20 July 2022: Forsyth - B

For those interested in these things, there was a grand total of five core participant observers in the Hearing Room during this session.

A letter from Prof Lowe of the Glasgow Royal Infirmary Haemophilia Centre to the witness was displayed. It mentioned the “sympathetic” approach to AIDS being seen as coming from the Scottish Office. “GDO Lowe” detailed the challenges to his patients arising out of the AIDS issue. Prof Lowe was seeking financial support on behalf of his patients. He also sought counselling services which he had been providing – although he himself was not a trained counsellor. Mr Forsyth’s Private Secretary summarised the letter contents in a separate document which mentioned how the matter had reached the Prime Minister and the relevant UK Secretary of State. The witness agreed with much of the Prof Lowe letter, but also recognised the potential problem with setting a precedent. He felt there was a need to provide support and a way round ought to be found. From the start, he thought there should be no distinction between those with bleeding disorders and transfusion patients. He saw the situation as wholly catastrophic and worthy of special consideration. He recognised this was not the view of colleagues. He felt that not being a lawyer among many who were, he was uniquely advantaged by that fact because he was not restricted in his thinking by what might be considered possible or not possible in law. His view was not based on any idea of the Government having done something wrong. In fact he thought that trying to prove so would have led to a long, drawn-out court battle unhelpful to the victims.

When asked if Scotland could have done something on their own. He acknowledged the concerns with precedent-setting and the possible financial impacts of that. His view was that the special case had been proved correct and after all the intervening years he pointed out how a floodgate did not open up. The witness mentioned the very effective campaigning associated with seeking financial support, which almost exclusively came from haemophilia groups. He still felt that while there was the added issue of them having a significant pre-existing condition, that was not enough to allow a distinction with transfusion infected people. He said he did what he could, despite the majority alternative view of colleagues. It took a few years, but he thought the shift to talking about “ex-gratia” payments and not “compensation” was helpful. He felt there was a degree of inevitability to payments having to be made. The Macfarlane Trust was in his opinion a step forward. In his reply to Prof Lowe, Mr Forsyth had to stick to the majority view among his colleagues and not immediately accede to the request (which would have required his resignation as a Minister), while expressing sympathy for the situation of infected haemophiliacs. He felt he could do more good by remaining in the Government. Specific to the request for counselling, it was not the desire of Government to make allocations to Health Boards with ring-fences attached, so rather than telling the Health Boards how to spend the money allocated to them, which they should know how best to spend locally, it was either a case of top-slicing before allocation (which he did not want to do), or simply encouraging the Boards to provide counselling to the specific cohort.

A month later the Government position changed. There were plans to set up what would become the Macfarlane Trust according to a Cabinet Sub-committee paper. Scotland was not consulted on the £10million allocation. Mr Forsyth welcomed how this was at least a move in the right direction. “Hallelujah” he said, on re-reading the actual words showing a change of heart.

(There was an increasingly loud and distracting sound of whale-song coming from outside, but with the curtains fully drawn, this writer is not able to specify the species making all the noise. It did seem a bit early in the day for these giants of the marine environment to be having a karaoke party.)

Suddenly, the witness got rather emotional when talking about the plight of infected people, to the extent the Chair asked if he needed a moment to compose himself. Mr Forsyth mentioned how too much of the argument was “looking at the cost and not on the individuals concerned”, which was challenging to the witness because it seemed like the line being taken was unsustainable. He and the other Territorial Departments were surprised to find them being expected to contribute to the costs. They were not consulted on the establishment of the Macfarlane Trust, so had to assume it was to be a Treasury matter to cover the costs. Mr Forsyth was extremely irritated at the “penny-pinching” of the Treasury, especially since this was exceptional and ought to have been covered by the Contingency Fund. It made him “grumpy”, but he did not want to get in the way of payments being made, especially since the other Territorial Departments had gone along with it. The Chief Secretary to the Treasury at the time was John Major, (… which must have been just such terribly bad luck). An amount was said to have been identified by officials to pay the unexpected Scottish liability, which Mr Forsyth said was civil servant speak for, “We found the money down the back of the sofa”.

Not too long later, John Major found himself in the role of Prime Minister, with William Waldegrave as Health Secretary. The Litigation situation was very fluid, and this was the time when announcements were made at very short notice. Scotland was not consulted, and when asked about that, he said, “Yes, they should have been consulted. I would have been furious at the discourtesy” he said, if he had been the Secretary of State. He said it “didn’t make good reading” to see how the UK Ministers did not involve Scotland, because even though there was a relatively small number of plaintiffs in Scotland, they were basically being told, “Take it or leave it”. The witness was perplexed because he saw it as “good news” the UK Government had finally, “seen the light” on this matter, but the way they went about it was definitely not good.

The Chair asked if the people in Scotland were plaintiffs, (an English expression), or pursuers (Scottish terminology). It was confirmed by a Scottish Counsel who was present that the people in Scotland were pursuers, so the fact of the Scottish litigation being definite and specific actions in a different jurisdiction made the matter even more challenging for the Scottish infected people and for the Scottish Office.

“The battle continued”, said the witness in relation to the case for extending access to payments, and he welcomed the campaigning going on inside and outside Government to pressurise for these changes. The one document with Mr Forsyth’s hand-written notification that was available to the Inquiry and thereby to the witness was displayed. It demonstrated the genuineness of the claims by him throughout his evidence that he was minded differently from his colleagues in that he wanted to make payments to people in this case. He had already referred to himself as “liberal”, which he thought was the first time he had ever said that about himself in public, but on the matters at hand this typifying Tory was agreeing with certain lead campaigners on this issue, specifically Robin Cook and Clare Short, whose right-wing credentials were far from well established.