https://www.angelawalkerreports.com/
https://www.angelawalkerreports.com/
The impending general election could mean more misery and further delays in compensation to victims of the infected blood scandal in the UK. It was not an accident. It involved downright deception and left people exposed to unacceptable risks. Those were the damning words of the Infected Blood Inquiry's final report on May the 20th, into the scandal which saw 30,000 people infected with HIV, hepatitis and other diseases from contaminated blood products given to them by the NHS. I'm journalist Angela Walker, and in this podcast I talk to inspirational people and discuss underreported issues. My guest today is barrister Clive Smith, who's the Chair of the Trustees of the Haemophilia Society. Thanks for joining me, clive. I know you've got severe haemophilia and I'd like to ask you how this has touched your life on a personal level. But first of all, sir Brian Langstar's report could hardly have been more scathing. What were your initial thoughts? Could hardly have been more scathing.
Speaker 2:What were your initial thoughts? My initial thoughts were that it went further than I think many people could have even hoped for. So when we heard evidence at the public inquiry, for example, about when we first licensed blood products to be imported from the US back in 1973, for example, there was then evidence later on about people with mild hemophilia or moderate hemophilia who perhaps sometimes only ever had one injection but sadly then became infected either with HIV or hepatitis C or sometimes both, and so I know in other inquiries there have been shades of grey about people's infection. So, for example, if you compare Ireland from January 1985, for people who are infected with HIV from then onwards they received larger compensation payments because the chair of that inquiry felt that the state of knowledge at the time meant that the reality of people being infected from then onwards was something that should never have happened. It was almost entirely preventable by that stage.
Speaker 2:But instead of getting into detail like that, sir Brian was just so clinical and forthright in his conclusions and he said that in 1973, the decision to license those products was wrong, and so we never got into the discussion. Really we can if you read a bit more of the report, but there was almost no need for the rest of that discussion in terms of whether people should have been treated with this or not or whether they could have been treated with something else. He just said the decision to import those products and license them in 1973 was wrong. And of course, he then went on to say that much of this could and should have been avoided, because he said more money should have been invested in heat treatment, which meant by the late 1970s, hepatitis C really should have been being killed in terms of blood products, and then, completely inadvertently, you would have actually found a system that would have killed HIV to the point of almost extinction, so that very few, if any, people ever would have been infected with HIV. And I think those conclusions are so compelling and clear that, as I say, I think even the community were shocked and stunned about how far he went in terms of saying when this could have been prevented. So for many, though, because of course he then went on to say that much of this could and should have been prevented and I was there on Monday, the 20th, when the report was published, and for some people it was just too difficult to read to know that this could have been prevented and their loved ones weren't there with them, sat next to them, was just too hard.
Speaker 2:So a bittersweet day really for many, because it's what so many people never dared to dream. And just having the report in your hand I've got it here and it's, it's so strong, it's so compelling. Um, seven, seven volumes, um, certainly not got through all of them yet, but, um, I will. Um, and it really was a day that nobody really dared to dream happening. And, and it did, and it has, and it's um, it's still sinking in, certainly for me and I think, for many other people too.
Speaker 1:I think one of the things that's so shocking is yes, mistakes were made, but along the line, many, many medical people, professionals, were involved in covering up mistakes, covering up the fact that they knew people had HIV and that people were still being infected. I mean, what's your stance on that?
Speaker 2:It is just appalling and I think for so many years people have been dismissed as conspiracy theorists because actually when you tell people about this, their jaw hits the ground and they think, well, surely that can't happen in a Western, civilised democracy? And sadly it can and it has. I think one of the things that struck me when I was at the inquiry um one day is that so brian has taken aim at, you know, government civil servants at pharmaceutical companies, at medical professionals and others, and it just feels like every layer and level of protection that was there for patients and for people failed, and it failed in the most horrendous way, as you say. And not only that, but it was compounded then by the cover up. And, as you know, one of the terms of reference for Sir Brian in his inquiry was whether or not there had been a cover up. And he said far from there being a cover up, actually he said there was a deliberate attempt to conceal this. Far from there being a cover-up, actually he said there was a deliberate attempt to conceal this, a conspiracy. And his words about the conspiracy are really poignant if you read that aspect of the summary.
