Contaminated Blood and Blood Products

George Howarth Excerpts

Thursday 24th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Diana Johnson]

My hon. Friend puts the point very well. The APPG and the right hon. Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt) have spoken to people about what they want from the revised scheme, and they have said they want the option of a lump sum payment, if that would be better for them than regular payments. It is important that we give people the ability to make those decisions for themselves.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter) just alluded to, the APPG still believes that we need a Hillsborough-style panel inquiry to allow people to tell their stories and to say what happened to them and how it affected them.

[Mr George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Diana Johnson]

I am happy to give way to my right hon. Friend, who has great knowledge on this point.

[Mr Howarth]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who is making a very powerful case, as she always does, and I congratulate her on the way she is doing it. She is right about the potential of a Hillsborough-style inquiry—I note that the Prime Minister is a great fan of that process, and has said so previously—but we need to take care that such an inquiry does not put all the important and urgent issues she has raised into the shade while the process takes place. The two things need to be separate.

[Diana Johnson]

I agree with my right hon. Friend, who makes his point very well. We need to make sure that any new support scheme moves quickly. We need to get on with this. The previous Prime Minister, when he apologised on behalf of the nation 18 months ago, also allocated £25 million, but none of that has been spent yet, as I understand it. We need to make sure that a scheme is introduced as quickly as possible, although obviously with our concerns having being addressed. But absolutely the two things can run in parallel, and a Hillsborough-style panel inquiry would give people the opportunity of a truth and reconciliation inquiry. I still think it a key requirement if there is to be any real sense of justice and closure.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alistair Burt]

Yes, I will. I will turn to those who are co-infected, but staying on discretionary payments for a moment, I just think that the position was not clear enough. As the trusts were administered separately and not by the Department, I do not think that there was full awareness that the discretionary payments had become a fixed part of people’s income. There is much more awareness of that now, and dealing with this is essential because people are extremely worried as they do not see such payments specifically included in the scheme, and I hope that they will be part of it.

I would also like a small amount of money to be made available for some of the things thrown up through the system that are not recognised. I am thinking in particular of a family in which two young boys lost their father and two uncles, and were taken into care. Their lives were changed hugely because of that. There is no part of the scheme that fits the agonies that they went through, so I wonder whether there could be some recognition of that, with a small part of the fund kept for unusual circumstances.

I must reiterate my determination that there should be some form of inquiry into what has happened. We know—it is on record—the sense of scandal about this. We have heard from former Ministers, including Lord Owen, who made a speech relatively recently in which he was very clear about what happened. He spoke about ministerial documents being “scrapped” and said:

“I have become convinced that there has been a cleaning-up of documents”,

and that

“there was a decision to clean up all the files and stop some of the incriminating evidence”.

Given that this major issue has led to so many deaths and so much misery, and that people know that something went wrong, it cannot be right that there is still not a public space so that the people affected can know what happened.

The inquiry process worked well for Hillsborough and Bloody Sunday, although we know that the position is currently clouded by what is happening with the child abuse inquiry. I do not think that a full public inquiry is necessarily the only vehicle to deal with this, but there needs to be some way for the Department to answer in a way that it has not done up to now, which it cannot do through the mere revealing of documents. It remains essential that we press for such a process.

[Mr George Howarth]

rose—

[Alistair Burt]

I will not give way, if the right hon. Gentleman will allow me. I have taken two interventions and will not get any more time.

I now want to raise specifically the issue of those who were co-infected. The majority of those infected by contaminated blood were infected with hep C. Some 1,200 people were co-infected with HIV and hep C, and perhaps only 250 of them are left alive. The suffering experienced by those who were co-infected is different from that of those who were mono-infected. There is now the possibility of treatment for hepatitis C, which we all welcome. Such treatment has considerably changed the outlook for many people, but it is not available for the co-infected.

This discrete group cannot grow any larger; it is diminishing all the time. Those who are co-infected have experienced things in their lives that have not affected others, such as being told their length of life right at the beginning. I know of those who were told when they were very young that they might have only five or six years left. They thought that the education they were going through was of no consequence—what was the point?—and nor was looking after any sum of money they were given, because they might as well spend it if they were not going to live. Their outlook is now different, because medical treatments have allowed them to stay alive, but their condition is still extremely serious and varies almost from day to day.

For that diminishing number, a lump sum, which the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North and others have mentioned, might be a possibility. They do not want to be dependent on the system; they want recognition of what they have lost, including their opportunities, and a lump sum might be the answer for them. I would be very grateful if there is now some consideration for the co-infected, because much of the debate has tended to be about the majority. I do not think that that is necessarily wrong, because what is provided for the majority is very important, but the co-infected matter.

We have been here too often. I doubt, sadly, that my hon. Friend the Minister will be the last Minister to talk about this issue, but we will not go away and the House will not leave this. This is a collective shame, because Government after Government have not grasped that this just needs a final settlement. We can find the money for other things. This issue cries out for that sort of settlement and we will not stop.