Contaminated Blood

Debate between Alistair Burt and Gordon Marsden

Thursday 15th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Alistair Burt]

My hon. Friend puts it very well. He is yet another example of an MP who does not have a constituency interest but has recognised the responsibility that we all share, and the state shares, for what has happened.

Only this morning we saw in one of the newspapers that local authorities had spent £5 billion on consultants. As I say, at any one time a Government will have no money or can find money.

[Mr Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South) (Lab)]

I apologise for not having been here at the beginning of the right hon. Gentleman’s speech. I want to touch on his point about payments. My constituency has four times the national mortality rate from hepatitis C—of course, not all of it acquired from contaminated blood—and a number of constituents who are living with the condition have written to me about it over the years. The latest comments have been about getting a conclusion to this process as fast as possible. One of them says:

“Existing mechanisms should be disbanded and replaced as quickly as possible with a new improved arrangement for processing payments.”

Is that not a short-term consideration to go with the longer-term ones?

[Alistair Burt]

I personally think that it is. That process will be informed by what the all-party group has spoken of, and its members will speak today. I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention.

As I said to my hon. Friend the Member for Stratford-on-Avon, I am not sure that I fully share the conclusions of the all-party group’s report with regard to the MacFarlane Trust. There is a great deal of detail in the report. As I was not responsible for compiling it, I can be lavish in my praise of the effort that went into it. A lot of hard work was done by a lot of people connected with the offices of the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North and my hon. Friend the Member for Colne Valley, and I am grateful for that. On the basis of information contained in the report and other information that we have, I do not believe that the MacFarlane Trust is saveable or capable of reform. I and others have seen a copy of a letter to the Secretary of State from two former trustees that is quite damning of its leadership, and one from some 68 beneficiaries that is equally uncompromising.

It would be unfair to go into more detail now. It may be that the trust has an impossible role. However, there should be no doubt that a body set up to support beneficiaries and those who have been victims of what happened is anything other than on their side—not an arm of Government, nor seen to be, and prepared to take on the Government to argue for the funds it needs without fearing a conflict of interest. The Department of Health has contributed to the situation by structuring too cosy a relationship, possibly in its own interests, and that has to stop.