Infected Blood Compensation Scheme

[Relevant Documents: Oral evidence taken before the Public Accounts Committee on 4 and 1 June, on Government compensation schemes: update, HC 88.]

I call Clive Efford, who will speak for around 15 minutes.

I beg to move, That this House has considered the Infected Blood Compensation Scheme.

At the outset, I would like to bear witness to those who have fought for justice for so long, and who have given evidence to the inquiry. I would also like to pay tribute to my predecessor as chair of the all party parliamentary group on haemophilia and contaminated blood, my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North and Cottingham (Dame Diana Johnson).

I am aware that many Members who would like to be here are in Makerfield for the by election, so I may ask for your indulgence, Madam Deputy Speaker, as I have a lot to cover, because a lot of people are missing. The Government are about to lay another set of orders before Parliament, and the community and campaigners have demanded that we make representations on their behalf before they are laid, so I am grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for moving us up the list and granting us this debate in such short time.

I congratulate the Paymaster General and Minister for the Cabinet Office for securing the funds to get the compensation process under way. I know that he takes the matter to heart, and it would be understandable if he felt slightly harshly treated, given that he has secured £9.8 billion for the compensation process, but I am sure he understands that because the community of the infected and affected have had to fight so hard for so long, and have lost many friends and relatives along the way in the face of huge opposition, they are not ready to praise anyone—not until everyone has received justice.

In his address during the service of remembrance and reflection at St Paul’s, Sir Brian Langstaff said that this catastrophe was no accident. It has been called the deadliest man made disaster in post war history. In the ’70s and ’80s, people knowingly gave infected products to unsuspecting patients. In the USA, the production of blood products farmed from volunteers and prisoners took off after the USA deregulated harvesting blood products. Pooling products from different people meant that entire supplies became infected. As early as 1975, “World in Action” exposed the dangers of these products. In 1983, Government experts knew of the risks of contaminated blood products. Costs meant that heat treatment to clean the products was not introduced.

In 1989, the then Government were advised to provide victims with compensation on humanitarian grounds. The Government rejected that advice on financial grounds. The Government continued to withhold information from the infected and their families. Had they been told, they could have sought medical help, and many would have avoided tragedy. The World Health Organisation expressed concern about the commercial supply of products from paid donors, but still the practice went on, and victims were kept in the dark.

Pupils at Treloar’s school were experimented on. Between 1970 and 1987, 122 pupils with haemophilia attended the school. At the time that the evidence was given to the inquiry, only 30 remained alive. Madam Deputy Speaker, I know that your constituent Gary Webster is one of those; another is my constituent Lee Moorey. I am pleased to say that he is still with us. Lee did not find out until he was 14 that he had been infected with HIV. He was in his 30s when he found out that he had been infected with hepatitis C, and he found out that he has hepatitis B only last year. There is no escaping the fact that, had people been under an obligation to tell the truth at the outset, many lives would have been saved.

We welcome the changes that the Government announced on 14 April this year, following the consultation that they held from October 2025 to January 2026. However, there remain concerns that some elements of the compensation system still require change.

I commend the hon. Gentleman for setting the scene so well, and I am sure that everyone in the House is committed to the same objectives. The hon. Gentleman is right to underline the issues. My constituents back home face significant stress over delays, and unfair deductions when compensation is passed on to the estate of the bereaved. Does he agree that we need a timescale for the moneys to be paid out, so that all those who have experienced delays will know the timeframe? Perhaps the Minister, who is always very responsive and helpful, will come to the House regularly to update us on that before the end of this year, and certainly by the conclusion of spring 2027.

I agree with the hon. Gentleman; we do need a timescale. I will cover that later.

There are concerns that elements of the compensation system still require change, and that some of the decision making is arbitrary and not consistent with what had been promised. I will attempt to go through those concerns. Unethical testing is the most disturbing and distressing aspect of this horrible affair. People—most of them children at the time—were used as human lab rats. Former Treloar’s pupils have described themselves as “cheaper than chimps” for experimenting on. The Government have increased the payment for those who attended Treloar’s school from £25,000 to £60,000, which is a welcome step in the right direction, and for those who were experimented on as children elsewhere from £25,000 to £45,000.

But we should stop to consider for a moment what this compensation is for. These children, without their knowledge, were given contaminated products so that the effects could be studied by the state—the state that should have been there to protect them. Imagine being one of the victims and reflecting on what the state has done to you, knowing that your life has been altered and shortened, and that you have lost friends. I spoke to one parent who described looking at her three children and knowing that she would never see them grow up to be adults or get married, and never see her grandchildren. The top price for that is £60,000. The message was, “If you are a pharmaceutical company, come to Britain. We have set the price low enough that you can carry out experiments on anyone, and then pay the fine and still make money.” What these people have lost is priceless, and £60,000 is nowhere near enough. The issue is not just the size of the compensation, but the gravity of what took place and its immorality. That has to be addressed, and these payments go nowhere near doing so. They should be withdrawn to allow a proper dialogue to take place with the infected and affected, so that an appropriate solution can be reached. We must recognise the losses that these people have endured since childhood.

Some recognition has to be given in the new regulations to the impact of interferon treatment for those infected with hepatitis. The changes are time limited to two years for financial loss, and one year for the care award. The compensation scheme cannot continue to ignore the real life effect on victims of long term interferon treatment, and the associated costs, which are far higher than the time limited uplifts that the Government propose introducing.

Treatment for interferon is not recognised when it comes to additional injury awards. Those awards must be paid to all those who underwent interferon treatment, regardless of other harms they may have suffered. Then there is the situation with hepatitis B. Why are people infected with hepatitis B not given equal treatment in the compensation packages with those infected with hepatitis C?

My hon. Friend may be aware of the work that the National Audit Office has done, looking at different compensation schemes. Does he think that there are lessons that this and any future Government need to take on board when proposing a compensation scheme? Some matters are dealt with by compensation, and some through bureaucratic procedures of the civil service; other resolutions come about as a result of a campaign, like the one he led with others, including my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North and Cottingham (Dame Diana Johnson). Are there lessons from this that should be applied more widely, and has he had conversations with the Government about taking that approach?

I have not had conversations with the Government about an approach like that, but I do agree with my hon. Friend, and I will address that later. The Government need to learn lessons, and to set up a system, so that we do not have to learn all over again all the lessons of paying compensation and implementing inquiries’ recommendations every time this happens.

The hon. Gentleman has set the point out very powerfully. It is distressing for any of us in this House, and particularly for those of us who cannot imagine our children being put through that in such a callous way. In addition to the questions around compensation, one of the most horrendous things is the additional burden being put on parents where they have to prove, with documented evidence, that they lived with their child 40 or 50 years ago when that was done to their baby, to the future of their family. Will the hon. Gentleman touch on how outrageous it is that that is required, and the additional heartache and burden that that puts on those families?

I will touch on that and I will make that very point. There are areas of evidence required that are unreasonable. I thought we had agreed that that sort of evidence would not be asked for.

In his statement on 14 April, the Paymaster General announced, for all those claimants who can demonstrate to the Infected Blood Compensation Authority that they meet the criteria, that all care and financial loss claims can be backdated to 2017, when the special category mechanism was first established. The community of people I have spoken to feels strongly that compensation must cover actual costs, whenever they occurred, and that there should not be an arbitrary cut off date of 2017.

On the issue of evidence, which the hon. Lady just referred to, the Government did not accept the inquiry’s recommendation for IBCA to be less stringent on overall evidence for the psychological harm award, and instead advised that people apply to the special category mechanism award. There is concern that the evidence threshold will be too high, and the Government should allow IBCA to be more flexible and compassionate in considering claims of psychological harm through the special category mechanism.

The communities consistently pointed out that the current scheme penalises those who died before the compensation scheme came into force. The Paymaster General did not address that issue in his statement earlier this year. The compensation scheme must pay the estates of those who died young for the harm and losses suffered, and end such a clear injustice.

The current scheme has not enabled family members who gave up work to be compensated for the sacrifices they made in their lives and the opportunities that they lost as a result. The supplementary compensation scheme should enable carers to claim the actual financial and personal losses that they have suffered as a result of providing care.

My constituent Mary Grindley wrote to me on that issue: “I understand that the Cabinet Office is considering a supplementary route to further compensation for the affected on top of the lump sum at present offered.

While considering this, please bear in mind many of us gave up our jobs and careers to look after our beloved ones often with little support. Also many had difficulty returning to work later or were too traumatised to do so. (I personally gave up work to look after my husband, giving up my teaching career. I tried to return after he died as my son was a minor and after two terms had a breakdown in the classroom in front of the children. I never worked again.)

Loss of earnings should be taken into account.”

She continued: “Other considerations that should be taken into account—being unable to have a child or more children, loss of a proper marriage (we were told that if my husband infected me he could be put in prison), harassment at home and work (we had to move twice, once with the help of the police) to living in poor housing due to not being able to get insurance for a mortgage.

Regards, Mary Grindley”.

When we read testimonies such as Mary’s they bring home the multitude of wrongs that must be recognised.

There is a growing concern among the community about the pace of payments. After an upturn towards the end of last year, things have slowed down. There seems to be an upturn in IBCA’s demand for documentation, despite it being agreed previously that that would not be required from claimants. After so many years, some documents are impossible to find and such requests will slow down the system. In some cases, people have been asked to provide proof that they were living with their parents as children at the time of their claim. Will the Government instruct IBCA to alter its current stance on that requirement?

The people infected and affected have been campaigning for decades, and many are very elderly. Does the Minister agree that it is time that we set timelines to end the limbo that they have been left in?

My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech. Does he agree that the Government need to work with colleagues in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to drive forward the final compensation scheme and address the concerns about timelines that he rightly talks about?

Yes, where we can improve the system by working together, I think we should do it. That is absolutely right.

We welcome the introduction of an ongoing dialogue between the infected and affected community and the Government. That was lacking throughout the process, from when the Government started to set the tariffs and set up IBCA, and that led to a lot of mistrust. A two- way dialogue is needed if good relationships and trust are to be maintained and if we are to restore trust in the process.

