Sir Brian Langstaff, chair of the Infected Blood Inquiry, which published its 2,500-page final report this week, has called for a statutory duty of candour to be imposed on civil servants and healthcare leaders
Responding to the report, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak apologised for government failures. John Glen, the paymaster general, later set out details of a multi-billion-pound scheme to compensate victims and families by the end of the year, in a statement to the House of Commons.
Glen said payments of £210,000 would be made within 90 days and, where an infected person has died, compensation will be paid to their estate. He said Sir Robert Francis, whose government-commissioned report with recommendations for compensation was published in 2022, would be appointed interim chair of an infected blood compensation authority.
Des Collins, senior partner of Collins Solicitors, who has represented about 1,500 victims of the scandal, said Glen’s update was ‘a positive step and broadly encouraging. While the additional interim payment for those infected is, of course, welcomed, many of our bereaved families, who have to date received nothing, are extremely disappointed that there is no information as to how the recently promised interim payment of £100,000 to be paid to estates may be claimed.
‘We also continue to have concerns and will be carefully reviewing the detail to come around delivery mechanisms. Other government compensation schemes, notably for Post Office and Windrush victims, have been flawed in execution, due to overly complicated, bureaucratic administrative requirements and a lack of appropriate support.’
More than 30,000 people were infected with HIV, Hepatitis C, or both, through contaminated blood transfusions from the 1970s to 1990s, with more than 3,000 deaths.
