Mae’n bleser cymryd rhan yn y ddadl bwysig yma prynhawn yma. Mae yna unfrydedd barn. A gaf i ddechrau drwy gydnabod gwaith y grŵp aml-bleidiol yma yn y Cynulliad o dan gadeiryddiaeth Julie Morgan? Rydw i’n diolch iddi am ei geiriau agoriadol. Wrth gwrs, rydw i hefyd yn diolch i Haemophilia Wales o dan lawr Lynne Kelly am bob cefnogaeth, a’u tystiolaeth gryf iawn nhw, angerddol, yn y cyfarfodydd yr ydym ni wedi’u mynychu dros y misoedd diwethaf yma.

I may have mentioned in passing before that I’ve been a GP in Swansea for the last 32 years.

‘Imported blood products from the United States have caused the problems. US blood products tend to be sourced from prisons. Furthermore, people are paid for donating blood in the US, and therefore high-risk groups, such as drug addicts, tend to take part. No UK Government has been self-sufficient in terms of blood products. That goal was first promised in 1945, but we still have not achieved it. Hepatitis C is a significant condition and should not be dismissed as a minor infection. It can attack the liver, and is potentially life threatening. Up to 80 per cent of those infected can develop chronic liver disease, up to 25 per cent, according to certain studies, can develop cirrhosis of the liver, and up to 5 per cent have a risk of developing liver cancer.’

Some of that information needs to be updated, because those words were first heard by my fellow Assembly Members at the time when I held a short debate in the Assembly on 8 March 2001—8 March 2001. This same issue—a public inquiry, compensation. Our people are still suffering. I was taking evidence then from people who have sadly passed away—Haydn Lewis, Gareth Lewis—they were part of the campaign, and I talked to them at length. Those were the fruits of the debate I’ve just quoted from the Cofnod of 16 years ago. Nothing has changed for the people on the ground here in Wales and in other parts of the United Kingdom. Jane Hutt was the health Minister at the time, who ably replied. We were in a different Chamber. The debate, infuriatingly, is the same—is the same. We’ve heard the history of the Archer inquiry. We’ve heard all about the simmering injustice. Because this is a simmering injustice. We must have that full public inquiry. It is shameful the United Kingdom Government have dodged the issue, denied access to papers, just hoping that the issue goes away and that people pass away. That is not the way to run government in the United Kingdom. We all have the stories of families suffering: young widows with young children in poverty because the father has died sadly young because of contaminated blood products as a haemophiliac; people living with hepatitis C, unfit for work—it’s a lifelong penury of tremendous, extreme fatigue and malaise—as well as those risks that I enunciated nearly 16 years ago here. You cannot get life assurance protection or mortgage protection, and yet also you cannot get adequate compensation for something that is not your fault. We lag behind Scotland, we certainly lag behind the Irish republic—we’ve been talking about the need for compensation here for our people in Wales for years. We look to the Cabinet Secretary to change that situation, because we have people living in poverty through no fault of their own.

So, we need to compensate families adequately. I tell the United Kingdom Government: time is well overdue, justice is well overdue—hold that full public inquiry into that contaminated blood products tragedy. ‘Scandal’ is not too strong a word. The enormity of suffering has gone unrecognised for too long—huge enormity.

I’m proud to take part in this debate today, as I was proud 16 years ago to take part in a similar debate. Hold that public inquiry now. Diolch yn fawr.