without thinking about the context of what it sounds like. But in this particular case, the murder of Brianna Gives, it's inescapable. The whole country has been completely shocked by what happened. It just came across as incredibly tone deaf. Then what happened is that there were these cries of shame. Then Liz Twist, a Labor MP, later on in the session, he urgent him to apologize, and he still wouldn't do so. He obviously didn't want to lose face. At the end, he addressed Esther Jai directly. Very warm words, talking about her dignity, how she was the best of humanity. But I think that for many of the MPs watching and campaigners, it remains to be seen Esther's own response herself. Will that really cut it? Because even afterwards, the Prime Minister's spokesperson was really being pressed by journalists on, Was it right to make a political joke about something like this? Was he going to apologize? He really doubled down on it, insisting that, no, it wasn't transphobic and that these were comments that are highlighting the U-turns made by Sakeer Starmer and really Taking it back to that political point, which is clearly what was intended, but really wasn't how it came across.

Now, look, there is a performative quality to every senior politician, particularly those who've got a bit of experience under their belt. But it did strike me that Keir Starmer spoke, and again, they exaggerate for political purpose, but Keir Starmer spoke with a degree of anger that I'm not sure I have seen in him at Prime Minister's questions that often.

Lots of his MPs, in fact, are tweeting their approval that he was genuinely angry and that his response was the appropriate one. He didn't say much. He didn't have to. He said it was shameful. I think at a moment like this, the fact that, obviously, as we know, Zekir Starmer's background, Director of Public Prosecutions, Criminal Barrister, Human Rights Barrister, is something that is very different from Rishi Sunak. I think that really did come across here. But certainly, I think partly as a just empathy with people watching. Whatever your views are on the trans rights debate, I think that's what the Prime Minister got very badly wrong here.

A bereaved mother. Exactly. He made a comment that she could have taken offense to. It's that simple, isn't it?

Exactly. Also, it's made many people think long and hard about all the issues around this. I mean, it's just so unbelievably awful what happened to her. It's been spelled out that the motivations were partly transphobic, at least from her killers, that she's spoken with such dignity about what happened, that she's been calling for changes in the law, too, to restrict access for under-16s to social media as well.

But the response in the chamber, that throw away statement from the Prime Minister at the very end. Do you know what? Let's just actually have a quick listen to that.

I could just say also to Brianna Gray's mom, who is here, as I've said earlier this week, what happened was an unspeakable and shocking tragedy, Mr. Speaker. As I said earlier this week, in the face of that, for her mother, to demonstrate the compassion and empathy that she did last weekend, I thought demonstrated the very best of humanity in the face of seeing the very worst of humanity, and she deserves all our admiration and praise for that.

I mean, let's leave aside the fact that Rishi Sunak mispronounced Brianna Jai's name whilst delivering a non-apology apology. I know from speaking to a couple of people who were in the press gallery, the Prime Minister's spinners, his special advisors, were there straight onto their phones furiously, tweeting and texting away to try and get this under control. Clearly, the Prime Minister had a note handed to him during this session of PMQs, which led to that statement. But it's what happened afterwards.

The party have clearly decided that this is the appropriate line to take. I mean, a political apology is a difficult thing, isn't it? He obviously is trying to hold his ground and try and justify it in this way, which does work for some things, but something that's got such a human emotional element to it, the rules around political apologies, is it better just to apologize, sound human, you made a mistake and move on, rather than this stubborn doubling down on it. No, my political point was correct. I mean, it's a strange approach, I think, because they're just so on the back foot with it and labor completely dominating the moral high ground.

What does it say about the state of modern politics that issues such as trans can be weaponised as part of the inverted commas, culture wars that are going on right now? Had Brianna's mother not been sitting in the gallery today, I wonder two things. One, whether Keir Starmer would have mentioned it, and two, whether the media would have been taking this story on in quite the way that they are.

