Parliament’s first ‘bionic Lord’ takes his seat on the red benches

Parliament’s first “bionic Lord” has taken his seat on the red benches, where he has pledged to highlight the awareness of sepsis and improve the quality of prosthetics offered to amputees.

Craig Mackinlay is the first quadruple amputee to be introduced to the House of Lords after he was given a peerage in Rishi Sunak’s dissolution honours list.

Lord Mackinlay of Richborough wore the traditional scarlet robes for the short introduction ceremony in the upper chamber where he swore the oath of allegiance to the King.

The 58-year-old was supported by fellow Conservative peers Lord Hayward and Lord Jackson of Peterborough.

His wife and daughter were among family and friends who looked on from the gallery above as Lord Mackinlay signed the members’ book with his “bionic” hand.

Others watching in the chamber included Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle, former deputy speaker Nigel Evans, and Conservative MP Mark Francois.

Lord Mackinlay told the PA news agency that he “loved” his nine years as the Tory MP for South Thanet, but being appointed to the Lords has given him “a new lease of life”.

In September last year he was rushed to hospital and put into a 16-day induced coma, with his wife told he had only a 5% chance of survival.

Lord Mackinlay had both legs and both arms amputated on December 1, 2023.

Speaking ahead of his introduction to the Lords on Thursday, Lord Mackinlay said he feels “lucky” because the alternative would have been the loss of his life to sepsis.

He said of his experience of life after sepsis: “You’re reliant on other people, and you do get frustrated, and I’ve never been the most patient of characters even before this. So yes, it’s difficult.

“But there’s two things that keep me going really, I can do more things today than I could do yesterday, so I’ll be able to do more tomorrow. And, you’ve got to say well it’s better than the alternative, and I was very close to the alternative, which was death.”

He added: “Inspiration is what people say, I say no I’m not, because today there will be thousands of people given a diagnosis for a terminal illness and they’re going downhill.

“I’m the other way, I’ve been at the bottom and I’m coming back up. So I’m lucky.”

On an episode of the Sepsis Voices with Dr Ron podcast, Lord Mackinlay described himself as the “bionic Lord” due to his prosthetics.

Lord Mackinlay told PA he has personally tried multiple different private manufacturers of prosthetics, but there is a “postcode lottery” when it comes to “access to the right prosthetics at the right time” on the NHS.

He said: “That’s a battle I’m going to have with the Secretary of State.

“There’s not many of us that are quadruple amputees, for god’s sake, you’ve spent a fortune keeping us alive, why not just do the last bit of the job properly?”

He added: “(The NHS) work off a list: year one you’ll have these rubber, blunt instruments.

“Year two, they might give you a body-powered thing that looks like something out of Victorian times.

“And year three they might start talking about electric ones that you really wanted in the first place. So what are you meant to do for those three years? Go into a total mental health hole?”

He went on to say: “All of this is very costly. I was in hospital for seven months, that does not come cheap, but to then say ‘well we’re not going to give you an arm you really want’, after they’ve spent a million pounds or more, seems a bit silly.”

Lord Mackinlay said he will also call for sepsis to have “similar recognition” to strokes.

The former MP wants to see an awareness campaign which matches that of the NHS’s Act FAST, which focuses on the main symptoms of strokes.

He said: “Despite the odd very, very bad stories that the NHS haven’t recognised sepsis, they’re generally very good, they do have a reasonable standard.

“You go into any hospital, you’ll see posters for sepsis, sepsis, sepsis. But you and your family and your friends, they’re the people that will recognise it in day two.”

He added: “The trouble is there’s not really a one size fits all menu, not really, but to try and get an awareness early, because sepsis kills 48,000 people a year, it’s a huge killer in the UK.

“We devote a lot of time to looking at other diseases, but not quite the same to this mass killer.”

Lord Mackinlay said he believes the House of Lords will be “very important this Parliament” due to the number of new MPs.

He said: “They’re new and they will be putting their hand up when they’re told to put their hand up, they won’t be quizzing too much what their own Government is doing, because they’re so new. And I suppose we’re all guilty of that in the early days.

“But the other problem is that, because the Conservative Party is down to 121 members, that’s only 121 minds that could be put to analysing legislation. The bandwidth of what we’ve got available in the House of Commons is now very much reduced.

“So where is the place that is going to put very poor legislation into some sort of better order? And I think it’s going to be in the House of Lords, if the Government wants to listen.

“I’m looking forward to the opportunity, I really am. As I say, it’ll be pure politics without some of the extra bits of being an elected MP.

“I loved being an elected MP, it was a great job but this has given me a new lease of life.”

On his family’s support during the difficult time, he said: “I would be nothing without my wife, she’s been such a huge part of this.

“I’ve really stretched the ‘in sickness and in health’ part of the marriage vows. She has been absolutely incredible.”

He added that his five-year-old daughter has become his hands in some ways, saying: “She puts stuff on for me, she’ll help me put my legs on. In some little jobs, she becomes my hands, little tricky jobs I can’t do.”