Gillian Keegan MP added her name to the below letter to Letter to Chancellor Angela Merkel to persuade the German Government that they have a duty to provide support for those 464 UK Thalidomide survivors.
‘As Chairman of the House of Commons All Party Thalidomide Group and the Chairman of the Thalidomide Trust we want to press the case for your Government to make good on those verbal commitments made to the UK Thalidomide campaigners in relation to financial support prior to your recent elections.
Our Group has met regularly with my colleague, Sir Alan Duncan MP as the Minister for Europe and he, and our Foreign Office, remain committed to facilitating a German-authored and funded outcome for those UK survivors of Thalidomide.
There is concern in the UK that the proposal to provide readily accessible funding for UK survivors is not contained within your Coalition Agreement. I have raised this with the Prime Minister at Question Time.
We are presuming that the Agreement does not limit the actions of your Government to its content and that, in the general scheme of things, and not least as the issue affects UK citizens, the issue was not deemed necessary or of sufficient scale to be included in the Agreement. You will be aware of the strength of feeling for justice to be done, not least as expressed by the European Parliament.
Our Government stands ready to provide whatever reporting/accountability requirements your Government may have and to engage with your Officials to deliver them. We remain of the hope that your Government remains reconciled to the proposition that financial support should be provided to those survivors living in the UK and that the fund is best administered in English and from the UK. The current arrangements are onerous and cumbersome, placing, as they do, an unfair burden on those who ‘live’ with Thalidomide.
Your Chancellorship has the hallmark of doing what is right for people. We hope that will be true for finding a speedy solution to this issue which has, in all conscience, gone on for too long. Now is the time for firm and swift action.
We look forward to hearing from you and would be happy to meet any of your officials in Germany.’
I look forward to hearing from you.
Yours ever,
Simon Hoare, Member of Parliament for North Dorset