Contaminated Blood

Hywel Williams Excerpts

Tuesday 11th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Diana Johnson]

That is an excellent point, and it needs to be considered.

[Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Diana Johnson]

I will give way one last time.

[Hywel Williams]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for giving way. I pay tribute to her on behalf of my constituent Jane Jones, whose family have had to deal with great privation for many years because of the scandal. In a written answer to the Welsh Assembly on 27 March there was confirmation that the payments continue to be made on an ex gratia basis, but with no liability being accepted. The answer was in Welsh, but it confirms that the payment of £10,000 to a partner or widow continues on an ex gratia basis.

[Diana Johnson]

That goes to the heart of it. There has never been any finding of liability, which has resulted in very low payments being made on a support basis, rather than on a compensatory basis.

I strongly believe, and I think the majority of the APPG believe, that a Hillsborough-style inquiry is the best way forward in this case, putting those affected at the heart of whatever is created and set up. They should be given the opportunity to have an input into the terms of reference. They should be able to look at people being considered as the chairperson or panel members of the inquiry, which has to have the support and confidence of all those affected. That is why the Hillsborough inquiry seemed to work effectively. In the case of Hillsborough, this was known as “Families First”, and I hope that approach might be able to continue in this inquiry as it is set up. All those affected need to be treated with the utmost respect and reverence, and to be fully consulted; any information that becomes available should first go to them.

In the remaining few minutes, I wish to talk about the four questions that I think the inquiry needs to look at. Andy Burnham set out in his speech why an inquiry was necessary, and of course he was one of two former Health Secretaries, the other being Lord Owen, who had raised serious concerns about the scandal. We know that the “Panorama” programme and the Daily Mail article followed. Given what Andy Burnham said and all the developments in the past few months, serious questions still need to be addressed by a public inquiry. First, why did the Government not act sooner to protect blood supplies once the risks became known? And why were we so reliant on American commercial products for haemophilia patients?

The UK was not self-sufficient in blood supplies, so profit-making American companies played a considerable role in supplying factor concentrates to haemophilia patients. That blood was sourced from much riskier patients, including prison inmates, who were much more likely to have infections and had a financial incentive to be less than honest about their risks of infection. The dangers of American products were discussed in public not from the 1990s, nor the 1980s, but from 1970. As the Daily Mail reported last week, files now suggest that at least as early as 1980 officials had even put an estimate on the number of haemophilia patients being infected from these products with what we now know to be hepatitis C. They put the figure at 50 a year, yet it was not until 1986 that they took any action to address that.

If the whole of the UK had been self-sufficient in blood supplies, fewer haemophilia patients would have been infected. We know that, because Scotland had higher levels of self-sufficiency than England. As the BBC “Panorama” programme outlined, that meant that haemophiliacs in England were twice as likely to be infected with HIV as those in Scotland. Even in the mid-1980s, when the dangers of hepatitis C and HIV became known, it appears we could have acted sooner to remove risky blood products. And when the United States started screening its commercial products from March 1983, we carried on using non-screened American supplies that we had purchased before then; how can that possibly be justified?

My second question for the inquiry is: why were patients kept in the dark and not told of the risks once they became known? There are many aspects to this controversy that I know other hon. Members may wish to touch on, but I want to draw the House’s attention to developments in 1983, in the midst of the AIDS epidemic, when there was still uncertainty over whether AIDS was a blood-borne disease.

In November 1983, the then Health Minister, the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke), told Parliament that there was

“no conclusive evidence that…AIDS is transmitted by blood products.”—[Official Report, 14 November 1983; Vol. 48, c. 327-8W.]

Yet earlier that same year his Department was preparing internal documents that said the opposite: in August 1983, that same Department was telling practising homosexuals and drug users not to give blood because of the risk of transmitting AIDS; in the summer of 1983, the Department was preparing a blood donor leaflet that said AIDS was “almost certainly” transmitted by blood and blood products; in July 1983, the UK Haemophilia Centre Doctors’ Organisation said that young children with haemophilia should receive a less risky form of blood product due to the dangers of AIDS; and between March and May 1983, the Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service prepared a leaflet for blood donors, which included “haemophiliacs” and “recipients of blood transfusion” on a list of people who could get AIDS, and asked those same individuals not to give blood. Of course, the Scottish Penrose inquiry itself acknowledged that in adopting its position in November 1983, the then Government relied on

“a highly nuanced use of language.”

