Infected Blood Inquiry

Baroness Berridge Excerpts

Tuesday 15th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, I too wish to recognise the tenacity and bravery of the many victims and their families who have suffered grievously due to receiving medical care that did them harm, contrary to the very first principles of medical ethics. This was compounded by the failure of many parts of the state to respond to their concerns, and the concealment of what happened to them. I was incredibly moved by the bravery of the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, in speaking about her family’s circumstances.

I recently served on the Select Committee of your Lordships’ House on the Inquiries Act, which called its recent report Public Inquiries: Enhancing Public Trust. This public inquiry, chaired by Sir Brian Langstaff, lasting six years and involving two interim reports—as well as the separate work on the compensation scheme by Sir Robert Francis, KC—cannot be subject to the criticism “too long” or “too costly”. It has enhanced public trust in this system that somewhere between the political and the justice systems lies public inquiries. When all else fails, it is a public inquiry that we need, but it took too long to get there, a point to which I will return. Although noble Lords will have the opportunity to debate fully the Select Committee’s report, some of our conclusions are relevant to, or overlap with, the inquiry’s work.

Keeping first things first, I turn to ensuring swift compensation for those infected and affected by infected blood and blood products, as well as the families of the deceased. I hope the Minister can confirm that the application system for interim payments of £100,000 for families of the deceased has actually opened this month, as the Paymaster-General said was the intention in the other place in July and September this year. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Keeley, I ask when the second set of statutory instruments will be laid, dealing with fuller compensation for those affected. It is important that Parliament considers that. I repeat that the main focus at this stage should be compensation, but I hope the Minister is able to provide details of progress on the many other recommendations Sir Brian made. As she noted, they are receiving careful consideration.

As the Select Committee on public inquiries heard so many times, even if His Majesty’s Government accept a public inquiry’s recommendations, whether they are then acted on is another matter. It can be remarkably hard to find out what progress is being made on each recommendation. As this inquiry recommended that the evidence and the report should remain accessible to the public, will this be where the public can access a simple timetable on the progress made? The public inquiry has admirably built confidence with victims and their families; enacting accepted recommendations is vital to retaining that trust.

Both the public inquiry and the Select Committee’s report recommend some kind of role for Parliament in holding the Government to account on progress in implementing the recommendations they have accepted. Sir Brian envisages this role to be that of the Commons’ Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee and the Select Committee of your Lordships’ House—a new Joint Select Committee.

In the other place, the Paymaster-General did not seem entirely clear about accepting that there would be some role for Parliament to play in future, so can the Minister please confirm that, in principle, Parliament will have a role? Time, human energy and money have been well spent here, but how His Majesty’s Government will be held to account on the recommendations is not clear. Please let us not ask more of the victims and their families in that regard.

If a good public inquiry like this is the answer when all else is failing, how do we get there quicker? As the right reverend Prelate said, justice delayed is justice denied—but it also enormously compounds the personal trauma. Noble Lords who served with me on the Select Committee will not be surprised to hear me mention how affected I was by the evidence of Bill Wright, the co-chair of Haemophilia Scotland. The Scottish Parliament was first asked for a public inquiry in 1999, and it took a quarter of a century until the infected blood inquiry reported. Mr Wright also said:

“Some of the people coming into inquiries will be completely broken; some will be highly resilient”.


It is obvious that victims having to go through lengthy campaigns such as those the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, outlined in order to get an inquiry compounds the damage and breaks some of them—if the original harm has not already done so.

Again, Sir Brian and the Select Committee see a role here for Parliament, and I would be grateful if the noble Baroness could outline His Majesty’s Government’s view of this. I am aware that the noble Baroness may have to write to me, but when there are so many public inquiries now happening, it seems highly unusual that Parliament does not yet have a more formal role.

Although it is another matter that might need a letter, there are a number of recommendations that are more constitutional in nature—another specialism of your Lordships’ House. These include recommendations such as:

“Ending the defensive culture in the Civil Service and government … a statutory duty of accountability on senior civil servants for the candour and completeness of advice given to Permanent Secretaries and Ministers”,


and that:

“The Government should consider the extent to which Ministers should be subject to a duty beyond their current duty to Parliament under the Ministerial Code”.


I note that the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, commented on this.

While the recommendations might ordinarily be a matter just for the Cabinet Secretary, and maybe the Minister for the Cabinet Office, such conclusions by Sir Brian in such a landmark report on such wide-scale failure of the state call for more in-depth consideration. The Select Committee was often told of the culture of candour in the aviation industry, where apparently mistakes are reported and people are not cowed by fear of the consequences for their own employment. How has it achieved that culture? I hope to see a humble attitude from His Majesty’s Government in seeking advice from other industries, perhaps from the Institute for Government—one of the few bodies that can talk to Ministers while in office—and maybe from the Committee on Standards in Public Life.

Does everyone, from junior officials to even Secretaries of State, know where they can discreetly obtain confidential ethics advice when something just does not feel right but everyone seems to think it is okay? I recall my time as a barrister. From very early on, the induction is that you have a phone number to get hold of a King’s Counsel confidentially, at short notice, if in the heat of a trial you have an ethics concern on which you need advice. Why are Ministers not also so equipped? This is particularly important for Ministers and special advisers who, due to the nature of their appointment and of how they can be dismissed, seem to be outside any of the protections of the whistleblowers legislation. Can the Minister confirm for the record that “public servants” for the duty of candour legislation will include Ministers of the Crown?

Finally, I return to the first priority: compensation. We heard in the Select Committee that when a public inquiry has been held, those lessons are not passed on to the next public inquiry. I hope that all the expertise of Sir Robert Francis is not lost, but along with all noble Lords I also hope that we will never have to use his expertise again.