Infected Blood Inquiry: Additional Report

Lord Polak Excerpts

Thursday 24th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent]

The noble Baroness makes an important point. Although it is vitally important that we focus on the victims and doing as much as we can to support them, more fundamental learnings also came through, so we are working our way through those and will continue to do so. The dashboard is incredibly important. One of the suggestions is that we should have a dashboard that covers every public inquiry; obviously, every public inquiry has different recommendations and different options, so at the moment this is the option going forward for us. It will be updated again in October; we have committed to quarterly updates, so that the people touched by this know exactly where we are and where we stand. I hope that that alone, if nothing else, will drive an ongoing commitment to deliver the rest of the recommendations.

[Lord Polak (Con)]

My Lords, I had not intended to speak and shamefully, I guess, I have not been involved in any of this area—we are all busy and get involved in many things. But listening to this debate, I think it shows the House in a rather good light. Listening to the Front Benches—our own Front Bench on the Conservative side, the Liberal Democrats and other colleagues—and to my noble friend Lord Waldegrave, I just wanted to say to the Minister, whom I know well, that I think that those victims, the families of victims, the others and the campaigners should feel a crumb of comfort—perhaps more than a crumb—from listening to a Minister who clearly has taken this to heart. I suppose all of us hope that she will be able to make fast progress to continue to give comfort to those who need it.

[Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)]

The noble Lord is very kind, but he does know me well and he knows quite how determined I can be. I will do everything I can to make sure that my Government deliver on these recommendations. I think that may be my last question and, if it is, I wish everybody a very happy Recess and some rest.