We must learn the lessons of all inquiries and compensation bodies that the Government have had to set up. We must not keep reinventing the wheel every time an inquiry reports and makes recommendations.

I thank my hon. Friend for all his work as Chair of the APPG and with the contaminated blood community. On the issue he has just raised, there is growing support for a national oversight mechanism to monitor and intervene when recommendations from public inquiries are being ignored or misapplied. Does he agree that it is particularly important in the case of contaminated blood, where there have been so many false starts and delays? Although the Minister has announced a new mechanism to raise concerns about how compensation schemes function, does he agree that such monitoring must be statutory and self resourced to ensure fair and timely compensation for victims and their families?

I agree. We need to put this on a statutory footing—if nothing else, to give rights to the people who have been wronged in the process.

The hon. Gentleman referred to “reinventing the wheel”. There is no possible way that anybody can be really compensated for the loss of a child, a husband or a wife. However, those of us who still bear the scars of the thalidomide scandal are seeing the wheel reinvented again and again. Surely there has to be a system that allows compensation and allows the Government to act as the insurer of last resort and then to make claims against those who are actually culpable. Does the hon. Gentleman agree?

Yes, I agree. We keep repeating the experience with inquiry after inquiry. The time has come for us to set up a body that retains that experience so that it can represent the people who have been wronged and ensure that the issues that have been raised by them, through whatever inquiry has taken place, can be addressed.

There are some discussions going on about how there should be oversight of Government’s acceptance of recommendations from public inquiries. My hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith and Chiswick (Andy Slaughter) talked about the statutory option, but there are also discussions about whether Select Committees should have a role in that space. That would bring the matter right to the heart of Parliament, in full view of the public. Sunlight shone on things means they might be followed through. Does my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham and Chislehurst (Clive Efford) have any thoughts on that process?

It would be an improvement if we were to set up a system that reviewed what action is taken in response to inquiries. For instance, if we had acted on the recommendations of the inquiry into the Lakanal House fire, we might not have had the Grenfell fire. Those things are just left to gather dust on a shelf, and we need to address that. We must set up a body for compensation payments so that skills and experience are not lost and do not have to be learned time and again. We must also have a duty of candour; the Hillsborough law must be introduced in its entirety.

One person whom I know the campaigners, the infected and the affected would like to thank, overall, is Sir Brian Langstaff. I will finish with his address at the remembrance service at St Paul’s. He said that the catastrophe was no accident, and quoted the then Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Richmond and Northallerton (Rishi Sunak), who said on the publication of the final report in 2024: “We must fundamentally rebalance the system so that we finally address the pattern of injustice, so familiar from other inquiries, such as Hillsborough, where innocent victims have to fight for decades just to be believed.”—[Official Report, 20 May 2024; Vol. 750, c. 666.] In response, the then Leader of the Opposition, now Prime Minister, said that “we must restore the sense that this is a country that can rectify injustice.”—[Official Report, 20 May 2025; Vol. 750, c. 668.] In the conclusion to his oration, Sir Brian said: “Putting into practice these principles—prioritising patients’ safety, embracing candour, transparency and involvement, recognising and remedying injustice, truly valuing people—is a challenge for the here and now. These principles need to be not just matters of words, but together provide a practical route map to follow.”

Had we been following Sir Brian’s advice, we would have got to the truth much earlier, saved lives and perhaps avoided other catastrophes. As we go forward, we must heed his words, involve people, value them, listen to them and act.

As the hon. Member for Eltham and Chislehurst (Clive Efford) did, I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting this debate. I pay tribute to him for securing it and for all his work with the all party parliamentary group on haemophilia and contaminated blood. He puts an awful lot of work into it—it is not like a normal APPG—and we are all very grateful.

This scandal is of such a scale that probably every MP has at least one constituent who has been infected or affected, but in my constituency it has a particular weight attached to it because East Hampshire is home to Treloar’s school and college. Treloar’s is an internationally recognised centre of excellence in which incredibly committed people provide the most remarkable level of support, care, nurture and education for children and young people with some of the most profound disabilities imaginable, but it was also the place where, in the 1970s and 1980s, there was the single biggest concentration of people who were victims of these terrible practices. The reason was that at any one time there were 40 to 50 haemophiliac patients there. It was seen as an opportunity to study the disease; the NHS haemophilia centre was established nearby, and it later moved into the school grounds.

Treloar’s looms large in Sir Brian Langstaff’s report: an entire section is given over to it. It describes how research objectives were put ahead of the interests of children and how those children were subjected to unethical research techniques, without them or their parents being informed or consulted about the risks attached. As the hon. Gentleman mentioned, of the 122 children with haemophilia who attended the school between 1970 and 1987, only about 30 are alive now. There have been much wider effects, too: the stigma that could be attached, the interrupted education, the long term mental scarring for the people and their families, and the trauma through families that has lasted for decades. This is a story of lost childhoods and lost futures.

It has been my privilege to meet a number of the Treloar’s boys over time. There is one gentleman in particular, Adrian Goodyear, with whom I have been in contact since I was first elected in 2010; he had previously been in contact with my predecessor Michael Mates for many years. In our 2010 debate, I read out a line from one of Ade’s emails to me that haunted me then and haunts me now: “We’ve now lost so many of our friends from the Treloar days—in fact, we stopped counting at 40”.

I pay tribute to Ade, to all the Treloar’s boys and to everybody in this community who has kept up the fight, for their remarkable tenacity in seeking justice in the name and memory of their friends lost.

I thank the Paymaster General for his continued and consistent positive engagement on the subject. He always comes to these events in person, which I think the House really appreciates. I have a few questions that I hope he will address later in the debate.

First, I have been asked specifically to raise the lack of parity between bereaved parents whose child was over 18 and those whose child was younger. I hope that the Minister can comment on that point and on whether a change may be possible.

On further elements of the award, I thank the Minister for his letter in response to our exchange at Cabinet Office questions about the special category mechanism and the psychological harm payments, but I continue to receive questions from my constituents about the unethical research awards. The increase in the amount is very welcome, but in our November 2024 debate I asked how the figures had been reached, and even with the higher number I am still being asked that question. Clearly one cannot put a value on this tragic loss or say that any amount of money could compensate it, but even if the answer is that there is no way of calculating such a number, it would be helpful to have that set out.

I think IBCA has tried to engage well with MPs, which is welcome, but clearly the administration of the scheme needs to accelerate. Inevitably with these processes, things move relatively well at first with the more straightforward cases, but it becomes harder when we get on to the more complex cases. As the hon. Member for Eltham and Chislehurst says, we are talking about victims who are increasingly elderly and who, tragically, may die before they receive the compensation they have been promised.

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for giving way and to the hon. Member for Eltham and Chislehurst (Clive Efford) for securing this debate. It is very difficult for any of us to contain our unadulterated rage at what happened.

My constituent lost her mother to infected blood. Unfortunately, her father is now in his final days, and soon she will lose him as well. He received compensation, and of course there was no inheritance tax on it then, but as his child she knows that the Government will be putting inheritance tax on that money when it passes to her in a very short time. Will my right hon. Friend give his view, which I am sure will be heard on the Government Front Bench, on how we are to ensure that when that compensation passes down from a father who lost his wife to a daughter who lost her mother, it does not incur inheritance tax?

My word! My hon. Friend puts it in very striking terms. [Interruption.] I see the Minister indicating that he has heard her question, so I think it is right that I defer to him to say a word about the matter when he makes his speech.

As the hon. Member for Eltham and Chislehurst and other colleagues have said, this is not the first compensation scheme that has been set up. Obviously every case is somewhat different and involves different categories of harm, but it seems that every time this happens, processes and systems have to be set up and time is thereby lost. We want lessons to be learned from this scheme, but they should also have been learned from previous schemes. I welcome the fact that the Public Accounts Committee is conducting its inquiry; I hope to hear a commitment from the Minister that lessons will be learned, particularly from that inquiry.

The last thing I want to mention is the possibility of a criminal investigation. I know that you and your constituent have been involved in discussions about that, Madam Deputy Speaker, and that you and I have both had discussions with the police and crime commissioner for Hampshire, Donna Jones. This is clearly not a question for this Minister or any Minister—not for the Cabinet Office or the Home Office; it is about the criminal justice system, the police and whether a threshold has been met. But I want to take this opportunity through the debate, without expecting the Minister to respond directly, to say that with all the passage of time, there is a premium on knowing what will happen and if we will move in this regard.

Nothing will ever or could ever make up for the multiple failings of the state in this case—from successive Governments, the civil service, the national health service and many more—but we can and must ensure that at this point, we have a compensation scheme that now does pay out in a timely way, and is as effective and humane as possible for all the victims and their families. We must face up clearly to our failings as a state and —let’s be honest—as a political system over those many years, and give truth to that phrase, “Never again”.

I too thank my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham and Chislehurst (Clive Efford) for his excellent and assiduous work on the APPG. The right hon. Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) is right that it is a very different APPG, and my hon. Friend does a fantastic job with it. I also my hon. Friend for articulating so well the asks of the community; mine is a general plea, but it is keenly felt by my constituents, and I fully support all his asks and look forward to the Minister’s response.

Over the last 15 years in this Chamber, I have raised the cases of the Newport East families impacted by the contaminated blood scandal over 20 times. I really hope that we are closer to the point where I do not have to raise them again, as we now have the compensation scheme and the money, and I thank the Minister for that. We appreciate that he is doing a very difficult job—I want him to know that. I also pay tribute to all those who have brought us to this stage, especially the victims and the families who have campaigned absolutely tirelessly and provided us with the vital evidence over the years.

I pay particular tribute to Colin and Janet Smith and their family, who have lived with this nightmare since 1983 when their toddler son Colin was given infected blood sourced from a prison in Arkansas. I am going to remember Colin again in this Chamber now—he died aged just seven; it is really important that we remember today the people we are here for. The Smiths are some of the strongest and most dignified people I have ever met. It is an immense privilege to have them as my constituents—and I really mean that. For them, this fight has been about justice and has never been about the money, but the Smiths, like so many others—I understand that there are about 92 estates in Wales—have not been invited to apply for compensation yet, even though we have the scheme and the money to pay the claims. They registered their intent to claim and pre qualified for interim payments, but are still waiting to be invited. All these families just need to know what the hold up is. The authorities have done the checks and have the information—the system appears to be doubling up. It would be helpful to know why people cannot just apply and why they have to wait to be invited to.

