Contaminated Blood — House of Commons, 2017-07-11
Topic: Health
Kevin John Foster (Conservative, Centre-right): It was interesting to hear the reflections of the hon. Member for Newport East (Jessica Morden) and the personal stories she recounted. That was what brought me to this issue two years ago when I was first elected. Someone came into my office who was heavily disabled, but who should have been fit and healthy. They were relatively young—not much older than me—but their whole life had been dominated by a series of treatments they received back in the 1980s This is not an issue of someone having had a couple of opportunities taken away, having lost a couple of quid, or needing to work a little longer before finally being able to retire. This is about people who literally had their whole lives, which were going reasonably, taken away, with all opportunities removed. For many—about 2,500 people—literally the end of their life was caused by a treatment programme that should have helped to cure them I agree with the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire (Dr Whitford) that doctors in a hospital or an operating theatre would not be able to look at every single thing; they have to rely on the agencies that vet and certify things as safe. Clearly, in this instance, there was a huge failure I am pleased about the progress that has been made over the past couple of years. When I first spoke on this, I remarked that I suspected that my predecessor, at the time he was elected in 1997, would not have expected his successor in 2015 to still be talking about the issue. It is therefore very welcome that we will finally have a public inquiry to examine exactly what went wrong I was reassured to hear the Minister saying that there will be genuine consultation around the terms of reference, as they will be very important. If there is evidence of criminal wrongdoing, no aspect of the inquiry should prevent people from being held to account for any criminal liability in a court of law. It would be a great pity if the inquiry that finally brought about justice and answers also prevented people from being held to account in a criminal court I was reassured to hear the Minister’s reference to the Hillsborough inquiries— obviously charges have followed on from that, although I will not go into them—and I hope that the same pattern can be established for this inquiry if there is evidence to support it. I am sure that we would all join the calls that anyone with evidence should hand it over to the police immediately. People certainly should not be withholding anything that would be of interest to the police and might identify whether individuals need to be held to account It is right that there will be proper consultation on the form of the inquiry. It certainly will need to be able to compel people to take part and provide evidence. I was reassured to hear that the Minister is carefully considering those issues, because that could make quite a difference. If there is an awareness that criminal sanctions might be available but people can just choose not to take part, that might have a negative impact on getting to the truth of what has happened It is appropriate that there is some form of time limit on getting to the answers. We can all think of examples of public inquiries that took a long time and seemed to drag on forever. Although people have had to wait decades for this process, there is a limit to how much longer many of the victims—and, in many cases, the children and families of those who have already passed on—will be able to wait for the final answers about what happened.