My third question is: why were some people tested for viruses without their knowledge and only told of the results many years later? There are many such cases of this happening, but I will make reference to just one: Jonathan Evans first tested positive for HIV in 1984 yet was not told of this until seven months later, in mid-1985. That posed a huge health risk to his wider family, and the history of this scandal is full of cases of spouses infecting each other. Tragically, the virus took his life. His son, Jason, was just four years old when his father died. He is still campaigning for justice for his father, and he has been instrumental in generating recent news coverage in the Daily Mail article and elsewhere.

Fourthly, there are allegations of a criminal cover-up, on an industrial scale, from the highest ranks of government downwards. At every stage of this scandal, there are concerns that officials knew more than they were letting on. Almost everyone affected by the scandal has encountered issues with lost medical records. Others have recovered their files, only to find that any mention of the connection with contaminated blood has been removed. Some individuals today are unable to access financial support via the Skipton Fund because of what has happened to their medical records. These cases of lost records also extend to the highest level of government. During the Archer inquiry, Lord Owen requested his departmental papers from the time when he was a Health Minister in the 1970s. He was told they had been destroyed

“under the 10-year rule”,

even though there is no evidence of the existence of such a rule.

Finally, when people were forced to sign waivers in 1991, as I mentioned earlier in my speech, they were asked to commit to bringing no further hepatitis C litigation as well as HIV litigation. These individuals did not yet know they had hepatitis C, as the disease has a long incubation period. It seems that the inescapable conclusion is that departmental officials knew more than they were willing to disclose.

In conclusion, earlier this week the Prime Minister expressed her intention to work more with other party leaders to act in the best interests of this country. She has shown a laudable commitment to that with respect to other public disasters, including the child abuse inquiry and the Hillsborough disaster. Alongside the many thousands of people who have campaigned for justice for so long, I want to personally thank her for showing that same commitment with respect to the contaminated blood tragedy.

There are still questions to be answered on the detail of an inquiry. In welcoming this announcement, we must also be mindful of those who will never see its results: the more than 2,400 people who have tragically lost their lives. Many never even knew of the true scale of the scandal that was impacting on them. Those infected, and their families, will be waiting anxiously to know that the Prime Minister’s announcement will truly give them the justice they have so long been denied. But today the Prime Minister has earned a place in history as someone who has listened to an issue that her predecessors had ignored, and put party politics aside in the name of giving people the answers that are their basic right. For that, she has my gratitude.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Philippa Whitford (Central Ayrshire) (SNP)]

As the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson) said, 2,400 people have died following the worst disaster in NHS history. That was due to a shortage of blood and clotting factors, which led to the NHS sourcing products from America. The problem is that the factor IX concentrates for men with haemophilia or women with Von Willebrand disease are made from thousands of samples. The moment one or two people within that collection are affected is the start of the virus, and that was why these patients were affected at a much higher rate than those who had a single blood transfusion. The problem is that the issue goes back decades and it has not been properly dealt with, as has been said already.

There have been multiple debates, statements and urgent questions on the issue during the two years in which I have been in the House—I, too, pay tribute to the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North for keeping at it with the all-party parliamentary group—but most of them have been about support. It was only last July that the Government finally came forward with a strengthened support package for these people. It is important to recognise that the payments are not compensation; they are ex gratia support payments, and they do not recognise the loss and suffering of the victims of contaminated blood. This seemed to come about only after the Scottish Government came up with a much more generous package in the form of a much larger lump sum, ongoing payments and, in particular, a 75% pension to the spouse and bereaved families. Such people still do not get sufficient support here in England, but it is not right that someone who has lost a partner to this scandal is not compensated.

We heard in March this year—a mere seven months after the announcement of a support package—that the Government were consulting on perhaps restricting who would qualify for the highest payments, and that the payments would not be index-linked. The youngest remaining victim is approximately 35. They have a whole lifetime to go through. That might be a shortened lifetime in comparison with ours, but we cannot suddenly leave people in poverty further down the line. These things need to be dealt with. I welcome the Minister’s commitment that the payments will be linked to the consumer prices index. We may need a debate on support, but that is not what this debate is about.

[Hywel Williams]

I am reluctant to interrupt the hon. Lady’s remarks, but may I point out that the support also extends to Wales, not just to England? As far as I understand it, there is also a £10,000 payment for spouses in Wales. Is it the hon. Lady’s understanding that the inquiry’s terms of reference will include the actions of the Governments in Wales, Scotland and possibly Northern Ireland, as well as what has happened in England? I had intended to ask the Minister that question, but could not make an intervention.