House of Commons
Wednesday 24 July 1996
The House met at half-past Nine o'clock
PRAYERS
[Madam Speaker in the Chair]
9.34 am
Mr. Nigel Spearing (Newham, South): On a point of order, Madam Speaker. During the course of preparations for today's Adjournment debate, in which hon. Members can raise various matters, I and my hon. Friends the Members for Newham, North-West (Mr. Banks) and for Newham, North-East (Mr. Timms) have been most concerned about the deficit of East London and the City health authority. In attempting to compare that deficit--of over £30 million--with those of other district health authorities, I tabled a question to the Secretary of State for Health.
That question has been answered and printed in Hansard this morning. I shall not read out the question, but it was about deficits, which is a very important matter for the health service across the country. The answer states:
Furthermore, the phrase
Madam Speaker, what are the appropriate means by which I can draw that matter to the attention of others? If the practice is more widespread, perhaps my raising this point of order will encourage other hon. Members who have received similar answers to take similar action.
Madam Speaker:
I am grateful to the hon. Member for giving me notice of his point of order, and I have seen the question and answer to which he refers. As he knows, however, the Speaker is not responsible for the content of ministerial answers. There are many ways in which hon. Members may pursue what they consider to be unsatisfactory answers, such as, for example, in Adjournment debates or by raising the issue with the relevant Select Committee. It is my understanding that the Select Committee on Public Service is currently inquiring into ministerial accountability. The hon. Member might help that Committee with its inquiries if he were to put the matter to it.
Mr. Alfred Morris (Manchester, Wythenshawe):
There are three urgent and important issues I want briefly to address. Each of them merits a ministerial response before the House rises for the summer recess.
First, I want to raise Lord Rix's moving plea, in a letter to the Leader of the House, for a fair wind for his Disabled Persons and Carers (Short-term Breaks) Bill. His Bill won unanimous support in the Lords and I was delighted to be asked to sponsor it in this House. In doing so I have the support of right hon. and hon. Members of all parties, large and small, none of whom saw any justification whatever for the blocking of the Bill by a Government Whip when I presented it for Second Reading on 12 July. That our procedures can allow that to happen where a Bill has already been unanimously approved in another place is surely wrong and should be immediately reviewed.
While I cannot now discuss its terms, the Bill, as its title implies, is one to help disabled people and their carers who, hugely to their detriment, never go beyond their own homes. As Lord Rix pointed out in his letter to the Leader of the House, of the 130,000 adults and children with severe learning disabilities living with their families, four out of five never receive short-term care provision to relieve the pressure of full-time care in the family home.
All I will say today, as Lord Rix did in other words in seeking the right hon. Gentleman's help, is that this is bad for the disabled person, bad for carers and bad for the taxpayer.
As is accepted in other legislation on disability--not least that which I had the good fortune to bring to this House, both as a private Member and as a Minister--any failure to give the disabled person and the carer a break hastens the day when it will no longer be possible to cope at home, making long-term institutional care the only option at far greater cost to the taxpayer than that of facilitating short-term breaks. Carers may be among the most admired people in this country, but they are also among the most neglected. Helping them is not only a moral and social priority: it also makes economic sense.
While it appears on today's Order Paper only as a remaining order, the Government have it within their power to let Lord Rix's excellent Bill through this House before we adjourn for the recess. It is about a small step forward that, in Lord Rix's words, would
The issue is not one that divides one side of the House from the other. The divide is now one between the Government and both sides of the House, and I implore the right hon. Gentleman to do all he can to help the Bill forward. Meanwhile I must inform him that, if he is not able to assist its supporters today, I shall be seeking to discharge my commitment to the Bill in full by bringing
it back to the Order Paper of this House on every remaining sitting day of the current parliamentary Session.
I turn now, again briefly, to the very deep sense of injustice that persists among people with haemophilia and their families. The tragic fate of three brothers explains why they are so aggrieved. All three had haemophilia. Two were infected with HIV by contaminated NHS blood transfusions and died of AIDS-related illnesses. The third brother was infected with hepatitis C by NHS blood products and died of liver failure. The two brothers infected with HIV received help from the Macfarlane Trust, funded by the Government, and were able to make some provision for their families. But their brother, infected with hepatitis C, went to his grave having been refused that help. He was unable to make any provision for his family.
