UK
Infected blood victims to get £210,000 interim compensation payment from this summer
Victims of the infected blood scandal will get £210,000 as an interim compensation payment from as early as this summer, the government has announced.
Cabinet minister John Glen told parliament the initial payment will be given to people living with the effects of contaminated blood “within 90 days, starting in the summer”.
Infected people who die between now and the payments being made will get the money sent to their estates, he added.
Mr Glen said: “As the prime minister made clear yesterday, there is no restriction on the budget. Where we need to pay, we will pay.
“We will minimise delays, we will address the recommendations of Sir Brian Langstaff with respect to that – speed and efficiency, and removing as much complexity as possible.”
The minister did not confirm the cost of the compensation package, but former justice secretary Robert Buckland said it could be upwards of £10 billion.
Mr Glen’s announcement came the day after a report into the scandal was published following a seven-year inquiry.
More than 30,000 Britons were infected with HIV and Hepatitis C from contaminated blood products in the 1970s and 1980s. More than 3,000 people died.
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Blood scandal: A look at the details
Mr Glen also announced:
• The Infected Blood Compensation Authority – an “arm’s length body” – has been established to administer compensation, with Sir Robert Francis KC as the interim chair
• Anyone directly or indirectly infected by NHS blood, blood products or tissue contaminated with HIV or Hepatitis C, or developed a chronic infection from blood contaminated with Hepatitis B is eligible for compensation
• If someone would have been eligible but has died, compensation will be paid to their estate
• When a victim has been accepted onto the scheme, their affected partners, parents, siblings, children, friends and family who acted as carers of them can claim in their own right
• People who are registered with an existing infected blood support scheme will be automatically eligible for compensation to minimise the distress of proving they should be
• There will be five types of compensation: an injury impact award, social impact award (to acknowledge the stigma or social isolation from being infected), autonomy award (for disrupted family/private life), care award (for past and future care needs), and financial loss award (for past and future financial losses caused by being infected)
• Compensation will be offered in a lump sum or periodic payments
• The family of anyone who has died will get a single lump sum
• Any payments will be exempt from income, capital gains and inheritance tax
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• Payments will not count towards means tested benefit assessments
• All recipients can appeal their compensation
• Final payments will start before the end of the year
• No immediate changes to existing infected blood support scheme payments – they will continue until 31 March 2025 and will not be deducted from new compensation
• From 1 April 2025, any support scheme payments received will be counted towards final compensation
• Nobody will receive less in compensation than they would have received in support payments.
Sir Brian Langstaff lead the review into the scandal
Sir Brian Langstaff, chair of the inquiry, found the scandal was “not an accident” and its failures lie with “successive governments, the NHS, and blood services”.
He said the response from governments of different stripes and the NHS “compounded” victims’ suffering.
This included the “deliberate destruction of some documents” by Department of Health workers, in what Sir Brian described as a “pervasive cover-up” and “downright deception”.
“It could largely, though not entirely, have been avoided. And I report that it should have been,” he said, adding the “scale of what happened is horrifying” for victims and their families.
Victims and their families welcomed the report following decades of not being believed.
Rishi Sunak offered a “wholehearted and unequivocal” apology to the victims following the report’s publication, saying it was a “day of shame for the British state”.
He promised compensation would be given to victims and those affected, adding: “Whatever it costs to deliver this scheme, we will pay it.”