Added, quite right.
We honour our military with a covenant. For the sacrifices they make for us— facing danger, injury and death—we give our respect, our support and fair treatment. We acknowledge a moral obligation. This Government should be congratulated on aiming to ensure that no disadvantage is suffered in gaining public services, and they acknowledge that there can be a case for special treatment in certain cases.
In no way do I try to cheapen either of those situations—the need for a military covenant or the needs of the people whom we are talking about today—but it is clear to me as a constituency MP that my constituent Anne seeks much the same as the sort of help that I have tried to get for veterans: doctors to act on the wider effects of their illness; getting the benefits system to see what they are suffering; and getting public services in general to join the dots of what they know.
I know it is controversial in the military covenant to emphasise preferential treatment, but in the case of Anne, who has wanted drugs and a new liver against the might of the NICE guidelines, when her appalling,
sapping illness was no fault of her own, I think that she, too, and many like her, should receive respect, support and fair treatment. I see a moral obligation and every moral argument for doing as she asks. Perhaps the Government might consider having a covenant for contaminated blood.
12.39 pm