Infected Blood Inquiry and Compensation Framework

Philippa Whitford Excerpts

Thursday 24th November 2022 Westminster Hall

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

I am delighted to serve under your chairmanship, Dame Angela.

I will open by paying tribute to the people affected by this disaster: the people infected and their families, those who have campaigned for years, either as infected people or in support of them, and all those who have simply had their lives changed. It takes a great deal of energy to campaign for 50 years and still not have received the limited justice that financial compensation can bring. The victims have faced stigma and lost opportunities to work, to have a family and to have insurance. We have heard about all those things in detail and cannot hear about them today, because the debate is simply going to be too short.

It is important that we remember the 2017 debate, in which I spoke. I had been a surgeon for over 30 years before I came to this place. The scandal began to leak out in the ’80s, and I remember the impact that it had on me. I was shocked at the idea that, having trusted something that was signed off by a Government or agency as safe, I might have transfused someone—we were pretty profuse with blood at that time—to save their life or simply to deal with post-surgical anaemia, and I might have destroyed their life. That had a big impact on me. It changed my practice: I stopped using a scalpel and started using argon-assisted diathermy. My theatre staff would moan about how obsessional I was about not having to transfuse patients by not losing blood in the first place. All patients gained from that, but a clinician who is dealing with someone who has been in a big car accident, or who has been stabbed or shot, does not have that luxury. Blood transfusion is not something that clinicians can avoid, and I am depressed about the fact that, five years on from the 2017 debate that led to the inquiry, we are still only at this point. We thought that we would be able to resolve the issue by now.

Absolutely everyone in this Chamber will welcome the completion of the evidence sessions, the interim report and especially the delivery of interim payments to the people infected or their bereaved partners. However, as has already been pointed out, bereaved parents and children are not included; nor are those who may have been unpaid family carers, who may not fall into one of those groups but who cared for years for someone who is now deceased and who will not even in the short term be eligible for care payments through an infected person.

I am merely repeating what the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson) said in asking: when will the registration of all those affected begin? What work is being done on establishing the full compensation framework so it is ready to go the moment the decision is made? When will the Government publish their full response to the report by Sir Robert Francis? At the moment, we are talking as if all those recommendations are accepted, and the community is trusting they are all accepted, but we do not actually know that.

I would like to have had a proper debate in the main Chamber. It warranted the full time so we could explore the detail. It is important that we remember that in 2017, it was not what any of us said in the debate that achieved the inquiry. That was agreed to in the morning, because the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) realised it would have been the first time the Government lost a vote because of the cross-party strength of feeling. It is therefore important that all MPs in this Chamber and all the supporters of this campaign in the House continue to work cross-party, as we are seeing here, to make sure the Government do not drag their feet and deliver the justice that is long past time.

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[Alex Burghart]

I hope that the right hon. Lady will appreciate that I was not the Minister at the time; I have been in post for just a few weeks and I do not want to say anything that is incorrect. However, my understanding is that following the work done by Sir Robert, Sir Brian called Sir Robert to give evidence and then he himself made recommendations about interim payments that the Government immediately responded to. I also hope that the right hon. Lady will bear that in mind when considering the Government’s likely response in the future. The Government said that they would respond very swiftly on interim payments and they did so. Before the end of October, as we pledged, the interim payments were all received by those affected. I hope that she will take that as an indication of our desire to move as quickly as possible, in keeping and in line with Sir Brian’s ultimate recommendations.

[Dr Whitford]

I am also a member of the APPG who has been part of the campaign throughout and took part in the tabling of parliamentary questions that were repeated ad nauseam to get a response. What was talked about in the Chamber was a response from the Government to the Sir Robert Francis report that would come at the same time as the publication—the reference was not to Sir Brian Langstaff’s call for interim payments nor to Sir Robert’s, but to the Sir Robert Francis report. The Minister must surely understand that given the 19 recommendations in the report, victims and their families want to know whether they can trust what is coming down the line. The idea of keeping them waiting for another seven or eight months is just cruel.

[Alex Burghart]

I understand what the hon. Lady is saying, but it is very important that Sir Brian’s findings are the final word on this matter and that the Government can respond to them as quickly as possible. The work that Sir Robert has done has obviously informed an enormous amount of work across Government to make sure that we can respond very quickly when the findings are produced in the middle of next year.

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[Alex Burghart]

The hon. Gentleman will have heard me say that we are working across Government to make sure we are in a position to respond very quickly to what happens with Sir Brian’s report in the middle of next year. I understand that there are questions of trust for historic reasons, but I hope that the fact that the Government have been able to respond quickly, promptly and to our own timescales on the delivery of the interim payments will do something to show that the Administration are absolutely committed to doing the right thing.

[Dr Whitford]

Not all of Sir Robert Francis’s recommendations are about the future and a final compensation scheme. Some relate to the support schemes that people are dependent on now. Why should action on those recommendations be delayed until the middle of next year when people face a cost of living crisis now? Surely if the Government responded to the more acute recommendations, saying they want to wait longer, would that not at least be a start?

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[Alex Burghart]

I hope the right hon. Lady will not see it as deflection that we want to meet her and discuss these matters with her. I am sorry that she is dissatisfied with the response today. She will have a chance to discuss this with the Minister for the Cabinet Office and me in coming weeks, as she knows, because it is in her diary.

[Dr Whitford]

That will be in private.

[Alex Burghart]

For the sake of Hansard, the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire said that that meeting will be in private, but I am quite confident that at least one of the people participating will talk about it in public afterwards and that it may be the start of a longer dialogue.