Victims and Prisoners Bill

Lord Horam Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 26th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Owen (Ind SD)]

My Lords, 1975 was a long time ago. I am getting on in age now, and I wondered if I would ever see the day when the decision I announced to the House of Commons with money attached—that we would go for self-sufficiency in blood products—would be honoured, at least in a way so that some of the relatives of the many people whose lives have been lost would feel some sense of satisfaction. I could make a very long speech on all those who have fought this fight with honour, dignity and integrity. They belong to all political parties; it very soon became a cross-party campaign.

I also want to make a few things clear. We knew about this earlier than 1975. A very remarkable book, The Gift Relationship by Professor Titmuss, identified the problem of the blood coming into our country from places in which there were absolutely no safeguards and very few questions you could ask about somebody’s past health. At that time, we had no way of finding out whether blood was infected with hepatitis, for example. We had to ask a simple question as a method of trying to find out whether a blood donor was suitable: we would ask if they had ever been yellow—ie, had their liver ever been affected so that they were jaundiced and, as likely as not, had been infected with hepatitis. It was as crude as that.

I want to make it clear that, through the years in which blood products which doctors knew might be infected were being used, they had an agonising choice. They had to explain the risks to the patients. Sometimes there were children who were not able to understand it, so the issue was put to the parents, who had to juggle these very difficult and complex medical facts. The paediatricians and haematologists had to do their best to explain the risks to them, without really knowing.

When I first began to look at this question, I wondered whether we could get away with having a complete ban on blood products. It soon became clear that, if we did that, we would not be able to give blood products that might well not be contaminated to a very substantial number of patients. Let us remember what the situation is. Eventually, we got a product that parents could inject at home. That meant that, if a child had fallen and was bound to bleed into their knee, arm or elsewhere, they could give the injection straightaway and the child would likely not suffer any serious damage—but that was actually one of the worst products to give. These choices were being made against this background of a lack of knowledge—but nothing explains the refusal of successive Governments to pay compensation to those affected. Nothing explains the delay, which meant that, when AIDS came, we still had no blood of our own—we were not self-sufficient with blood very likely not to be contaminated, although even then we could not be absolutely sure that it would not be contaminated.

What I would have said would have been much stronger, more vehement and angrier if not for the circulation of a letter from the noble Earl, Lord Howe, to us about this debate. I have known him in many different guises, and I know him to be a man of honour. Frankly, when I read this letter, I do not need any more assurances that there will not be any unnecessary delays. I believe his words are carefully chosen, and I think he understands, like many people from his own party and people who have been responsible for healthcare, that there can be no more ducking and weaving, and no more appeals from the Chancellor to delay it for another year or anything like that. This time, we have to honour it—and we have to do it this year.

The report will be available on 20 May, and everybody will be able to read it. Judging by the day’s evidence I gave, I think that it will be a searching and honourable report. Given the device in the House of Commons of attaching it to the Bill—of course this was a device—and now given the Government responding to this device by trying not to dismiss it but to make it more precise and effective, that battle seems to be over. We can be sure that this year—in a matter of months—payments will be made. I hope that can be made clear from the Front Bench. Nobody comes out of this with a lot of distinction, but I only say: let us read the report. I suspect a lot of people will feel very ashamed.

[Lord Horam (Con)]

My Lords, the Committee listened with great interest to the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Owen, and the honourable part he played in this tragic situation. I was a Minister of Health much later, between 1995 and 1997, and I had to struggle with problems with the Treasury and getting reasonable compensation for the victims—the infected and the affected—as he said. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, for raising this issue today so that we could have a debate of this kind. It is necessary, and we should keep pressing.

I was appalled by the Statement by John Glen before Christmas in the other place. It was one of the emptiest Statements I have heard from a Minister in that situation. It was as though the Government were just going through the motions of giving a Statement because they had committed themselves to doing so, without having anything at all to say, which is extremely disappointing. I was grateful to my noble friend Lord Howe for having much more sensible and positive things to say in his letters so far. We hope he can follow those up.

Elections Bill

Lord Horam Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 1 & Committee stage
Monday 28th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I came into this Chamber absolutely not caring about the outcome of this—I was waiting for subsequent groups. But actually, having heard both speeches, I totally agree with the noble Lord, Lord Dubs. In spite of all the respect and affection I have for the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, I cannot see that what he said makes any difference at all. So what if we are permanent? We come and go, we do not always survive very long here, we can retire or die, so I do not see the relevance of what he is saying. And, of course, he pointed out that if we all voted it would not make any difference. We all have our views and we all vote in other ways in other elections, so I salute the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, for his thorough examination of this problem and I completely support him. I had never given it a thought before—I had not minded about not voting, but now I do.

