Contaminated Blood and Blood Products

Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick Excerpts

Thursday 24th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House notes the Government’s recent announcement on the reform of the support schemes for people affected by contaminated blood and blood products; recognises that the contaminated blood scandal was one of the biggest treatment disasters in the history of the NHS; believes that those people affected should have a reasonable standard of living and not just be removed from poverty; is concerned that bereaved partners of people who died with HIV/AIDS and those reliant on regular top-up payments will be worse off; is concerned that the new payments for people infected with Hepatitis C are not commensurate with the pain and suffering caused; notes that people who were infected with other viruses, those who did not reach the chronic stage of Hepatitis C and bereaved parents are not mentioned in this announcement; and calls on the Government to use the funds from the sale of Plasma Resources UK to bring forward revised proposals that are properly funded and which provide appropriate support to all affected people.

I thank Members of the Backbench Business Committee, who, since the Committee was established, have always been very generous in recognising the importance of this issue to many of our constituents. This is the third Backbench Business debate that we have had on the subject.

It is more than 45 years since the first people were infected with HIV, hepatitis C and other viruses from NHS-supplied blood products. Their lives, and those of their families, were changed forever by this tragedy. The contaminated blood scandal is now rightly recognised as a grave injustice—the worst treatment disaster in the history of our country’s health service—but those affected are still waiting for a proper financial settlement that recognises the full effect that the scandal has had on them and on their families. This group of people have campaigned for far too many years for justice, at the same time as dealing with illness and disability.

The current financial support for those affected is simply not fit for purpose. That stark fact was laid bare in the inquiry of the all-party group on haemophilia and contaminated blood in January 2015. This quote is on the first page of our report:

“You can’t give us back our health. But you can give us back our dignity. This tortured road has been too long for many of us. But for the rest of us, please let this be the final road to closure.”

Thankfully, we all now agree that the current support arrangements cannot continue, and that we need to create a scheme that gives this community back their dignity.

I welcome the efforts made by the former Prime Minister when he was in office. I welcome the Under-Secretary of State for Health, the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Nicola Blackwood), to her new post and I welcome Lord Prior of Brampton to his new position. I was happy to meet him last week, alongside other APPG members, to discuss the new support arrangements.

Although we are all agreed on the need for a reformed scheme, I cannot agree with the Department of Health that its proposed settlement is sufficient. The purpose of this debate is to highlight the aspects of the new support scheme that will not provide the support that these people need, following the hasty announcement made by the former Prime Minister as he left office in July 2016.

In my speech, I want to stress five key issues that the Department of Health urgently needs to address. The first issue concerns the differences between the country schemes in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. We need to know what support people in all four countries of the United Kingdom will get. While Scotland and England have set out their own separate support schemes, in Wales and especially in Northern Ireland people desperately need some certainty about the help they will receive.

[Ms Margaret Ritchie (South Down) (SDLP)]

I thank my hon. Friend for securing this debate along with other right hon. and hon. Members. I have been in touch with the Minister for Health in Northern Ireland and there has been no progress on this matter. I and other hon. Members from Northern Ireland have constituents who have suffered from the ill effects of contaminated blood for over 45 years.

[Diana Johnson]

It is very worrying to hear that there has not been any progress on what is happening in Northern Ireland, so the Minister needs to explain to the House what work is going on.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ms Margaret Ritchie (South Down) (SDLP)]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson) for her strong campaigning zeal in relation to this subject. The contaminated blood and blood products scandal has touched the lives of many people over the past 40 years. Sadly, many people have died, leaving loved ones who had spent their lives caring for them. The scandal has not only affected those who are infected but changed the lives of their families as well. We have had many debates in the House and Westminster Hall calling for a full and final settlement for those affected, and what we see today is an improvement on what was offered to them in January, but we still have a distance to go if we are to give those people and their families the means to have a decent standard of living.

Questions remain unanswered as to why those infected blood products, which infected others, were imported from the United States—and perhaps other places—into Northern Ireland and Britain. I understand that the Under-Secretary of State for Health, the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Nicola Blackwood), is not the Minister responsible for this matter, but I hope that she can answer my questions today. I hope that she will pursue Lord Prior to ensure that we get answers. As the right hon. Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt) said, there is a collective shame surrounding this issue. It is an issue without political boundaries or barriers, because it has impacted on families throughout the UK.

