Dr Peter Prinsley

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham and Chislehurst (Clive Efford) for securing this debate, and the many hon. Members who have given marvellous speeches this afternoon. I am new to this debate in Parliament, but I am not new to this issue, for I remember the very first patients we infected with AIDS. In 1988, I was an ear, nose and throat registrar at the Royal Free hospital, right here in London. The Royal Free has a large haemophilia unit for the treatment of patients with bleeding disorders, which are caused by a lack of clotting factors in the blood, as we have heard. Factor VIII was derived from pooled blood donations from donors in the United States—incidentally, people are paid to donate blood in the US, unlike here in the United Kingdom. I wrote my very first scientific paper on the management of tonsillectomy in haemophilia patients. Who would believe that we would be brave enough to take out the tonsils of a patient with haemophilia? Well, we were able to do so. The patients we saw started dying, not of bleeding disorders but of the HIV with which we had unknowingly infected them. I met such patients over several years and then I stopped meeting them, because they had mostly died. Then we had hepatitis and deaths from cirrhosis and liver cancer, and still we have deaths and many bereaved families. We doctors did not realise what we were doing to our patients until it was far too late. We cannot change history, however much we regret our actions, but there is surely something we can do, and do it we must. Our Government have committed billions of pounds to this scheme, and that is exactly right, but we must go faster. That is why we are having today’s debate. We are informed that thousands have yet to start a claim, and people are dying each week, so it is our duty to sort this out.