Frankly, I don't think the media would have done because this is a comment that Rishi Sunak has made many, many times before. He's got this stock lines that he wheels out on a regular basis to illustrate his claim that Keir Starmer flip flops. I mean, Stomal, the charity, have put out a statement saying, Careless words from people in power have an impact, and I think that is really important. But as you say, in the context of it, it is something that does get bandied around. It is something that is a political hit, as it were. It's an issue debated in the papers as a political football without really much reference to the lives of the people who are directly affected by it. This is just the ultimate example of how this issue has such a terrible impact on someone like Brianna.

Amanda, here's one for you. It was just a couple of days ago that we had the sight of our multimillionaire Prime Minister, Richie Sunak, in a television interview making a bet, a thousand pound bet on the Rwanda plan, the forced repatriation of people who arrive into this country illegally. A thousand pound bet in the middle of a cost of living crisis. You take that, you take the remarks that he made in the full knowledge that Brianna Joy's mother was in the public gallery of the Commons today. I have to ask a very simple question, is Richie Sunak bad at politics?

I mean, certainly this week, I think, has just been this whole collection of unforced errors. Certainly, this This is a week that he should have been riding high on political success, having successfully managed to bring the DUP back to power sharing and somehow resolve the whole Brexit conundrum. Then suddenly, he just seems to have shot himself on the foot. I think they really do raise, I think certainly among some Tori MPs, who we know have their rebellious instincts bubbling away underneath all of it, just thinking, does this guy have the political nouse, really, to go through what's going to be a very bitter I mean, clearly, Piers Morgan had prepared a track for him by suggesting that bet to him, but he didn't have to take it. His spokesperson said, Oh, well, he wanted to express his confidence that the Rwanda policy would work and we would see flights going off to Rwanda.

Why didn't he just do that?

But he could have said that. Instead, he immediately accepted the bet. The fact that it was so glibly done, the fact that he was willing to shake on it £1,000 in terms of just the lack of awareness of the message that's sending when all the attacks on him from labor are that he's out of touch, he doesn't understand what it's like for ordinary people in this country because clearly he is a very wealthy man himself. He's a very educated man. He's a very successful man. He's made a lot of money. He obviously prides himself on being able to go through the details and look at policies. But does any of that really cut through with people when the message they're getting is someone who sees themselves above the ordinary folk in terms of the way that they live, which is exactly what Labor are trying to paint him as.

Well, perhaps these, let's be charitable, missteps demonstrate the risks in fasting for 36 hours before the start of your working week. Amanda, for now, thanks very much indeed. Stay right where you are. After the break, pelvic mesh, valparate primedos. Those who have suffered ill effects from two of those may soon receive some compensation. One will not. Why? Well, we We'll be focusing on that after this. Welcome back. On previous Editions of The Daily, we have covered, in some depth, actually, sky news investigations into the very significant harms caused by three things: pelvic mesh, the epilepsy drug valproate, and primedos, an oral pregnancy test. Well, today, the Patient Safety Commissioner for England released a report which could eventually lead to compensation for the victims of mesh and valproate. But not Primidos. That despite the fact that a report in 2020 by Bernice Cumberlidge, the Cumberlidge Review, identified it alongside the other two as causing avoidable harms. Jason Farrell is our home editor, and he joins us once again in the studio. Good to see you, Jason. This is, isn't it? Potentially, potentially, and I'm placing a lot of emphasis on that, significant day for those who have suffered due to pelvic mesh, due to valproate.

Explain exactly why.

Well, I suppose the key thing is hope, a bit of extra hope, because what's happened is that the patient safety commissioner, Henrietta Hughes, in a new role, has put a report together saying not only there should be redressed, there should be payments, financial to these people who have suffered from these injuries that have been caused by medical products or drugs, but also here's roughly how it should work. It's a pretty rough scheme, but it's basically saying the government needs to act now on an immediate payment, which we can all agree about a rough sum, and then there should be a secondary payment based on their needs down the road. The problem is the government have been told to do this before, back in the Cumlish review four years ago, we said they need to pay for it, and they refuse to do it.