I return to a point that I raised in an earlier intervention, to highlight the issues that we face in Northern Ireland. I have written to the Northern Ireland Health Minister, Michelle O’Neill, because there has not yet been an announcement on the scheme for Northern Ireland. She replied to me in early August, after the Prime Minister’s statement here in the Commons. She stated:

“I am currently considering options for the future of financial support for patients and families in the north of Ireland before making a decision.”

That is a similar answer to those that I received from her predecessors. There is no sense of urgency on their part, and no recognition or acknowledgment of the fact that this is a serious matter, which has impacted on people’s lives. I have written again to the Minister in Northern Ireland to urge her to address this matter as soon as possible, and I would appreciate it if the Under-Secretary here could raise it in any forthcoming discussions with her Northern Ireland counterpart.

An important point is that the affected people in Northern Ireland can stay in the current scheme as long as the English scheme remains unreformed, but once the new English administrator is in place—I hope it will not be Atos or Capita—the existing discretionary charities will close. That will leave my constituents and those of my hon. Friend the Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan), as well as other affected people in Northern Ireland, in great peril. We do not want that to happen. The Haemophilia Society has also raised this matter in its document.

I remind the Minister that the Irish Government took the courageous decision some years ago to accept liability for this tragedy, which has compromised the health and the immune systems of so many people, and to deliver a compensation scheme.

[Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)]

The House has been misinformed on this point a number of times in previous debates, and it is important to point out that the compensation scheme in the Irish Republic was established even before liability was acknowledged. The tribunal system and the compensation scheme were set up, and the subsequent acknowledgment of liability simply affected the quantum. The fact of compensation had already been established, and that is what is still missing in the UK.

[Ms Ritchie]

I thank my hon. Friend for his helpful intervention. He characterises the position in the Republic of Ireland, which illustrates clearly the acknowledgment that the needs of people came first, before all the other extraneous matters.

I welcome the fact that progress has been made, but there are still matters that the Government must address if they want to be responsible for the long overdue settlement that these people are entitled to and require. It is not clear what will be in place following 2020-21. People need time to plan and they should not have to worry that the scheme might deteriorate or be pulled out from under their feet. I am also concerned by the lack of clarity on support for dependants, bereaved partners and bereaved parents, both current and future.

I have spoken many times in the Chamber about constituents of mine who have been affected by contaminated blood, and they have given me permission to name them. One constituent I have known for most of my life, Brian Carberry, has to go to weekly hospital appointments. He also has associated health problems. Over a year ago, he was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Thankfully, he is currently in remission.

Two other constituents are twins, Martin and Seamus Sloan, who live in Kilkeel. They are both haemophiliacs and both infected. Their lives have been turned upside down. They have difficulty keeping hold of interpersonal relationships, and their immune systems have been completely compromised. That means that they are exposed to many other types of illness, and they are therefore unable to work and to provide for their families.

The strain and challenges that the families of infected people face cannot be overlooked. It is a direct result of this tragic situation. There can never really be a remedy for those whose lives have been affected, but the Government can recognise their suffering and alleviate the financial strain that they experience as a result. The Government must also try to resolve what the right hon. Member for North East Bedfordshire described as the legacy of collective shame that goes back across many Governments, and to bring relief to the people affected. Sadly, some of those people have passed on.

Regular payments must be in place and discretionary grants must be available to all those infected and their families. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North, who has been such a stout campaigner on the behalf of these individuals, I would also like some form of inquiry, but I do not want an inquiry to hold up whatever form of compensation will eventually become available. We need to find out the reasons and the causes and hold to account the people who did this to our constituents and the wider population. It must never happen again. The Government have made progress, but they must ensure a full, fair settlement that is allied to an inquiry, because that is what these people deserve, so vitally need and have long been owed. It is long overdue for those lives lost, compromised or damaged by bad health as a result of infected and contaminated blood products.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nicola Blackwood]

The issue of death certificates is one that we are very alive to. It is one that the Department is trying to address, and I hope that we will be consulting closely with the relevant groups to make sure we deal with it in as sympathetic a manner as possible.

[Ms Ritchie]

Could the Minister comment on the points I made about the inactivity of the Northern Ireland Executive? Would it be possible for further phone calls to be made to the Minister for Health in Northern Ireland to accelerate the process and to enable payments and a scheme to be made available?

