5 July 2022: Waldegrave - D

The next topic related to the cases of non-haemophilia patients infected with HIV. The witness recalled reading how a lawyer had claimed it was first their aim to get money from the Government for the haemophiliacs, and then to proceed to the whole blood victims. The witness suggested had he himself been cleverer, he should have claimed this as his own strategy when negotiating with the Treasury, but he could not claim it. Counsel displayed documents, including a letter from a Scottish legal firm who were acting for whole blood patients, raising the issue of non-haemophiliacs. Reference was made to the Rosie Barns proposals seeking to establish a system of no-fault compensation. The description of not supporting whole blood victims had been recognised and accepted by Lord Waldegrave. As expected, the Government machine kicked-in to re-state all the reasons in the official “line to take” of seeing haemophiliacs as a special case and keeping them in the exclusive ring-fence. Clearly, they were raising their favourite hoodoo of not setting a precedent, “knock-on effects”, and the opening of floodgates.

Robin Cook was described as the most formidable of shadow Health Ministers and he was keeping Mr Waldegrave under significant pressure on a variety of issues. Mr Cook found it “wholly untenable” to exclude whole blood victims. The witness accepted that the case being made by Robin Cook was well made, not least as a constituency MP for two of the 135 whole blood infected people known at the time. Lord Waldegrave’s reply to Robin Cook maintained the line to take but did so with additional justification and considerations than might have been included in Ken Clarke’s style.

In response to his apparent weakening and moving away from the line, civil servants began to collate and disseminate a list of dangers from allowing non-haemophiliacs to receive payments. The witness said that most of these arguments could be easily dismissed. However, he recognised the weight of opinion against his thinking, so he decided to publicly stick to the party line and to take a more strategic approach to moving forward in the way he thought things should move. This was in the context of DH still being in the midst of the spat with the Treasury, and he had to see that through before trying to advance further for whole blood cases. One new argument he faced was about the threat it would pose to the voluntary blood donation flow from UK citizens. He noted how these attack vessels would be launched at him, float around a bit, then disappear because they didn’t hold water – so to speak aquatically. This approach was typical of the efforts to address the way he was becoming “twitchy” in the opinion of officials. One who thought they knew where this would lead even handwrote on a document that they might “open a book on when he would cave in”.

It appears from documents displayed how alongside the constant focus on maintaining the ring-fence – which was a cheapened version of the dangers of precedent setting since one group had received some money – were concerns over Government reputation in the face of public interest which went against the Government position. Has anything really changed that much in the 30 odd years about this way of thinking? No … if anything it’s gotten worse.

He will be back tomorrow to continue the deconstruction of Whitehall walls.