Infected Blood Inquiry

Debate between Peter Bottomley and Hannah Bardell

Thursday 22nd June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

It is difficult to follow the speech of the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson) and I will not try to match it. As the Minister may say, it is helpful to think of what we can do in future, the situation we are in now and what has happened.

I commend to those who have not read it Richard Titmuss’s book, “The Gift Relationship: From Human Blood to Social Policy”, which was published in 1970. He made it clear that it was better for people to give rather than sell their blood. The collection of blood in other countries was the biggest problem.

When people were given factor VIII made from contaminated or infected blood, it was done with the best intentions of trying to provide a prophylactic to avoid the dramatic treatments that were needed by people with haemophilia when they started bleeding.

However, that is not the point of the inquiry or of this debate. The point of the debate is to give the Minister an opportunity to update the House in the same way as he kindly met the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North and me recently and followed up with a helpful letter. We ask him whether, before the summer session ends, it is possible to give further information, by a written or oral statement so that we can follow that up. Between now and the autumn, a payment scheme should be possible. We want to ensure that the Government are given the most effective, co-operative encouragement and that pressure is put on them.

I speak as someone whose mother had major blood transfusions during the peak period and so, it is on record, did my wife. My mother was the first person in our family to have an HIV test. She was clear. I take an HIV test four times a year, when I give blood. The contamination issue has now been addressed, so the question facing Sir Brian for the remainder of the report is how we got to where we are. This debate is mainly about compensation and the system being brought forward.

The Minister will be able to explain how co-ordination with the other Governments of the United Kingdom and the permanent secretary of the Department of Health in Northern Ireland is coming together. It is accepted that a national scheme will be needed, but are we sure that the names of those affected and infected are being gathered now? It should not start in the autumn, when the scheme is agreed.

Some believe that the scheme’s details are not clear, so it would be helpful if the Minister could make plain how the Government intend to fulfil the recommendations of Sir Brian Langstaff’s second interim report, based on Sir Robert Francis’s specially commissioned study.

One of our closest friends was HIV-positive, having received infected blood, at a time when people thought they should not associate with those with AIDS or HIV. We did not believe that, and we spent our time socialising as best we could. We also understood the devastating impact on families. I have constituents who are survivors, and I had constituents who did not survive, and I know from all of them what it is like not to be able to get insurance, what it is like not to be able to save into a pension, what it is like not to be able to continue with their job, what it is like not to know whether they have infected their partner, and what it is like to go for treatment and have to explain that, no, they are not an alcoholic—that they do not have that illness—to every person in every hospital or clinic.

[Hannah Bardell]

That chimes with me profoundly. When I sat down with my constituent Vera Gaskin, she talked about exactly those things. She talked about not being able to get insurance to go on holiday, and so not being able to leave our beautiful country of Scotland, and about being asked repeatedly whether she is an alcoholic, even though she does not take a drop of alcohol. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that these people have lived with these things for a lifetime, or since they had those transfusions? Will he also pay tribute to the many people watching today from the Public Gallery?

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady. The difficulty with where I am standing is that I cannot see the Public Gallery, but I do, of course, pay tribute to them. Those of us who have spent a lot of time with the real campaigners can be their mouthpiece. We have the microphone, but they are the ones Sir Brian rightly listened to at the beginning of his inquiry. Successive Ministers have also listened to them, for which I give them credit.

I think the health service could have done better by giving people a tag, so that they are not asked these difficult questions three or four times a year. I will not take up more time, but I associate myself with what the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North said about Glen, Nick and Michele. It is for them that we rely on the Minister, his advisers and the small ministerial group to make an impact in putting right the things that can be put right and in acknowledging the mistakes that cannot be put right.

International Women’s Day

Debate between Peter Bottomley and Hannah Bardell

Thursday 9th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Hannah Bardell (Livingston) (SNP)]

It is a huge pleasure and privilege to speak in this debate. There have been some fantastic and powerful speeches by right hon. and hon. Members. I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Dame Maria Miller), who opened the debate. I have fond memories of us trekking down the corridor to the former Speaker’s office to advocate for baby and parental leave for Members of this House, to try to take this place forward. It is right, as other Members have said, that female parliamentarians often work cross-party to achieve progress. It is not the Punch and Judy show that folks see on the television week in, week out.

