Contaminated Blood

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Tuesday 11th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

Like my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson), I became engaged in this issue after 2010, when constituents contacted me, and one constituent in particular—a remarkable man called Andrew March, whom I shall say a little about in a moment.

I feel slightly ashamed that I did not fully understand the utter tragedy of contaminated blood, which has not been with us for seven years; it has been with us for more than 30 years. As a country, we need to own up to the fact that we do not do these things very well. The same is true of Hillsborough and, in many ways, of Grenfell. These are not matters that have happened and then been dealt with appropriately. They are things that we have failed to address over years, if not decades.

I would say one or two things on the remit and type of inquiry, because these are multiple failings. Yes, of course, there is the failing that led to the infections and the multiple infections in the first place, but, until recently the Government would not even mention the word “negligence”. Now, I am pleased to say, due in large part to what Andy Burnham has done, we are talking about criminality, but it has taken a long time to get there. On how the victims have been treated by the establishment, again, one could make comparisons with what happened with Hillsborough over many years, such as the way that they have been ignored and badly treated. In relation to recompense and financing, that includes the fact that the various trusts and schemes, as well as the quantum involved and the administration, have been appalling.

I have said to Minister after Minister over the past seven years that a bespoke solution is needed. We are talking about a finite and decreasing number of people, and we need a bespoke solution for each of those individuals and families, because everybody is in a different position according to their circumstances, health and personal needs.

I again pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North, and to many other Members—I am surprised that the all-party group does not have 650 members, rather than 111—but the real credit goes to the victims themselves, who had to fight and fight and fight to get very little.

I have felt frustration taking part in every debate on the subject over the past seven years and during the endless meetings with Ministers through the all-party group, so I am glad that the Minister has said that his mind is open on the type of inquiry. We need an inquiry with powers, such as an inquiry held under the Inquiries Act 2005 with powers to call witnesses and interrogate them under oath. We need the forensic skills that a judge would bring, but at the same time the inquiry needs to have credibility and trust. We do not want to start making the same mistakes that we made with the sex abuse inquiries and are beginning to make, I am afraid, in the Grenfell inquiry.

The other day, I was listening to Dr Richard Stone on the radio. He assisted the Macpherson inquiry and was trusted by the local community. We need here a combination of those forensic skills and people who know the issues and know the people involved, and are trusted by them. We have to have full access to documentation. We have to have proper rights of audience for the victims and their families. We have to have full representation. That means legal aid. I hope that in the same way that the Government are now discovering their neglect of social housing over many years has been a mistake, they will discover that the cuts in legal aid are also a mistake and are false economies.

I say that while paying tribute to what the Minister has said today, but remembering that in the previous debate, which Andy Burnham held in this House only some two months ago, we were told that a public inquiry was not appropriate. Let us consider just some of the issues that are being dealt with here: non-consensual testing; victims not being informed of the results of that testing; non-consensual research involving previously untested patients; people being informed, if they were informed, in hospital corridors or through the post; and minors being told without their parents being present. All this was happening in our country in the relatively recent past.

Then there is the cover up—the allegations in relation to documents being destroyed and people not being prepared even to answer questions. All that has to be addressed through this inquiry.

Given the time, may I end by talking about Andrew March, as a large part of my involvement in the investigation is down to him? With his consent, I shall discuss personal details, which, courageously, he wants in the public realm because he wants us to get to the bottom of this. In a letter to me earlier today, he wrote:

“I have been looking at my medical notes, and have discovered that essentially, I am one of the patients who was not informed by their hospital (in my case Coventry and Warwick Hospital) that I had non-A non-B hepatitis throughout the 80s, and similarly, I was not informed that I had Hepatitis C when the hospital tested me without myself or my parents knowing”—

he was a minor at the time—

“despite testing me years earlier, without myself or my parents knowing. I only found out ‘by accident’ in October 1992, when I transferred my care to the Royal Free in London”.

Andrew quotes from the letter from the consultant at the Royal Free, who said:

“On further discussion he did not seem to be aware that he was Hepatitis C antibody positive and we therefore spent some considerable time discussing our understanding of Hepatitis C infection and the implications of antibody positivity.”

Andrew says:

“I am a severe haemophiliac, and one of only 250 HIV positive haemophiliacs who remain alive today. Of those originally infected in the 1980s, more than three-quarters have died during the course of the past 3 decades. Many of them were my friends.

I was also infected with hepatitis B and C, and despite treatment, I continue to live with the adverse effects of cirrhosis of the liver…I am also one of the 3,872 haemophiliacs (and persons with bleeding disorders), who have been notified as being considered ‘At-Risk’ of vCJD (the human form of Mad Cow Disease).”

This avoidable tragedy has completely transformed Andrew’s life and put him at huge disadvantage. He has never received a proper explanation. He has never been properly recompensed. Despite that, he has devoted his life to ensuring justice for all the victims. We owe it to him and to all those other victims—many of them, unfortunately, already dead—to drill down forensically into this tragedy, and to do so reasonably speedily and in a way that leaves nothing unexposed. If we do not do that, a reducing number of people will get justice.