What sums are we talking about here?

The interim payment for For Valtorate is estimated at about £100,000 per person, and for Mesh, £20,000. It's very, very roughly calculated based on a survey of about 500 people, mostly Mesh people who responded to it. If you're trying to calculate it and you'd say, well, there are roughly 10,000, probably more mesh people, and there are roughly 10,000 Valtorate people. Because of the way the survey was skewed, they've calculated it at 20,000 You would say that that's going to cost the government about half a billion, that initial amount, half a billion pounds. But that is an initial amount. I mean, can they even stomach half a billion before they get into saying, well, what are the actual long-term effects on various people? The truth is, if you look at the damage it's done to people, I mean, £20,000 for someone who's lost their job, who can't do things with their kids anymore, maybe their marriage is broken down because of mesh. It's £20,000 enough. A mesh victim would say, Well, no, It's not. But it's the balance between that and what the government can afford.

Let's remind ourselves as to the harmful outcomes that both of these products inflict on plenty of people, frankly. Let's start with VALPRO. It's an epilepsy drug, but it led to some fairly significant developmental problems and birth defects, didn't it?

Yeah, and I think the important point is that regulators knew about it. That's why the focus is on the government, although people would say as well it should be on the manufacturers. But back in the '70s and '80s, they knew that there was problems, and it really has been established now, something which is recognized, it's called fetal valproate syndrome, and it is things like facial dysmorphia, so lopsided face, some congenital It can cause physical malformations. It can cause heart problems. The most obvious one is things like learning difficulties and autism.

That was going to be my question. Are we talking about learning difficulties of a nature of of a scale that will require lifelong care? Yes, we are. Well, the the the figure quoted, the initial payment is going to be nowhere near what an individual in those circumstances will require. That's right. Let's talk about the other product, of course, the pelvic mesh implant. In Firstly, what were those for?

Well, they were like a support for internal organs after birth or hysterectomy. It looks like a mesh, a blue, the images we've shown of it, wire, if you like. It was supposed to be the gold standard product to help women with those problems. What it's done is it's cut through their organs, cut into their nerves, and left them with extraordinary pain.

With mesh and With VALPROIT, do we know how many people were talking about?

With Mesh, some of it is for men as well, but mostly it's women. With VALPROIT, it's estimated there's between 10,000 and 17,000 people. In both cases, it could come to about 20,000, 25,000 people.

Let's talk about the Patient Safety Commissioner for England, her report, Dr. Henrietta Hughes. It is but a report, one that the government has requested, but it is a report. Is there any means by which the publication of this report compels the government to do what it request? Aside from peer pressure, is there any reason that the government needs to act on this?

There's absolutely no reason why. I think you have a slightly more, as I said at the beginning, receptive government, but we're coming into an election year. The sums that have come out of the report are maybe bigger than they'd hoped. What are they going to do? They don't have to do anything. I think that is a worry for all of the victims that this could come to nothing. The reason they're worried about that is because for so many years it has come to nothing.

But of course, the one thing that we're not talking, Jason, you've done some fantastic work on Mesh, on Valtroet. Where's Primedos? I mean, first Remind listeners what Primidos was.

Primidos was a pregnancy drug. It was given as a pregnancy test, and it was alleged to have caused all sorts of range of malformations and miscarriage. The drug manufacturer, shearing, now owned by The bear has always denied that. But the Cumbleage review very clearly said that that drug should have been taken off the market in 1967, a decade before it was, and that it caused avoidable harm. Just like all three others, there was an ethical duty on the government, and to an extent, the manufacturer, to give some form of redress for the suffering that was caused. That's where we were with Primedos. It was part of the review. The review said they should have redressed, too. They were then left off of this latest report, just completely left off. Why?