We need to move much faster than we are now. The current pace of delivery is just adding to the stress that these people have already endured for decades. On behalf of the families, the Hepatitis Trust and the Haemophilia Society, I urge the Minister to look at what we can do to increase the speed of the scheme’s delivery and about people waiting to be invited. These people have fought long enough. Crucially, as my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham and Chislehurst said, it is important that we continue to listen to the community, and prioritise the elderly and the terminally ill. As the right hon. Member for East Hampshire said, the community are getting older, and it has now been more than two years since Sir Brian Langstaff delivered his recommendations and around 20 months since the Chancellor set out the £11.8 billion required to settle all the claims. Those affected want the chance to move on from this painful chapter, and the many bereaved parents want the chance to live their remaining years with a sense of closure after what, for them, has been more than 40 years of struggle.

These families deserve the closure before it is too late, and we have it in our gift to make that happen. Please can we increase the pace and bring this long injustice to an end? I support all the asks made by my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham and Chislehurst. My final plea to the Government is: please continue to listen to the community.

Like others before me, I pay tribute to the work of the hon. Member for Eltham and Chislehurst (Clive Efford). He is the driving force behind the all party parliamentary group, which has done so much to highlight this terrible tragedy.

I was struck by what my right hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) said about having been alerted to this as far back as 2010. In my case, it was not quite so far back; it was 2015, but that is still more than a decade ago. I spoke in this House about the case of my constituent Lesley, which illustrated how long it often took for victims of contaminated blood to discover that they indeed had been infected. I pointed out that in 1970, she and her future husband had been involved in a serious road traffic accident, and she had to receive no fewer than 44 pints of blood. For many years, she knew nothing about the fact that she had been infected, although over those years she had many visits to GPs and hospitals, with numerous symptoms of illness, and considerable pain and suffering. It was only in 2014 that she finally discovered that she had been infected with hepatitis C by NHS contaminated blood.

Another example of a constituent who is in regular contact with me and my office is Stephen. He came to see me in August 2023. He was diagnosed as haemophiliac as an eight year old in the late 1960s. He thinks that he was infected with hepatitis C in 1974, which persisted for nearly 15 years before it eventually cleared from his system. He says that although it did not inhibit his professional life too badly, it had a deep impact on his personal life. He was married in 1986, and he was constantly having to have testing for fear every time that he had to have a transfusion that he might be being infected. He was told in quite firm terms not to have children, and he said that he was often too scared to have treatment. Once he had quite a bad leg injury, which led to complications, and his fear of treatment led to him being effectively disabled for a period of time.

Stephen’s brother’s case was far worse, because he was one of about 400 chronic hepatitis C victims of this scandal. To this day, he can only effectively live on a day to day basis; he cannot plan because the complications of his infection mean that whether he will be able to do something will depend on how he is on the day in question.

In Portcullis House on Tuesday, we benefited from briefings from a number of organisations that are concerned with this scandal. I will briefly touch on a couple. One was a campaign about a condition of which I was previously unaware, called thalassaemia. This rare blood disorder requires sufferers to have a transfusion every three to four weeks—a blood transfusion every month. These people are at a very high risk of having been infected, and many of them were. These regular blood transfusions deposit more iron into the major organs, which, coupled with the hepatitis C virus with which they had been infected, maximises the prospect of their developing cirrhosis and liver cancer.

The drug interferon has been mentioned a couple of times already. I am old enough to remember when interferon was first regarded as a great breakthrough in the treatment of some cancers. Sadly, like so many medical interventions, it has side effects that can be harmful. Taken in combination with what these patients are also suffering from by way of infection and, in the case of thalassaemia sufferers, the build up of iron, the interferon used in their cases also has complicating adverse effects. That was a point impressed on me at the briefing by the representative of the Terrence Higgins Trust, who pointed to the additional negative impact of treatment with interferon, which was for a significant time the only option available for HIV positive patients.

I am indebted to the Haemophilia Society for briefing material that I hope will simply add to the excellent statement and laying of the groundwork in the opening speech so ably delivered by the hon. Member for Eltham and Chislehurst. The Haemophilia Society draws attention to one or two specific points that I would like to put before the House.

We all acknowledge that the infected blood community has fought valiantly for the truth for decades. We also accept that the Government are clearly committed to compensation following the inquiry. The debate now focuses on how to deliver that commitment and how to make sure that people are compensated without further delay and that the compensation is truly fair.

In this connection, I would like to make reference to a detailed opportunity I had virtually to participate in exchanges with senior people—in fact, the most senior people—at the Infected Blood Compensation Authority back in June last year. Again, that was at the initiative of the chairman of the APPG, the hon. Member for Eltham and Chislehurst. My participation was online, but I was able, as was he, to discuss all these matters with the interim chairman at the time, Sir Robert Francis; the chief executive, David Foley; and other key officials.

In particular, we were able to talk directly with members of IBCA’s cases team. I must say that I, for one, found them to be both compassionate and empathetic. I was very impressed with the calibre of people who are involved in this agency, and I am hopeful that if they are given the direction they need and the resources they require, they can succeed. I got the feeling that this is an organisation that really does want to help the people it has been set up to support, not an organisation that wants to be in any way obstructive. I hope everything can be done to encourage it. I know that it is operating in uncharted waters with a tragedy of this magnitude, but I hope it can succeed in overcoming the obstacles that have been causing the delays.

More than two years have passed since the Government accepted the need for compensation, but the majority of eligible people are still waiting to begin their claims. That includes infected people not previously on a support scheme and affected people—namely, the partners and family members of those who are sadly no longer with us. We have heard concern from the community that progress has slowed while IBCA works out how to grapple with these categories of claims in a process that it calls test and learn.

Every month of delay matters, because many infected and affected people are elderly or seriously ill. We would like to know from the Minister his latest assessment of the timescale by which IBCA will compensate each of the categories of claimant. IBCA’s latest figures show that just 30 affected people have been paid compensation so far. Over 14,000 affected people are waiting to start their claim. At what point does the Minister expect IBCA to truly start making a dent in those very large numbers? In particular, we would like to know what specific steps are being taken to accelerate compensation payments over the next 12 months.

Finally, there is an issue to do with claims that relate to the estates of those who died before the scheme commenced. Those who survived until the scheme commencement are rightly entitled to financial loss compensation from the date of their infection right up to the national age of healthy life expectancy that they should have had. In contrast, those who died before the scheme started have their financial loss calculated only from the date of their infection until the date of their death, which may have been a lot earlier than the normal expectation of a term of life that would have been their lot had this catastrophe not befallen them.

There can be no doubt that this creates a stark and unjust two tier system. Those who died earlier will often have suffered the same or worse than those who died later, and the financial loss to their estate is clear, yet the Government’s position seems to be that those killed by their infections the soonest deserve less compensation and recognition than those who survived for longer. In many cases, this amounts to a very substantial reduction in compensation—potentially decades of lost earnings. Bereaved families should not receive lesser justice because their loved one died before the scheme was established. The result is that timing, not harm, is determining value, meaning that compensation depends on whether someone survived long enough to see the scheme introduced. As I said, this is about avoiding a two tier compensation system.

In conclusion, I would like the Minister to explain how it can be in accordance with natural justice for those who died earlier due to their infection to receive less compensation than those who died later from a similar infection. Will the Government commit to reviewing their position on estate claims, to ensure families are not disadvantaged because their relative died earlier?

We have got to boil this down very, very simply. This has been described as the biggest tragedy the NHS has ever seen. As a result, lots of people have sadly passed on, and people are still dying on a frequent basis at a time when there are still issues in paying their compensation. People are dying as a result of contaminated blood as we sit here—they are dying on a regular basis.

I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Paymaster General, who I think has done a marvellous job. But I have made the point time and again, along with my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham and Chislehurst (Clive Efford)—I think I have spoken in 10 debates in the Commons on this—about the issues with this scheme. The Minister has afforded as many meetings as have been required—he is totally dedicated to the scheme—but the reality is that it is failing the people who are still awaiting compensation. That is the reality, despite everybody’s best efforts and despite the fact that IBCA is doing a really good job, as the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis) said. I have been to IBCA and had a look at how it operates. Regardless of all the Sirs, the chairman and the chief executive, it is the staff who are so dedicated and compassionate. As it is in my area, I am not too surprised that that is the case.

I pay tribute to the victims, the families, the friends, the supporters and the campaigners because without their persistence and commitment I am not sure where we would be. I am saddened that the latest iteration of the Government’s infected blood compensation scheme still falls short of what the victims and their families have been expecting. We have to question why might that be—why is this the case?

The Government have had the chairman of the inquiry into this scandal, Sir Brian Langstaff, intervene to provide guidance in November 2024 and they have had months of further consultations, but still the victims and their families feel that they and their representatives have not been listened to properly. They still find that they face unacceptable provisions in the scheme, as has been explained by a number of hon. Members already, regarding matters such as adequate compensation for all classes of relatives of deceased victims, for the suffering stemming from treatments and for the periods of financial losses experienced. There are still huge difficulties with this scheme. They are feeling like they might be let down by this Government. I share their frustrations, as hon. Members can hear from the tone of my contribution today. Again I thank the Paymaster General for the fact that the Labour Government allocated £11 billion to compensate the victims, but the reality is that that compensation needs to get to those who justly deserve it.

