Contaminated Blood

Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con): In supporting this motion, I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt) on securing this important debate. I praise him and the all-party group on haemophilia and contaminated blood for leading their campaigns to ensure that those infected by contaminated blood in the 1970s and 1980s, and their families, receive the support and justice they deserve. It is justice for which they have waited far too long. We often hear in this House the statement, “Justice delayed is justice denied”, but it is rarely so apt as in this case.
Like many Members here today, I was first alerted to this terrible situation by a constituent. My constituent’s father had been jointly infected by hepatitis C and HIV via contaminated blood products. My constituent told me:

“My father lost his battle with these joint diseases on the 17 January 2000, after 19 years of suffering…His story is a long one with distressing details.”

I do not propose to go into those details, but I will say that it is a heartbreaking, twisted tragedy that my constituent’s father could go to hospital to receive treatment to help with haemophilia and yet it would be that very treatment that would kill him, having caused him 19 years of suffering. It is a tragedy for that man and for his whole family, one similarly suffered by nearly 5,000 people in 5,000 families, so many of them going to our own national health service hospitals to be treated but receiving what would turn out to be lethal injections.
If proper support and a proper inquiry had been provided in 2000, it would, even then, have been tragically too late for my constituent’s father. This Saturday will mark 15 years since he passed away, and here we are still—in 2015—with no proper inquiry, unsatisfactory support for survivors, unsatisfactory support for families, inadequate compensation provision and, not least, no apology. Not only is this tragedy heartbreaking, but it is a double tragedy and a double scandal. The first is that anyone—let alone 5,000 people—was infected through contaminated blood. The second is that decades later— 24 years after my constituent’s father was contaminated and 15 years after his death—we find that my constituent and his family, and so many others like them, still have received no satisfactory response or justice. That must change. It is nothing less than appalling that successive Governments have failed to address this issue: a situation caused by a failure in our NHS provision.
My constituent’s letter continued by saying that

“it is the survivors and the widows who most need help now, and those who have died need a voice. The largest tragedy of this is that unlike other countries, there has never been a public inquiry.”

As a member of the Select Committee on International Development, it is my privilege to travel the world, and wherever I go I hear people admiring the high standards of our country’s justice system, rule of law and provision of access to justice. This country is respected globally for those things, yet it is a terrible stain on our reputation, of which we should feel ashamed and embarrassed, that we have failed as a nation, by such a long way and over
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such a long time, to adhere to those high standards of justice expected by our constituents, and which they deserve.

What now needs to be done is clear, thanks to the work of my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire and the all-party group, who have identified the main priorities of those who suffered from these situations and their relatives. The priorities are reasonable, just, possible, necessary and, above all, urgent, because, as we have been reminded today, justice delayed is justice denied—indeed, it is no justice at all. Let us hope that today’s debate signals the beginning of the end of this terrible scandal.

NHS Specialised Services

Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con): May I first add my most sincere congratulations to you, Sir David, on your recent elevation?
I will be brief. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for St Austell and Newquay (Stephen Gilbert) for securing this debate. Ahead of it, I have been contacted by an exceptional charity in my constituency, the Raynaud’s and Scleroderma Association, of which it is my privilege to have been patron for many years. That outstanding charity was founded and is based in Alsager in my constituency, and it is the only charity providing national support, research and help for people suffering from Raynaud’s and scleroderma—two debilitating conditions that affect the digits and the autoimmune system. The charity also supplies support to their carers.
I am glad to take the chance today to pay tribute to the work that the RSA does every day for people suffering from those debilitating conditions. Despite working from a tiny terraced house on limited resources, it has raised millions of pounds to fund national treatment and vital research. It has helped the country’s understanding of the conditions, as I have heard personally from clinicians and doctors. As a result, I believe that the RSA’s concerns about the proposals that we are discussing today demand a hearing.
The RSA’s work makes a huge difference to the lives of those affected by the conditions, especially those with Raynaud’s when their condition develops into scleroderma, which is rarer and more serious. The progress the association has made in research into and treatment of the conditions is outlined on its website. Its chief executive officer, Elizabeth Bevins, contacted me prior to the debate because she is concerned about the plans we are debating, which could reverse the progress that has been made over recent years on services for these rare conditions. I will quote from Elizabeth’s letter to me:

“Having followed the development of NHS England with interest since its launch…and having welcomed Specialised Services commissioning at national rather than local level as an important cornerstone of the plan to help eradicate any ‘postcode lottery’ issues, I am now concerned at the proposed changes on national commissioning for specialised services.”

She added that she shared the concerns of the Specialised Healthcare Alliance, which she thought had articulated the position well in the statement it released on the issue. That statement says:

“Specialised services are best planned on a national level–in the past patients experienced very different levels of access to specialised care.”

Elizabeth is concerned that NHS England’s plans to let local commissioners share responsibility for commissioning such complex services, thereby incentivising them to direct funding to local priorities, could result in a patchwork quilt of provision. An example is the prescription of the drug Bosentan for scleroderma. The drug can often help to prevent the formation of digital ulcers. The RSA is extremely concerned that access to that drug and others for the rare conditions to which I have referred should continue to be “equitable and consistent”.
These diseases are rare, so shared knowledge across clinicians nationwide is essential. Scleroderma affects only about 8,000 patients in the UK. The RSA has stated that
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“treatment is best and most effectively made from a few specialist hospitals across the UK…who work with a patient’s local hospital to manage what can be killer diseases.”

