Contaminated Blood

Baroness Keeley Excerpts

Tuesday 12th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[Diana Johnson]

My right hon. Friend makes an important point.

Fourthly, there are concerns that under the plans money will be used to pay for new drugs to treat hepatitis C, which will be bought separately from the NHS budget, so will cost more. Under guidelines from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, everyone with hepatitis C should be eligible for treatment with a new generation of drugs from the end of February 2016, so when funds are allocated for treatment, that means once again that money does not go directly to those who need financial support.

[Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend, who is making an excellent speech, agree with my constituent, who is affected and feels that the changes are deliberately punitive and exceedingly cruel, as they use requests for changes to support schemes to affect people in that way? My constituent has had to use the ex gratia payment from the Government to fund treatment refused by the NHS, as many other people have had to do. His annual payment will decrease over time and he will lose the additional support that is currently provided. People such as my constituent are hit again and again, so how can the consultation on reform go ahead on that basis?

[Diana Johnson]

I shall move on and complete my speech.

Fifthly, there is concern about the fact that beneficiaries in England will be worse off than beneficiaries in Scotland. The Scottish proposals are far more generous to hepatitis C stage 2 and HIV sufferers, who will receive £27,000 per annum or £37,000 if they are co-infected, which is welcome, but are much less generous for hepatitis C stage 1s, who will receive an additional lump sum payment but no ongoing support. The Scottish proposals have been broadly welcomed, partly because of the way in which the consultation was conducted in Scotland, and the clear acknowledgement, for example, that the existing trust structure will be scrapped.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Gerald Kaufman (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)]

Thank you for calling me to speak, Mr Deputy Speaker. I would like to join other Members of Parliament in thanking my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson) for her work on this matter, which, among other things, has enabled us to take part in this debate.

Everything that we deal with in this House of Commons is about people, whether they are Syrian refugees or steelworkers from south Wales. Whatever we do deals with the lives of people, and we are somehow led to believe that the larger the number of people involved, the more important the issue will be. That is a basic problem about this issue. There is not, sub specie aeternitatis, a huge number of people who are affected by blood contamination, but those involved have been affected in a way that damages their lives every minute of every day. I would not have known about this issue if it were not for a person in my constituency called Mohibul Islam, who has been in contact with me year after year—I now have a file of correspondence so enormous that I could not bring it into the Chamber—and who has asked me to participate in the debate and to ask a specific question.

Let us be clear about this: I do not accuse the Government of being heartless. It would be easy to do that, given the suffering of the people involved. However, the Government do not seem to grasp the fact that a process that should have been followed to produce an effective outcome has been left in such a way that we still cannot believe that we are going to get a result. We still cannot believe that the outcome will be known to, and potentially satisfy, the relatively small number of our constituents who are suffering in this way. Also, when I say that this involves a small number of people, I must stress that it occupies 100% of their lives.

It may well be that every Member in this Chamber has in her or his family someone who suffers from some deeply upsetting illness, but unless one knows about blood contamination, it passes us by. The Government have not given the matter the active attention that it deserves, and that may simply be because the number of people affected is relatively small. This is not in any way an accusation against the Government—I will make accusations against them when I need to—but there are no votes in this, because the number is small. However, the numbers suffering cannot be pinned down by statistics. Unless any of us in the Chamber have actually suffered from blood contamination or its consequences, we do not really know about it, even if we are told.

Mohibul Islam has asked me to put a specific question to the Minister, and I will ask her to respond to him, so that I can let him know that his voice has been heard in the House of Commons. He wants to know why, instead of raising payments and bringing them above the poverty threshold, the payment for the dual-infected group is being cut substantially, leading to some people being £7,000 a year worse off. For someone with tax relationships with Panama, £7,000 may not seem like a large sum of money, but it is everything to somebody who needs the money and goes day after day without any prospect of alleviation.

[Barbara Keeley]

We have heard Government Members say that money is tight, but like my right hon. Friend’s constituent, my constituent Mr Dave Gort has had to cover the cost of his own treatment and is facing a decrease in the annual payment. He will also lose additional support such as winter fuel payments and the prescription prepayment programme. Those affected also have issues with insurance, for example, with premiums being loaded even when the virus has cleared. I support my right hon. Friend’s points about hardship and the hit that the change represents.

[Sir Gerald Kaufman]

What my hon. Friend says is remarkably valid and I concur with it. As a consequence of what she and other Members have said and, most of all, of my communications from Mohibul Islam, I want to know why the Government cannot at least provide parity with Scotland. That would not solve the problem, but it would to some extent alleviate the financial consequences.

As I said, every one of us in this House, either personally or through someone in our family, has suffered the effects of some kind of health-related problem. In my case, my brother and one of my sisters died in suffering after a long experience of Alzheimer’s disease. There are many ways in which the human condition can be hurtful or troublesome. I am not looking for a solution—frankly, I do not believe that there is a solution in health terms—but I am looking for the Government to show that they care, that there will be an outcome, and that that outcome will, as a minimum, alleviate the anxieties and concerns of those who live with this affliction every single day.