Contaminated Blood and Blood Products

Damian Hinds Excerpts

Thursday 14th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)]

I am conscious that there are many hon. Members still wishing to speak, so I shall be brief. As the hon. Member for Coventry North West (Mr Robinson) said, it is almost inevitable, given the number of people involved in this scandal, that there will be someone in every constituency who has been affected. The issue has especial significance in my constituency, because it is home to the outstanding Lord Mayor Treloar college, where many of the victims were students in the 1970s and 1980s. There were many haemophiliacs at the college because it had an excellent in-house haemophilia centre. My constituent Mr Adrian Goodyear was one of those who was infected by contaminated blood and blood products. He wrote to me to say:

“We’ve now lost so many of our friends from the Treloar days—in fact, we stopped counting at 40—many of whom were children, teenagers or young adults at the time.”

Those words will stay with me.

I would like to pay tribute to all the tireless campaigners from the affected community for their perseverance and tenacity over many years. I congratulate them, and everyone involved on securing this historic debate on the Floor of the House. Hon. Members across the political spectrum have also been instrumental in keeping up the fight. Among them was my predecessor as East Hampshire’s MP, Michael Mates, for whom this was a special cause.

Like most others, I cannot begin to imagine the anguish and fury of the thousands of patients infected by contaminated blood. Whether we call it accident, negligence or anything else, these people came to receive treatment through our national health service—and were poisoned. For some it has been a death sentence; for others a long lingering life sentence.

There are some things in this morning’s written statement that are to be welcomed, including the Minister’s commitment to look afresh at insurance, prescription charges, and access to care services and nursing. Many hon. Members have spoken about compensation, which is, of course, fundamental. It has become clear through this debate—for the reasons expounded by the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Charnwood (Mr Dorrell)—that today’s motion, as currently worded, is not the best basis on which to move forward. We all look to the Minister to move forward towards a just settlement that will allow those people and their families, who have suffered so much, to reach some sort of closure.

For about the next 30 seconds I want to focus on a different aspect—apology. One of the worst aspects of this whole sad affair is that so many, including those children from Treloar, died without anybody saying, “We’re sorry.” That makes me very uncomfortable. It is not about assigning blame. There could be—indeed, there has been—long debate over the technicalities of liability or otherwise, who knew what and when, how quickly things could have changed and so forth. Regardless of those specifics, surely the victims of this disaster are owed the dignity of a proper apology. I have read the expressions of sympathy, but I do not think they quite go far enough. The events predate most current Members of the House, and I am not suggesting that a Minister should come to the Dispatch Box to take, or indeed assign, blame. I do think, however, that it is not too much to ask to give the victims the dignity of hearing a Minister of the Crown come to the Floor of this House and say, “Yes, we are truly sorry.”