[Lord Horam (Con)]

My Lords, I am sure we all hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, lasts for a long time in this House. She is a great asset to this place, particularly given the brevity and pointedness of her speeches. I have to say that I agree with my noble friend Lord Cormack, because there is no doubt that he is constitutionally absolutely correct—and he has the better argument.

However, the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, hit firmly on one point in his speech: in the registration document which we all have to fill in to vote in local elections and so forth, often, there is no category for “Lord”, “Lady” or “Baroness”. I do not know what other Members’ experience has been, but I had some difficulty, living in Hammersmith and Fulham, filling this in. I rang up the registration office and said, “I can’t vote in national elections—are you aware of this?” They said, “There is no category on the computer that allows for this, so we will have to put you down and just rely on your native honesty that you do not actually vote”. Well, I can assure the House that I am an honest person, as are all its Members. None the less, there is a discrepancy and a difficulty here, and I hope the Minister can draw it to the attention of others.

[Lord Rennard (LD)]

In the six general elections since I have been a Member of this House, I have always found people to be very surprised that I was unable to cast a vote in them, even though I campaigned in all of them. They find it ironic that I have been campaigning for my party, and its predecessor the Liberal Party, for some 49 years, but I now no longer have a say on who will be the Prime Minister of the country.

Like the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, I am not an opponent of piecemeal reform of this House; I am actually rather in favour of radical reform, and quickly. However, if we had objected to piecemeal reform, this place would be the same as it was in the 19th century. All the progress on reform of your Lordships’ House has been piecemeal, and this amendment would also be an example of piecemeal reform. The principle of the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, was debated extensively when it formed the basis of two recent Private Members’ Bills, and there was a clear logic to the proposition. The Parliament Acts of 1911 and 1949 ensured that Peers lost the power of an absolute veto on legislation, or to determine any financial measure. As Peers, we have no opportunity to vote at a general election to help decide who becomes Prime Minister. Therefore, in those debates on the Private Members’ Bills, I supported the principle of Peers being able to vote in general elections, but I also emphasised that it is not my party’s immediate priority. There are many measures in this Bill which may have considerable impact on future elections, but this is not one of them. As the noble Lord, Lord Horam, pointed out, if membership of the House were evenly distributed across 650 constituencies, there would, on average, be one extra voter on top of some 73,000 others. Therefore, it would be unlikely to make a great deal of difference to the election outcome—although it was of course Churchill who said that “one vote is enough”.

The issue we are debating is really one of principle. As an issue of principle, it is ironic, in my view and that of my party, for any Peer to argue for their right to vote in general elections without also arguing for the right of our country’s voters to have a say in who becomes a Member of this House. There are other priorities. Before we argue for our right to vote in general elections, we must address the problem of 9 million people being missing from or incorrectly recorded on the electoral registers. Our last debate showed that there is a real need to address major inconsistences in the right to be included in our electoral registers. For these reasons, we support this amendment but, while it is logical, it is not our priority.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I have great sympathy with the arguments of the noble Lord, Lord Green of Deddington; I am sorry he looks so surprised. We need to sort out what we mean by UK citizenship. I cannot now remember which election it was when I was canvassing in Southwark and I came to a block that had a large number of Congolese-born people and a large number of Tanzanian-born people. The latter had the right to vote; the former did not, although I deeply suspected that some of them had got themselves on the register, somehow or other, because the local people were not quite sure who was what. This is at least as much a legacy of empire and our great-grandparents’ day as the sacking and pencils in polling stations, which the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, was talking about. Both need to be modernised and it is high time we did so.

I ask the Minister whether he can tell us when Mozambique joined the Commonwealth and whether that meant that all Mozambiquans in Britain immediately gained the right to vote. I think I am right in saying that Rwanda joined the Commonwealth and that must have given them the vote, as well. The noble Lord, Lord Howell, if he were in his place, would remind us that he has campaigned for Algeria to become a member of the Commonwealth. The hypothetical question of how many voters we would be adding each time a new country became a member of the Commonwealth is interesting.

Of course, we should be sorting out the categories of our voting. We have been saying that all afternoon. The noble Lord, Lord Green, is entirely right on this and I hope that the Government take some notice, but I suspect that they will not act on this unfortunately illogical and messy Bill.

[Lord Horam (Con)]

I declare an interest as a former electoral commissioner. First, I agree with the remarks made on the previous amendment by the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, that this Bill should have included the findings of the Law Commission, which have cleared up a lot of the complexity of language involved in legislation. It sometimes goes back to the Victorian times and is really a wholesale mess, frankly. I was glad that the Law Commission came to such clear conclusions.

Of course, the noble Lord will appreciate that the Law Commission by itself cannot alter anything and does not alter the law as it stands. None the less, I agree with him that it is a missed opportunity that we have an Elections Bill of this kind but are not able to take into account the views of the Law Commission. When I was on the Electoral Commission, it would have wanted the Law Commission’s findings to be taken into account as soon as practically possible, as it certainly would now.