May
2024
Heroes: A Bloody Awful Scandal
DIY Investor
24 May 2024
‘The world don’t care what a soldier does in Town
It’s all hanging in the windows by the Pound’
We start this week with a drip! Yesterday, the PM stood outside No.10 in torrential rain and an ill-fitting suit and announced the election date, 4th July.
Popular opinion suggests that this earlier than expected election date means that things could get worse, if that’s possible, by the autumn, which is when most commentators assumed the election would actually be. I suspect that inflation might start to creep back upwards, not double digits, but heading in the wrong direction.
‘I suspect that inflation might start to creep back upwards’
We now turn to the scandals, namely infected blood and the Post Office (‘PO’). Both are an utter disgrace that reflects very badly on the country, successive governments, and those advising them.
Having reflected on both, I have to conclude that Liz Truss and other populists might have a point, there is an establishment, ‘a dark state’, who are largely to blame for these scandals. What Truss and her ilk miss is that they too are are part of the establishment; politicians, senior government advisers, the police, some lawyers, big business are all in cahoots. This is why the UK personifies the term; ‘big fucks small’.
I don’t wish to compare scandals, they are all shocking; Grenfell Tower, Hillsborough, Orgreave, et al. However, in terms of real shock, horror, the infected blood scandal is just horrifying!
‘the UK personifies the term; ‘big fucks small”
Perhaps, the length of time it has taken for those whose lives were devastated by infected blood to gain some measure of justice puts this scandal in a league of its own. It is gravely concerning that politicians, civil servants and doctors are all implicated not only in the original poor treatment of a vulnerable group of patients but also in a long fight to bury the truth.
The report found that patients were knowingly exposed to ‘unacceptable‘ infection risks between 1970 and 1991, which resulted from successive governments, the NHS and the medical profession failing to ‘put patient safety first’.
But, it doesn’t stop there; Successive governments are primarily to blame for the ‘catalogue‘ of ‘systemic, collective and individual failures’ that allowed the infected blood scandal to happen, though ‘others share some of it‘.
Ministers’ refusal to own up to failings ‘served to compound people’s suffering‘, resulting in a decades-long battle for the truth,
‘the infected blood scandal is just horrifying!’
As a summary this says everything; It was ‘astonishing‘ that this could have happened in the UK, causing a ‘level of suffering which it is difficult to comprehend‘.
Then there is the numbers; >3,000 deaths, an estimated 1,250 people with bleeding disorders are thought to have been infected with HIV, about 380 of whom were children, and a further 80 to 100 in transfusion recipients.
Turning to hepatitis C; between 3,650 to 6,250 in people with bleeding disorders, and 26,800 in transfusion recipients, just 2,700 of whom were still alive in 2019. Many of these people were undiagnosed.
If that wasn’t enough, there is the callous way that the risk were dismissed, overlooked, or simply ignored.
From the 1930s onward it was known that blood transfusions could transmit fatal hepatitis. The virus responsible for hepatitis C was identified in 1998, but apparent from at least the mid-1970s. Transmission of HIV through blood products was established in 1982. This was all ‘very well known‘ among the government officials responsible for treatment with blood products.
‘one commercial product was sourced ‘100% from Skid-row derelicts”
Yet we continued to import commercial blood products to a level that led one professor in the 1970s to warn that one commercial product was sourced ‘100% from Skid-row derelicts‘.
One of the reports findings that made my blood run cold was the fact that children used as ‘objects for research’, while the risks of contracting hepatitis and HIV were ignored.
Of the pupils that attended the Lord Mayor Treloar College in the 1970s and 80s, ‘very few escaped being infected‘ and of the 122 pupils with haemophilia that attended the school between 1970 and 1987, only 30 are still alive.
The page report concluded that children at Treloar’s were treated with multiple commercial concentrates that were known to carry higher risks of infection and that staff favoured the ‘advancement of research‘ above the best interests of the children.
The report found that from 1977, medical research was carried out at Treloar’s ‘to an extent which appears unparalleled elsewhere‘ and that children were treated unnecessarily with concentrates, particularly commercial ones rather than alternative safer treatments.
Langstaff said: ‘The pupils were often regarded as objects for research, rather than first and foremost as children whose treatment should be firmly focused on their individual best interests alone. This was unethical and wrong.’
His report found there is ‘no doubt‘ that the healthcare professionals at Treloar’s were aware of the risks of virus transmission through blood and blood products.
‘Compounding the felony is the cover-up. Call it by government, the establishment, it’s all the same’
Compounding the felony is the cover-up. Call it by government, the establishment, it’s all the same.
There was a ‘a lack of transparency and candour‘ and ‘groupthink’ among civil servants and ministers over decades, exacerbated the ‘slow and protracted nature‘ of government decision-making, and the ‘deliberate destruction of documents of relevance‘.
If one quote sums up the attitude of the establishment in this disgraceful episode, it came from Margaret Thatcher in 1989; ‘they had received the best treatment available’ and therefore compensation was not required.
‘To call this a scandal, or a disgrace misses the point, it was little more than state sponsored murder. Playing games with people’s lives’
To call this a scandal, or a disgrace misses the point, it was little more than state sponsored murder. Playing games with people’s lives.
