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Lord Warner: My Lords, I always sympathise with individual cases described by noble Lords. I remind the House that the Government established a hepatitis C ex gratia payment scheme, which has the underlying principle that it is targeted to help alleviate the suffering of people living with inadvertent hepatitis C infection. The reason why we have not gone in for a public inquiry is that there is no evidence of wrongful action on the part of people, which is a different situation from that found in Canada and Ireland. We are continuing to make payments under that scheme. To be fair, the previous government also set up a similar scheme called the Macfarlane Trust in relation to HIV infections through contaminated blood. Both governments have tried to respond to those concerns over the periods that they were in office.
Baroness Barker: My Lords, does the Minister accept that the report, which contains no information about what patients were advised at the time and no information about what government policy was on blood donations from high-risk groups, is an unsatisfactory report and will not help to move this policy or this practice forward; nor will it give any help to individuals such as the one mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Snape?
Lord Warner: My Lords, the document is helpful in setting out the chronology and the changes in scientific understanding during this period, which had a considerable impact on policy under successive governments on blood products and their use with haemophiliacs. There was a lot of clinical uncertainty in the early days in identifying hepatitis C. The document sets out clearly those clinical and scientific uncertainties. It gives an extensive 158 references to other documents on which it relied, and we will be looking at a freedom of information request that has been made for putting more of those documents in the public arena. We will look sympathetically at that FOI request.
Lord Morris of Manchester: My Lords, I have an interest to declare, not a pecuniary one, as president of
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the Haemophilia Society. Is my noble friend aware that this in-house inquiry began four years ago with a ministerial prediction that it would report within six months? Do not its errors and omissions—failing even to provide accurate figures on the numbers of patients infected or to acknowledge the 1,240 deaths caused—now totally vindicate the Haemophilia Society's call for an independent public inquiry into the worst-ever treatment disaster in the history of the NHS? Why does the report fail even to mention Mr Justice Burton's landmark High Court ruling on the legal duty to provide clean blood?
Lord Warner: My Lords, I accept that the document will not have satisfied everyone, but as I said, it was set up with the main purpose that Yvette Cooper, the Minister who set up the review, described—to identify whether the policy of self-sufficiency in blood products would have prevented the infection of haemophiliacs with hepatitis C through contaminated blood. It deals with that issue along with setting out clearly the chronology, which is complex, as I have said. I recognise the concerns that have been expressed, but we do not believe that a public inquiry is appropriate. There is no evidence of wrongdoing. The report makes that clear, and it gives a set of 158 references in full on which it relied. As I said, we will look sympathetically at placing more of those in the public arena in response to the FOI request that has been made.
Israel: Tom Hurndall and James Miller
3.30 pm
Baroness Northover asked Her Majesty's Government:
What representations they will make to the government of Israel concerning the deaths of Tom Hurndall and James Miller following the verdicts by St Pancras Coroner's Court on 10 and 6 April respectively.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Lord Triesman): My Lords, the St Pancras coroner has formally written to my noble and learned friend the Attorney-General about both cases. Foreign Office Ministers will offer to meet the Hurndall and Miller families. We will decide on the next steps in relation to the Government of Israel only when the Attorney-General has been able to assess the coroner's findings and Ministers have discussed the cases with the families.
Baroness Northover: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for that reply. However, this has been a very lengthy business, and the paperwork is all there. Will he now agree to the request from the St Pancras coroner that, in order to prevent further unlawful British fatalities, the Attorney-General and the Foreign Secretary should "require" the Israeli Government to hold an independent inquiry into these killings? Further, will he assure the Hurndall and Miller families, who are present here today, that the
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Government will act on the coroner's request that, under Section 1 of the Geneva Conventions Act 1957, the noble and learned Lord the Attorney-General, who is also here today, and the DPP will consider taking criminal proceedings in the UK against not only those who carried out these unlawful killings but those higher up the chain of command in the Israel Defence Forces and elsewhere who may have aided and abetted them?
Lord Triesman: My Lords, I start by expressing a very deeply felt sentiment that these are terrible events that have happened to both families. I feel that as much as anybody. I hope that, in that light, the response that I make will not be thought inappropriate or wrong. It is really a matter for the Attorney-General's judgment on receipt of the reports; it is not for the Government. It is an independent matter for the legal judgment of the Attorney-General, and that is genuinely where it must rest. I hope that on that basis we will be able to proceed in a way that the families feel is helpful.
Lord Judd: My Lords, does my noble friend agree that one of the hallmarks of a democratic society is the accountability of the security and military services to democratic and legal institutions? Will he assure the House that, in their relationships with the new Israeli Government, the British Government will do everything possible to encourage them to understand that their transparent credibility in a commitment to any peace process will be partly, if not extensively, measured by the degree to which anything that the military does is in the context of that commitment to peace?
Lord Triesman: My Lords, I naturally agree with the proposition that the military of any democratic country must answer to the elected forums of that country. There can be no question that anything else could be the case. The British Government have consistently pressed the Israelis at every level for a full and transparent military investigation into both deaths. The issue of James Miller's tragic death is still before us. We are frustrated that the investigations have taken so long to complete and extremely disappointed that no one has been held to account for James's killing. The noble Baroness, Lady Symons, described our view as one of dismay. I take exactly the same view: every military has to answer for its code of conduct and its rules of engagement to the democracy that provides for it.
Baroness Williams of Crosby: My Lords, I am afraid that the matter goes a little further than that. First, the Minister will be aware that the family felt that it got very little support and help from the Foreign Office during the extremely difficult past two years. Secondly, he will be aware that, during the recent inquests into the cases of Mr James Miller and Mr Tom Hurndall, there was virtually no co-operation by the Israeli Government. That seems a tragedy, given that the cases raise extremely serious issues about rules of engagement, the extent to which they are maintained by the relevant government and the
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obvious suffering of families whose sons were completely innocent of an aggression or offence of any kind. Will the noble Lord consider carefully what the Foreign Office can do in these cases? Also, taking into account the Attorney-General's great commitment to the rule of law internationally and nationally, what steps might be taken—particularly the rules of engagement under which they occurred—to ensure that they are carefully reviewed by the Government of Israel?
Lord Triesman: My Lords, I understand that my noble and learned friend the Attorney-General will make a statement once he has been in a position to study what the coroner has said. Those issues will be fully and effectively explored in those circumstances. I have never suffered a loss of the kind that both these families have tragically endured, and I do not know whether someone who has never suffered such a loss can ever really comment in an effective way on it. I make no pretension to do so. Going back as accurately as I can through the papers that relate to James Miller, I believe that we have made 40 interventions on the case with the Israelis, at ministerial and Permanent Under-Secretary level, in order to try to get them to co-operate fully and to move in a direction that would not have led to the dismay that I have just described.
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