Contaminated Blood

Tom Pursglove Excerpts

Tuesday 11th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Tom Pursglove (Corby) (Con)]

May I, too, welcome you to your new role, Madam Deputy Speaker? I am absolutely delighted. I congratulate the hon. Member for Oxford East (Anneliese Dodds) on her brilliant maiden speech and pay tribute to the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson) for being such a doughty champion of this issue in Parliament.

This debate has been conducted in a way we can all recognise as hugely positive. It has been very constructive, which I think is what people out there in the country would expect—they would expect us to conduct this debate responsibly because this issue very much affects people’s lives. I am acutely aware of that because one of my constituents who has been caught up in this tragedy is Sue Wathen, a local teacher whose husband is a councillor. They are friends I care about very much. Rather like several of my colleagues, I was shocked when, shortly after I was elected, Sue and Peter asked me to go around to their house, where they told me all about the things they had gone through and the difficulties that Sue was facing in trying to access the Harvoni treatment that she so desperately needed.

I know that Sue will be sat at home watching this debate and will welcome the Government’s announcement no end. Things went so disastrously wrong in the past and we need to get to the bottom of that. A particular shock to Sue was that she was diagnosed as having her condition after some 30 years. It was a bombshell: she was marking books in her office at school when she received the telephone call telling her that she had this condition.

The most welcome thing about today’s announcement is the firm commitment to ensure that the victims of this tragedy are properly listened to and are really involved in shaping the inquiry. There are lessons to be learned from what happened with Hillsborough. It does not surprise me in the slightest that the Prime Minister is so committed to addressing this issue: we have seen her take up a number of injustices, of which Hillsborough is one example. I hope that we can get to the bottom of this particular tragedy. The victims know how it affects them on a day-to-day basis. They know what the consequences are for their families and they should be listened to and encouraged to help shape the inquiry.

One key point that I suspect will come up in these discussions in the weeks and months ahead is access to treatment. Unfortunately, from time to time, NHS bureaucracy gets in the way of people accessing treatments. In Sue’s case, we went through a multitude of dramas to get the Harvoni treatment that she so desperately needed. In the end, we were successful. I am very grateful to Ministers for all their efforts in helping to achieve that. I remember what Sue said to me when we first had that early conversation. She said, “I am not worried about compensation; I just want to get better.” There is a lot in that. These are all issues that the public inquiry should consider and address. I welcome it very much and look forward to the debates ahead.