Coming hot on the heels of this report, and in neighbouring rooms we have the ongoing PO Horizon enquiry.
This week it has been the turn of the PO’s former senior executive, Paula Vennells to give evidence.
In addition to her day job, Paula was a committed Christian, an ordained minister, who gave sermons at her local parish church, in Bromham, Bedfordshire. A confidant of the archbishop of Canterbury, it is reported that Justin Welby supported her unsuccessful candidature to become bishop of London in 2017. Which doesn’t say much for his judgement.
In case anyone has forgotten when running the PO, Paula oversaw the prosecution of over 900 employees for crimes including theft and false accounting, based on evidence from the flawed Horizon system. Of those, 96 have had wrongful convictions overturned, with more to follow; many others had their lives ruined by bankruptcy and public disgrace. The scandal has so far cost UK taxpayers well over £1bn.
’96 have had wrongful convictions overturned, with more to follow; many others had their lives ruined by bankruptcy and public disgrace’
Only days before she was due to give evidence, Jason Beer KC for the inquiry revealed that Vennells had only that morning supplied 50 new documents relevant to it. Late and incomplete disclosure has been a repeated cause of criticism from chair of the inquiry, retired judge Sir Wyn Williams.
She appeared to be in complete denial; her former chief financial officer, Alasdair Cameron, told the inquiry: ‘She seemed clear in her conviction from the day I joined that nothing had gone wrong. She never, in my observation, deviated from that or seemed to particularly doubt that.’
The inquiry also heard evidence from the PO’s then senior in-house lawyer, Chris Aujard, that it was Vennells who insisted that prosecutions of sub-postmasters continue, despite contrary evidence raised in an external report. Susan Crichton, Aujard’s predecessor as general counsel, had resigned after being excluded from a meeting about that report after, she said refusing to ‘manage or manipulate the [information] in the way that Alice Perkins [former chair of the board] was expecting me to.’ In meeting notes about Crichton’s departure, Vennells wrote that the lawyer had ‘put her integrity as a lawyer above the interests of the business‘.
”can’t remember, ‘I acted on advice’…everyone’s fault except hers’
Much of Vennell’s evidence, other than when she was having a tearful interlude, has been self-serving; ‘can’t remember, ‘I acted on advice’…everyone’s fault except hers.
For example:
Vennells repeatedly told the inquiry that she could not recollect events, and denied any knowledge of a conversation recounted by her general legal counsel Susan Crichton on the eve of a board meeting in July 2013.
Crichton had told the inquiry that she informed Vennells that she believed there would be ‘many successful claims against claims arising from past wrongful prosecutions’, to which Vennells responded: ‘I don’t recall that.’
Five days after the email exchange between Vennells and Davies, the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) wrote to the Post Office’s chief executive to request information about any knowledge the organisation had about faults in Horizon.
Vennells said she passed on the correspondence to Crichton and would not have requested for there to be any lack of disclosure.
Beer asked Vennells whether ‘the right and honest thing for the Post Office to have done’ would have been to let the CCRC know immediately about the doubts over the evidence of Jenkins.
Vennells said: ‘Yes it would.’
Beer went on: ‘That didn’t happen for years and years, did it?’
‘I understand that to be the case now‘, Vennells replied.
”the right and honest thing for the Post Office to have done’ would have been to let the CCRC know immediately about the doubts over the evidence of Jenkins’
Another example was her attitude to the suicide of Martin Griffiths. For those that don’t know his story, Griffiths, despite having been the victim of an armed robbery at his branch, was deemed partly culpable for it as well as relentlessly pursued over a Horizon shortfall.
Vennells reaction to Griffiths walking in front of as bus was found on the PO’s internal email, pointing out there were ‘usually several contributory factors‘ with suicide, and that ‘accusations of blame were unhelpful‘. Within days she was asking for ‘background‘ on Mr Griffiths and any previous mental health or potential family issues – presumably any and all speculative causes other than ‘hounded to death by the Post Office’.
So much that is wrong with these scandals sums up the failing of this country. If you’re wealthy and establishment the country is your oyster, if not…..put simply, you’re fucked!
‘If you’re wealthy and establishment the country is your oyster, if not…..put simply, you’re fucked!‘
I have written several times that capitalism in its current form serves only the minority at the expense of the majority. The same is true of government, the establishment, the police. Until they realise that they are here to serve all of the people, and uphold the law nothing will ever change!
Still Rishi wont care for him its…….
‘Mirrors on the ceiling, the pink champagne on ice’
There’s very little to add to Philip’s powerful summary of the infected blood and Horizon scandals; people had their lives destroyed, and in many cases ended, by a combination of incompetence and wilful harm by the government to blameless, defenceless citizens.
This is the state of the great Britain, as we lurch towards a general election, and the prospect of a ‘less worse’ replacement administration.
Not much to look forward to, is it?
If there was a heart-warming moment this week, it was the sight of the incredibly brave ‘bionic MP’ Craig Mackinlay making his way back into the chamber; sir, I salute you.
@coldwarsteve
Philip Gilbert is a city-based corporate financier, and former investment banker.
Philip is a great believer in meritocracy, and in the belief that if you want something enough you can make it happen. These beliefs were formed in his formative years, of the late 1970s and 80s
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