Headlining on BBC Wales today, a BBC Wales investigation of the kind BBC Scotland and it’s Disclosure team will never tackle:
When 10-month-old Colin Smith contracted HIV after receiving contaminated blood, his parents’ house was daubed with “Aids dead”. His father was also forced to leave his job.
Now 34 years on from his death from Aids at the age of seven, his family are facing another injustice. A BBC investigation has found Prof Arthur Bloom, the doctor who gave Colin infected imported blood product Factor VIII, broke his own rules to do so. Just three months earlier, Prof Bloom’s own department had written internal NHS guidelines discouraging the use of imported blood treatments on children because of the risk of infection.
“This wasn’t an accident,” said Colin’s father, also called Colin. “It could have been avoided.”
BBC Scotland is no more interested in this than they are in the plague of County Lines gangs or statistics proving NHS Scotland’s waiting times are far shorter than those in England or Wales. They are reporting on the Duke of Kent standing down, a murder and a knitter.
It was, of course, a Conservative UK Government under Thatcher, Starmer’s inspiration, that started importing blood from US prisoners to then infect thousands with HIV and Hepatitis C but it was a Labour UK Government from 1997 that was left with the responsibility for compensation.
Labour, of course, fought to delay and deny compensation. They needed the money for invasions.
How did their colleagues in the newly devolved Scottish Labour government, at Holyrood, from 1997 to 2007, when the SNP took over, represent and work in the interests of Scottish victims?
They didn’t.
Scotland’s former health minister was told by his Westminster counterpart to “tough it out” amid calls to compensate victims of the infected blood scandal, an inquiry has heard. Malcolm Chisholm was warned in 2002 that handing payments to people with Hepatitis C would be a “grave mistake”.
About 3,000 Scots contracted the virus in the 1970s and 1980s through contaminated blood products. Survivors did not receive financial support until 2004.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-62337002
See that ‘handing payments?’ The victims of appalling government errors, destroying their lives, characterised as undeserving benefits claimants.
The Scottish Labour Government suggested victims should receive £50 000 but the UK Labour Government decided for them and they got only £20-25 000, for lives ruined beyond measure.
If Labour ever get into power in Scotland as well as in London, that’s what we’ll get, a ‘poodle’ administration.
Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 