Speaker 2:But you know it's a more insidious way in which this had all been covered up, by medical records being destroyed, by people like Lord Owen when he was health secretary, by his papers no longer existing, all these sorts of things. It wasn't a group of people who sat down and decided to do this, it was pockets of people who took these decisions and that's really difficult to hear. If you think of doctors and the Hippocratic Oath and their first duty first, do no harm and surely your second duty first do no harm. And second, if you do do harm, don't cover it up and try and remedy it and rectify it. But that's what happens. This godlike behaviour by some health care professionals is absolutely chilling and has been thoroughly exposed by this report.
Speaker 1:I mean as patients, as members of the public, we put our trust and faith in the medical professionals that are supposed to be looking after us. This has been catastrophic. Where does this leave us regarding our relationship with the NHS, with our health professionals?
Speaker 2:I think it's really difficult because I think in this country, you know, we venerate the NHS and I think it was Nigel Lawson talked about it being the closest thing we have to a religion and many, many people who work in the NHS do a phenomenal and fantastic job. But I don't think we should ever just rest on our laurels and think we have a perfect system. I think it has. For many people with haemophilia and, of course, others who were infected through blood transfusions as a result of childbirth or surgery or going into a and e, for example, it has completely shattered their trust in health care professionals. But not only that, but in the state, in society. As you say, when you go into hospital, you go in because you're vulnerable and you put your trust in somebody to look after you at your most vulnerable moment. You know when you're giving and you put your trust in somebody to look after you at your most vulnerable moment. You know when you're giving birth to your child, for example, or when you have been involved in a major car accident or when you've got a severe bleeding disorder, and you're going in and you're putting your, putting your life in their hands and you don't expect to walk out of there worse off than when you went in. Not only that, you, you don't expect it, as you say, to be covered up.
Speaker 2:I think times have moved on, but I think we're a far way, a long way, from the relationship between patients and healthcare professionals being perfect. And one of the themes I think there were six themes in Sir Brian's report One of them was the patient voice and the fact that that was completely, you know, subjugated and it was not even second best. At times it was third or fourth, and others were listened to. So you know, when healthcare professionals did this, then it was civil servants and ministers who were fed lines about receiving the best possible treatment based on the best medical advice, and the patient voice was just relegated to the bottom. And so there needs to be a rebalancing of that, and it's welcome that in Sir Brian's report, one of his recommendations is about training of health care professionals, and you know the BMA, for example, the British Medical Association, the training of doctors, and I think what I and many others would like to see is people who have been victims of this scandal actually being involved in the education of health care professionals.
Speaker 2:I think one of the really important things about the contaminated blood scandal is that it didn't just happen here. This is a worldwide issue. Places like America and Canada and Ireland had their inquiries many, many years ago and dealt with this problem. We haven't had these decades of burning injustice that we have had in the United Kingdom. So we need to be educating healthcare professionals during the educational phase of their training. It's almost too late, I think, once they get into hospitals or GP practices and they get into the institution itself, because there is a risk there's a risk for everyone working in certain jobs, but of people becoming institutionalized, and so you need to get to them early, I think, and have that education piece, because I think that's the only way that the patient voice is going to be promoted and patient safety is going to be everybody's primary concern when treating people.
Speaker 1:And it's so interesting, clive, that you're talking about this kind of like way that people get swept along with the culture of the institution that they're working for, and we were chatting earlier about a man who was positive for HIV and his GP covered that up. Tell us a bit more about that, because he didn't even tell the patient that he had HIV.
Speaker 2:No, we had a member a few years ago who was in the press and he was telling his story about the fact that he was infected with HIV when he was a patient at Birmingham and his doctor had been testing him without his knowledge and found out he was HIV positive and then didn't reveal his HIV status to him. That patient then moved from Birmingham to Leicester and when he moved, his consultant wrote to his new consultant in Leicester and asked him not to share that diagnosis with him. And the doctor in Leicester agreed not to share his diagnosis. And some years later the patient then moved from Leicester to Stafford, I think from memory, and when he got to Stafford that letter didn't go from the Leicester consultant saying please don't tell him. And when he got there he was literally told in the doorway, as he was walking into his first appointment, his doctor hello, I see your HIV positive. Then you've probably only got a few years left to live. And that was the start of his relationship with his healthcare professional, with his doctor.
