Contaminated Blood and Blood Products

Debate between Baroness Fullbrook and Andy Slaughter

Thursday 14th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

I wish to say a few words about my constituent, Andrew March, who is a victim of contaminated blood. He is not only a remarkable man and campaigner; he is the reason we are talking about this today, because he was the claimant in the judicial review that led to the written ministerial statement. That statement was correctly attacked by my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North West (Mr Robinson) today.

I am new to Mr March, in the sense that he has been a constituent of mine since May, as he lives in the Hammersmith and Fulham part of the constituency that I inherited. However, I have caught up quickly with what he has been doing over many years and decades. The easiest way for me to summarise his predicament and what he has done is to read from a letter that he sent to me on 23 July. He said:

“I was one of the young children at the time of the AIDS outbreak, and I had to cope with being told that I had HIV at the age of 9. It was extremely difficult to deal with back then—and the devastation was compounded by the stigma. Before that, I had already been ill from Hepatitis B, again, from blood products because of my haemophilia condition. By 1992, whilst I was studying at the Royal College of Music on a 4-year degree, I was informed that I had also been exposed to hepatitis C, and only 5 years later, I was given another blow when I was informed that I had been exposed to two batches of Factor VIII blood products taken from a donor who later went on to develop vCJD. I had been treated with over 110 bottles of this vCJD-implicated material being injected directly into my bloodstream.”

[Lorraine Fullbrook]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that this very debate helps to raise awareness of those people suffering from hepatitis C contracted from contaminated blood products and helps to remove the stigma attached to hepatitis C? I am thinking of people such as a constituent of mine, who wishes not to be named but is suffering from hepatitis C1a, which is the severest form of hepatitis.

[Mr Slaughter]

I think that this debate does do that, and I am grateful for this opportunity to increase my own knowledge. However, I think that we need to move on to some very specific recommendations because, as the mover of the motion eloquently said, this is a time for action more than contemplation. That is exactly what Mr March did when he brought the judicial review in April, and the matter has been just been clarified, as my hon. Friend the Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan) described, in relation to the mistake that the previous Government made on the situation in Ireland. That was the error made by that Government. That was the finding of the judicial review, and it is what the Government are responding to today.

I shall not read from the judicial review, other than to quote its final paragraphs, because they again relate to Mr March. The learned judge, Mr Justice Holman, said that counsel for the claimant

“paid a warm but measured tribute to…Andrew March, ‘for his tenacity and balance in the asking of questions and soliciting of information, and not taking no for an answer when the reasons are not good ones.’ My impression is that that tribute is justified and well judged, and that the many other people interested in this cause owe gratitude to Mr March for his tenacity or persistence.”

I say again that Mr March has done that for many years, suffering as he did not only from his original medical condition but from the effects of the contamination.

Taintedblood, an organisation that has done a lot of excellent work in briefing us all and preparing us for this debate, states:

“The Under-Secretary of State for Health”—

the hon. Member for Guildford (Anne Milton)—

“recently held a series of meetings with campaigners, the Haemophilia Society, the Macfarlane and Eileen Trusts, the Skipton Fund and others. In those meetings she demonstrated a new willingness by Government to face up to and deal with what has happened to the Haemophilia Community.”

Those organisations must be very disappointed today by the amendment that the Government attempted to move and by the written ministerial statement.

I welcome what is said in the terms of reference about hepatitis C, as has been mentioned. I want to clarify whether the Minister is offering full parity for hepatitis C sufferers with what AIDS sufferers experience, including the £12,800 per annum payments, and that that will be susceptible to the review.