10 June 2022: Gutowski - C

Mr Gutowski was asked to return to the matter of anonymising yellow card notifications. The DH was prepared to use Public Interest Immunity (PII) if challenged by plaintiffs. It turned out they didn’t have to. The justification was that disclosing doctors’ names would discourage doctors from sending in the adverse reaction yellow cards. But given that earlier this week it was disclosed how only 16% of doctors actually did send in cards, that seems to be a redundant justification. The DH clearly had bigger issues to overcome on yellow card non-use.

There was also a brief return to the exclusion of Wales and Northern Ireland in progressing the Scottish-forced change in position on setting up a scheme of payments for Hep C. A document was displayed which recorded the decision to not involve them, even with the recognition that there might be concerns about these two nations being presented with a fete-accompli.

On the setup of the Skipton Fund, the witness started to answer a question he had not been asked, but still managed to give enough information to illustrate a further lack of knowledge somewhere within the DH about Charity Law. The actual question related to the way so many people had to give up their careers, with all the losses that entailed, to become a carer for their infected relative, and how this might be addressed by payments. The sorry answer was that it never even crossed their minds. So, who were they not listening to who could have enlightened them on this and other flaws in the schemes?

Counsel returned to the Burgin Review into lost records, including Lord Owen’s papers. The DH were already aware of how it would look when people found out about the “accidental” destruction by a “junior member of staff” which might feed “conspiracy theories”.

A letter was displayed in relation to news items emerging in Scotland wherein the witness referred to an erroneous date for the naming non-A-non-B Hepatitis as Hepatitis C. In it he also predicted that a document would require a defensive response, even though he had not seen. He said this was just the way the civil service prepared themselves to respond to the possibility of a threat which might lead to people “marching on Richmond House”. An email from Bob Stock illustrated the language which some civil servants used that was dismissive, such as “Morris and his lot”, referring to Lord Morris who was a main instigator to the Archer Inquiry. These English and Scottish civil servants seemed to have their own sense of being attacked, so had to attack back; Gutowski, Lister, Stock, Falconer, et al.

Counsel referred to the activity to set up a supplementary report to the Bergin Review. The idea that it had left unresolved the issues brought up about nAnB Hep which could expose the DH to certain accusations, was denied. Rather the “loose ends” of Burgin needed to be pulled together and this was described as a second “security blanket” being desired. The witness thought Dr Hugh Nicholas would do the review of the review, but he was not available. The alternative was to turn to a medical writing company for reasons he could not recall. It turns out that the updated and re-written Burgin Review – an internal process – was used as the sole source of justification to continue to reject calls for a Public Inquiry. The document written by the witness where this view was re-stated, was chock-full of the usual long-standing statements (“lines”) to justify that position. Despite hindsight, the position he put up of continuing to resist calls for an Inquiry was one he still stuck with. It is worth noting that much of this activity was in response to a series of communications from Carol Grayson. There was a note displayed stating that the Lord Owen missing papers matter was, “not a priority”. So, everything that justified not holding a Public Inquiry into the DH/NHS use of contaminated blood had come from internal DH/NHS papers written by DH/NHS staff. How wonderfully transparent an arrangement.

This evidence, this witness became increasingly tiresome. There seemed to be no difficulty for him in recalling the boring administrative and discursive aspects of his work, while at the same time finding it easy to switch to being forgetful when it came to the weightier matters of real interest to the Inquiry. Not impressed.