All three brothers had become terminally ill and died from the same cause: contaminated NHS blood products. But one was denied help given to the other two brothers by a Government who provided £70 million for people infected with HIV and set up the Macfarlane Trust to give them continuing support. The Government accepted their moral responsibility in the case of HIV infection. They have the same responsibility now in the HCV cases.
It is argued that compensating those infected with HCV would take money away from patient care in the NHS. To say that is to get not just the wrong end of the stick, but the wrong stick. For the payments made in the HIV cases, including those to the dependants of people who subsequently died because of AIDS-related illnesses, came from contingency moneys, which is what the Haemophilia Society is asking for now for the hepatitis C victims. The society simply wants the terms of reference of the Macfarlane Trust to be extended to include them.
Measured against the pain and suffering endured, the claim is an extremely modest one. Hepatitis C attacks the liver and is life-threatening. Current medical opinion is that up to 80 per cent. of those infected will develop chronic liver disease. Of these, some 20 per cent. will develop severe liver problems such as cirrhosis or liver cancer. More than 50 of those infected by contaminated blood products have already died and the death rate is accelerating.
This further tragedy in the haemophilia community dates back to before 1986 when heat treatment was introduced to end the contamination of NHS blood products. But by then 3,100 people with haemophilia alone had been infected with hepatitis C. In recognition of the scale of the problem, an all-party early-day motion was tabled, in my name, urging parity of treatment for people infected with HIV or HCV. The motion has now been signed by more than 260 right hon. and hon. Members, a majority of all Members of Parliament who are free to sign such motions. As the list of signatories shows, the issue is treated not as one of right and left but of right and wrong.
In none of the many campaigns in which I have been closely involved in this House in my 32 years here have I had so strong a sense that it should not be necessary to campaign to right such an obvious wrong. The
Government know we are right and that our campaign is entirely free from party animus. They know, too, that if given the nod by Ministers, this House would settle the issue within an hour. That hour could and should be found before the new parliamentary Session begins. If there is no commitment today to finding it and the campaign has to go on, then go on it will until justice is achieved for people who simply want equitable treatment.
I turn now, thirdly and finally, to an issue of urgent concern to all long-term sick and disabled people and those who work with and for them. I refer to the implications of a judgment given by the Court of Appeal in what the Royal Association for Disability and Rehabilitation--RADAR--describes as
The Court of Appeal's judgment, as John Keep of RADAR who played such an admirable role in helping Michael Barry to achieve the judicial review has reminded me, is totally in line with the guidance given to me as the Minister for Disabled People about the legal effect of section 2 of theAct.
I set out that guidance in this House, for the information of right hon. and hon. Members and local authorities, making it crystal clear that to reduce or withdraw a service under the section without diminution in need, was plainly unlawful. That is what the Court of Appeal has now ruled and it is, in my view as the author of the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act, urgently necessary for Ministers to issue guidance to local authorities about the implications for them of the court's ruling.
Clearly, service users whose needs have been assessed under the Act now have an undoubted right to have those needs provided for, and many thousands of disabled people up and down the country who had their services withdrawn or reduced for financial reasons are now entitled to have them restored. And they must quickly be identified and informed of their rights and entitlements. That there should ever have been any misunderstanding about the mandatory effect of the Act after my statement to the House is all the more disturbing when one learns that the legal guidance given to me as Minister was repeated by their legal advisers to all my successors in the post over the past 17 years.
"The information requested is based on estimates subject to revision. It is not suitable for publication."--[Official Report, 22 July 1996; Vol. 282, c. 121.]
Every hon. Member is familiar with answers containing such expressions as "not centrally held", "disproportionate costs" and "placed in the Library", but the answer "estimates subject to revision"--which is given all the time in response to questions on finance, taxation and public expenditure--is not a reason for withholding information.
"It is not suitable for publication"
is an addition to the canon of unhappy excuses that sometimes comes from the Executive.
"add a touch of compassion and understanding to the Government's record."
He might justifiably have added that, for the Government to refuse to let so uncontroversial a measure through this House, would be both self-defeating and inhumane.
"one of the most important cases to date on the rights of disabled people to community care services."
The court ruled that, when a local authority has agreed that a disabled person has needs for care services under the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act 1970, the authority must meet those needs and cannot take its own budgetary constraints into consideration. This landmark ruling was given in a judicial review judgment against Gloucestershire county council in relation to its treatment of a disabled pensioner, Michael Barry, in withdrawing home care services from him, among 1,500 other disabled people in the county, claiming that a Government squeeze on funds was responsible for the cuts.
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