Infected Blood Inquiry

Debate between Clive Efford and David Jones

Thursday 22nd June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

I too pay tribute to the hon. Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson) for securing the debate and for the work they have done on this issue, on behalf of all of us and particularly on behalf of those who have been campaigning for justice for so long.

I draw the Minister’s attention to the words of Sir Brian Langstaff, who implores those who will make the decisions and respond to his recommendations to listen to the victims. I also warn the Minister that the final report, which will be published in the autumn, will be extremely damning. Just imagine what will be said if the Government have not responded to the interim report when that final report comes out, so I urge the Minister to heed that warning.

I pay tribute to my constituents, Lee Moorey and Mary Grindley, who have been campaigning on the issue over many years and have recently come to see me. Mr Moorey went to Treloar’s School when he was 12 and he wrote:

“I am a severe haemophiliac A sufferer. I attended Treloar’s in 1985 aged 12 years. At the age of 14 years, I was told I was HIV positive and that I had only a few years to live. You can imagine the impact this had on myself and my family. I have watched so many of my Treloar blood brothers pass away, I suffer from survivor’s guilt. From the early 1970s until the late 1980s approximately 130 haemophiliacs went to Treloar’s, of which less than 35 are alive today due to infected blood. I am one of the less than 35 still alive.”

Mary Grindley met her husband in the 1970s and they married in 1980, knowing that he was a severe haemophilia sufferer. She gave up teaching in 1991 to look after her husband, John. He died in June 1994, aged 41. Her testimony is harrowing. Her son, Tim, lost his father at the age of 14. To read their stories, as I have done over the last couple of days, is harrowing. That they have had to expose their private details to the public gaze in order to get justice is shameful.

I have been reading about those people’s experiences. They suffered prejudice; their relationships suffered; they suffered harassment, both where they lived and from work colleagues; they were threatened by people they knew, who were upset when they found out; they were unable to get insurance, so they could not get a mortgage, which compounded the problems of being harassed by neighbours, as they were unable to move away; careers were lost; pensions were lost; education was destroyed; and there were impacts on family.

Lee Moorey talks about how his mother struggled financially, and Mary talks about the impact on her son, who was 14 when his father died. They both talk about the psychological impacts. One of the appeals made by Sir Brian Langstaff is that the Government provide psychological support in England, which is provided in the rest of the UK.

My constituents have some requests of the Government, which echo what has been asked by other hon. Members but I will reiterate. The Government have been intransigent in setting up the compensation scheme and there has been a lack of transparency. What are they hiding? Are they actively looking for a chair now? When will that person be in place? Why are they not willing to preregister affected people, particularly parents and children, with possible claims to compensation in order to speed up the process? On the devolution issue, we do not want devolved Governments to set up different compensation schemes, as the scandal occurred pre-devolution. We want one central scheme.

The time for sympathy is over and the time for action is now. I will finish where I started, with the words of Sir Brian Langstaff. Talking to those people who gave evidence about their personal experiences, he said:

“I record in the report that some of the milestones that eventually led to the Government’s acceptance of a moral case for compensation have been marked by the reactions from individuals in power when they have listened—actually listened—to people describing what happened to them and their families. So the right place to start my report was with some of your voices, and that is where it begins. I urge those responsible for considering my recommendations to start there, listening to you and appreciating the depths of what you have experienced so that they, like me, can understand why compensation is overdue.”1.24 pm

[Mr David Jones (Clwyd West) (Con)]

I congratulate the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson) and my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley) on securing this important debate.

The conclusion of Sir Brian Langstaff’s recent interim report is absolutely clear: a compensation scheme must be established to provide appropriate redress to all those who have been wronged over so many decades, and that must be done as soon as possible. That recommendation is clearly correct, and the Government should lose no further time in implementing it. I would like to focus on one issue, of particular importance in Wales, which is whether the scheme should be administered centrally or at a devolved level.

The report has been welcomed by the charity Haemophilia Wales, which supports over 500 of those who have been infected and affected across Wales. The charity has expressed concern that the Government intend to consult with devolved Administrations on the issue of whether the scheme should be administered centrally or locally. The position of Haemophilia Wales is absolutely clear: it believes that a UK-wide compensation scheme should be created, so as to avoid potential inequities in financial support and the danger of political point scoring.

That stance reflects Sir Brian’s own view. In his report, he observes that the scheme he is recommending

“lends itself to administration from one place within the UK rather than being localised.”

He goes on to say:

“The latter is more likely to give rise to disparities of approach.”

It is important to remember that in Wales, devolution was not established until 1999, very many years after patients were infected with HIV and hepatitis C. Many of those patients have had their care delivered by hospitals in England.

Take, for example, my constituent Mrs Rosemary Richards. She was born in 1953, and in the late 1970s decided to be tested to establish if she was a haemophilia carrier, before making a decision whether or not to have children. She was diagnosed as a carrier and was referred to the Royal Liverpool Hospital’s haematology unit in 1980 for testing and counselling. She had two sons, who were born with haemophilia in 1983 and 1985. The official regional centre for the whole of north Wales was the Royal Liverpool Hospital. It paid for and provided the blood products for haemophiliacs. Both her sons were under the care of Alder Hey Children’s Hospital, Liverpool, from 1983, and throughout their childhood they attended reviews at Alder Hey. All their factor VIII treatment was funded from Liverpool.

