DAVID CAMERON has pledged to confront Angela Merkel to demand justice for British thalidomide survivors more than 50 years after the scandal first broke.
The promise came in a meeting with Mark Allen, one of his constituents, who is among the victims of the world’s biggest drugs scandal. An estimated 10,000 people suffered deformities when their mothers took the morning sickness pill in the 1950s.
Allen, who has three-quarter-length arms and deformed hands, has urged the prime minister for more than a year to assist in securing compensation from Grünenthal, the drug’s German manufacturer.
Allen claims that recent new evidence potentially shows that the German government was complicit in bringing a criminal trial against Grünenthal to a premature end.
This, he argued, led to a cursory compensation deal and a gagging order that meant the company could not be prosecuted.
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The Thalidomide Trust, representing the 469 UK survivors, is seeking £9m a year in funding from the German government to help cover the rising cost of their medical care.
Cameron pledged not only to raise the matter with the German chancellor but also to push for a direct meeting between the thalidomide survivors and a German minister.
This, he said, would add to the ongoing efforts of the health department and the British embassy in Berlin.
Cameron described how he had learned of the victims’ personal struggles after he befriended a thalidomide survivor during his student days at Oxford University. Allen, a 55-year-old former mechanic from Over Norton in Oxfordshire, was diagnosed as being a thalidomide victim only four years ago, despite being bullied at school and suffering from crippling back pain as a result of his deformities. He believes his mother was in denial about the issue.
Afterwards he said he had been touched by the prime minister’s words, adding: “I have great hope that David Cameron’s kind offer of intervention with Chancellor Merkel will finally deliver the justice we have been seeking for more than 50 years.”
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It comes after Michael Moore MP, the secretary of state for Scotland, wrote to the German ambassador protesting at his failure to meet victims and a cross-party group of MPs. The German government says that it does not pay compensation to victims who did not buy the drug directly from Grünenthal.
The pharmaceutical company has previously said it cannot comment on claims of political involvement in the trial without access to the Thalidomide Trust’s evidence.
However, it insisted the compensation settlement was reached in direct negotiations with the victims alone.