Speaker 2:And when you have a condition like haemophilia or indeed any other lifelong condition, those relationships are really important your doctors, your nurses, your physiotherapists, all those sorts of people. They become part of your family. You know them by first name, you can pick up the phone often and speak to them directly. You know there's no need sometimes to go through reception and they really do become part of the family. The reason I am chair of the board of trustees is because my former hemophilia nurse at Great Ormond Street encouraged me to apply to become a trustee. So you know, it's over 20 years since I left Great Ormond Street but I'm still in touch with my nurse.
Speaker 2:So those are the kinds of relationships that people have when you have lifelong conditions, and so for that trust to be shattered and destroyed is really damaging to people's long-term health.
Speaker 2:Because I've spoken to people who don't like going into hospital and not just hospital generally, but specifically the hospital where they receive their diagnosis and I remember speaking to my doctor recently and she said to me that as healthcare professionals, they often think of it as just a hospital.
Speaker 2:But it's not. It's the place where people receive their diagnosis and that can be incredibly triggering for people. So when they do have issues with their haemophilia, they don't go to hospital, they don't access their healthcare. They end up staying at home and resting and having internal bleeds and having further damage to their joints and all those sorts of things, and then they become depressed and that affects their relationships with their partners, with their family, with their children, with their job, all those sorts of things. The generational harm that this has caused cannot be underestimated. We think of this as something is happening in the 70s and 80s and it was that's, the initial uh ripples of this earthquake were felt, but it continues to to shatter and destroy people's lives today, sadly of course, and people are still dying all the time, and many people are dying and they haven't received any compensation.
Speaker 1:Their families haven't received a penny um, and we talk about compensation. It's not just. It's not just because they were wronged. These people were unable to buy houses, they were unable to have hold down jobs because of their illnesses that they received because of these contaminated blood products. Now I know in february last year, so brian langstaff recommended compensation be paid, and quickly, and and yet there's still been more delays. Let's talk about the compensation side of it then.
Speaker 2:Yeah, as you say, it's about two years ago now Sir Robert Francis, who was the chair of the public inquiry into the mid-staffs there were a number of excess deaths in mid-staffs and he chaired that inquiry and he was the person who first came up with recommending a duty of candour for healthcare professionals, and we can perhaps talk about that a bit later. He submitted that report to government and to the inquiry, gave evidence to the inquiry and then in April last year Sir Brian Lang's staff published an interim report on compensation. He said I couldn't in all conscience wait any further because I know people continue to die and just having that peace of mind of being able to go to their graves knowing that their loved ones and their family members will be looked after is hugely significant. And so he published that interim report and said to the government get on with it. They didn't, they still haven't and that should have been up and running by the end of last year.
Speaker 2:The government said two things. Firstly, they said they would publish their own response to the Sir Robert Francis report. They've still never done that. Published their own response to the Sir Robert Francis report They've still never done that. Secondly, what they said is that they couldn't respond to Sir Brian's interim recommendation until they received his full report On the 20th of May this year. We received Sir Brian's full report On the 21st of May. The government published their response in terms of their proposals for compensation. Quite how they managed to do that overnight, I don't know. I'm being cynical, of course, because the reality is they didn't need that report. They could have done it, they could have got on with it, and it didn't happen, which is appalling.
Speaker 2:And actually, as a result of that, sir Brian Langstaff has done something which I think is unprecedented in a public inquiry, because one of his terms of reference is the timeliness of government response, and the timeliness of the government response to his recommendation on compensation is still something which he is actively considering.
Speaker 2:So whilst he said, well, here's my final report, he's not closed the book or closed the final chapter on this inquiry, and he said in 12 months time. He said I want a response from government saying how you are taking forward my recommendations or why you are not taking forward those recommendations. So what he's very gently saying to the government is exactly the same as what the community has been saying for decades, which is we don't believe you and we don't trust you, and Sir Brian Langstaff has said the same, which I think is incredibly damning for the chair of a public inquiry to say to government I don't trust you and as a result of that, I'm not going to close the book on this inquiry yet. You need to sort this out. You can't keep having public inquiry after public inquiry where reports sit on shelves in Whitehall and gather dust and we don't learn the lessons from the past. This cycle has to stop and it has to be broken now.
Speaker 1:But of course, in 12 months' time we're going to have a completely different government, because was it the day after the report was out, rishi Sunak announced that there was to be a general election in July. So what effect is this going to have on the compensation scheme for the infected blood victims and their families?
