Cabinet Office – in the House of Commons at on 31 March 2022.
Philippa Whitford
Shadow SNP Spokesperson (Europe)
When the Government plan to publish the report by Sir Robert Francis on compensation for those affected by contaminated blood products.
Michael Ellis
Minister of State (Cabinet Office) (Attends Cabinet), Paymaster General
Sir Robert Francis delivered his report to me on
Philippa Whitford
Shadow SNP Spokesperson (Europe)
In the five years since the UK Government finally agreed to hold a public inquiry, 90 victims of the contaminated blood disaster have died in Scotland alone, 27 of them just in the last year since Sir Robert Francis was asked to consider compensation mechanisms. The inquiry team and victim groups need sufficient time to look at his report, so does the Minister not recognise how disrespectful it is to the victims of this disaster to delay publishing the report and then announce the Government’s response and decision without hearing their views?
Michael Ellis
Minister of State (Cabinet Office) (Attends Cabinet), Paymaster General
It is extremely important that all those who have suffered so terribly can get the answers that they have spent decades waiting for. The hon. Lady knows that it was my right hon. Friend Mrs May who initiated this inquiry after 30 years of successive Governments not doing so, and it is Her Majesty’s Government who commissioned, proactively, the study that we are talking about this morning. What I have said is that I will consider the matter very carefully, and all due and appropriate considerations are being given to all of the factors that the hon. Lady has mentioned and to other factors, too. We will do that in sufficient time for the inquiry and its core participants to consider them before Sir Robert gives evidence.
Christopher Chope
Conservative, Christchurch
Does my right hon. and learned Friend accept that there is another NHS treatment disaster in the making, in that there may be 10,000 or more people who have suffered serious injury or even death as a result of adverse reactions to the covid-19 vaccinations? Will he give an assurance that those people will get justice immediately rather than have to wait for decades?
Lindsay Hoyle
Speaker of the House of Commons, Chair, House of Commons Commission, Chair, Speaker's Committee for the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, Chair, Speaker's Committee on the Electoral Commission
Order. That is a very weak link. Sir Christopher is usually better than that. I think that is a poor effort from him. Let us move on to Kate Osamor.
The cabinet is the group of twenty or so (and no more than 22) senior government ministers who are responsible for running the departments of state and deciding government policy.
It is chaired by the prime minister.
The cabinet is bound by collective responsibility, which means that all its members must abide by and defend the decisions it takes, despite any private doubts that they might have.
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War cabinets have sometimes been formed with a much smaller membership than the full cabinet.
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