I pay particular tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) for her incredibly moving speech. It has become a grim tradition, it is fair to say, that every year she discharges her duty of reading the names of women who have been killed by violent men. That is incredibly important.

One of those names was a constituent of mine, Aimee Cannon. Her mother, Wendy Cannon, is here with us today in the Gallery. I want to share the details of what happened to Aimee. I stress that these are Wendy’s own words, and we are privileged that she is willing to share them with us through me, her Member of Parliament.

On 5 May last year, Wendy and her husband were enjoying a Friday night. It felt like any other typical Friday night as they began thinking about the weekend. Wendy had been communicating with their daughter, Aimee, via WhatsApp. Aimee had been telling them how much she was looking forward to work the next day. Aimee worked at a beauty salon. She had plans to celebrate at a birthday party that weekend, and she was also going to help out at a charity fundraising event for a children’s hospice. In spite of her own challenges—anorexia, self-harming, domestic abuse and addiction—she wanted to help others. She had a big heart. That was Aimee.

On Saturday her parents became worried about Aimee’s lack of contact. Aimee’s father went to her house and found her dead with multiple injuries. The police described the attack as a brutal and sustained attack. Aimee would have been frightened, in pain, alone and dying in a place that she should have felt safe in. Aimee was only 26 years old, and she had so much to live for and so much to give.

Aimee’s parents and their grandchildren’s lives will never be the same again. Aimee’s mum Wendy told me that they stagger from day to day in a dark maze of grief, lost in a legal system that they do not understand. They have one question: how many more women have to die before we recognise that gender violence is now becoming an epidemic in our society?

I am incredibly proud of and grateful to Aimee’s parents for their courage and bravery in sharing Aimee’s story, and for allowing me to share it today. When Wendy first came to see us to get support, we sat together and she told me about Aimee. And we cried—a lot. Wendy said to me this morning when she came to Parliament that she had heard the Prime Minister’s legitimate concerns about his daughter’s safety while walking to school. She said that she hears that—but imagine how she feels.

The challenges that Aimee faced in her life are, sadly, shared by many women across the UK. I have spoken before of women from my constituency, Kirsty Maxwell and Julie Pearson, who were both killed abroad at the hands of violent men. It was their untimely and tragic deaths that led my team and me to start our work on deaths abroad and consular assistance. There are so many other women we could talk about, though some are very often missed off our lists, forgotten about or unnamed.

We are privileged to be here and in this position as female parliamentarians. I am in this place because of generations of women who have come before me, who fought for our right to vote, to get paid equally and to get treated fairly, and who fought for real progress at their own expense, both professionally and personally. In fact, yesterday I had the privilege of taking some of the WASPI women—from the Women Against State Pension Inequality Campaign—to the suffragette broom cupboard, a little-known shrine for those feminists among us. On the night of the 1911 census, Emily Wilding Davison hid herself in that cupboard so that she could record it as her address, in the Chapel of St Mary Undercroft. Her census form gives the postal address as:

“Found hiding in crypt of Westminster Hall”,

and the pencilled note on the bottom left gives the date, “3/4/11 Since Saturday”. Emily was arrested on nine occasions, went on hunger strike seven times and was force-fed on 49 occasions. She died after being hit by King George V’s horse at the 1913 Derby when she walked on to the track during the race, sacrificing herself so that we can be here today.

There was something almost prophetic about showing those incredible women, who have faced such injustice, that place where another great woman suffered and sacrificed to make her point.

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

Emily Wilding Davison taught for a time in Worthing, which gives me a constituency link. I think her view was that if she could not vote, she was not a person and therefore she should not be recorded by the census. I do not think that she aimed to be recorded as being in Westminster; she just wanted to hide here.

[Hannah Bardell]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that providing that incredibly helpful education.

As we walked past the statue of Falkland, to which suffragette and activist Margery Humes chained herself, one of the WASPI women told me that they should have brought their own chains. It is a brutal and harsh reality that more than a century later, we have women facing similar injustice who have to fight way past retirement age and who are dying before they get the justice to which they are entitled.

I am reminded that it is Endometriosis Awareness and Action Month. My co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on endometriosis, my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy), and I have been to a number of events and briefings this week, as we do throughout the year, to talk about, discuss and campaign for better diagnosis, support and funding for research and treatment for those who suffer from such a brutal and life-limiting disease.