“Every man is guilty of all the good he did not do.” Voltaire
"In England justice is open to all - just like the Ritz."
19th-century legal comment often attributed to Sir James Mathew
False rhino syndrome is the willingness to believe that something is other than what it is...
Human beings possess a vast capacity for misperception and for preferring to believe what they would like to believe...It is difficult to understand politics unless one grasps how ready people are to believe things that are belied by the facts.
Martin Kettle, The Guardian 31 May 2008
It is the custom in the UK parliament to refer to all members as honourable and ministers in charge of departments as right honourable.
The Right Honourable David Blunkett has been a Labour MP since 1987 and in government held two appointments very relevant to doing something about the great benzo scandal. He was Home Secretary from 2001 to 2004 when he was forced to resign after a scandal and was then appointed Secretary of State for Work and Pensions after the 2005 General Election.
In November 2005 he was again forced to resign over business dealings.
The motto of the Home Office is ‘Working together to Protect the Public’. That Department is responsible for drug classification in the UK and in spite of the best efforts of campaigners benzodiazepines have never been reclassified from C when less harmful drugs have category B or even A classifications. David Blunkett could have ensured that happened when he was minister in charge but he did not.
The Department of Work and Pensions exists it says - ‘to promote opportunity and independence for all, help individuals achieve their potential through employment, and work to end poverty in all its forms.’ There are between 1 million and 1.5 million addicted benzodiazepine victims of medicine and clinical judgement today and there were approximately the same numbers in 2001 and in 2005. Indeed there were similar numbers in 1994 (the relevance of that date will be seen below). Many of the great number addicted by doctors in their pride and ignorance were addicted decades ago and many (particularly but not exclusively) men have been unable to work and follow the normal processes of life. They are therefore poor. As Department of Works and Pensions minister, David Blunkett could have brought the plight of the benzodiazepine victims to the attention of government, but he did not.
He joined the shadow cabinet in 1992 as Shadow Health Secretary and on 24 February 1994 he wrote the following letter to Barry Haslam, a victim of prescribed lorazepam, benzodiazepine campaigner and voluntary counsellor.
H O U S E OF C O M M O N S
LONDON SW1A 0AA
DAVID BLUNKETT MP
Shadow Secretary of State for Health
and Member of Parliament for Sheffield Brightside
24 February 1994
Dear Mr Haslam
Thank you for your recent letter regarding Benzodiazepine Tranquillisers.
Dawn Primarolo and myself have been taking up cases and have advised on how best the groups involved might organise a parliamentary lobby and keep attention on these issues.
We have also tried to assist through both Parliamentary Questions and raising the matter on the floor of the House, in pushing the Government to accept its own responsibilities and to take action now to ensure that it does not happen again.
This is something we will be returning to both in the House and in terms of our own future policy development.
I am passing your letter to Paul Boateng who, as the legal affairs spokesman, has specific responsibility for the litigation side of what is a national scandal.
With all good wishes
David Blunkett MP
Shadow Secretary of State for Health
Former Tory Chancellor Nigel Lawson described the NHS as 'the closest thing the English have to a religion'. Friedrich von Hayek said that if our beliefs prove to be dependent on factual assumptions shown to be incorrect, it would be hardly moral to defend them by refusing to acknowledge the facts.
Blunkett knew the facts and knew what medicine had done in spite of its protestations of innocence. In effect by his inaction, Blunkett immorally maintained the status quo as regards benzodiazepines and allowed the situation to go on unchallenged and unaltered. He allowed the public to continue to view medicine as beneficial and good for both body and soul, when it had carried out with impunity a great scourging of the innocent and trusting.
Jan Moir, writing in the Daily Telegraph on 25 July 2007 said:
“For too long, the default attitude towards British GPs has been that they are long-suffering, hard-working and over-stressed, yet somehow remain a dedicated band of trustworthy professionals in whose hands we are safe. Instead of complaining, we should be grateful to them for any medical attention that we get. Yet you don't have to look very hard to see that there is another diagnosis that also has merit: a second opinion that suggests a malaise at the core of our primary care system, with a number of GPs who are incompetent at best, and uninterested in our welfare at worst...”
Medicine and Politics are the two areas of life that hold responsibility for a solution to the scandal; it is not the responsibility of ordinary people outside those systems – the lumpenproletariat as Marx described them, but they should be aware if only for their own protection. Adam Smith famously remarked that a man is likely to be more concerned by the imminent prospect of losing his own finger than the death of thousands in a Chinese earthquake. That is the way of humanity, there are unfortunately, few who can look outside themselves and feel empathy for the plight of others. As far as NHS activities are concerned, it is often better to not believe it.
A report from the World Health Organisation last month said that a 'toxic combination' of bad policies, economics and politics is killing people on a large scale [in the UK]... ‘Social injustice is killing people on a grand scale.' Government policies to do with benzodiazepine prescribing are contained within that condemnation – long term prescribing often leads to catastrophic ill health and to inescapable poverty. Blunkett could have helped to do something about that but he did not. It is difficult to escape the conclusion that politicians and bureaucrats who directly serve the state believe the interests of the state are supreme and not the welfare of individuals.
Steve Webb the Liberal Democrat health spokesman said in 2006:
"The fundamental priority for the NHS must be patient safety, with a culture of openness and accountability. For it to take years for incidents to be recorded and for good practice to spread is lamentable...The buck must stop at the door of the Department of Health."
It is almost fifty years since the addiction of patients by doctors with benzodiazepines began and the buck has still to reach the door of the Department of Health; medicine has been allowed to believe it did nothing wrong or avoidable. David Blunkett knew better and recognised the scandal when in opposition to government and then conveniently forgot it when Labour came to power in 1997. There may be no-one in government who recognises his responsibility, but campaigners do.