Infected Blood Inquiry Report

Baroness May of Maidenhead Excerpts

Monday 20th May 2024 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I welcome the absolute consensus that today is a moment for the families and the community, and for their voices to be heard loudest. Every single testimony and account in Sir Brian’s report today sets out a unique story of hurt, suffering and loss. Individually, these accounts are astounding; taken together, they are truly unimaginable. They must be heard and they must be understood, as the right hon. Gentleman said. I thank him for his remarks. I know that we share a determination to work together to ensure that nothing like this shocking and avoidable calamity can ever happen in our country again.

[Mrs Theresa May (Maidenhead) (Con)]

Sir Brian Langstaff’s report today has finally uncovered the truth of this appalling tragedy, which has affected the lives of so many. So many have been fighting, as the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition said, for decades to get to this point. Sir Brian has highlighted a devastating and abject failure of the British state: medical professionals, civil servants and politicians, all of whom felt their job was to protect their own reputation rather than to serve and look after the public they were there to serve. Today, as we rightly remember all the victims of this terrible tragedy, will my right hon. Friend commit himself unashamedly to working to ensure that all those in Government—politicians and civil servants—recognise that their job is to serve the public, not to protect themselves?

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my right hon. Friend for her statement. As Prime Minister, she launched Sir Brian’s inquiry and in doing so began the process of establishing the full truth we have heard today. There is no doubt, as she recognises, that the inquiry came too late, that the compensation came too late and was woefully insufficient, and that the consequences of that failure are stark. That is why today I apologise on behalf of Governments since the 1970s for that shameful failure.

Sir Brian and his team have made a series of wide-ranging recommendations, and I can assure my right hon. Friend that we will study every single one in detail and work urgently across Government and public organisations—our health services, civil society, all—to ensure that nothing like this can ever happen again, and that we end the challenges she encountered, where the institutions responsible for serving the public, including the NHS and the civil service, are more concerned by cost than accountability.