Contaminated Blood

Philippa Whitford Excerpts

Tuesday 11th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[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.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Whitford]

The Scottish Government set up the Penrose inquiry, but I would assume that any inquiry will look at the whole UK, and the Minister has committed to that. It must be remembered that the decisions that led to the scandal were taken here and in Whitehall. This was before devolution. Governments such as the Scottish Government have tried to step up to support citizens who have been affected, but getting the answers to what caused the situation is a matter for this place.

[Catherine West]

Does the hon. Lady agree that the lack of trust has been enhanced by documents such as “Self-Sufficiency in Blood Products in England and Wales”? That was a Department of Health document, but many people felt it was inaccurate and contained outright lies?

[Dr Whitford]

The inquiry will have to look at all those things. Documents, patients’ records, things that were altered and hidden, and things that are hiding behind public interest barriers now all need to be opened up so that light can be shed on the matter, as with Hillsborough.

Penrose was a Scotland-only inquiry. The Department of Health was invited to take part and turn it into a UK-wide inquiry, but it declined. One of the key weaknesses of the inquiry was that Penrose did not have the right to summon documents or people.

I remember when the scandal started to unfold in the ’80s. As a surgeon who was, of course, using blood on her patients, I remember how shocked I was at the mere thought that an action I might have taken could have harmed a patient I was looking after. In my elective surgery, I set about chasing every single blood cell to avoid spilling blood. I used electrocautery and all sorts of modern techniques. If I were to wheel out the staff from my theatre now, they would moan about how long I used to spend doing that. If a clinician is dealing with someone who has been hit by a bus, however, they have no choice.

I remember a critic of Penrose in 2015 saying that they were surprised that clinicians showed so much trust in the quality of blood, but a clinician who is using hundreds of drugs, implants, machines and blood products must be able to trust them. We have no mechanism personally to check them. That is the role of the Government and all their agencies. It is why we have licensing and inspections, and it is why action must be taken when there is a suspicion of harm. Failing to act, hiding and not dealing with the situation at the time all happened pre-devolution, and this inquiry must take account of that.

At a conference in Glasgow in 1980, clinicians were already raising concerns about changes in the liver function of patients who were receiving blood concentrate for haemophilia. A 1981 meeting of the UK’s Blood Transfusion Research Committee, which we have all read about recently, recognised that about 50 patients a year developed some form of liver damage. Yet the decision at that meeting appeared to be to let that continue and simply to study the situation, using those patients as a way of developing a test for what was known at the time as non-A, non-B hepatitis. It is important that we ensure that this inquiry looks at all this. The official from the Department of Health and Social Security who was at that meeting would not attend Penrose. Such people need to be called by this inquiry.

Going forward, the inquiry must include the families and the victims so that we are sensitive to what they want to know. This is also about not just the Government but producers—and not just producers in America. We try to make ourselves feel better by blaming this on the States, where people bought blood, and where people with addictions, people living in poverty and prisoners were used. In the mid-70s, prisoners in this country were also used, and it is claimed that that was encouraged by the Home Office as part of prisoner rehabilitation. We need the documents on that; we need to understand if that decision was made. UK producers have often been found wanting in the quality of product they came up with, so we must not pat ourselves on the back and imagine that the UK product was somehow safe and that this was all due to the US. We need to follow this right down and get the answers.

These people have been failed so many times, over and over, and it is crucial that that does not happen again. We need to keep the Government on their toes. We need to have reports back from this inquiry as it is set up, so that we know what it is actually going to look into. If we fail to get answers this time, and particularly if we fail to deliver compensation for the lives lost, the suffering, the failure to get a mortgage or insurance, and the costs of care, we will have failed these people all over again.

[Mims Davies (Eastleigh) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson) on securing this important debate. I was in the Chamber when the former Member for Leigh raised these very concerning issues, which need to be looked at in the inquiry. That struck a chord with me, so I am delighted to be back in the Chamber to see this debate.

Like many Members on both sides of the House, I have been contacted by constituents who have told me about their experiences and about how contaminated blood has affected them, their family life and their friends. Every so often as a constituency MP, we meet the saddest constituents who tell us the most heartbreaking stories. We sit there week in, week out, and those stories resonate with us, but they are not stories for the victims—they are daily life. These are wrecked lives, but the people have done nothing wrong of their own accord—it is pure injustice.

It is clear that the contaminated blood products that were used decades ago have continued daily to affect people’s lives in a devastating and destructive way. When I have heard the stories of how people have been affected, they have lived with me, and I can understand the campaigning that has been done by Members on both sides of the House. I am therefore delighted to talk about my constituents’ experiences.

Today, we finally recognise what has happened, and the Government are ready to tackle this injustice. I am delighted that that is being done in the name of the victims and their families, who did nothing to bring this on themselves.

After I became the MP for Eastleigh in May 2015, I met one of my constituents from Bishopstoke, Gary Webster, who has been left coping with HIV, hepatitis C and possibly variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease as a result of the NHS blood products that were used during a routine procedure in the 1980s to treat his haemophilia.

[Dr Whitford]

It will be important that the inquiry goes far enough back. The decision to heat-treat albumin for hepatitis B was made in the mid-60s, but we did not treat concentrates. We need to make sure that all these conditions are included.

[Mims Davies]

I thank the hon. Lady for that input. It is absolutely right that she, like all our constituents, brings her experience to this. We need to make sure that we do go back far enough.

Last year, Gary attended a debate we had here once again to discuss this heartbreaking issue. He attended a specialist school in Alton, where he was one of many haemophiliacs. He told me that he kept in contact with around 100 other students, all of whom had been affected by contaminated blood, although only around 20 were still alive. These students all contracted illnesses through blood products they had received because of their haemophilia. Tragically, Gary’s story is similar to that of thousands of others across the country.

Other constituents, some of whom wish not to be named, have had grave financial burdens placed on them and their families as a result of the diseases they contracted from contaminated blood, which have affected their lives. It is only right that we support those whose lives have been significantly affected by these contaminated products. I am therefore pleased to hear about the additional support that the Government will provide to those who have been roundly affected. I am particularly pleased that the annual payments for those with hepatitis stage 2 will increase to £15,500, and then to £18,500 in 2018-19. Payments to those co-infected with HIV and hepatitis stage 2 will also go up, to £36,500 by 2018-19. I am pleased to see that these payments will be linked to CPI.

That will help to support all our constituents we know have been affected. I know from speaking to Gary and others about the real hardship and challenges these conditions have brought to their lives, and about the difficulty they face in working, and in bringing up and supporting their families in the way they would have liked had they not been affected.

Almost £400 million has been paid out to those affected by five different organisations, which have been funded by the Department of Health. I am delighted to hear about the £125 million the Government have committed as additional funding for the reformed scheme, which will double the Department’s annual spend on the scheme over the next five years. That money must go to the people who really need it—that should absolutely be noted—because the daily-life decisions they have made have been really difficult because of their financial impact.