Speaker 2:It was quite the week, so over five days. On the Monday we had the inquiry report published. On the Tuesday we had the government's proposals on compensation published. On Wednesday we had a general election called and then on the Friday the Victims and Prisoners Bill became law and received royal assent, and One of those in a month would have been enough to deal with and digest. But to try and digest all of that in the space of five days has been ridiculous, quite frankly. We counseled the government about making any major announcements around the inquiry being the report, final report being published, because we knew how emotional and how exhausting it would be for the community and we as a charity.
Speaker 2:We have a webinar tonight and it was supposed to be about the findings of the inquiry and to discuss the report. But it's going to be about compensation, because that's all people want to talk about at the moment because they've been waiting so long for it, and you said earlier that when we talked about compensation, that it's important. Of course the money is significant for many, many people, but the other aspect of compensation for me, I think, which many people feel, is that it's about recognition, and recognition in this scandal, I think, is more significant than in many others Because, as you know, the stigma that so many people have faced, particularly with HIV but with hepatitis C2, and many of the other viruses, we all remember, or many of us remember, the Tombstone campaign in the 80s Don't Die of Ignorance and people having their houses dogged with graffiti. And many people have heard the story of Colin Smith, who was seven years old in South Wales when he died, and his parents having had their house dogged with graffiti. Aids family or AIDS victims, and the compensation is recognition of the harm and the wrong that was done to them. Their compensation is recognition of the harm and the wrong that was done to them.
Speaker 2:But in terms of, as you say, in terms of the announcement of the general election, initially that the fear was and I was actually in Parliament on Wednesday when the general election was announced and the fear was that the Victims and Prisoners Bill wouldn't be included in what's known as the wash up. So when Parliament is then dissolved and we enter the period of purdah, there's a very short window of opportunity for all the bills that are before Parliament to be passed into law and of course, there's not enough time for all of them to pass and we were initially very fearful that the Victims and Prisons Bill wasn't going to pass and that has thankfully passed. So in the short term, the calling of the general election has actually sped things up. The question is, as you all appreciate and everyone else listening will, is what goes on in the background. Of course, the civil servants will continue to work on this. Sir Robert Francis has now been named as the chair of the Infected Blood Compensation Authority. The Infected Blood Compensation Authority has now formally been set up under the Victims and Prisons Bill, which is why I've been mentioning it, and many other things now have to happen. Within three months, regulations need to be placed before Parliament. So in the short term, it's sped some things up.
Speaker 2:In the medium term, I suppose we don't know what the change if there is, of course can't predict what may or may not happen at a general election, but if there is to be a change in administration, then time will tell as to how quickly things move, I think from our own position, just commenting on where we are. So one of the things that's happened obviously in the last few years is many people will be familiar with the name Sue Gray. She was the former senior civil servant who was actually in charge of the government response to the infected blood inquiry. She obviously chaired the inquiry into the Downing Street parties and Boris Johnson, etc. Following which she left the civil service and is now, of course, sir Keir Starmer's chief of staff, and I've had meetings with uh, we've discussed this um, because that's been another challenge in all of this, because, with a general election coming up where there is potentially, um a change of administration, we've all effectively had to ride two horses in one race. So instead of focusing our energies on the government, we've had to focus our energies on the government and um, the opposition party, um, which has added another dimension to all of this. And if there is a change of administration, then Sakhir Starmer has said we will get this done.
Speaker 2:It was heartening on Monday, the 20th so, when the inquiry report was published, a number of people were invited to the speaker's gallery to hear the Prime Minister's apology and I was privileged to be one of those people and, as well as the Prime Minister standing up and apologising, sir Keir Starmer stood up, sir David stood up and they all apologised and there was a rare moment of political unity in the Commons. There was a rare hushed silence as well, which, considering how close we are to a general election, is something you very rarely see. There was actually quite a large dose of humility on show, which was very welcome, because it's the first time we've really seen all of that. So, in terms of the impact of the general election, initially it's actually sped things up. We'll have to wait and see in the medium term where we go, but it's just added another level of complexity.
Speaker 2:I know I said to you before, angie. I think it's worth repeating if somebody said at a meeting I was at last wednesday, that just as you get to the top of the mountain and the mist clears, then you realize that there's another mountain in front of you. You still have to climb so frustrating, so frustrating.
Speaker 1:and while we're talking about politics, I mean it's worth mentioning that, you know, governments of all colours have failed to get to the bottom of a fail to even allow an inquiry until Theresa May. Now, who should be held to account politically? Because we've talked about, you know, medics, people in the NHS, who who failed patients, but there was a huge political failure as well. So who should be held to account for this cover up?
