Human Growth Hormone - Cjd Litigation

EDM number 1203 in 1995-96, proposed by David Hinchliffe on 22/07/1996.

That this House, whilst welcoming the recent decision of Mr Justice Morland in the Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease litigation, nevertheless notes with concern that it was necessary for this forensic judicial inquiry to take place because of the failure of the Secretary of State for Health to order a public inquiry akin to that undertaken by the Allars Inquiry between May 1993 and June 1994 in Australia and that such a judicial inquiry into the shortcomings of the working of a branch of the Scientific Civil Service was necessitated by the absence of independent scrutiny by any Government or other watchdog of safety standards and risk management in that service; deplores the fact that such scrutiny by litigation will become rare, if not impossible in future because of changes to legal aid eligibility and cost rules set out by the Lord Chancellor's recent White Paper on The Future of Legal Aid in England and Wales; further notes that the judicial inquiry has left some of the plaintiffs without compensation for loss of loved ones at a time when the Government has promised ex gratia payments of 2.5 billion pounds to dairy farmers for the loss of their cattle from the equivalent bovine disease, BSE; and call upon the Government to make payment of an appropriate sum of compensation to all of thoe who have lost loved ones to Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease following a growth hormone treatment before 1985.

This motion has been signed by a total of 60 MPs.