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Thalidomide Survivors

I echo the comments made by the chair of the all-party group, and I must say that the Minister does deserve genuine congratulations. In a Westminster Hall debate initiated by the hon. Member for Staffordshire, Moorlands (Charlotte Atkins), we all collectively exhorted him to abandon his "line to take", and to listen to what the House was saying, reflect upon it and come back with a scheme. In fairness to him, I should say that he did exactly that; he has reflected on what colleagues collectively urged him to do. Would that more Ministers took the collective advice of the House on issues of this kind. I suspect that one of the reasons why it has taken so long to obtain the expression of regret is that departmental lawyers throughout the generations have been terrified that any such expression would be construed as an admission of liability. Is there not a broader point here for the Minister, who is also a lawyer, to address? Perhaps the House should reflect upon this on some other occasion, but huge amounts of NHS funds are spent on paying lawyers' bills—the Department's lawyers' bills and other people's lawyers' bills—when contesting cases of alleged negligence on the NHS. In any system of modern medicine there will always be times when things go wrong. Do we not need to try to find a system to resolve those issues whereby more of the available money goes to the patients and those who need it and less goes to the lawyers?