[Nicola Blackwood]

If the hon. Lady will have a little patience, I have an entire section on the devolved nations coming up. Before then, however, I would like to move on and speak a little about the other sections of the scheme. As well as the one-off payment to bereaved partners and spouses, the Government’s response to the consultation makes it clear that partners and spouses will be able to continue to access discretionary schemes on a means-tested basis. However, that is not the end of the story. My officials will continue to work with a reference group of experts on the details of the policy for this new payment for the bereaved and on elements of the wider discretionary payment. As soon as the policy is confirmed, the Department will publish it and give guidance on who is eligible and how to access the payment as easily as possible.

I recognise that, as has been clear from this debate, some do not feel that the new payments that have been announced are sufficient. However, they are based on the consultation response, and a judgment was made to provide support to the widest group of people possible to recognise the pain and suffering of those who have been affected by this tragedy. There are never really any right answers when designing a support scheme in recognition of such awful circumstances. Difficult judgments have to be made in relation to prioritising support. We consulted on the proposals and used the responses gathered to announce reforms that, for the first time, provide annual payments to all infected individuals rather than waiting for more people to get sicker before they receive support.

The hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North raised issues about other viruses. We have not expanded the scheme to include other viruses, including vCJD. In that case in particular, that is because there is already a vCJD compensation scheme that offers no-fault compensation. It was set up by the Government for vCJD patients and their families in recognition of their wholly exceptional situation. The scheme provides for payments to be made, in respect of 250 cases, from a trust fund of £67.5 million. Over £41 million has been paid out by the trust to date. There are currently no proposals to extend the infected blood system of ex gratia payments to include other viruses or infections that were contracted through routes other than NHS-supplied infected blood. This is based on the advice of the Advisory Committee on the Safety of Blood, Tissues and Organs. For example, hepatitis B was not involved in the schemes when they were set up because the blood donor hepatitis B screening test had been introduced in the 1970s. There are other reasons for not including hepatitis E that I am happy to write to the hon. Lady about in more detail should she wish me to do so.

We now arrive at the devolved nations section that I mentioned to the hon. Member for South Down (Ms Ritchie). Many colleagues have referred to the Scottish Government’s reforms. We are working closely with officials from Northern Ireland in keeping them up to date on our progress with implementation. These beneficiaries, as the hon. Lady said, will be eligible under the Northern Irish scheme to continue to receive support at their current levels. I am happy to ensure that my noble Friend Lord Prior is made aware of her concerns about the potential impact on Northern Irish victims.

The hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Martyn Day) rightly raised the importance of co-ordination between the devolved nations on the support schemes. Given the significance of the points that he raised, and some complexities about the co-ordination of business, it is important that I ask my noble Friend Lord Prior to contact him directly on those points so that these matters can be co-ordinated effectively. I can reassure the hon. Gentleman on one point: the £500 winter fuel payment is now automatically included in the payment that people in England are getting as part of the support scheme. That means that they do not have to apply for it, as was the case previously. I hope that he will accept that that is a degree of progress.

Many colleagues point to the Scottish scheme as a blueprint for what they would like to see introduced in England, but there are some differences, as the hon. Gentleman noted. In England, there are about 2,400 individuals with hepatitis C stage 1 who were not receiving any annual payment. We have introduced a new annual payment for all those individuals so that they can get support now rather than waiting for their health to deteriorate before they are eligible for it. The Scottish Government have made their own judgments. They have chosen to provide a lump sum payment, and there are currently no proposals for annual payments to the hepatitis C stage 1 group.

We have put in place other measures to avoid the sense that, as the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter) suggested, this support could be grudging, or that, as the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North mentioned, people could feel as though they were being treated as beggars. We have specifically put in measures to avoid this. For example, as we announced in response to the public consultation, people should not feel as though they have to jump through hoops to prove that they are worthy of support. We have no intention of introducing individual health assessments to registrants of schemes as a means of making people feel as though they have to prove their eligibility. Another key element is a special categories mechanism, with appeal, for those with hepatitis C stage 1 who consider that the impact of their infection, or the treatment for it, is similar or greater than for those at stage 2, such that they could qualify for stage 2 annual payments. This is a particularly beneficial aspect of the scheme.

Members have raised the issue of those who could clear hepatitis C infection. They will remain entitled to compensation under the scheme. The shadow Minister is right that those who clear the virus during the acute phase are not included in the scheme, but that is because the body fights off the infection before the severe health impacts occur. That has been the judgment of the expert advisory group, which we have been pleased to listen to.