Speaker 2:It's difficult to pin the tail of responsibility on any particular donkey, isn't it? And we have to be careful. I have to be careful as the chair of a charity about what I say at the moment, obviously during an election period. But you're right in the sense that, no, I don't think any political party comes out of this with much credit. It was Lord Owen, when he was self-secretary in the late 1970s, who said that the United Kingdom should become self-sufficient in the production of its own blood products, and that obviously didn't happen under the Tory government afterwards.
Speaker 2:We then, of course, had a change of government in the late 90s, and we were denied repeatedly again then a public inquiry by successive Labour prime ministers too. I think we've had something like 12 prime ministers and 23 health secretaries since this all kicked off. So I'll let our listeners decide who might be most or least to blame in all of that, but the reality is that they should all shoulder some degree of blame, and I said in the week that the inquiry reported it was quite refreshing to hear Jeremy Hunt because of course he's currently the Chancellor and a former Health Secretary himself talked about his failures during his time in office as Health Secretary. Andy Burnham has gone on record to talk about the fact that he was counselled actively counselled by civil servants not to meet victims of this. Jeremy Hunt talked about this really powerfully in his evidence. He talked about the case of Nazanin Zaghari Radcliffe and the fact that he was actively counselled by civil servants not to meet her husband and of course he did and we all know how that ended happily with her release eventually. But there were all those levels of barrier within our political system that civil servants were counselling politicians and ministers not to meet with victims.
Speaker 2:And there was Sir Brian called it a lack of curiosity, a lack of professional curiosity by ministers that when they were told things they simply swallowed it and they accepted it. I think to give politicians some not credit credit's the wrong word, but I think in today's day and age it's far easier to access information and get things out there, particularly with things like Twitter and X and the fact you can just go online and Google things. So if somebody tells you something, you can actually go and fact check it. I suppose is the phrase we'd use today, rather than simply being told well, your civil servants have gone away, this is the homework and research they've done and this is the position and many ministers happen to be able to say well, ok, I can't really go anywhere else with that, but, as Sir Brian said, there was a complete lack of curiosity and people like Lord Clark, lord Kenneth Clark, when he gave evidence, his evidence over three days was patronizing at best and offensive at worst.
Speaker 2:And at the end of his evidence he said that he didn't even know what the treatment today for haemophilia was, and of course, for most people it's an injection into a vein. But he said well, what do you just take? A tablet, is that it? And it was so condescending and patronizing. What was abundantly clear to everybody is that Lord Clark had never met a single victim of the contaminated blood scandal in his life and, as a former health secretary who was in office during the early 1980s, that is a damning indictment. There is this barrier between politicians and people, the people who are there to represent and they're there to look after and they're to protect, and that barrier has to be broken down Again, going back to the patient voice or just the citizen's voice being heard by the corridors of power and actually them learning the truth from them, rather than what they're told by civil servants, what they're told by civil servants.
Speaker 1:I was going to ask you about Ken Clarke because when I saw him giving evidence, I was absolutely dumbfounded by the way that he was just so dismissive of the whole scandal, to be honest, the way that he spoke. You were there at the time. I mean, what were your initial feelings? Because it was so shocking, so shocking.
Speaker 2:It was, and I think Sir Brian described him as combative.
Speaker 1:Well, that's very kind.
Speaker 2:Well, quite, that's a polite way for a high court judge or former high court judge to describe his conduct and behaviour. But he was combative in a way that he didn't need to be. In a way, he was symptomatic of the way the state has treated people. And it was, um, if you look at things like hillsborough and bishop james jones um, he published a report the behest of theresa may, actually when she was home secretary. Um, she asked him to write a report about the experiences of the hillsborough family families and because she didn't want anybody else to have to go through what they went through.
Speaker 2:And Bishop James Jones' report he entitled the Patronising Disposition of Unaccountable Power, and Kenneth Clark was the physical embodiment of that phrase. When he gave evidence it was deeply offensive. And, as somebody said to me two things Firstly, he has no emotional intelligence. He never apologised, he never thought it was appropriate to apologise, he never sympathised with people's positions and secondly, it feels like he's just been a politician for so long. He can only ever see this through a political prism. It was all still about politics for him. There was absolutely no humanity from the man and I think that's what compounded what people have thought about Kenneth Clark for years, the way he behaved over three days of giving evidence.
