PAThousands of victims of the infected blood scandal are being “harmed further” by long waits for compensation, the chair of the public inquiry into the disaster has said.
In a hard-hitting report, Sir Brian Langstaff said there were “obvious injustices” in the way the scheme had been devised.
It is thought 30,000 people were infected with HIV and hepatitis B or C in the 1970s, 80s and early 90s after being given contaminated blood products on the NHS.
The government has set aside £11.8bn to pay compensation and has said it is cutting red tape to speed up payments to victims.
The inquiry’s main report into the scandal, published last year, found that the disaster could largely have been avoided if different decisions had been taken by the health authorities at the time.
It said too little was done to stop the importing of contaminated blood products from abroad in the 1970s and 80s, and there was evidence that elements of the scandal had been covered up.
In May of this year, Sir Brian took the unusual step of ordering two days of extra hearings after he received “letter after letter, email after email” expressing concerns about the way the government’s compensation scheme for victims had been managed.
His extra 200-page report, published on Wednesday, was based on that evidence, and found that victims had been “harmed further” by the way they had been treated over the last 12 months.
The latest figures from the Infected Blood Compensation Authority, which was set up by the government to administer payments, show that 2,043 people have been asked to start their claims so far and 460 have received full compensation.
The scheme is open to those who were infected and also their family members, including parents, children and siblings, who can claim compensation in their own right as someone affected by the scandal.
Sir Brian said: “The UK government has known for years that compensation for thousands of people was inevitable and had identified many of those who should have it.
“But only 460 have received compensation so far and many, many more have not even been allowed to begin the process.”
The inquiry’s new report makes a series of recommendations including:
- Victims should be allowed to apply for compensation, rather than waiting to be invited
- Victims and family members who are seriously ill, older, or who have never received compensation should get priority
- A series of “injustices” needed to be addressed by, for example, allowing some victims infected with HIV before 1982 to apply for compensation
- NHS patients who were the victims of medical experimentation should receive extra payments
- The system as a whole needs to be more transparent with more involvement of those infected and their families
Speaking at Westminster Chapel in central London to survivors and their families after his report was published, Sir Brian said a significant cause of the blood scandal was the belief that authorities knew best and people did not need to be consulted.
He said: “Decisions were made behind closed doors and when things went wrong people weren’t listening.
“It has happened again in the design of the compensation scheme. It will be a travesty to keep repeating these mistakes. People should not be kept at arms’ length.”
Kate Burt, chief executive of the Haemophilia Society, said: “Government’s failure to listen to those at the heart of the contaminated blood scandal has shamefully been exposed by the infected blood inquiry yet again.
“This failure is exhausting, damaging and is stripping this community of its dignity.”
Richard Angell, chief executive of the Terrence Higgins Trust, said: “We work with one family whose young son died three decades ago because of Aids-related illnesses caused by infected blood.
“His father now has dementia. It shouldn’t be too much for him to receive compensation whilst he can still remember his son.”
Rachel Halford, chief executive of the Hepatitis C trust, said the government had “delayed every action and routinely ignored the voice of the community; as a result, we have a poorly designed compensation scheme that does not reflect the harm done to thousands of people affected.”
Earlier, Cabinet Office minister Nick Thomas-Symonds denied the government was “dragging its heels” over compensation.
He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme he did not want to impose any further delays after “decades of injustice”.
“We’ve paid out over £488m,” he said, adding that he had been “very open that there are areas that I am willing to look at, listening to the voice of victims”.
Mr Thomas-Symonds later added that the government would quickly work through the recommendations to understand the implications of any changes to the scheme.
“My intention is to provide a further update to the House [of Commons] before summer recess”, he said.
