I shall try to restrict my speech to two minutes, because I know that we want to hear the speeches from the two Front Benchers and, of course, from my neighbour, my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt), who so nobly started this constructive debate, which will be a great comfort to my constituent, whose family life was devastated when she lost her husband at a young age with a very young family.
The debate has been constructive and we have heard of a number of measures that have been taken over a number of years. We also have the constructive recommendations from the all-party parliamentary group, which have featured heavily. I do not wish to sound a discordant note in this constructive debate, but I believe that despite all that there remains a suspicion to which I want to give voice. The suspicion is that all the responses from the Department of Health over the years have had to be drawn out of it and have not been freely given. The measures are often seen as a contrivance to ensure that a full answer has never been given, and people do not know why. The compensation provided is a construction of a response, but there is a belief that beneath this lies a darkness—a darkness that breeds suspicion about the root causes of all we have talked about today and about who was responsible, and about the feeling that those people remain faceless and nameless, fearing exposure for actions that may have led to what might have been a mighty, mighty wrong, and having an absence of courage to repent of those actions.
We all have to remember that it is our NHS. It does not belong to a political party or to the Department’s officials—it belongs to the people. My request to the two Front Benchers is: will they, to the extent of their powers, shine a light on this darkness and, beyond any financial consideration, provide that comfort to the hearts and memories of the victims?
2 pm