Speaker 1:Do you think there should be any repercussions because of the position he was in at the height of this?
Speaker 2:Well, I've said in other interviews, I know some people are calling for him to be stripped of his peerage. That's not my position. My position is that if he wants to apologise to people, and apologise properly, then he might want to consider giving it back himself. So as far as I'm concerned, the ball is in his court. He's kept a low profile so far, as have many other politicians. I've mentioned a couple of former health secretaries by name, but it'd be very welcome if other health secretaries, or indeed prime ministers, wanted to come forward and say sorry for not calling a public inquiry sooner. I was wrong. I think that would actually be really powerful, and if there are any of them listening, then I'd encourage them to do that.
Speaker 1:Well, we can, but hope can't we. Now we've talked a lot about the political implications, we've talked about what happened, but on a personal level, you've got severe hemophilia. You've lived this. You know what was it like growing up as a you know, as a young lad, with this very, very serious condition and then everything that happened with this, with the scandal and people starting to fall ill and so forth. Talk us through that for me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was. It's obviously. It's been really difficult, obviously growing up under the shadow of this and at the time, of course, people didn't know whether they'd been infected and then, if they were, they didn't know about life expectancy. And I've sadly lost several friends to all of this throughout. I've sadly lost several friends to all of this throughout.
Speaker 2:Haemophilia when I was born in 1980, was a far more serious condition than it is now. It's still obviously a very serious condition and people can still potentially die from things like brain bleeds for example. But it meant initially that if you needed factor, you needed to go to the hospital. So many people talk about the hospital becoming a second home. It wasn't a second home, it was a first home for me.
Speaker 2:I spent a lot of time there In fact more time there usually than sometimes at home and growing up sort of near Windsor and going to Great Ormond Street it was an hour there on of being at school I'd for about two or three years, three weeks out of four, I go into school on crutches or in a wheelchair because I couldn't walk properly, because you end up having bleeds into your internal, bleeding into your joints where they swell up and you obviously then can't bear weight on them and then obviously by doing that, anyone who's broken a leg or an arm will appreciate that you lose muscle around it.
Speaker 2:But of course, if that keeps recurring, it becomes what's known as a target joint, and so I can't, for example, touch my shoulder with my left elbow because I had lots of bleeds into that when I was very young. My left ankle and my right ankle have both had bleeds into them over the years, so it was challenging. But because of that, because you spend so much time there, you spend a lot of time with some other people there too, and they become your brothers to an extent. So I had a good friend, stuart, who was two years older than me, who was also at Great Ormond Street, and he was sadly co-infected with HIV and hepatitis C when he was 27. And his story was told actually the week before the inquiry reported on Panorama, his parents, diane, mike Blake, and his sister, laura, on Panorama talking about Stuart, and that was really, really tough. When you start, when you lose your friends to.
Speaker 2:This's just horrific, absolutely horrific, um you know he was a young boy, I think he was seven, when he was infected. It's just, you know, 1000, around 1250 people with hemophilia, infected with with hiv, and I think 308 of them were children. And I talked about the fact that Sir Brian's been so clear in his findings. But one of the things we know is that, you know, in 1983, the United Kingdom Haemophilia Centred Doctors' Organisation was saying that children should not be treated with these imported products. But we know there were doctors like Professor Bloom who were in Cardiff who were still treating patients and he was the chair of the UKHEDO and he was ignoring his own advice. He was part of the cover-up and I think Sir Brian described his actions as unfathomable and I don't think anyone will ever be able to work out what was going on in Bloom's head.
Speaker 2:And Sir Brian was clear that children at places like Treloar School in Hampshire were being tested on. They were vulnerable. They were at a school away from home, away from their parents. They had a rare bleeding disorder which made them even more vulnerable, and then their vulnerability was completely taken advantage of by testing and experimentation by doctors there and it's just horrific to think about.
Speaker 2:It really is so growing up with all of this has been challenging, but it's been the privilege of my life to be to be the chair of the society during this time and actually get to where we are. It's been. I don't think I'll ever go. I hope I don't have to go through anything like this ever again in my life. And it's people like Stuart that, when you're tired and you're worn down by government and others, that it's because of Stuart that you get up every day. So the day the Inquirer reported, I tweeted a picture of Stuart that you get up every day. So, um the the Daily Inquirer reported, I tweeted a picture of Stuart and his sister, um, and I just wish he was here now to see what we've achieved. It's.
