After decades of campaign for a Public Inquiry into the contaminated blood and blood products scandal there have now been two Inquiries.
The first to be held was the Archer Inquiry. In response to the refusal of successive Government's to hold a Public Inquiry our late President, The RT Hon The Lord Morris of Manchester, approached the late The RT Hon The Lord Archer of Sandwell QC and asked him to conduct and Independent Public Inquiry.
The Archer Inquiry has now reported and we have made the full implementation of the Archer Recommendations our campaign objective. To achieve this Lord Morris has repeatedly introduced the Contaminated Blood Bill to Parliament. If passed this Bill would give the force of law to the Archer Report's recommendations.
Meanwhile in Scotland we helped back a Judicial Review of Andy Kerr MSP's decision, as Minister of Health, not to hold a Public Inquiry. The Scottish Counts ruled that there had been deaths are the result of State actions and that under Article 2 of the European Convention of Human Rights the victims had a right to have their deaths publicly investigated. After the SNP Government was elected in 2007 Nicola Sturgeon MSP decided to discharge this duty in combination with a manifesto pledge to hold a Public Inquiry into Hepatitis C infections from contaminated blood and blood products. We tried to have the Inquiry broadened to include vCJD but the Terms of Reference were restricted to Hepatitis C and HIV.
The Inquiry was established under the Chairmanship of Lord Penrose and the Haemophilia Society in Scotland successfully applied to be a Core Participant as did several of our members. The Inquiry has now stopped taking evidence in public and is currently expected to report by the end of 2013.
