Part of the debate – in the House of Lords am 8:12 pm ar 21 Mai 2024.
I am grateful to my noble friend and well remember the Statement that he refers to, which I repeated in this House in January 2011. He is exactly right. Both he and I were advised at the time that there was no comparability between the situations in the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom—that they were entirely different. That was not true, but it was the advice that we received. We did as much as we could, I am sure my noble friend will agree, to honour the spirit of the late Lord Archer’s report, which was at the time a very thorough piece of work, although he did not have access to all the evidence, as we now are aware. So it does raise the question of how successive Secretaries of State for Health in the Labour Government, the coalition Government and no doubt beyond were advised in the way that they were by officials. This is a question that merits the closest scrutiny and I undertake that that will be done.