Contaminated-blood scandal – former health minister Clarke denies responsibility

Around 3,000 people died as a result of being given blood products containing hepatitis C and HIV during the 1970s and 1980s.

Lord Clarke, conservative health minister between 1882 and 1985 and health secretary between 1988 and 1990, is the first senior health minister from the period to testify during the inquiry into the scandal.

Lord Clarke has said the emerging controversy “hardly ever came across my desk”.

Questions have been raised about whether the government knew about the risks of the blood treatments and whether patients were provided with sufficient warning.

Victims of what has become known as the biggest treatment disaster in the history of the NHS were given a clotting agent called Factor VIII imported from the US, where it had been produced from plasma donated by prisoners and other at-risk groups from blood-borne viruses.

By the mid-1980s once HIV was better understood, the products were heat-treated to destroy the viruses, but not before thousands of people had been infected.

Lord Clarke told the inquiry “As the tragedy with the haemophiliacs developed, I was aware it was there. From time to time, usually on my own instigation, I got on the edge of it. I did not call meetings on it.

“I was never the minister directly responsible for blood products. I was never asked to make a decision on blood products. I did intervene or get involved in discussions a bit when I wanted to be reassured.

“When I arrived (as health minister) the idea that blood products was a very big part of the department’s activity is simply not true.”

The public inquiry, led by former High Court judge Sir Brian Langstaff, has been examining the circumstances of the contaminated-blood scandal since 2018.

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Posted by Karen Motley, Clinical Negligence Department, Chadwick Lawrence LLP (tonymay@chadlaw.co.uk ), medical negligence lawyers and clinical negligence solicitors in Huddersfield, Leeds, Wakefield and Halifax, West Yorkshire.

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