Well, I think- Particularly given, Henriette Hughes describes the sodium valproate scandal as bigger than thalidomide, of course, that drug that I think lots and lots of people will remember from the morning morning sickness pill, morning sickness drug, which led to birth defects. If she's describing sodium valproate as bigger than thalidomide, I mean, primedos isn't far off it.

It was left off because Henriette Hughes was told to leave it off by government, and she's told me that, and she said she wanted to have them involved, and she wants them to have redress. But she was told to by the government. Now, there's a question mark about, hang on a second, she's an independent regulator. Should she be taking instructions from the government? That's one question. The other question is, why would the government say that? Well, it would be because, a) they might argue, well, it hasn't been conclusively proven, and b) there was a litigation against the government and the manufacturer. I think that's the key thing, and I think that has been cited. There was a litigation. Primedos victims had tried to. There was a strikeout, and actually the government and the manufacturer's lawyers struck out the claim, even though in 2020, the government had apologized to the Primedos victims following the Cumulence Refuse.

Are you not starting to get a bit angry about this, Jason? You've been working on these stories for a long, long time. As of this moment, victims of Primedos are getting nothing. They're getting absolutely nothing. Victims of pelvic mesh and sodium valproate might get something.

It's like having three prisoners of war, mesh, valproate, and primindus, and they're all trying to escape to the border. There was a celebratory tone to the press conference. I said, I don't understand quite what we're celebrating here because you've left one of them primedos in the barbed wire, and the other two, you've taken them up to the fence, but they still got to get over it. There's not a penny in anyone's pocket yet. This has been going on for decades. Everyone's accepted now that people were wronged. When is it actually going to be some recognition of those people that actually helps those people? Because the apology is always, We're sorry if you've struggled for so long, but what are they actually doing to help with their struggle? There's another expression, I guess, another analogy that I think of, which is Mark Twain's quote, which is actually on the stairs on the way up here, which is it's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog, and it's not true.

I mean, you've spoken to plenty of people who've been found themselves in a horrible situation. Parents blame themselves for the defects that their children have. Women who will not have children or will not have productive relationships in future, people who are permanently incontinent. You can take your pick.

You can. It's really hard to just go, Oh, look, here's an example. I think of Nicky Gubbins, who's got terrible just malformations on her face. As a kid, she was told, take your mask off by all the other kids. I can think of Mary's lion's daughter who's missing an arm. She has a false arm. When she went to hold a boy's hand in school because she fancied him, he recoiled and said, What the hell are you? The personal stories and these little things that have affected each of these people's lives for so long. But actually today, just actually listening to the mental health problems this has caused. You could see people when they were talking about their stories, it resonating with the other people in the room going, Oh, my God, there's someone like me. When one of the Mesh campaigners, I think the thing that really annoyed me was her being told, even recently, even after the Cumlish review, that it was something else. It wasn't the Mesh that was causing her pain. She was grieving. She was going through the menopause, this shift in the… And also being told, well, there's no one else having this problem.

What does that remind you of?

It reminds me of the post office scandal. You're the only one. People have felt so alone in this. And that really resonated with me when she said, You know what? I didn't know there was anyone else out here with my problem. This is only a couple of years ago because doctors told me it was just me.

It is easy to understand the anger that will be felt by those affected by primedos. And, whilst to step in the right direction, Dr. Hughes' report itself puts no money in the pockets of the victims of Mesh and Valproate. But haven't we been here before? The victims of the infected blood scandal, they are still waiting. There's only been movement on the post office horizon affair because an ITV drama was made about it. So why these delays in payment? Perhaps the answer is quite simple. Our politicians have to focus on a different Mark Twain aphorism. Never put off till tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow. That's your look for this edition of The Daily. We'll see you next time. Within a couple of seconds, there were a number of armed security with great big airport machine guns. An autism patient's daring escape from NHS psychiatric care pits her against one of the most powerful institutions in the state. From the multi-award-winning Skynews Storycast team, in partnership with the Independent, follow Patient Eleven wherever you get your podcasts.