In November 2024, I said in this House: “The infected and contaminated blood scandal is just one of far too many injustices in the UK in recent decades, in which powerful people have treated institutional reputations, career prospects and, in a number of cases, profits as being more important than working class lives. Hillsborough, Orgreave, the postal service Horizon scandal and Grenfell all share this shameful characteristic: each one sent out a message that ordinary working class lives do not matter. The Minister can take this opportunity to show that this Labour Government think that the lives of ordinary people matter by ensuring that the victims of contaminated blood products receive just and meaningful compensation without any further unconscionable delay.”—[Official Report, 19 November 2024; Vol. 757, c. 208.] Many of the points have already been raised, but I am compelled to raise a number of the outstanding issues. The excellent work and the determination of the Paymaster General means that we are in the position that we are in today, with lots of progress made, and I thank him for his engagement with the infected blood community. There are a few points that I would like to raise. I want to talk about the changes many believe are still needed to the compensation scheme, about the pace of compensation and about the impact the compensation scheme is having.

Fundamental injustices clearly remain in the compensation scheme that I hope can still be addressed. Interferon treatment is still not properly recognised under the latest proposals. For example, people treated with interferon are excluded from the additional injury award if they later developed more severe conditions, like cirrhosis. That is supposed to reflect the fact that they are already compensated for a higher level of injury, but the harm caused by interferon treatment is distinct and additional to the harm caused by infection of any severity. It should be acknowledged in its own right. Will the Paymaster General look again at extending the additional injury award to all those who underwent interferon treatment, regardless of other conditions?

On estate claims, we are going to see families ending up with very different amounts of compensation depending on when their loved one died. In practice, that means that those who died earlier can end up worse off, which is ludicrous and perverse. It cannot be right that families receive less just because their loved one died before the scheme was up and running.

I am going to try to make my intervention without crying. I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on his impassioned speech. I am a member of the Public Accounts Committee, and this subject came before us a couple of weeks ago when we examined the impact of the infected blood scandal as part of a much wider report on Government compensation schemes. These cases are always marked by a profound injustice, but nowhere is that clearer than in relation to the infected blood scandal. Each week people die before receiving the compensation they are promised, and I know that the hon. Gentleman will agree that that is a moral stain upon our country.

I am sure that hon. Members from across the House would agree with the hon. Lady’s sentiments.

On the estate claims, what has just been explained cannot be right, as the right hon. Member—sorry, I am promoting the hon. Gentleman—[Interruption.] Sorry! The right hon. Member for New Forest East set that out. Will the Minister be able to announce a change of approach for the families who have already suffered so much, so that they are not penalised because of the date when their relative died?

Carer’s contributions still are not properly recognised in the way they should be. Many family members provided unpaid care for many years, putting their lives and careers on hold, as has already been mentioned. This is especially stark for children and young people who took on caring responsibilities that went far beyond what would normally be expected, often at real cost to their education, wellbeing and future prospects. The supplementary compensation route should be amended to recognise both the financial and personal losses of carers, as well as recognising the additional impact caring duties have placed on children.

To his credit, the Paymaster General has engaged with the community, parliamentarians and advocates. I know he will listen closely today, and I hope that there may be further changes before the next regulations are introduced. I hope that the latest proposals are not the last word and that we will ultimately have a scheme that is free from the clear inequities that I have already described.

The other top priority now must be for compensation to be delivered faster. We need to focus on delivery and accountability. Too many people are still waiting, and the system is not moving fast enough. Many people are wondering how long it will take for their cases to be considered if this pace remains the same. The scheme made some initial progress, but it now feels as if it has slighted stalled.

Most of the progress IBCA has made is among the most straightforward category of claims—living infected people who are already on a support scheme. We also need to see faster progress across all remaining categories of claims, including infected people who were never previously compensated, affected people and estate claims. A lot of those cases should be relatively straightforward, for example with many estate claims where probate is already in place and interim payments have been made. There is strong argument for prioritising those so families can get closure sooner. There is also a growing concern that IBCA’s test and learn approach is not working and is not delivering speed or fairness. Would it not be in most people’s best interests to deal with these straightforward cases rapidly so that thousands of people get closure and can move on with their lives?

The haemophilia centres do fantastic work, but ongoing operational problems in the regulations are causing avoidable delays and placing additional burdens on them. Clinicians and haemophilia centres are under real pressure as a result. Many are being asked for historical records that no longer exist, and the administrative burden of finding evidence and responding to IBCA is falling on already stretched NHS teams. There are cases where centre staff, whose primary focus should be on the treatment and care of people with bleeding disorders, are working every weekend to keep on top of compensation administration.

It is important to note that haemophilia care is already facing challenges. The most recent peer review found major gaps, with 93% of haemophilia centres staffed below the target standard. Compensation claim admin should be properly resourced and funded through IBCA, rather than relying on haemophilia clinicians to pick up the slack. I hope that will be accepted by the Paymaster General.

Finally, will the Paymaster General clarify a point about regulation 12, regarding the switching of payments? Sean Cavens, a great campaigner who has suffered greatly as a result of this tragedy, thought it was possible to switch his payments. He is asking that if an individual is on yearly support payments, which were previously guaranteed for life, they can switch it to take a lump sum payment.

To clarify, Sean believed there would be an appropriate lump sum payment. However, he is 45 years of age. If he commuted his support payments to a lump sum payment, it would represent only four years of support payments. When was that changed? Surely it cannot be right that if somebody wants to transfer their support payments, basically forget about the situation and move on, they are not allowed more than four years of support payments as a lump sum.

I call Mims Davies.

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Blyth and Ashington (Ian Lavery). Where to start? Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for the opportunity to contribute on behalf of my constituents. I congratulate the hon. Member for Eltham and Chislehurst (Clive Efford) on securing and opening this debate and on all his sterling work.

Like you, Madam Deputy Speaker, I have constituents who stick in my mind and who I want to stand up for. My constituent Robert Ellinor has given me a huge understanding of the terrible injustice in this particular area, just as the Webster family has done in your own constituency. I thank Robert, who is from East Grinstead and who I have known for some time. He has done sterling activity and parliamentary engagement on this subject, which affects him, and with the all party parliamentary group on haemophilia and contaminated blood.

I am keen to raise points on behalf of Josie, from Turners Hill, and her father, Andrew Quin. Much of what I will say today will be her words, on behalf of her father. It reflects much of what my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis) has said, and it also reflects engagement that I have had with the Cabinet Office on behalf of Josie and her father.

Josie writes: “I am writing to you as my family is one of the first 15 families to be asked to begin our compensation claim for the estate of an infected blood victim, this being my dad, Andrew Quin who passed away in May 2020.

We are now a few weeks into the claim process and frustratingly and sadly I feel my dad is being completely failed by the core route and I’m doubtful at this point that the proposed supplementary route is going to be any different, for the following reasons: CORE ROUTE: My father was infected with Hepatitis C and developed cirrhosis of the liver, we believe around 2017, which puts him in the severity level 3 of the core route.

However, in 2018 my father underwent a 12 week course of Harvoni Hep C treatment… after completion of the 12 week course, it not only failed but at the very same time, my father was also told he had developed Mantle Cell Lymphoma, which could have been a side effect of the Harvoni treatment or could have simply been caused by the Hep C.

My father was told he was too ill to undergo full chemo, due to his liver cirrhosis and other ailments caused by the Hep C, and so he did not have the required 2 rounds of chemo needed to qualify for severity level 4.

My father died on 16th May 2020 from Hep C liver cirrhosis and lymphoma.

What could possibly be more severe than the above?

To summarise, my father died because he was infected with Hep C, which caused liver cirrhosis and gave him lymphoma, ‘for which he was too ill to receive the required 2 rounds of chemo’ and consequently he died!

Yet my father does not qualify for the highest severity level 4?”

That is the highest severity level. Josie continues: “Ironically, had my father’s health not been as severely impacted by the Hep C, he would have been well enough to have had the required 2 rounds of chemo, in order for him to qualify for severity level 4 of the compensation scheme, and may have even still been with us today!

I believe my father has been discriminated against for being ‘too ill to receive 2 rounds of chemo’, which I find utterly disgraceful!

SUPPLEMENTARY ROUTE: The supplementary route, requires victims to have had at least 12 weeks’ treatment of Interferon, in order for them to be considered for the next severity level, this being a level 3 or a new level between 2 and 3. I strongly object to this as some victims, including my father, had such severe side effects, such as chronic depression and a mild heart attack, etc, that they were un able to sustain 12 weeks of Interferon. Not that this would even benefit my father’s claim as he is already in severity level 3 due to him developing cirrhosis—i.e. the supplementary route is no help to my father either.

To summarise, once again, I believe victims who were too ill to sustain 12 weeks of interferon treatment are being discriminated against.

I do not believe anything could be more severe than the death of an infected blood victim—‘a death which was caused by their infection!’

At present neither the core route nor the supplementary route addresses this injustice.

I would sincerely appreciate your help and support in this matter—help to identify and rectify this injustice—in order to bring about the rightful justice the infected blood victims deserve.

As the family of an infected blood victim, we desperately want to put all the hurt and pain behind us, but we cannot do that if we are still discriminated against and unfairly treated.”

This week, Josie wrote to me again. She was very keen that I speak in this debate, and I am very grateful to her. She wrote: “The letter you forwarded me from the Minister for the cabinet office stated that infected blood victims would not be discriminated against for not being well enough to receive treatment, however, IBCA will not recognise this despite my making them aware of what the Minister for the cabinet office stated in their letter.

IBCA have stated that in order for them to recognise this statement and not discriminate against victims who were not well enough to have treatment, this statement made by the Minister for the cabinet office would have to be made law.”

Josie urged me to raise this issue today in Parliament, on behalf of “all the victims who were not well enough to receive treatment, because as it stands, victims who were not well enough to receive treatment and have died as a result of their infections will receive less compensation than those victims who were well enough to receive treatment and survived. I’m sure you will agree that this is an injustice and needs to be addressed”

today. Those are Josie’s words. She and families like hers must get justice and proper compensation, and must feel that the process works for them and reflects the impact on them and their loved ones. We know that all of this is so wrong; we must make it right. I hope that the Paymaster General can give Josie and many families like hers the comfort they deserve.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham and Chislehurst (Clive Efford) for his excellent work, and for securing another debate on this issue—an opportunity for us to speak up for our constituents and express our continued frustration at the pace and disparities of the roll out of the compensation scheme. I pay a huge tribute to all those who have campaigned tirelessly for so many long years, and to my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North and Cottingham (Dame Diana Johnson) for her sterling work.

Before I turn to concerns about the scheme, I want to take a moment to remind us of what an appalling scandal the infected blood scandal has been. It has absolutely ruined lives and destroyed families. It is appalling enough that people were infected in the first place, leaving them with lifelong health problems, and having a devastating impact on them and their families—but of course, that was compounded by the fact that they, and their families, were not told the truth; by the continued use of products after their risks had become known; by medical records going missing; by cover ups, obfuscation and the deliberate withholding of information; by the stigma that surrounded HIV; by the limited treatments available; and by the endless delays in getting to where we are today. Hopes were raised, only to be dashed again. There was anticipation, expectation, and then disappointment. People have been waiting years and years for compensation. Many of the infected and affected have passed away before seeing any redress, but many are still waiting, wondering if they will get redress in their lifetime.

I turn to some specific issues and cases. I will mention three of my constituents, but we only get a tiny glimpse into their life; we can never know the anguish that they and their families have endured, the obstacles they have encountered, the continual battles they have had to fight just to live their life, or the injustice, anger and despair that they have felt. So often, we have felt inadequate as MPs; there was so little that we could do. Like them, we were waiting.

The mother of one of my constituents is 98 years old. She was only 52 when her son was infected; she has had to see him suffer, and she has cared for him. It has been 46 years, and she still has not received any redress or compensation. Let us remind ourselves of the trauma that mothers like her have lived through, seeing their children suffer and looking after them. I had understood that the older members of the affected community were to be prioritised, but just how old do you have to be? Is 98 not old enough to be a priority? Of course, any redress or compensation is totally inadequate in the light of what has happened, and can never make up for what the infected and their families have been through, but my constituent’s mother at least deserves recognition in her lifetime. They have still had no redress and no recognition, and the worry is that they may not even live to see it. I appreciate the arguments about getting the scheme right and learning the lessons from small numbers, but now really is the time to ramp up and speed up the roll out of the compensation.

Another of my constituents was infected very young. Again, we can never know the anguish he and his family suffered, but because of his age, there was never any proper accounting for his earning potential—any recognition of what he would have achieved if his childhood had not been dominated and ruined by the very serious consequences of his infection. He quite rightly feels that it has all been too little, too late, and that the payments do not reflect what he has been through. Again, his family—his mother, his sister and his children—are still waiting, and no one is getting any younger. His case, as the person infected, is all documented, so surely it should not be difficult to deal with the family members who have been affected as a result of his being infected.

Then there is the family of Damian Lewis, who was infected with HIV in 1983 as the result of bone marrow treatment in a London hospital, and who subsequently developed AIDS and died in 1995, when he was just 19 years old. To compound matters, this was another case in which the parents, Brian and Joan, were not told straightaway what had really happened, and only found out the truth later. The impact of Damian’s infection on him and the family was devastating; his surviving twin brother tells how his parents never got over it. They had their lives destroyed by losing Damian. His mother Joan passed away in 2021—all those long years after Damian was infected—having seen only the first three years of the inquiry. She sacrificed her career as a nursing midwifery manager to look after him in his final years. Even after so many years, Damian’s family have never had redress or an apology. They never saw matters resolved, and as Joan passed away in 2021, her estate will never be eligible for any compensation, because claims can be made by estates only when the affected person dies between 20 May 2024 and 30 May 2031. That just seems so unfair, unjustifiable and morally wrong, particularly as there have been so many delays. Even now, the pace at which the affected are being dealt with is glacial.

Like so many others, Damian’s surviving twin is shocked at the disparity between the living infected and the infected who have passed away, who never received answers or redress. There are also disparities in the ways that the various family members are treated; there are substantial differences in the treatment of partners, parents, children and siblings, despite family members experiencing the same events and witnessing the same injury, suffering and injustice. He would like answers on these issues. Of course, while delays continue, those still waiting for payments see the worth of their entitlement eroded by inflation, and are missing out on the opportunity to earn interest on their money.

I turn to the current situation. We all appreciate that my right hon. Friend the Minister has worked hard on this issue, and has secured £11 billion in funding for the scheme. He is the latest in a long line of Ministers dealing with this, and many of the delays happened before he was appointed, but nevertheless, he is the one who now has the power to expedite matters. The cry from everyone is: can we please speed up the process of payments? Can we avoid all the duplication, going back over records, and imposing unnecessary work on clinical staff? Some of the dates set out by the Infected Blood Compensation Authority feel light years away. It is not just that those affected are missing out financially; there is the psychological trauma of yet more delays, and the fact that they still cannot get closure. The infected, too, do not want to be forever simply getting the payments under their current scheme. They want the option of a lump sum—but above all, they want closure.

The affected also want proper redress and recognition of all that they have been through. Sir Brian Langstaff repeatedly made it clear that the affected should be able to make an application themselves, and should not have to wait to be invited to do so. Many of those involved have the documentation ready, and so much time, effort and cost could be saved by allowing them to make an application. Haemophilia Wales has assessed that it would be far simpler, and would save the Cabinet Office a lot of work, if those wishing to claim could put in their forms and get the necessary evidence together with the help of their lawyers, many of whom have been involved for many years. Instead, I understand that very well meaning caseworkers who are new to the issues are having to ask for additional copies of documents, and are giving clinicians additional work. They are duplicating what has already been done, when many of those who have been waiting for compensation for many, many years have all that information ready. Will the Minister look seriously at this suggestion?

I understand that the legislation will include a supplementary route for those affected, which will give a 50% uplift. That recognises the unique and lasting impact on children and siblings affected while under the age of 18, bereaved parents whose infected child died under the age of 18, and bereaved partners. Can the Minister give us a timescale for that?

To conclude, what will the Minister do to speed up the roll out of the payments to all those infected and affected? None of us should rest until every person infected or affected receives their entitlement.

I whole- heartedly congratulate the hon. Member for Eltham and Chislehurst (Clive Efford) on the customarily forthright and direct way in which he opened the debate. I agree with all the points he made; he would expect that of me, as his loyal deputy on the all party parliamentary group. It is great that we have heard so many solid and significant contributions today.

Once we are a couple of hours into a debate, we start to get a feeling for how it is going, the emerging themes and the sense of direction. We all acknowledge and appreciate the huge progress that has been made. When I started out on this campaign more than 20 years ago, I would never have believed that we could get to this point, at which payments are being made to those impacted and those affected.

The Minister is starting to hear that the same issues are emerging. Constituents are experiencing the same complications and difficulties, and the same representations are being made. I will not touch on those, because so many have been raised, but I might just reinforce some of the points made. The Minister is beginning to hear a chorus of things that need to be addressed—and addressed they must be. We are on the cusp of having something of which we can be proud—of this House having addressed one of the biggest scandals that we have ever experienced in parliamentary life. We took control of it; we handled it; we got a report and an inquiry; and we got billions of pounds of compensation. We have the opportunity to pay that compensation right now, and I hope that the Government grab it.

I pay tribute to IBCA for the work that it has done. It is amazing that we have put together the infrastructure and a support scheme as quickly as we have. IBCA has done remarkable work in such a short time. It is starting to deliver, and I think we are all immensely pleased and proud that this House has collectively been able to construct it, and to make sure that it is functional and works. I have visited IBCA on a couple of occasions, and I have met the staff and discussed many of these issues with them. I recognise their sheer dedication to the work that they are pursuing, in the best interests of everybody whom they serve; and their commitment, as an arm’s length body.

It is amazing that we have got here, but it was not always like this. I remember what happened back in the early 2000s. I am looking at the chair of the APPG, my friend the hon. Member for Eltham and Chislehurst, and he will remember this, too. We were fobbed off, disregarded and lied to when we took up the cases of our constituents. They presented to us at our various surgeries with these unexplained difficulties and complications. They would say, “How did I get HIV?”, or “I’ve got hepatitis. I do not know how on earth this happened.” We would write to successive Ministers in the Department of Health, making representations, and asking for assistance or acknowledgement, only to be told that they were not interested, and that there was nothing to see here. They would say, “Move along. We are not prepared to take this up. Believe me, we are doing everything in our power, and there’s really nothing to acknowledge.” For years, we were fobbed off and disregarded, and for years, we fought on.

Over the years, I have got to know the campaigners. They came together with a common purpose, determined to get to the heart of the issue and to support each other. We call them the community, and we could not find a better community than the campaigners who have led this, been at the forefront, and refused to accept “No”. They are people with different lives from different backgrounds, but they all carry the burden of what happened to them. All of them are still here, fighting the good fight, determined to get justice for the whole community, and that whole community is the key thing today.

I was the APPG chair for all those years, and the community has some of the finest people I have ever encountered. I have seen lots of campaigns in this House, and I have seen how people approach these issues, how they take them forward, how they engage and how they access their Members of Parliament to make sure that things are done. It is the most fantastic campaign we have ever had. Unfortunately, I could not make the ceremony at St Paul’s, as I was recovering from an illness, but I know from friends, colleagues and campaigners who were there the importance to them of that ceremony, where they were recognised as a community for their work.

There have been high points, and we should acknowledge that. Few of us would have expected Theresa May to have made the announcement back in 2017 that there was to be a full inquiry. A lot of us were surprised that she chose Sir Brian Langstaff to lead it, and lead it he did. Like many people in this debate, I listened to lots of the evidence in the inquiry sessions, and I cheered along with the community when the report was produced. I was in this House when the report was launched, and the Government took full responsibility and said that there would be a full repayment scheme and that people would get what they should. Those were great days, met with real enthusiasm and euphoria by those who have campaigned.

There have been good days, but we have to address the biggest issue. It has been mentioned on several occasions, so I will not labour the point, but people have been waiting decades. Even at this point, the majority of these people are still waiting just to start their claim. That is not to receive compensation—we might think that we would be at that stage now—but just to get into the system. Even at this stage, only a relatively small number have been paid. People have mentioned that these are real people—people who are unwell and who know that time is not on their side. I do not know which Member mentioned it, but people are dying weekly because they are not having their situation attended to and their payments made.

Families still have no clarity about when their case will move forward. That is made worse by what is being asked of them. I have been surprised—I have listened carefully to colleagues who have raised this—that we see people being asked for evidence that in many cases simply does not exist. They have been asked for records from decades ago, such as proof of cohabitation between parents and children in the 1980s. Those things were probably never properly recorded in the first place, and if they had been, it may have been lost over time. That means that so many people are being delayed or sometimes shut out completely because they cannot meet requirements that are not realistic. In some cases, people run into a purely arbitrary administrative date, rather than when harm was actually suffered. Members have mentioned the bereaved families in whose cases support can stop at the point of death rather than reflecting the full impact of what has been lost.

Another theme that has developed—I think it was the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis) who raised this in particular—is the growing concern about those with hepatitis C who were treated with interferon. That has to be addressed. Of all the issues that have started to emerge, that is the one that the community in general wants us to press as strongly and as directly as we can with the Minister. I hope that we get some satisfaction.

I am grateful that my hon. Friend has reiterated that point, and I will do likewise. Many of my constituents who have been affected and infected by this scandal have asked me to emphasise the point that even the updated scheme does not properly recognise the long term consequences of interferon treatment.

Interferon was introduced as almost like a chemotherapy drug back in the day, and some of its impacts and consequences have been similar to the side effects and impacts of chemotherapy. Physically and mentally, the effects are often severe and long lasting. When the Minister is on his feet, perhaps he can explain a little more about what he intends to do with this group and this community. The Government have introduced a new level 2B to recognise some of these harms, and my understanding is that it provides a temporary uplift, but it seems to apply only in certain circumstances. What it does not seem to do—I have read about it carefully—is reflect the long term reality for many. The argument appears to be that the higher category covers just about everything else when it comes to interferon treatment for hepatitis C, and that levels 3 and 4 already take interferon into account. My colleagues in Haemophilia Scotland asked for the evidence showing how that was factored in, and none was provided, so can the Minister tell us a more about that evidence in relation to levels 3 and 4?

A similar set of concerns relate to unethical research, as we have heard. The Government have expanded eligibility and increased awards. That is welcome in principle, because it means that people are recognised without having to jump over additional evidential hurdles, but there is still a lack of clarity as to whether the level of award properly reflects what actually happened to people. The issue seems to be the arbitrary 1985 cut off date. Perhaps the Minister can provide clarity. Officials say that there is no evidence of unethical research beyond that point, but the inquiry itself referred to evidence beyond that date, and even up to the 1990s, of children being recruited without proper information or consent. Why did the Government arrive at 1985 as a cut off date for eligibility for unethical research awards, given that there is evidence that unethical trials and research continued well into the 1990s?

There are also ongoing concerns about estate claims, because the structure of the payments could disadvantage those who died earlier, and about unpaid care over the years. That, again, has been reflected by several hon. Members.

A few people referred to some of the different schemes around the devolved nations. I am particularly proud of what we did in the Scottish Parliament, and the Minister will be aware of the bespoke schemes across the whole United Kingdom, not just in Scotland. The one that particularly worked in Scotland—I want the Minister’s response regarding what has happened to it—is the special category mechanism known as the severely affected category. This was open to people who had significant problems and issues; they could apply, and were given an increased payout and support. That has since been subsumed under the general supplementary scheme; that scheme is welcome, but this is disadvantageous compared with the superior scheme in Scotland. Those who were initially on that superior scheme have been kept on it, but those who wished to apply for it have to go through bigger hoops and hurdles to get there. We need to know that scheme will still be available and that it will be easier for people to apply to it, because we were particularly pleased about the way it operated in Scotland.

Let me turn finally to accountability. Throughout the decades, the Government repeatedly dismissed those asking questions and trying to achieve justice. The final report acknowledged that the infected and the affected were fed lies and lines, and that serious concerns were dismissed outright. We have to address this. We cannot leave it. We have to look at how we get round some of the things that were encountered. I remember the letters I got from various Government Ministers: “The Government do not accept that any wrongful practices were employed and do not consider that a public inquiry is justified.” I got that for years, every time I raised these issues on behalf of a constituent.

I listened carefully to the infected blood inquiry. The evidence I found most compelling was from a certain Andy Burnham, who was Health Minister at one point during that period—I believe he is in the news today for some other reason, not particularly related to this. I remember Andy Burnham candidly telling the inquiry that he now knew that the lines he had been given by senior officials in the civil service were wrong, and that he had sent lies to me and other Members who raised these issues in Parliament. That is what he said, in effect, in evidence to the inquiry. That is simply unacceptable.

The current Ministers are probably much better than their predecessors, and will look carefully at what comes across their desks, but this must not be allowed to happen again. That is why we need a statutory duty of candour on all public officials, including civil servants and senior civil servants. More than that, we need an independent compensation body to oversee all Government compensation schemes. Such a body would retain expertise and experience, would save time and money when schemes are set up, and would be capable of ramping up and down according to need. The Hillsborough law must be enacted without delay, introducing a duty of candour for everybody involved in public life. A national oversight mechanism should be established to monitor and scrutinise the implementation of recommendations from all public inquiries and hold the Government to account.

After all this, it is hard to believe that the first meeting I had about the issue was back in about 2004, with a lovely lady from Blairgowrie, in my old constituency. She came to see me in what could only be described as a hell of a state; she could not account for why she had HIV following a blood transfusion after a medical emergency. It was because of her that I started to get involved in all this, tried to find answers and tried to ensure that campaigners got justice. The name of that lady was Tricia Titheridge. After contracting HIV, she died in 2013, without seeing the huge progress that we have made. It is because of people like Tricia that we are all still here—still fighting to ensure that everybody is included and that there is a scheme that works for all our constituents. Looking at the Minister and knowing the qualities that he will bring to this job, I am pretty certain that he is going to be the man who delivers this for everybody, meets our concerns and looks at the difficulties we have presented today.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham and Chislehurst (Clive Efford), my constituency neighbour, for securing the debate and speaking with such clarity, and so powerfully, in his opening address. I was contacted by my constituent Susan and her two daughters, including Louise, who I welcome to the Gallery today; they asked me to take part in this debate. I pay tribute to them for their fight and for bravely sharing their story with me. I will come to that story in a moment.

As has been said, the infected blood scandal is widely recognised as the worst treatment disaster in the history of the NHS. More than 25,000 people were infected with hepatitis C and, particularly tragically, more than 380 children were infected with HIV. I vividly remember meeting some of those impacted at an event with the phenomenal and unrelenting Hillsborough law coalition. A Hillsborough law is an important part of this debate, because this situation went from a tragedy to a scandal because of the way that patients and families were treated.

As I have said previously, all the campaigners and campaigns supporting the Hillsborough law are distinct. I got involved in the campaign for the Hillsborough law because I am a relative of Hugh Mullan, who was one of the victims of the Ballymurphy massacre, which was one of the worst atrocities of the troubles. He was shot in the abdomen and again in the back as he lay on the ground, giving the last rites to someone. I have watched my dad’s family fight for 50 years for truth and justice to be put on the record, and to be told that he was entirely innocent.

I have got to know many of the other campaigns involved: Margaret Aspinall and the Hillsborough families, the Grenfell families, those related to the Post Office Horizon campaign, and many others who are part of this coalition. Although they are distinct and come from different contexts, places and times, there are often many similarities in what happens to them. First, victims are dismissed, information is withheld from them and they are sometimes smeared. Secondly, the authorities close ranks, shutting off routes to justice—we have heard many of those stories from Members across the House. Thirdly, victims face a legal system in which the scales of justice are stacked in favour of the state. Justice for one of those campaigns requires justice for all. The Hillsborough law must be passed in full if we are to deliver that.

I echo the comments made by hon. Members across the House about learning from these injustices—we need to stop trying to recreate the wheel. We must learn from the processes around these scandals and the inquiries that take place; bringing that together with the Hillsborough law is a really important step.

I turn to my constituent Susan and her husband George. Let me tell the House what happened to George. George suffered from severe haemophilia A and type 1 diabetes, and died suddenly on 26 April 1978 at the age of just 33. It was only 41 years later, when the family were able to obtain his medical records in 2019 on hearing about the infected blood inquiry being set up, that they discovered he had been given factor VIII products for various operations at St Thomas’ hospital from 1976 onwards, including a product called Hemofil in January 1978. The records also show that he was regularly tested for hepatitis B antigens and that the test results were negative until October 1976—just six months after he was first treated with factor VIII.

George died in 1978 before hepatitis C had even been identified—no tests were available. The inquiry concluded, though, that essentially any haemophiliac given blood products in the 1970s would have been infected with hepatitis C. Susan, his wife, gave evidence to the infected blood inquiry in March 2020 with assistance and contributions from her daughters. They expressed their belief that infected blood products may have contributed to George’s death, in particular through his ability to respond to insulin for his diabetes.

Susan has just been informed by IBCA that it is ready to begin her claim. That is really positive, welcome news, especially as she is 80 and not in the best of health. Many hon. Members have mentioned that time is not on the side of victims and families and that an expedient process is really important. Susan has been told that she will be one of the first people to make a deceased infected person claim, and that her experience will help to improve the service for people who claim in the future.

However, Susan’s daughters and doubtless thousands of others affected by the scandal would like more information on when the further claims will be processed. They fully understand that those who are elderly or ill take priority and that IBCA can bring only small numbers of affected people into the scheme for now, but they would hugely value a more detailed timeline for when affected people’s claims will be addressed, even if that means distinguishing between months and years. I have also heard from other victims and victims’ families about the waiting. As Sir Brian Langstaff, the inquiry’s chair, stated in his address at the recent infected blood memorial service, people need greater transparency. I would welcome the Minister’s response to that.

Susan’s husband George was given products that the Government knew were not safe. His family were never made aware at any time that that was happening, nor that he was being tested for hepatitis. Reading about George’s experience and that of his family, and listening to the contributions made by hon. Members across the House, brings genuine anger. The state must ensure now that it does not fail victims and families again and that we make quick progress on this.

Susan had to wait over 40 years to find out the truth about her husband’s death, but she and thousands of others have still not been given closure. As the Haemophilia Society has laid out, first, psychological harm must be fairly and compassionately recognised. Secondly, the scheme must ensure that compensation to estates reflects the harm and loss suffered and removes the clear injustice of penalising those who died earlier. Thirdly, compensation must begin to be paid faster. Beyond that, as George’s daughter Louise, who is sat in the Gallery, said: “A compensation payment is hugely significant not just for its monetary value, but as an acknowledgement that an injustice has been done, too”.

We talk about compensation, which is one component of redress. I have just spent the past year on Philomena’s law—I am proud to have brought it in—which has delivered justice for victims and survivors of Ireland’s cruel mother and baby homes, 13,000 of whom live in Britain today. I have met countless survivors, and what they say is that nothing can undo the wrongs done to them, but compensation is one important component of redress. The House will not deliver closure for those families until it is paid. A swift resolution to the compensation issue would help many like Susan to find some kind of ending to a very difficult process. The importance of acknowledgement of injustice and wrongdoing is a sentiment I hear echoed across much of the Hillsborough law coalition.

Time and again, we have seen the state engaged in David versus Goliath battles in which the state, flanked by an army of lawyers, takes on families who have scraped together enough for a single barrister. The state closes ranks and opportunities for justice are snuffed out. Even when there are admissions of guilt and wrongdoing, such as with the infected blood scandal, too often we see hesitation to implement the recommendations of public inquiries. As the Haemophilia Society also says, the Hillsborough law must be enacted in full, introducing a duty of candour for public officials to ensure that such scandals can never happen again. The Hillsborough law will also introduce a national oversight mechanism so that Governments are held to account in implementing the recommendations of public inquiries like that into infected blood.

We must deliver justice for those impacted by the infected blood scandal—we know that, for many, we do not have long to do so. We must also do all that we can to ensure that no scandal like what happened to George and his family can happen again. I have faith that the Government want to do that. I thank again my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham and Chislehurst for securing the debate. While I urge the Government as a whole to go faster, I thank the Minister personally for all the tireless work he does on this issue.

We find ourselves at a critical juncture in time as we approach the laying of the final amendments to the scheme in the fourth set of regulations. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham and Chislehurst (Clive Efford) for securing the debate and all the work that he and the all party parliamentary group on haemophilia and contaminated blood have done. I also pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North and Cottingham (Dame Diana Johnson) who ably led the APPG previously for her years of tireless campaigning and to the Minister for the countless hours he has spent working on this issue and his willingness to engage with me and other hon. Members every time we speak to him.

The infected blood scandal has rightly been described by the chair of the infected blood inquiry Sir Brian Langstaff as the worst treatment disaster in the history of our national health service. Between the 1970s and the early 1990s, tens of thousands of people were knowingly exposed to unacceptable risks and infected with HIV, hepatitis B and hepatitis C. More than 30,000 patients received contaminated blood or clotting products, many of which were sourced from high risk paid donors in the US, including prisoners and drug addicts. The result was catastrophic, claiming at least 2,900 lives. In some particularly horrifying cases, children as young as two were used as guinea pigs in clinical trials without the knowledge or consent of their parents. Doctors, the blood services and successive Governments did not put patient safety first. Many of those affected have had to live with the consequences of those failures for decades.

One such person is my constituent John, who I know will be watching the debate. Like many hepatitis C patients, John was initially unaware of his illness. Once he became symptomatic, he spent 40 years desperately trying to figure out what was causing myriad inexplicable symptoms. The impact that that search for answers has had on every aspect of his life cannot be overstated. It was only after a chance conversation several years ago when a doctor offhandedly asked if he had ever received a blood transfusion that the truth came to light.

John’s story is tragically mirrored in thousands of households across the country. The survivors and bereaved families have battled for justice for too long, but in May 2024 hope was brought to many of those homes when Sir Brian Langstaff delivered his landmark report. The previous Government committed to providing compensation to those infected and affected by this catastrophe, and this Government, on its election six weeks later, rightly set aside nearly £13 billion for compensation and rapidly launched a compensation scheme.

Yet as we stand here over two years on from that final report, that promise remains unfulfilled for the vast majority. The sense of exhaustion, anger and desperation within the community is palpable. These issues could have been mitigated if, as Sir Brian wrote, “decisions about those who should receive compensation are not made without them.”

The minimal involvement of the people affected in the development of the compensation scheme has introduced problems and injustices.

The most urgent issue is the pace of delivery, which remains glacial. Out of 18,000 registered claims, just over 3,000 people have had compensation paid. Even more are still waiting to be invited to claim compensation. This has left tens of thousands of individuals in a state of agonising limbo, often in poor health and at the end of their lives, without any guidance about when their claim will start, praying that their case will be processed before it is too late. This is a particular concern for affected survivors who are unmarried and childless. The rule that their claim dies with them if they pass away before an offer is made is a source of total despair, and we must change it so that these claims become part of their estate. We cannot forget the stigma of HIV during this period and the impact that it would have had on victims’ personal lives. Will the Minister look at this, pressure the Infected Blood Compensation Authority to rapidly increase claims processing rates or provide additional resources for it to do so, and ensure that compensation payments are paid in line with the CPI measure of inflation?

I fear that there are a number of inequities in the composition of the scheme that must be addressed. Under a provision called the special category mechanism, people can claim additional compensation for the financial loss and care costs that they have occurred as a result of their infection. However, this additional compensation applied only from 2017—an arbitrary administrative date inherited from a previous support scheme. I strongly believe that people should be compensated from the day that their harm occurred. If the Minister could confirm whether his Department is looking into this matter, or provide the Government’s justifications for maintaining this cut off either today or later in writing, it would be most welcome.

Furthermore, the evidential barriers placed before victims are often cruel and unnecessary. It is heartbreaking to hear of elderly mothers being asked to find 40-year old school reports or GP letters to prove that they lived with children who died in the 1980s. These records often simply do not exist, and families are stuck in a loop of searching for the impossible while they themselves age and fall ill. We need a common sense approach that relaxes these requirements, particularly for proven family relationships. Again, I would welcome the Minister’s assurance that the evidence requirements will be permissive and flexible to ensure that those eligible are not unduly excluded and to avoid retraumatising claimants.

In a recent report, the National Audit Office found that there is currently no dedicated team within Government that has central oversight or offers support to those setting up or administrating compensation schemes, and victims have no route for formal redress. I support the National Audit Office’s call for a central oversight body for compensation schemes, and I hope that the Government will respond to its report in due course.

The need for change is clear. Ultimately, there is only one way in which we can prevent a repeat of this sorry saga. I agree with others that we desperately need a Hillsborough law with a fully fledged duty of candour to prevent institutional scandals and cover ups from ruining even more people’s lives and to ensure that victims of the state get the justice they deserve at the time they need it.

I begin by thanking my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham and Chislehurst (Clive Efford) for his moving and powerful speech and for all the work he does with the APPG. I also want to put on the record my respect for my right hon. Friend the Minister and thank him for his and the Government’s efforts, which I think have been acknowledged across the House.

I have been contacted by a constituent of mine whose identity I am going to keep anonymous, and Members will therefore hear me using the pronoun “they” quite a lot. The crux of the issue is that after an operation in 1977, my constituent contracted hepatitis C. They are struggling to locate medical records, which is making it difficult to engage with the Skipton Fund or the English infected blood support scheme. The point about evidence has been made by the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross shire (Pete Wishart) and my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Brightside and Hillsborough (Gill Furniss). The concern here is that the records have been lost or destroyed, and there have been significant consequences for my constituent. They registered with the infected blood compensation scheme last October, but have not had any correspondence from the scheme.

My constituent believes that they received contaminated blood during an operation at the Hospital of St Cross in Rugby in 1977 and was infected with hepatitis C. The hospital appears to have lost its notes of the operation, and both the Hospital of St Cross in Rugby and University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire have stated that any records of this operation have been destroyed. I want to put it on the record that I am not casting any aspersions whatsoever on the current staff of either hospital or the trust.

My constituent tried to claim from the Skipton Fund in the early 2000s, but was turned down for lack of evidence because of the need for hospital records. They then applied to the England infected blood support scheme, but this request for compensation was also declined due to lack of evidence. They have since tried to appeal this decision, but this appeal was, of course, rejected because of the requirement to present new evidence. My constituent is concerned that they may not be registered with the Infected Blood Compensation Authority to receive compensation through the authority.

I have written to the Department of Health and Social Care about this case, and I would like to know the status of any intervention. I think it is worth the Department checking whether there is evidence that any other people who were treated by the Hospital of St Cross in my constituency in or around October 1977 were infected in the way that my constituent appears to have been. I am also keen to know what happened to my constituent’s records—how and why they were lost or destroyed.

Given that my constituent registered with the infected blood compensation scheme last October, I want to ensure that they receive the compensation they are owed. Could the Minister assure me that this case will be investigated and that my constituent will be updated on its progress, and that they will receive any compensation that they are owed? I will of course provide the Minister with details of this specific case.

Finally, I want to make a broader point that has been made by many other hon. Members across the House today. The duty of candour, which I am glad our Government are committed to bringing in through the Hillsborough law, cannot come into effect soon enough. Hopefully it will deter future examples of such egregious state failure as well as deterring such behaviour in the private sector, which the duty of candour will have some relevance to in certain circumstances.

We have saved the best till last. I call Dr Peter Prinsley.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham and Chislehurst (Clive Efford) for securing this debate, and the many hon. Members who have given marvellous speeches this afternoon. I am new to this debate in Parliament, but I am not new to this issue, for I remember the very first patients we infected with AIDS. In 1988, I was an ear, nose and throat registrar at the Royal Free hospital, right here in London. The Royal Free has a large haemophilia unit for the treatment of patients with bleeding disorders, which are caused by a lack of clotting factors in the blood, as we have heard. Factor VIII was derived from pooled blood donations from donors in the United States—incidentally, people are paid to donate blood in the US, unlike here in the United Kingdom.

