My Lords, as some of your Lordships will know, I declare an interest as my nephew died aged 35. He was a haemophiliac, a twin and my sister’s son. He left a 10 month-old baby daughter. I too thank the noble Earl for being so sincere about this. He is one of the first people I have heard on the government side who actually gets it and understands the agony that the community has been through over the last 40 years—so I thank him for that.
I will speak briefly to a couple of amendments. With Amendment 119PA, we are concerned that infected and affected people who may want to appeal against a decision on compensation will not be able to go to a separate body to appeal, as Sir Brian Langstaff recommended in his report. If Sir Brian’s recommendations are ignored, people will have to seek to reverse a decision through the First-tier Tribunal, as is the case at the moment. They are concerned about that because the First-tier Tribunal is not specialised in infected blood and has a whole host of other things to deal with, such as PIP and housing appeals. The process will be very difficult.
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Almost all the infected blood compensation appeals will be based on a factual appeal and not on a point of law. It is going to be impossible to dispute any decisions that are made. The concern is that, if the Government go down this route, there will effectively be no appeal process and applications will fail. My Amendment 119PA is about ensuring that appeals are made to the High Court or the Court of Session rather than the First-tier Tribunal.
I am very glad that the noble Earl opened on the issue of trust, as many noble Lords have raised this. There is such deep suspicion and mistrust on behalf of the community. They want the person considering appeals to be independent. They do not want the Government to be involved, because trust has been lost. We all have to recognise that the infected and affected community literally do not trust the Government because they have been pushed from pillar to post. I have been campaigning on this with my sister for years. They have been treated, quite frankly, as an annoyance when they have talked to the health officials or Ministers available to them. They have been treated as supplicants and lied to over and over again. I am afraid that trust is really far gone, as we have discussed in the past.
My Amendment 121GA is about the formation of the body. The chair needs to be a High Court judge or a judge of the Court of Session. We want the other non-executive members to be appointed by the chair, and the chair to be appointed by the Lord Chief Justice. If the chair is appointed by the Government, that again raises the issue of mistrust.
I welcome the Minister saying that four of the other non-executive members—I have numbers, but the point is the principle—should be people affected or infected by blood contamination or people representing such issues, and they should be from all four home nations. Without that commitment to the inclusion of the community there will be no trust, so I very much welcome that.