Contaminated Blood

Chloe Smith Excerpts

Thursday 15th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Chloe Smith (Norwich North) (Con)]

I have attended today’s debate for three reasons. First, I know of two constituents who have suffered from the contaminated blood scandal. Secondly, the Backbench Business Committee is doing good by returning to the subject of one of its earliest debates in 2010, so we can take this as a test of what sort of progress can and should be made during a Parliament. Thirdly and most seriously, I share the view of many in the Chamber that this issue is a national disgrace and a national tragedy. The victims have suffered long enough. I endorse the calls in the comprehensive inquiry by the APPG and I thank the various hon. Members who contributed to it. I also endorse its view that a public inquiry is necessary to establish culpability.

I shall use this time to tell the story of my constituents, and much of what I say will be direct quotations from them. They asked me to attend this debate, to speak for them and to support their interests. One in particular thanked me for such forms of support, saying:

“You have no idea how importantly we, in this contaminated blood community, who are very sick and ill, hold them.”

She wanted to make sure that we know that

“they are ill and exhausted and do not want to be constantly fighting and campaigning.”

Anne had an operation in 1974 that required three pints of blood. She knew by 2001 that she had been infected with hepatitis C, and she is now a stage 2 Skipton Fund recipient. She has suffered decompensated hepatitis C cirrhosis, end-stage liver disease, cancer, osteoporosis with weak teeth and a compression fracture of the spine, portal hypertension and oesophageal bleeding for which, she says,

“the procedures had recently are no cure, they simply stop the likelihood of my bleeding to death from the mouth and will return.”

She has splenomegaly, with her spleen twice the size it should be; in her words,

“it…‘eats’ platelets, red blood cells and immune giving chemicals.”

She has extreme fatigue and often describes her inability do anything more than be in bed all day, which is very hard when the treating hospital is several hours’ travel away. She has had four rounds of interferon injections—a drug that she says is “like chemo”—and pills that

“kill all your cells good and bad”.

Anne has most recently had a liver transplant, for which her consultant cheered her up with three things to worry about: No. 1, dying on the list to get the transplant; No. 2, not surviving the 10-hour operation; and No. 3, rejecting the new liver. She has had a drug regime that has helped to remove the virus. Indeed, when I spoke to her since the transplant, she sounded like a new woman, even when she almost cheerily told me:

“I still have cancer, but the Hep C has gone!”

Anne has been concerned about funeral payments so that her family do not need to worry. She explains the daily humiliation of waiting until last in a doctor’s or dentist’s surgery because she is infectious; she says she is being “treated like a leper”. She describes the

“stigma of cirrhosis and a disease associated with drugs”.

Anne would like priority support for survivors, although the majority will already be dead. In particular, she wants access to liver transplants and access to new drugs. She would like a national strategy for GPs to understand better the complexity of hepatitis C infection. She would also like better advocacy, because so many people affected are not in a position to speak for themselves.

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

A point put to me is how infuriating and occasionally humiliating it is when, on meeting a new clinician, someone has to go through their whole life history, explaining that they do not drink too much and so forth. There should be some way of flagging up the fact that these people do not need to be asked ordinary clerking questions when their condition is perfectly plain.

[Chloe Smith]

I thank my hon. Friend for that point. It speaks directly about an issue I am coming on to. Anne has told me that she faced that problem, along with others such as getting a benefits processing centre to understand how the Skipton Fund works and the fact that she and others like her are fatally ill. She would like to see the “passporting” of prescriptions, which connects with what my hon. Friend just said.

My second constituent is a haemophiliac, and he was infected with hepatitis C in 1978 from an operation on arthritis. He realised the result in the 1990s. I am sorry to say that he had been part of Skipton stage 1 until last year, but he was then diagnosed with cirrhosis of the liver, which he had feared for many years. He, too, has been treated with interferon, a “truly awful drug”, and he is hoping for a new generation of drugs in a couple of years’ time.

My constituent has lived in fear of his disease worsening and of passing it on inadvertently to his wife and children. At first, he was told

“not to worry, as Hep C was like flu”.

He explained:

“Later they said that was wrong and it would probably kill him one day—unless…something else got him first.”

He told me:

“It’s funny how as you clock on a bit you get told you don’t need to worry as something else will kill you first. One does begin to fear this thing that’s going to get you first!”

He has been angered by the distinction drawn between stages 1 and 2 of hepatitis C in the lingo of the fund. The APPG’s report backs his view, and indeed my other constituent, Anne, agrees in the sense that many sufferers sadly progress from stage 1 to stage 2.

My second constituent would like three things: a full judicial inquiry; improved administration by the Skipton Fund; and better compensation, which he believes to be poor for the death and suffering caused in comparison with payments that other victims of other tragedies have received. He is hugely cynical that any Government will do something about this “hidden scandal”, which, as he calmly says,

“is a great pity for an awful lot of people.”

Let me come to my own views. I think the APPG’s report is a strong piece of work which holds many sensible recommendations that I would back. As I said, I would back the holding of a public inquiry, as this is one of the last remaining great scandals for which culpability ought to be clear, acknowledged and apologised for. I back the motion and pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt) and all the others who have made today possible.

I add one comparison drawn from Anne’s comments, and this speaks to what my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley) challenged me on.

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

I did not challenge; I added.

[Chloe Smith]

Added, quite right.

We honour our military with a covenant. For the sacrifices they make for us— facing danger, injury and death—we give our respect, our support and fair treatment. We acknowledge a moral obligation. This Government should be congratulated on aiming to ensure that no disadvantage is suffered in gaining public services, and they acknowledge that there can be a case for special treatment in certain cases.

In no way do I try to cheapen either of those situations—the need for a military covenant or the needs of the people whom we are talking about today—but it is clear to me as a constituency MP that my constituent Anne seeks much the same as the sort of help that I have tried to get for veterans: doctors to act on the wider effects of their illness; getting the benefits system to see what they are suffering; and getting public services in general to join the dots of what they know.

I know it is controversial in the military covenant to emphasise preferential treatment, but in the case of Anne, who has wanted drugs and a new liver against the might of the NICE guidelines, when her appalling, sapping illness was no fault of her own, I think that she, too, and many like her, should receive respect, support and fair treatment. I see a moral obligation and every moral argument for doing as she asks. Perhaps the Government might consider having a covenant for contaminated blood.