Contaminated Blood

Sarah Newton Excerpts

Thursday 15th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Newton (Truro and Falmouth) (Con)]

I am grateful to my colleagues inside and outside Parliament for working so effectively with the victims of blood contamination and raising these matters so effectively. Without their support, I would not be here—I would not have found out about this issue—so I am grateful to them. I also wish to recognise the work of my hon. Friend the Member for Guildford (Anne Milton) while she was Health Minister. I know also that the Under-Secretary of State for Health, my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea (Jane Ellison), takes a great interest in this very important subject, and I am particularly pleased that the Prime Minister has indicated that he now wants to take action. I am sure that the work of the Minister and the all-party group will be listened to very carefully by the Prime Minister as they come together to find out what further action can be taken.

I will not go over all the salient points from the findings of the inquiries and the all-party group as they have already been discussed. One of the most important roles of a Member of Parliament, and one that I take very seriously, is to give a voice to the voiceless. In my brief contribution today, I want to do just that for one of my constituents. In a letter to me, she said:

“I would be incredibly grateful if you had the opportunity to express my hurt and disappointment and help strengthen the case for better treatment of others. My name being spoken publicly terrifies me, especially as I in the past have been subject to such ill treatment by the NHS and the court system.”

My constituent contracted hep C as a result of a blood transfusion shortly after giving birth to her son. Sadly, her hep C was not detected until 2004. She has received some help from the Skipton Fund. I do not have time to catalogue the sequence of poor treatment that she has received and her continuing fear for herself and her children. She says:

“At this point in time, none of my three children has been checked for hep C. It is a bridge, they say, they don’t yet want to face. I worry…To try and quantify how this has affected my life would be near impossible. Perhaps with this inquiry, the Government will make sure that those affected have what’s left of their futures made easier.”

Today, in this place, we must make sure we do that.