20 May 2022: Patten - A

Lord Patten walked in slowly, reminding us that while the ravages of time have certainly had their tragic and scandalous impacts on victim survivors, the same period has not always been kind to so many of the witnesses either. The impact on them and their powers of recall is a double deficit for us which we can put down to the delay in holding an Inquiry earlier.

His Ministerial CV includes the Home Office, Northern Ireland, Health (the focus of the hearing), Environment, the Home Office, then finally Education and Science. He has never given evidence to any previous investigation concerning contaminated blood. He also stated as a preamble, that he has no memory of the events to be explored, but he is relying on the documents provided to him to provide the information. The witness mentioned that might have had a conversation about infected blood issues with Dr Anthony Fauchie, who is currently the main medical adviser to the present and previous US President concerning Coronavirus-Covid-19 and a world expert in his field. The witnesses’ early answers were quite often started with a very definite and assertive, “Yes”, “Correct,” “That’s right,” etc.

Norman Fowler was again lauded for his skills and knowledge and gave mentoring advice to Lord Patten. The witness split up his time in ways which allowed him to stay on top of his brief in the wider Departmental context, and to make the key decisions related to his specific responsibilities. He was not given an introductory brief when he started. The only time that really happens is if there is a change of Government and the civil servants prepare a large and very useful briefing document. So, he had to learn on the job. This was quite normal across Government, although he remembered some induction when he went to the Department of Education.

There were always a lot of pieces of information flowing around a department, particularly the DH. Civil servants had to make important decisions about what went into the ministerial red boxes for weekend reading. It was a matter requiring good judgement by civil servants, given the amount of material to be dealt with on an ongoing basis. Counsel suggested that one trigger for an item coming to a Minister’s attention would be when something was raised in the press; and the witness agreed. For example, the topics to be featured in “the Sundays” (newspapers) would normally be written on a Friday and be flagged up the Parliament Press Office for a comment in time for publication. This would create a furore of activity to know the issues and have a response.

As with other witnesses, Lord Patten was very complementary about Donald Aitcheson. He coached new Junior Ministers and was very open in his approach, as well as having immense knowledge. There was a large amount of quite urgent activity around the time each month when it was Health Questions in the House. At that time large amounts of paperwork were prepared. 

The “Territorial” Ministers were said to be very protective of their areas of influence and activity. Most of the liaison was between civil servants, while the big issues were dealt with by the respective Ministers of State. When in Northern Ireland, Lord Patten did not remember anything there coming up about contaminated blood. He also mentioned a more general problem in relation to Northern Ireland which was the almost complete unavailability (disappearance) of ministerial papers.

Junior Ministers generally did not see the actual minutes of expert committees. The most he would get might be a summarised briefing based on the paper outputs of these groups. It was considered to be important that the experts were kept separate and independent from Government, in particular on the details of their discussions and differences, until they arrived at a collective view.

The role of the civil service was again praised, while there was a comment about some recent reduction in that very welcome process after the rise of special advisers. (He stopped short of calling a spad a spad.) Lord Patten could not recall if there was a special ministerial role for an individual which concentrated AIDS. A particular document which Lord Patten had previously requested had been prepared by Dr Woolford and it gave an update on what was known at the time about AIDS. He could quickly tell that AIDS was a serious issue. He confirmed his awareness of the particular risks to people with bleeding disorders and some transfusion recipients. Also, even though the initial data came from the US, he was in no doubt that the UK blood supply, and therefore the population, were at some yet to be established risk. This was the period when the whole narrative of US commercial blood being the big problem seems to have started, and it quickly became a renewed focus on achieving self-sufficiency.

Lord Patten did remember the issue of Hepatitis coming up during his time at the DH, not least due to his focus on health education to encourage people not to use drugs. One of the reasons cited in that public education campaign was the risk of contracting hepatitis. On seeing a list of people who attended a meeting, Lord Patten highlighted how Dr Woolford was a formidable operator in her role. In relation to the leaflet on AIDS, the normal cost was noted to be £5,000. It was noted that these types of spending decisions were always taken by civil servants, not Ministers. An aside related to recent Covid spending was heard. There were further discussions related to the AIDS leaflet. Those involved were clearly vexed about the wording due to the potential to cause concern and upset to those bodies who represented the homosexual community. There were so many aspects to the misinformation at the time, especially as seen in the press, that occasionally required Ministers to do things on camera to demonstrate the truth or fallacy of these situations. Lord Patten stated that there were many groups who wanted to use the AIDS situation to advance their negative or judgemental views on homosexuality, especially promiscuous homosexual men. This included a significant number of Parliamentarians. The need to balance the quite polarised views meant that any leaflet preparation had to seek a balance, but to also try not to take too long to get the information out there. In hindsight, it might have been possible to be clearer in the messaging, including to Ministers. The Chair pointed out how the use of the word “however” would not help with clarity and could simply be a way for those preparing the information to have a way out if things went wrong.

The witness said he just “wanted to get on with it”, but since the science was still emerging, he could understand the reluctance of civil servants to be too specific or hasty. The text of the leaflet went through various approval stages, with some of the proposal text being changed by a more senior Minister at a fairly advanced stage, which required it to be reverted back to the original drafters.