Speaker 1:I'm so sorry, clive. You went through that and Stuart will be so proud of what you've achieved.
Speaker 2:Yeah he'd be laughing his head off. I think that tweet got over a thousand likes and Stuart will be so proud of what you've achieved.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he'd be laughing his head off. I think that tweet got over a thousand likes. Well, I saw it because I've been following you for a long time, because we go back some many years, and I saw that for you, stuart, it's all been for you is what you tweeted, and and that, for me, epitomizes this, because, for all the politics, ultimately it was it's people like Stuart, people like you, people whose lives have been ripped apart and devastated by this, and I wonder do you think anything can be done to stop things like this from happening again? Clive?
Speaker 2:Patient safety has to be prioritised and you know we can talk specifically about this inquiry and then more broadly about other inquiries, but absolutely that's one of the things that Sir Brian said that patient safety has to be prioritised. The patient safety landscape is complicated, he said, and it needs simplifying and you know this community has been fighting for decades and when this inquiry was first set up, one of the things I did is I spoke to my counterparts in Ireland and in Canada. So a gentleman by the name of David Page in Canada and Brian O'Mahony, who's the chief executive of the Irish Human Feeding Society, and they were very clear with me. They always said there are two phases to this. They said, firstly, you need a good public inquiry. Secondly, you need a good government response and whilst compensation will be the focus of many in terms of the government response people like the Human Feeding Society and many other charities and campaign groups out there their focus will continue to be the government response. We will not let the government get away with not responding in full to this inquiry and they will have to explain why they are not taking forward any of these recommendations or indeed what they're doing to take forward the recommendations that have been made, and so we will continue that fight in their name to make sure this doesn't happen again.
Speaker 2:Because that's what unites everybody in all these scandals, be it Hillsborough, grenfell, nuclear test veterans, all those burning injustices, as Theresa May called them on the streets of Downing Street when she first became prime minister it's what unites everybody. They don't want anybody else to ever have to go what they've been through. You genuinely wouldn't wish it on your worst enemy. It's so horrific and it's so defining for so many people as well in terms of their their lives. It's been particularly in the contaminated blood community. It's been many people's that it's been their lives, work, um, and it's going to be really difficult, now that inquiry is winding up, for people to to find an identity and to find something else to do sure, because people like yourself and jason evans from factor eight.
Speaker 1:You've just basically devoted your whole adult lives, and before, to really shining a light on this and and and. Now that has happened. Where do you go from here? I mean, what are you? What are you going to do now?
Speaker 2:um well, I I actually have to step down as the chair of the Heme Fetis site in November. So I've been on the board for nine years and the chair for six. So our articles of association say that I have to step down. So it'll be time for me to hand over to somebody else. But I will continue to be involved with the Heme Fetis site and I'll be continuing to be involved in following through on the recommendations as well, but in a slightly cliched way, I suppose.
Speaker 2:I'm looking forward to spending some time with family and friends, because I've, like many of us, we've neglected them and you know, our fellow campaigners have become our friends and indeed our family as well to a large extent too. So I think many people are looking forward to getting a bit more of their time back. I know that two particular people they've both gone on holiday. They deliberately booked holidays immediately after the inquiry reported, which is exactly what they should be doing, because it really has taken a toll on people's mental health, all of this. Because it really has. It's taken a toll on people's mental health, all of this, and it will take some time for them to readjust and decompress and recalibrate as to where they are and what they're going to do.
Speaker 2:Um, so, uh, yeah, I, as you mentioned at the start, I'm, I'm, I'm a barrister, although I don't practice anymore. I did that for just over 10 years and I um still do some teaching. So, um, that teaching, so that's a nice distraction from all of this at times, although, of course, there's been a degree of overlap between my sort of professional and personal life in all of this. So, yes, looking forward to being at home in Yorkshire a bit more and less trains to London and back.
Speaker 1:Clive, thank you so much for talking to me. Thank you for being so open, because you've been through so much and I know you must be exhausted after all of the developments over the past week and the fact that you've devoted so much of your time and energy into this the emotional toll has been great. I can see that. So thank you for talking to me today.
Speaker 2:Pleasure. Thank you very much.
Speaker 1:You've been listening to Angela Walker in conversation. I hope you've enjoyed the show. Don't forget to subscribe, click to follow. You can find me on Instagram or check out my website, angelawalkerreportscom. Until next time, goodbye.