Our fight for compensation took us to 10 Downing Street, urging the Prime Minister to commit to a long‑overdue financial redress scheme for women harmed by pelvic mesh – and set out a clear timeframe and firm dates for action.

The letter we are handing in to Sir Kier Starmer is published below. This initiative aligns with International Women’s Day 2026. We are calling on English Parliament to take the lead by setting out a robust financial redress framework that the devolved nations can follow.

A press release follows at the end of this post.

PRESS RELEASE

10 March 2026

On International Women’s Day mesh‑injured women take their demands for compensation to 10 Downing Street

Women harmed by pelvic mesh are taking their campaign for justice to 10 Downing Street, demanding compensation for the thousands whose lives have been devastated by one of the UK’s biggest medical scandals.

To tie in with International Women’s Day, mesh‑injured women will attend an event in Parliament, by the All‑Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) First Do No Harm, hosted by Sarah Green MP.

Following the Parliamentary event, Ms Green and members of campaign group Sling The Mesh,  will go to 10 Downing Street where they have arranged to hand‑deliver a formal letter to Prime Minister Keir Starmer, calling on the Government to take urgent action to provide a timeframe of action with a deadline outlining a scheme of financial compensation to women harmed by pelvic mesh implants.

Patient Safety Commissioner Dr Henrietta Hughes laid out how compensation should be delivered in her 2024 Hughes Report – but two years later there has been no action. Dr Hughes has written to 10 Downing Street calling for urgent action.

Sarah Green, Vice Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on ‘First Do No Harm – Mesh, Primodos, Valproate’ said: “This International Women’s Day, I am proud to be surrounded by women who embody such strength and resilience from all that they have endured.  While full of pride and admiration at their ability to turn their trauma into strength and their pain into fight, I also share their rage because our system has let women down time and time again and not heard their voices. A system that we are determined to change – a plan which we already have formulated thanks to Baroness Cumberlege. It is now up to us to deliver those recommendations. Alongside this hard systematic work, women still await a government response to the Hughes report which set out how compensation should be issued to mesh and valproate harmed women.”  

She continued: “Changing the system will take time, but issuing compensation to these women should be quick and easy thanks to the already completed work by our Patient Safety Commissioner Dr Henrietta Hughes.  Excuses no longer hold; it is now morally incumbent upon the government to act. I hope that number 10 hear us loud and clear today.”

Despite years of evidence, patient testimony, the scathing First Do No Harm report by Baroness Cumberlege and the 2024 Hughes Report outlining how a scheme of compensation would work, there has been no response from government committing to financial redress.

Thousands of mesh‑injured women continue to live with chronic pain, disability, infections, autoimmune disease, loss of employment or reduced working hours, loss of pensions and savings – leading to financial hardship for many – and severe psychological trauma, often without adequate medical care.

International Women’s Day – a global moment recognising women’s rights and equality – has been chosen deliberately to highlight what campaigners describe as a systemic failure to listen to women in healthcare, and the consequences of that failure.

Kath Sansom, founder of Sling The Mesh, who will be handing in the letter at Downing Street with MP Sarah Green and other women harmed by mesh, said: “Pelvic mesh has stolen women’s health, irreversibly ruined their quality of life, their independence, and their future. On International Women’s Day, we are standing at the heart of our democracy to say clearly: women deserve justice, and we deserve it now.

“We must not be fobbed off with platitudes, delays, or excuses. We are innocent patients caught up in a medical scandal that has caused lifelong physical, mental, and financial harm. These women deserve proper compensation.”

Campaigners are calling for:

• A timescale for a properly funded government‑backed compensation scheme for all women harmed by pelvic mesh, including rectopexy mesh.

The event in Parliament for International Women’s Day brings together mesh‑injured women, other women’s campaigners including families affected by the Primodos and Sodium Valproate scandals, politicians and supporters to ensure the issue remains firmly on the national agenda and cannot be ignored by the Government.

Patient Safety Commissioner Dr Henrietta Hughes wrote The Hughes Report in 2024 outlining how a compensation scheme would work.

Page 5 of this report notes that:

Patients must not be subjected to an emotional rollercoaster, meaning that commissioning this work would inevitably raise expectations and that it would be profoundly unfair to do so if the government had no intention of providing redress.