Craig Mackinlay returns to Commons for first time since developing sepsis

Tory MP Craig Mackinlay has returned to the House of Commons for the first time since he lost his arms and legs to sepsis.

He was seen meeting Sir Lindsay Hoyle, the Speaker, before attending Prime Minister’s Questions later.

The 57-year-old MP for South Thanet required a quadruple amputation after developing blood clots that left his arms and legs blackened.

His legs were amputated below the knee and his arms below the elbow in a single procedure taking five hours on Dec 1.

His wife Kati and their four-year-old daughter Olivia will be sitting in the public gallery to mark his return to Parliament.

Mr Mackinlay, who was elected to represent South Thanet in 2015 after defeating Ukip’s Nigel Farage, is determined to continue as MP and will contest the next election.

He plans to campaign for better treatment for amputees after being forced to go private for state-of-the-art multifunctional hands that would take at least two years to receive on the NHS. He said any successful campaign would be too late to help him.

The new hands will cost in the region of £100,000. He described the hands given to him by the NHS as “medieval” and “good for fighting and smashing windows but not much else”.

In an interview with The Telegraph, Mr Mackinlay said he was “lucky” to have survived and said he was “stoic” after being told his limbs could not be saved.

He said: “They did it all in one hit, on one day. I could see over that month that these limbs were finished.

“The blackness was increasing and the fingers were like something out of Peat Bog Man or some pharaoh dug out of the desert. They were all desiccated, clenched and dying.”

Lying in a hospital bed, he could see his legs were “gradually getting worse” and described his feet as “just dead stuff”.

In a harrowing video he recorded on Nov 30, the night before his limbs were removed, Mr Mackinlay said: “The grim reaper has let me survive but he’s taken his payment in four of my limbs. But that’s the way it is. There are plenty of worse things happening to other people.”

In the video, he said of the amputation: “It will be like saying goodbye to old friends,” while also thanking his local hospital in Kent which kept him alive when his body went into septic shock.

He said: “The reality is I probably shouldn’t have survived this far because the damage that was done by the sepsis was so severe you don’t often see people in my condition actually surviving. That’s a big thanks to what they’ve done to keep me alive.”