30 June 2022: Hooper - A

Baroness Gloria Hooper, was among other things the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (1989-1992). She trained as a solicitor doing mainly international commercial work. She was a Member of the European Parliament before coming into Westminster, and ultimately Health, where she served under Ken Clarke and William Waldegrave. She came into Health as the result of an untimely death and when there was a major Health Reform Bill going through Parliament. As a Lord’s Minister (or equivalent to that) she had to cover all the Health matters. She seems to have accepted a lesser title (and lesser salary) for doing the same heavy amount of work without putting up a fight; which sounds surprisingly sheepish. She left politics to become an executive director of SmithKline Beecham (we wonder why since she had no medical training … oh wait, she had been … that’s right … case solved). She did not see a conflict with that since that company was not involved in blood product manufacture.

Her personal experience of the NHS came from a time when two of her siblings were being treated for terminal cancer. Does that mean she was always treated privately throughout all of her life? Is this indicative of a systemic problem where we have people with no experiential knowledge of a key public body being pivotally responsible for running it (… into the ground). Incidentally, she received no handover or training for the role in Health.

The Health Reform Bill was highly controversial at the time, particularly due to its opening up the NHS to private investment and a more business-focused way of being. She said the impetus for this had come from academic and other views about increasing the patient service focus (oh, really). Not long prior to that there had been the new arrangement for GPs gaining greater independence of local operation, and the move to Trusts having more independence with management being given to professional managers and not highly qualified clinicians (citing the James Robertson-Justice caricature). It was a very large Bill, so its progress through the Readings stages was slow and time-consuming before eventually reaching Royal Ascent. She was also dealing with the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, so a great deal of her time was used up on these matters. This was not just by her steering them through the Houses, but also dealing with lots of detailed correspondence. The general rule was that a letter from a member of the public could be answered by a civil servant, whereas a letter from a MP had to get a reply from a Minister. In both cases, the drafting was done by civil servants. There was great reliance on the Principle Private Secretary to control the flow of papers to a Minister. The action documents in a take home box (e.g. for signing) were put on top of those documents for information only. Boxes were taken home every night, there was just more of them at the weekend.

Counsel sought to understand how the weight of the workload and the great variety of topics to cover affected Ministers’ relationships with civil servants. The witness did not feel that it resulted in an over-reliance on officials, and she did not think there was a problem of not allowing the time for weeding out any natural biases and attitudes by these individuals. When asked about any differences in the civil servants between Departments, the witness was unable to say, so moved on to tell her version of how wonderfully committed the people were with their strong sense of public service. Baroness Hooper said it would have been nice to have had more people involved in her section of the DH but did not actually say there was an under-staffing problem.

This witness had some significant leadership roles, such as being part of the whips group (which is normally not for the faint-hearted), but she comes across as quite reticent, not at all assured or assertive, and possibly someone who could be trusted to do what they were told and not ask any questions; unless they were given to her. She did not have any significant dealings with the Territorial offices, and since it was pre-devolution, she assumed that was mainly led through the relevant Secretaries of State (for Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales).

As with so many of the recent witnesses, mention was made in her statement about the difficulties remembering details of events given the length of time since the relevant events had happened and the incomplete documentary record. Yawn.

Baroness Hooper did not see it as strange that despite her role including blood products, she was not leading on matters related to the Macfarlane Trust. She agreed with Baroness Bottomley that when matters related to other departments, especially the Treasury, then business was likely to be done at the level of the Secretary of State. The witness actually had had a different view on the litigation related to blood products from her colleagues (Clarke, Waldegrave and Bottomley), but she did not feel she was being excluded from this matter. She admitted to not having experience in litigation because her legal background was in creating corporate commercial profit-making entities. Maybe that is why she was brought in to lead the Health Reform Bill as another wedge insertion to privatising the NHS eventually, while the blood product issue was just in the job role profile to beef it up. Dealing with blood products must have been “a dirty job, but someone had to do it”.

An enquiry from a person designated “Rt Hon” (meaning they are a Privy Councillor) would be replied to by the Secretary of State as a matter of protocol; in this case it was Ken Clarke as boss of the Department of Health. This writer believes the role of the Privy Council ought to come under greater scrutiny, and not just on the matters related to the Contaminated Blood Scandal. We keep seeing documents sent directly to or signed by Ken Clarke that are obviously related to blood and blood product issues. This is at odds with his frequent claims to have not been involved to any real extent in the matters related to the topics covered by the Infected Blood Inquiry. Does anyone smell a cigar, masking the smell of a rat?