A barrister representing victims of the contaminated blood scandal including Jesmond's Carol Grayson attacked the Government's "absolute lack of candour" in his closing statement to the Infected Blood Inquiry.
Sam Stein KC set out in a moving address - taking place on the final day of the inquiry's hearings - how the Government's "failure to realise that apologies must mean something" was indicative of a failure to understand the importance of restorative justice. The lawyer said: "Restorative justice requires not just the form of an apology, but the sense - to those who are being apologised to - that the apology giver accepts wrongdoing."
Mr Stein also paid tribute to the work of campaigners like Carol and colleagues such as Colette Wintle, Mark Ward and the late Peter Mossman - whose funeral was a year to the day before the inquiry's final hearings. He said without them, the Inquiry itself would never have happened. Later in the day Inquiry counsel Jenni Richards KC repeated this.
Mr Stein added: "They never stopped and without them – and this needs recognition – this inquiry would never have happened. All of our clients are passionate, unrelenting and angry but this is a righteous anger. This is the righteous anger of the ignored, the side-lined and the discriminated [against].
"We don’t apologise for our clients’ visceral anger. We don’t apologise for their desire for truth and for proper compensation for the damage done to them. Instead let me be pin-point clear – they are right to be angry, and they are right to demand compensation, right to demand change and right to demand restitution."
The Infected Blood Inquiry - led by Sir Brian Langstaff - has spent more than four years investigating the circumstances and response to what is commonly known as the "biggest treatment disaster in NHS history". The scandal saw thousands - including Carol Grayson's husband Peter and his brother Stephen - infected with lethal viruses like HIV and Hepatitis C through NHS blood products. Both men died after developing AIDS.
Mr Stein said the names of Carol and Colette "should be remembered and recorded" and said Carol's campaigning work over decades "had foreshadowed so much of what this inquiry has been considering".
The barrister - instructed by Milners solicitors - had begun his submissions by highlighting what he called three key principles: "Treatment without consent was never acceptable. Treatment without consent is no excuse for substandard care. Those who treat without consent and cause harm should be hauled up before the criminal courts."
Later, he added: "We suggest that if any doctor at any time or date proceeds to treat without consent that that increases the burden on the doctors to get it right, to get it right for the patient and get it right according to the science - and not to muck it up."
Explaining that treatment without full and informed consent was an especially "great betrayal of trust" for haemophiliacs because of "what they perceived as a very special relationship with their doctor", he added that it seemed doctors had "fallen in love" and been "seduced" by factor concentrate treatments.
Mr Stein also cited evidence of publications produced by Newcastle haemophilia doctor Dr Peter Jones - which did not discuss any of the risks of blood products understood to have been known about - dating back to the early 1970s.
Factor concentrates replaced cryoprecipitate as the treatment of choice for haemophiliacs during the 1970s. Blood factor products increased the risk of infection with lethal viruses - but were seen as more convenient.
Speaking on the last day of evidence at the Inquiry, Carol told ChronicleLive: "What I was saying back then [decades ago] is the same evidence that has been used over the Inquiry. I had that evidence and no-one was listening."
On Thursday, Jamie Dawson KC - for many victims of the scandal infected in Scotland including Northumberland's Sean Cavens, also gave an oral submission. He said: "Our contention, sir, is that the evidence which you have heard shows clearly that the infection of Scottish patients with HIV and HCV, and indeed HBV, was in many cases entirely avoidable.
"Not only were they avoidable in theory, we argue that many cases of infection ought to have been prevented. The state failed in its most basic obligation to care for those who sought medical assistance from the NHS in a vulnerable state."
The Infected Blood Inquiry finished hearing evidence on Friday. Sir Brian Langstaff is now expected to produce an interim report dealing with compensation frameworks before Easter - and has estimated his final report into the scandal will be delivered in Autumn 2023.
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