I hope that, in continuing with the proposals, Ministers will take into account the concerns of the RSA.

Business (North of England)

Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con): Some of the most exciting and innovative developments in this country today are along the science corridor, which a number of Members have mentioned. It crosses several constituencies, including mine and that of my immediate neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Macclesfield (David Rutley), to whom I pay tribute for calling the debate. The Government have rightly committed many millions of pounds of national funding to supporting the corridor and adjacent infrastructure—not least in my constituency, where £45 million of growth deal funding has gone towards the Congleton link road, about which I have spoken in the House on a number of occasions; I am grateful to Ministers for listening and responding to my points. It is of great importance to businesses in my constituency, such as Reliance Medical, Senior Aerospace Bird Bellows and Airbags International. However, that is not what I want chiefly to speak about today. I want to focus on Jodrell Bank.
The world famous dish of Jodrell Bank lies within my constituency, although I must confess that the controls are in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member
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for Macclesfield, so we share an interest. Jodrell Bank is important locally, regionally, nationally and internationally. I want to highlight that importance and express concern about a threat to its work and to recent Government investment in it.
To provide some context, I should say that Jodrell Bank has been at the forefront of radar technology since it became world famous in 1957, as the Lovell telescope emerged as the only instrument capable of using radar to detect the Russian satellite Sputnik. It now hosts the e-MERLIN national facility as well as the Lovell telescope. It continues to produce world-class science. It also hosts the outstanding Discovery centre, which has done much to increase public awareness of science in the UK. That has more than 140,000 visitors a year, including about 16,000 schoolchildren taking part in its education programme, and it has received numerous awards. The BBC transmitted its “Stargazing Live” programme from Jodrell Bank from 2011 to 2014.
As we heard, the Square Kilometre Array is at the leading edge of astrophysics research, and continues to receive the full support of universities, businesses and public sector agencies across the north and beyond, which work together to underpin its activities. It is a very important area—a national and global network of telescopes, with Jodrell Bank at the centre, carrying out unique, world-leading science, across a wide range of astrophysics and cosmology. The facilities at Jodrell Bank are used by almost every university astrophysics group in the country and hundreds of scientists in the UK and Europe, and across the globe. The developments being undertaken by Jodrell Bank, and its potential developments, are of huge importance to jobs and the economy.
In 2013, the Minister’s predecessor as Science Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Havant (Mr Willetts), opened the SKA and Jodrell Bank as its centre. The SKA is a project that joins thousands of receivers across the globe to create the largest, most sensitive radio telescope ever built. Members of the SKA include Australia, China, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, South Africa, Canada, Germany and Sweden; and the UK leads it. At the opening Dame Nancy Rothwell, of the university of Manchester, called it a “cutting edge science project” and said that it would

“become a real science and engineering hub”.

The Minister’s predecessor said:

“This project is pushing the frontiers and that is why the Chancellor has awarded some of the extra £600 m towards science development”

to it. He said it was

“a global strategic project but one that Great Britain is a major player in.”

The economic benefits of that work for the national economy cannot be over-estimated. However—and it is a big “however”—it is threatened. Professor Simon Garrington of the university of Manchester has spoken of the detrimental effect of radio interference from surrounding developments on the work at Jodrell Bank:

“Radio interference has an impact on almost all the experiments that are carried out at Jodrell Bank.”

He explains that in many observations radio interference is the main factor limiting the quality of the data and that

“every increase in interference...reduces the amount of useful data that are left”.

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He adds that

“when there are lots of these…as might be the case for emission from housing developments then it has a significant impact on the data.”

Even a domestic microwave in someone’s home can have an impact on the work at Jodrell Bank. It is important to remember that decades ago Professor Lovell moved his work at the university from the centre of Manchester to Cheshire, to avoid such interference.
Professor Garrington says that the work of Jodrell Bank has already been hampered by local development, explaining that the

“discovery of pulsars was led by Jodrell Bank for many years”

but that

“now…we can no longer find new pulsars and our experiments are limited to timing the pulsars which are already known. We do make the most precise measurements...but really interference limits the extent to which we can search for new pulsars.”

He explains how researchers at Jodrell Bank have done the most extensive analysis anywhere, to understand how towns, developments and roads affect the work. He has given evidence to a planning committee in Cheshire in the past month, and says:

“We have in the last few months constructed a detailed map which quantifies this loss due to distance and terrain...What this model shows is that the largest potential contribution is often from local villages such as Goostrey”.

Goostrey is a village in my constituency, between 1 mile and 2 miles from Jodrell Bank. Professor Garrington adds that modelling of the proposed development in Goostrey

“shows that it will add significantly to what is a present and growing problem...We believe this continued development at this rate so close to Jodrell Bank poses a significant impact on the science that can be carried out at this international institution.”

?

Fiona Bruce: I will, Mrs Main. I am raising this concern because the village of Goostrey has 900 houses and there are now plans to build up to 250 additional houses. Applications have been put in and some have been agreed. The latest one is for a development of 119. A public meeting was held in the village only last Friday, attended by 250 people, asking for consideration of an exclusion zone for further housing development around Jodrell Bank of up to, say, 2 miles; no doubt the parameters could be established by discussion with Jodrell Bank, which I understand supports the proposals. I am keen that the Science Minister should be aware of the request, and I hope that he will consider it.