Infected Blood Inquiry

Baroness Kramer Excerpts

Tuesday 30th July 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Twycross (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend for her question. On the urgency of ensuring that those affected and infected receive compensation, it is difficult to talk about urgency when people have quite clearly waited decades, in some cases, to get justice. A lot of dialogue is going on at official level with the devolved Administrations, and this will be taking place at ministerial level as well. Applications for interim payments will start in October and it is a matter of absolute urgency that that goes smoothly. Those discussions will continue to take place over the summer, in advance of 24 August, when the “made affirmative” procedure will go through. It is vital that those continue to proceed. Applications for payments will open across the piece in October and the compensation scheme will be a priority for this Government. As I said, the Prime Minister made it a priority and reaffirmed this on his second day in office.

[Baroness Kramer (LD)]

My Lords, the Minister raised the duty of candour as a mechanism to make sure that such horrors are not repeated, but will she take on board that a duty of candour alone is completely insufficient—the noble Earl, Lord Howe, raised this—so long as those who speak out become victims of retaliation? This is almost the norm, rather than the exception, despite the existence of employment tribunals, which are completely unfit for purpose in dealing with these situations. People will not speak out because they are not prepared to martyr their career, their family and their future. So will the Minister please support actions to provide proper protections for whistleblowers? Obviously, I have brought Bills before this House, but can that become a priority? Without that, a duty of candour is ineffective.

[Baroness Twycross (Lab)]

The duty of candour really matters. I appreciate that people are concerned about making sure that we protect public servants, which is right: we should protect them. But the duty of candour also relates to making sure that we have a culture within all our public services where, when things go wrong, people are able to say so and we do not have cover-up after cover-up. That is about not just whistleblowing but a culture that has protected the establishment and left people vulnerable and unprotected when they have been infected and affected by infected blood and infected blood products in this instance. Time and again when we have public inquiries, we see that people knew but did not speak out—and actually people have not always spoken out initially when there has been a formal public inquiry. So you cannot do that just by having a duty of candour within legislation; it has to be about the culture, which has to respect that, when whistleblowers speak out, they are protected. That is about not just legislation but the culture in which we want to operate our public services across the piece.