Contaminated Blood

Baroness Meacher Excerpts

Monday 29th January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham]

The noble Lord asks a question that is right at the extremity of my familiarity with the subject, but I looked it up and the noble Lord is quite right. There was an independent inquiry in the early 2000s by the former Solicitor-General for England and Wales, Lord Archer. I understand that it held no legal or official status at all. It was unable to subpoena witnesses or demand the disclosure of documents, but it looked at some of the issues and discovered that some important documents had been destroyed. There were issues of missing evidence. After he reported, Lord Jenkin, who was also a former Secretary of State, voiced his difficulties about obtaining documents for the inquiry. That inquiry is available and will be available to the statutory inquiry. I hope that it will be able to build on some of the work that Lord Archer undertook.

[Baroness Meacher (CB)]

My Lords, can the Minister assure the House that the different groups of sufferers within this community will all be consulted by the chair and the panel? There are widows, people who are still suffering, people with HIV and people who do not have HIV and they have all been treated differently and in many cases grossly inadequately over the years. This is one of the concerns. People do not want the Haemophilia Society to be the one group that is consulted, because people from these different situations want to speak for themselves. I would like to think that the Haemophilia Society reflects everyone’s interests, but I absolutely respect the wishes of the different groupings. That assurance would be very helpful to them.

[Lord Young of Cookham]

I am very happy to give that assurance to the noble Baroness. As she may know, there were more than 800 responses to the consultation that we launched in July, which concluded in October, so it is quite clear that there is a substantial body of people who take an interest in the subject and have already made representations. I am sure that the chair will want to consult with a wide range of people—survivors and relatives—before he or she finalises terms of reference.