Therefore, patients resident in north Wales had their treatments funded from and delivered by hospitals in England. There will be very many victims resident in Wales with a similar history. Indeed, it is worth pointing out that children from north Wales with bleeding disorders, such as haemophilia, are still, many years after devolution, receiving their treatment at Alder Hey.

Haemophilia Wales also makes the important point that contaminated blood victims were infected prior to devolution. Many live in Wales but were infected in England and therefore, in any event, do not come under a Welsh scheme. Others were infected in Wales, but now live in England. This pattern does not fit neatly into a devolved landscape.

The Cabinet Office has suggested in correspondence that it is the preference of victims that the scheme should be delivered locally. That is certainly not the view of Haemophilia Wales, which considers that a UK-wide scheme is entirely preferable. The question arises: what is “local”? In Wales, ex gratia payments to the infected are made via the Wales infected blood support scheme at Velindre hospital in Cardiff, which is administered by the Welsh Government. It cannot be said that that scheme is being delivered locally unless the patient in question happens to live in Cardiff. It is certainly not local for victims in my constituency for whom Cardiff is more than four hours away. In fact, on journey time, London is considerably closer—considerably more local.

Time is passing and action is called for. Giving consideration to a devolved structure for the scheme is simply protracting matters unnecessarily and is contrary to the wishes of victims and their families. What the Government should do now is ensure that the scheme is set up and implemented without any further unnecessary delay. I would therefore urge my hon. Friend the Minister to heed the recommendations of Sir Brian Langstaff and the views of Haemophilia Wales and proceed to establish a UK-wide scheme as quickly as possible.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Clive Efford and David Jones

Thursday 9th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr David Jones]

We regularly engage with the tourism industry, and we will continue to do so. Tourism is an important part of the British economy, and we fully recognise its particular concerns.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

The Government have said that they want to secure the rights of British nationals living in Europe, but what about British nationals living in this country who are married to European nationals whose futures have been thrown into doubt by the repugnant position that the Government have adopted? Is it not time to end the doubt for those people?

European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Clive Efford and David Jones

Committee: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 7th February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jones]

I will not give way as I have very little time.

New clause 137 would require the Government to seek to negotiate a new agreement with the EU if Parliament rejects a deal. Again, I reject the measure. Although we are confident that we will achieve a deal acceptable to Parliament, if Parliament were to reject that deal, it would be a sure sign of weakness, as I have said, to return to the EU and ask for other terms. We would be likely to achieve only a worse deal. Furthermore, there is no obligation on the EU to continue negotiating with us beyond the two-year period specified in article 50.

New clause 175 would effectively require the Government to request that we remain a member of the EU if the terms were not approved by Parliament. Frankly, to do so would be to betray the outcome of the referendum, and the Government are not prepared to accept that. I must make it absolutely clear that the Government want Parliament to be engaged throughout this process.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

Will the Minister confirm that the Government’s position is to diminish the status of this House compared with that of the European Parliament in respect of having oversight of this process?

[Mr Jones]

That is absolutely ludicrous. The European Parliament’s role comes at the end of the process; it has oversight to the extent that it rubber-stamps the agreement or not.

New clauses 18 and 19 would require any new treaties agreed with the EU to be subject to the ratification of Parliament. We have always said that we will observe the constitutional and legal obligations that apply to the final deal, and that remains the case. As we have confirmed, the final agreement will be subject to a vote of this House before it is concluded.

European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Clive Efford and David Jones

2nd reading: House of Commons
Wednesday 1st February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jones]

I do not know why the hon. Gentleman does not understand; I am not taking his intervention.

In particular, we are wholly committed to the Belfast agreement and its successors. We will work with the Irish Government to maintain the common travel area on the island of Ireland and not return to the borders of the past. We have received, and we are grateful for, the submissions from the Scottish and Welsh Governments, which are being considered.

That said, the Supreme Court was clear in its judgment that triggering article 50 is a reserved matter for this Parliament, and that the devolved legislatures do not have a veto. But we have been clear that we will work very carefully to ensure that as powers are repatriated from Brussels back to Britain, the right powers are returned to Westminster and the right powers are passed to the devolved Administrations of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Many hon. Members raised the question of the status of EU citizens living and working in the United Kingdom. Let us be clear: this Government value and appreciate the role that they play in our economy and in our communities, and we are determined to provide as much certainty as we can, as soon as we can. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has been clear that guaranteeing UK citizens’ rights in the EU, and EU citizens’ rights in the UK, is one of our immediate objectives in the upcoming negotiations. Indeed, we stand ready to reach such a deal right now if the other countries of the European Union agree. To the EU citizens who are living, studying and working in the UK I say, “You will still be welcome in this country, as we trust our citizens will continue to be welcome in yours.”

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker.