Professor John Robertson OBA
BBC Scotland is broadcasting tragic stories today of those infected by blood transfusions:
Between 1970 and the early 1990s, more than 30,000 NHS patients were given blood transfusions, or treatments made using blood products, which were contaminated with hep C or HIV. Some of the blood was from abroad, but in Scotland, the majority came from Scottish donors which included prisoners and drug users.
Nowhere in the extended reporting is it made clear which political parties were in Government, thus responsible for the tragedy.
Here is the necessary clarification:
On May 17th, the head of the Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service (SNBTS) apologised to the thousands of victims in Scotland who were infected by HIV or Hepatitis C through NHS blood products.
While I understand why he made that apology on behalf of the SNBTS and the victims fully deserve an apology, even if it’s nearly 50 years late, it’s not really those working for the blood transfusion service, 50 years ago or now, who should be apologising.
According to the Guardian, the commercial blood product Koate, given to haemophiliacs across the UK in the 1970s and 1980s, to enable their blood to clot, was based on plasma from paid US prisoners, among whom it was known that drug use and sexual infections were rife. [i]
In the same report, we read that the drug producer, Bayer, were aware, at the very beginning, that because a single batch could contain plasma from 20 000 donors it was then very likely that the entire batch would be contaminated.
In August 1976, the Labour Government of Jim Callaghan and with the Secretary of State for Scotland, Willie Ross in the Cabinet, seeing the papers, the deal with Bayer was signed. A Labour health minister at the time, David Owen, had warned of the risks but was told in 1987, when he asked for them, that his papers had been shredded because of the risk of litigation. [ii]
Shockingly, we now know that one year before the Labour Government signed the deal, the World Health Organisation had warned of the risk of transmitting diseases when blood products were obtained from paid rather than from voluntary donors and urged (in block capital lettering), member states such as the UK, to enact effective legislation to protect the recipients of blood products. [iii]
In December 2015, ITV’s World in Action TV show did a special on the risks. According to the Guardian, in April 2024, despite the WHO warning and the TV broadcast, the deal was done by the Labour cabinet in August 1976, in part, to cut costs.[iv]
While some will point, justifiably, to the role played by Conservative Governments from 1979 to 1997 in perpetuating this practice and then in attempting to cover it up, it must be remembered that, in Scotland, Labour which was utterly dominant at national and local levels including on health boards, did nothing.
We see this most clearly in the case of Yorkhill Hospital in Glasgow where children continued to be treated with infected blood products for years, until 1984, after other parts of the country had begun to use heat treatments to remove risk. [v] Virtually every MP and councillor, in Glasgow, in those days, was Labour.
Then, in 2002, as a Labour/Lib Dem coalition governed a devolved Scotland, the Labour Scottish Health Minister, Malcolm Chisholm, was warned by the UK Labour Health Secretary, Alan Milburn, to avoid agreeing to compensation for haemophiliacs in Scotland, because of the inability of the UK Labour Government to meet these costs for the larger population affected in England. [vi]
The above reluctance of Labour to help those in dire need reminds us, all-too-clearly, of how Glasgow Council’s Labour administration did its utmost to avoid compensating its own women workers, who had for decades been denied fair pay, comparable to men in similar work and, in the last few weeks, of Sir Keir Starmer’s instructions to his Scottish MSPs not to support compensation for the WASPI women.
Vote for Labour at your peril.
[i] https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/apr/27/revealed-government-was-warned-of-infected-blood-risks-in-1970s
[ii] https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/apr/27/revealed-government-was-warned-of-infected-blood-risks-in-1970s
[iii] https://www.infectedbloodinquiry.org.uk/evidence/prse0003476-world-health-organization-assembly-resolution-utilization-and-supply-human
[iv] https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/apr/14/contaminated-blood-inquiry-uk-cheaper-minutes
[v] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-48850969
[vi] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-62337002
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Excellent post.
People in Scotland need to realise that these UK political parties, whenever they achieve any power, they then have a tendency to hold the ‘purse strings very very tightly’ ……….to such an extent that they rarely want to open that public purse to provide , not just any compensation, but appropriate compensation to those negatively impacted ……
As in impacted not through their own actions but through either a negligence of the UK State, or via an action taken by a part of the establishment that represents the UK State or a bad decision directly taken by the UK State.
