Righting wrongs?
A stunning debate in the House of Lords on Friday, on what one peer described, with some statistical authority, as Britain's worst-ever medical treatment disaster - the transmission of HIV and hepatitis, as well as other diseases, through contaminated blood products.
The death rate was worse than the Black Death, according to the Labour peer Lord Morris of Manchester, who was moving a private member's bill to compensate the victims and improve the future treatment of the survivors.
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The main group of victims were haemophiliacs, people who suffer from a life threatening blood clotting disorder treated with products made from human blood. Thousands died. Lord Morris - the former disability minister Alf Morris - based his bill on the conclusions of an under the chairmanship of the former Solicitor-General, Lord Archer of Sandwell.
Lord Archer made a series of recommendations on coping with the consequences for the people involved. It calls for the creation of a committee to oversee the future treatment of haemophiliacs, with substantial patient representation. It says patients with haemophilia who have received blood or blood products and their partners, should be tested in case they have been infected with diseases like syphilis, Hepatitis B, HIV, Hepatitis C and HTLV. It also calls for the testing of donated blood.
The report says there should be benefits for those who have been infected, including free prescription drugs, GP visits, counselling, physiotherapy, home nursing and support services. Plus access to an NHS hospital bed and specialist services. And it calls for "direct financial relief" for victims and for carers who have been prevented from working. In the debate, the system by which compensation was paid to some victims or families was denounced as arbitrary.
The Archer report also revealed how the Medicines Inspectorate had visited the Blood Products Laboratory, which then made treatment products for haemophilia - and decided the facilities were so inadequate that they would have closed it down, if they could. It continued operating without interference under the now-abolished doctrine of Crown Immunity, with, Lord Morris said, catastrophic consequences.
There was a lot of comment in the debate on the disappearance of many of the records from that time. As ex-ministers in the department, the former Health Secretary Patrick Jenkin, and the former Health Minister David Owen had both scoured the departmental archives, only to be told the documents they sought had been accidentally destroyed. Lord Jenkin seemed pretty sceptical about that - although there was later some discussion about whether some records had survived, or whether some copies had later emerged from the storeroom of a Scottish solicitor....
The government spokesman on health issues in the Lords, Lady Thornton, (she's a whip, rather than a minister), insisted action was being taken to help the victims, and offered her sympathy. But she thought the bill was unnecessary. By tradition, the Lords never refuse a second reading to a bill - but this one has scant chance of becoming law, as the general election approaches.
I'm Mark D'Arcy and I'll be writing about what goes on in the chambers and committee rooms at Westminster.
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