Contaminated Blood and Blood Products

Debate between Wayne David and Paul Goggins

Thursday 14th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Paul Goggins (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Cardiff Central (Jenny Willott), both for her work and for her speech, and I join my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North West (Mr Robinson) in paying tribute to Lord Archer for his report—and also to Lord Morris of Manchester, who was my predecessor as Member of Parliament for Manchester, Wythenshawe, and has done so much work on this and many other issues.

Much of my understanding of this issue comes from the experience of three of my constituents: Peter Mossman, Fred Bates and Fred’s wife Eleanor. I pay tribute to their resilience and determination. Peter discovered that he was a mild haemophiliac in 1976. One day in 1985 he came home from work with bruising on his leg. He went to hospital, where he was treated with contaminated blood and infected with hepatitis C. What resulted immediately was a desperate illness followed by, in the longer term, worsening bleeds and severe liver damage.

Fred was also a mild haemophiliac, although his condition is now severe. He has never been able to identify precisely when he became infected with hepatitis C, although it is certain that, although tests were carried out throughout the 1980s that would have confirmed his condition, he was never told. Only after the chance reading of a leaflet in 1993 did he ask whether he was infected, and he was finally told the truth. He was then told to go home, and that there was nothing to worry about. Life for Fred means often feeling extremely cold. He suffers from severe bleeding, and now has cirrhosis of the liver. For Eleanor, life means not only supporting Fred and enduring severe financial hardship, but having to live for years unaware of the risks that she faced to her own health because Fred had never been told the truth about his condition.

What Peter, Fred and Eleanor find hardest to bear is covered in chapter 7 of Lord Archer’s report—namely that doctors knew about the risks involved in treating patients with blood products, but failed to inform them. There is no doubt that Fred and Peter, who were both mild haemophiliacs, would never have consented to treatment with contaminated blood products which carried a high risk of infection with HIV and hepatitis C. However, it is not only the doctors who failed to explain the dangers. It seems to me, and indeed to all of us, that the whole health system was caught up in what amounts to a conspiracy of silence.

I have a copy of a letter dated 31 July 1981 from a member of staff in the Department of Health and Social Security to an official in the Treasury. The letter is headed “Blood products laboratory—redevelopment”. It states, among other things, that

“health authorities are obliged to supplement supplies from BPL with expensive and, because of the hepatitis risk, less safe imported commercial blood products at a cost of up to £10m annually.”

People at the top of the DHSS knew the risks, but patients were not informed, and four years after that letter was written, my constituent Peter Mossman was infected with hepatitis C.

[Mr Wayne David (Caerphilly) (Lab)]

Is my right hon. Friend aware that it has been estimated that as many as 90% of haemophiliacs who were treated with blood in the 1970s and 1980s have at least one life-threatening disease?

[Paul Goggins]

I am aware of that. What I am trying to emphasise is that if my constituents, and indeed many others, had been given proper information, they would have been able to make a balanced decision about the risks that they faced.

We all have constituents who will have their own stories, and as a result of the Archer report we now have a definite analysis of what went wrong. The great thing about the report, however, is that it points the way forward. It is now a case of what we can do to support those who survive in the circumstances in which they find themselves, and I believe that we need to do at least four things.

First, there needs to be an apology. I know that some people feel that an apology is just words and is therefore meaningless, but in June this year the Prime Minister proved from the Dispatch Box that that is not the case when he gave an unequivocal apology to the families of Derry for what had occurred on 30 January 1972. That apology means a lot to those families, and it is enabling them to move forward. I believe that haemophiliacs infected with hepatitis C and HIV deserve no less.

Secondly, there must be proper financial recompense. There is a debate about that. Archer recommends equivalence with the Irish scheme, but the Government ruled that out today, and are to institute a review instead. Whatever the outcome of that review, it must be demonstrably fair to those who have been affected. There must be a level playing field between those infected with, respectively, hepatitis C and HIV. Thirdly, there must be no impact on benefit entitlement: any recompense must be over and above the benefit payments that people receive.