Newsnight on BBC2 once had , as guests, the “victims and campaigners seeking compensation for injustices and losses they had experienced in the UK. The program had highlighted issues such as delays in payments, wrongful rejections of claims, and the systemic failures that led to the scandals in the first place”….those taking part in the programme included those from The Windrush campaign, the Post Office scandal and the Hillsborough compensation scheme.
They “discussed the insufficient compensation offered to some victims and the prolonged delays in processing claims, with some claimants dying before receiving payment. It has also covered cases where victims were unfairly denied compensation due to the scheme’s failings“.
Then of course we have, as you noted in your post above, the prolonged and so far fruitless campaign by WASPI women.
Where a previous UK Tory government, caused the situation in the first place and then subsequent Tory UK governments denied WASPI women any compensation, and now we also have the current UK government, under the Labour party, who are doing the exact same….
(Though their, Labour’s, previous position on this matter was the exact opposite when they, Labour, were the official UK opposition at WM…..where many Labour MP’s , including their current leader Keir Starmer, all pledged support for them, WASPI women, getting a justified compensation).
All of the above has happened and is still happening under the watch of a UK government…..which is coincidentally the same kind of UK government and UK State that always communicates to us in Scotland that we are Better Together as a part of their UK State………..but clearly just not in times when………….
We, as UK citizens , are enduring and suffering real distress, as a citizen wronged by the UK State and so are seeking a timely and appropriate compensation from that UK State that has seriously wronged us as UK State citizens……..
Or indeed those others who are responsible for that distress and suffering who act on behalf of the UK State and who have acted in a way that has resulted in some of us suffering unduly in seeing our relatives and friends die in a tragic event….
A prime example being the Hillsborough tragedy and the Police action on that day and then their Police denial after that tragic event…..where it was the people who died on that day who were blamed for the tragedy……and then of course the Scum newspaper as per protecting the UK State….and then also protecting those who represented that UK State as part of the establishment (i.e. the Police)……hence the Scum since then has not been distributed in Liverpool and so has also not been bought in Liverpool by it’s citizens.
#PeoplePower (something more Scots could learn from…)
So pardon me (and others) if I and those others like me do not all fall into line with the UK establishment, and so then we too always choose, like them, to condemn the Scottish government (SNP) for those things which are over publicised and always revisited by a politically compromised and biased UK media…..
Examples being the never ending soap opera that is the so called “Ferries fiasco” or indeed the ‘SNP Police investigation’ or indeed any #SNPBAD TV news reports, online articles and also newspaper articles ……because I and others know that compared and contrasted with what the UK State have done…………and are still doing……well one is monumental while the other is miniscule in real significance and impact for the majority of us , as in the people of their UK State….and we all know surely which is which………..
So yes I agree “Vote for Labour at your peril” but also remember too that other UK State political parties are also complicit in not doing the best for their citizens as UK governments…… and indeed neither were those UK parties who previously governed us in our Scottish parliament and who acted on behalf of the UK State and also on behalf of their respective party HQ’s…..
Perhaps if more, or all mainstream media , were to be as explicit and detailed in their reports as you are on TUS…….then we would never see as many UK political parties getting as much votes as they do in our Scottish Councils , at Holyrood or at WM.
However that is why much of the MSM within the UK State are not as “explicit and detailed” in their coverage as you are……..as “their job” is to omit, supress and hide much of the details that could jeopardise the chances of UK State political parties winning seats in elections in Scotland and at WM…….as it is obviously a big NO NO to expose the truth on all of the UK political parties via some of the UK MSM.
The mob who supposdley ‘report’ political news within Scotland as so called Journalists and Reporters are not exactly the same standard or calibre of the Washington Post’s Carl Bernstein or Bob Woodward of the Watergate scandal …..as the mob who relay ‘political news’ on behalf of the UK State …….are either politically compromised…….. or are those who willingly pass on the political opinions , political perceptions and political perspectives that they receive as a UK media from different UK opposition parties against the SNP…….
So not actually the real “News where we are” but news, as dictated and communicated , by others…as in by hostile opposition UK parties and hostile individuals who constantly both act and speak against the SNP.
In a parallel universe no one would ever vote for Labour , the Tories, the Lib Dems or for the pretend party that are the Reform UK ‘party’ (or any other pro UK party)…….alas in the real world ….some actually do.
Liz S
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I was employed by the Common Services Agency in 1980 as an assistant management accountant. I seen the invoices from america for these blood products! You are spot on, that it was the government of the day that failed us!
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