19 May 2022: Mellor - A

The cameras were back, but not for the star turn at the Inquiry, David Mellor. He stood and used the Bible to make the oath (noted). He made a few comments about the terrible situation of people who were already challenged by a genetic disorder, then being further badly affected by infected blood and viruses.

The witness is another politician who was originally a lawyer (mainly for industrial disputes). As a Minister he was in Energy, the Home Office, Foreign Office, a Health Minister, and back to the Home Office. He became a Privy Counsellor and Minister for Art, and more. He succeeded Tony Newton and was under Ken Clarke. Edwina Currie as acknowledged as being around at the time, and there was a wry-sounding noise from him at the mention of her name. He had a high regard for the CMO, Donald Aitchison. Ken Clarke was and is a long-term friend. He had asked Mr Mellor to come to the Health role. His role included AIDS, and he had experience of AIDS through his work at the Home Office on illegal IV drug. Currie held responsibility for blood policy. He was interested in blood transmission issues, not least because of having met patients in hospitals along with Princess Diana. Depending on the lines of responsibility, he informed Ken Clarke to help a senior Minister avoid being blindsided on an important issue. Not all Ministers did that. It usually depended on the issue how much involvement the top Minister was involved.

Mr Mellor explained the system for supporting Ministers, including the layers of people who ensured their Minister knew what he needed to know, but managed the information which he or she needed to concentrate on. In Health, a very significant issue was the quality of the advice given. As Minister, he knew he was not medically trained, but could make political decisions. He usually spent a lot of his time sitting with the experts, relying on them to help him make sometimes difficult decisions.

Tellingly, Mr Mellor explained how the job of the civil servants was to make sure the Government didn’t take on too much, and that their Department didn’t go over its spending limits. Occasionally, there was a need to emphasise the political issues beyond expert advice, for example, with cochlea implants – which was largely due to his friendship with another MP who was positive about them from his own experience. The witness was not comfortable to be seen as someone who gave people medical advice, rather he wanted the CMO to have a more public role. He said being a Minister had its own skill set, which was firstly to recognise what you had to know.

The witness did not recall having many engagements with the territorial offices. He could not say how much the territorial departments influenced central policy. He saw it as the role of the civil servants to do that kind of liaison. Thatcher told him it was “a privilege to serve” as a Minister, and he agreed with that. But Ministers had to remember they had to vote on all issues in the Commons and stay on top of constituency matters. The time pressures meant a Minister did not have the time they wanted to give towards making difficult decisions, perhaps after a late-night sitting of Parliament. They had to rely on advisors more than they ideally should have. His outlook on life was like Ken Clarke, but that was different from, for example, Edwina Currie. Ministers in a Department would meet regularly in “Prayers” to exchange information on what each of them were doing.

On AIDS again, the witness retained interest in blood products and the emerging issues around contamination. He remembered the layers of complexity and the range of issues it brought up which each required significant consideration. In the early days, they did not know if AIDS would be a pandemic. In the scale of things, Coronavirus as a pandemic was not nearly as difficult as AIDS would have been if it had turned into a pandemic. The situation in Africa gave an illustration of how bad things could have turned out to be.

He recalled the difficulties of views being expressed when some wanted to include a moral element. There were lively debates about AIDS with Margaret Thatcher. Some Ministers could handle her better than others. Norman Fowler was a master at this. He had led the tombstone advert campaign which Mr Mellor described positively as “brave”. It sounds like brave could be a way of saying doggedly foolhardy.

The examples of children experiencing severe prejudice, for example in the US, after having been infected with AIDS due to no fault of their own was a subject for debate about stigma. The theoretical risks had turned into a mass hysteria of assumed risk in the public domain. Respecting the current public fall-outs by apparent experts related to Covid, the witness suggested that history will look back with distain on the array of informed commentators who sought their 15 minutes of fame by expressing their divergent views in public rather than leaving the differences to happen within the walls of the meeting only. While Fowler was again lionised, Winterton was vilified for his bull in a China shop nature.

Turning to the Macfarlane Trust, the situation of the long delay between its announcement and its tardiness in actually paying out money had appeared in the Sunday Times. After this was highlighted, Mr Mellor set up a system of two-monthly reporting. He never believed the £10m was enough to meet the need. The budget was not the problem, and the Trust was not to worry about that, but that money was to be used properly, for example, to not make payments to people for lawyers to sue the Government. The legal aid fund was available for that (at least while it lasted to cover such things, Mr Mellor).

Macfarlane criteria for making payments was reviewed and viewed as being “cautious”. (It looks like that meant stingy and slow.) It included the bits about the benefits disregard, the means testing, the focus on meeting need, etc. “The sums involved were quite small,” suggested Mr Mellor. The witness said the Trust was independent, but his views were to be passed on to the Trust.

Mr Mellor would meet Mr Clarke most evenings after work, often for a drink. They understood each other’s thinking. He stated how Clarke was the best Minister he ever worked under and was a caring and interested person. He passed comment on Mr Clarke’s appearance at the Inquiry and put any difficulties down to old age and his arthritis playing up.

The Macfarlane Trust suffered from inertia said the witness. They had structures he had inherited. Mr Mellor criticised the recent flagrant disregard for protecting public money as a result to Covid, but the behaviour of the Macfarlane Trust was too far the other way. Counsel highlighted the lack of confidence of Trustees of getting more money, which is at odds with what the witness is suggesting the case was.