I wrote my very first scientific paper on the management of tonsillectomy in haemophilia patients. Who would believe that we would be brave enough to take out the tonsils of a patient with haemophilia? Well, we were able to do so. The patients we saw started dying, not of bleeding disorders but of the HIV with which we had unknowingly infected them. I met such patients over several years and then I stopped meeting them, because they had mostly died. Then we had hepatitis and deaths from cirrhosis and liver cancer, and still we have deaths and many bereaved families.

We doctors did not realise what we were doing to our patients until it was far too late. We cannot change history, however much we regret our actions, but there is surely something we can do, and do it we must. Our Government have committed billions of pounds to this scheme, and that is exactly right, but we must go faster. That is why we are having today’s debate. We are informed that thousands have yet to start a claim, and people are dying each week, so it is our duty to sort this out.

Dr Prinsley, you have done yourself proud with that contribution. I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

The infected blood scandal, and the 30,000 or so people who were infected with HIV, hepatitis or both, have been discussed in this House many times, but the numbers—the sheer scale of the scandal—are still hard to comprehend. The hon. Member for Eltham and Chislehurst (Clive Efford) laid out the background compellingly at the start of this debate, and I congratulate him on securing it.

Other Members have spoken of perhaps the most horrifying element of the scandal: children were subjected to unsafe and unethical clinical testing in the 1970s and ’80s. This testing—this experimentation—continued for more than 15 years. It involved hundreds of people and infected most with hepatitis B, hepatitis C or HIV. The trials involved children with blood clotting disorders, when families had often not consented to their taking part, and the majority of the children who were experimented on are now dead. It is not just about those who were infected, of course; the number of those affected by the scandal is far higher. Although we welcome the steps that the Government have taken in progressing the compensation scheme, it is clear that the job is not yet done.

The changes that the Government have brought in will mean more compensation for those who have been impacted by the infected blood scandal. Payments will be sent out to victims as part of the wider £11 billion plus allocated by the Government in the 2024 Budget to compensate victims, but in the last two months to June, just 217 people have received compensation payments. At that rate, far too many victims will not receive their compensation by the 2029 deadline. The pace must increase—a point that has been well made in this debate by the hon. Members for Llanelli (Dame Nia Griffith) and for Newport East (Jessica Morden), as well as others.

The Liberal Democrats welcome the improvements to the scheme that the Government set out earlier this year. These changes will hopefully deliver some of the justice that victims have been calling for, but there is clearly a strength of feeling that the scheme still does not go far enough, and the hon. Member for Eltham and Chislehurst laid out some of the well founded concerns in opening the debate.

The failure to deliver the Hillsborough law has been raised by many Members from across the House, and they are right to do so. It would extend the duty of candour to all public officials, and it was a manifesto commitment from this Government. It is also a promise that has been repeated by the Prime Minister and several other Ministers since. Despite repeated talk of an “unwavering commitment”, this vital reform has still not been delivered, and we do not know when it will be. I would welcome any update that the Paymaster General could give on the progress that we might expect and when we might expect it.

With this scandal, as with too many others, the inability to deliver both timely compensation and complementary legislation extends people’s fears of a culture of cover up. In so many instances we see the breakdown of trust between the people we represent and our politics, so delivering compensation at pace, and delivering the Hillsborough law, would be a statement of intent to change our political culture. It is one of the vital building blocks that can start to repair this House’s fractured relationship with the public—an essential step to recover trust. That is more vital today than at any other point in my lifetime.

Many Members have spoken of their constituents who have been impacted by this scandal. My constituent Catherine from Marple Bridge is one of so many who provided testimony to the compensation authority. She is a daughter handling the estate of her father, who was infected, and she is affected. Catherine’s thorough, detailed testimony was calm, thoughtful and delivered with remarkable clarity. It was testament to her strength of character. Last year’s damning report on compensation showed that not enough lessons had been learned, and survivors such as Catherine continue to be left out in the cold.

The impact of course extends to those who have lost family members to contaminated blood, such as Angus Lacey Stewart, who contacted my hon. Friend the Member for Bicester and Woodstock (Calum Miller). Angus’s dad and granddad both died due to health conditions caused by infected blood. Angus lost his dad prematurely, but he also told my hon. Friend how his dad’s infection at the age of 14 changed his dad’s life and robbed Angus of the relationship he might have wanted with his father, who suffered from poor mental and physical health. Angus understands that there are many claims and supports the prioritisation of infected claimants, but he cannot understand why he has been told not to expect payment until 2030. Angus told my hon. Friend that he “feels let down and ignored by the Government”, and he will not be alone.

The Liberal Democrats have been consistent in urging the Government to end the record of failure of successive Governments, and finally answer the needs of victims. We committed, along with others, in our 2019 manifesto to act on the inquiry’s recommendations, “ensuring a just settlement for victims and their families”, and we have voted in favour of legislation when it has been brought to this House. We encourage the Government to be as effective and visible as possible in the way they deliver the promised compensation scheme for the all too many victims. After so many years of secrecy, deceit and delay, the Government must deliver on the start they have made to ensure full transparency on the progress of the scheme and open, ongoing and effective communication with all those affected.

I close my remarks by paying tribute to the victims and their families, and particularly the doughty campaigners who have worked for decades for the compensation and justice they deserve.

I call the shadow Minister.

I thank right hon. and hon. Members from across the House for their thoughtful, measured and often heartbreaking contributions. I would particularly mention the hon. Member for Eltham and Chislehurst (Clive Efford) for securing and leading this debate, and my right hon. Friends the Members for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis) and for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) and my hon. Friend the Member for East Grinstead and Uckfield (Mims Davies), who spoke movingly about cases involving their constituents and the heartbreaking effects this scandal has had on them.

The infected blood scandal remains the most devastating treatment disaster in the history of our national health service. The scale of the tragedy—the lives cut short, the families shattered, the trust destroyed—is something this House and indeed the entire country must never forget. The victims of this scandal, those infected and those affected, have spent decades fighting the establishment for truth and justice. Now that the truth has been laid bare by Sir Brian Langstaff’s inquiry, it is the duty of the state—and that means all of us in this House—to deliver that justice without further delay.

It is entirely right that we begin by recognising the significant progress that has been made, because the establishment of the Infected Blood Compensation Authority, with the commencement of actual payments, represents a monumental milestone in this decades long journey. In doing so, I again place on record my profound gratitude for the foundational work done by my right hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (John Glen) when he was the Paymaster General. It was under his determined stewardship that the Government accepted the moral case for compensation and passed the legislation needed to establish the delivery body to administer this scheme. He faced an incredibly complex technical challenge, but his deep personal commitment to the infected and the affected communities ensured that the crucial groundwork, including the initial framework for multibillion pound interim payments, was laid. I know that the Paymaster General and the dedicated civil servants at IBCA are building on that foundation and working intensely to stand up a complex compensation scheme from scratch. We welcome the fact that more than £2.1 billion has been paid out to more than 3,200 victims. For those living infected victims who are already registered with existing support schemes, these payments offer a long overdue measure of financial security and tangible recognition of the horrific wrongs that they have endured. Getting billions of pounds out of the door to those who need it is no small administrative feat, and we support the progress that the Minister and the Government have made on that front.

However, it is exactly because we share the Government’s desire to see the scheme succeed that we must urgently raise the profound frustration being voiced by those who are still waiting. Progress for living infected victims on existing schemes has accelerated, but the reality for the thousands of affected victims and the estates of infected victims who have tragically passed away is still one of agonising delay.

Since the registration of intent opened, more than 18,500 registrations have been made, yet we know from IBCA’s own figures that the number of payments made to affected individuals—the widows, the widowers, the parents and the children of those who died—remains painfully low. The same is true for the number of payments to those claiming on behalf of deceased infected individuals. There have been thousands of registrations, but only a tiny fraction of claims from estates and affected people have been fully processed and paid. We hear from families across the country who feel that they are stuck in an unbearable limbo. They have watched the inquiry conclude; they have heard the apologies from the Dispatch Box; and they have seen the compensation scheme launched, yet they still wake up every day wondering when their claim will even be assessed.

For the families who have lost loved ones, time is a cruel companion. Of course, many of those waiting are now very elderly. Tragically, victims and affected family members are dying before they receive the compensation that they are owed. We must ask ourselves: what comfort is a compensation scheme if it arrives too late? IBCA has stated that it expects to bring in all currently registered claims from living infected people and estates by March 2027. We must push to see if that timeline can be safely accelerated, because for some, even next year is simply too far away. Of course, as more time passes, the real value of the offers reduces. Will the Minister look again at uprating payments in line with the consumer prices index, so that victims and their families are not financially disadvantaged because their claims take longer to process?

That brings me to a specific, acute concern that has been raised repeatedly by victims and their families, as well as by hon. Members today. It is one that I urge the Minister to address. It is the issue of the burden of proof, and the requirement to provide evidence that is, in many cases, practically impossible to access. Let me give the House a harrowing example. There are parents who suffered the unimaginable trauma of watching their children die as a result of infected blood products decades ago. Under the current requirements, some of those mothers and fathers are being told that for the claim to be processed, they must provide documentary evidence that they lived with their child at the time. Think about what is being asked here. We are asking grieving parents to source official paperwork from 40 or 50 years ago to prove that their own child lived under their roof. How many of us in this House could easily produce a four decade old document proving our living arrangements with our own families? It is not just an administrative burden; it is deeply distressing and re traumatising. It makes victims feel as though they are not believed.

We see similar issues for estates; they are trying to track down decades old medical records, or navigating complex probate rules relating to relatives who died in the 1980s or 1990s. We understand that the authority has a duty to protect public funds and to ensure that claims are valid. However, we cannot allow the pursuit of administrative perfection to become the enemy of compassion. When the state has been responsible for the systemic cover up and destruction of medical records, as the inquiry so damningly revealed, it cannot turn around and demand that victims produce those same missing records.

The burden of proof must be relaxed. We must always be mindful that we are talking about huge sums of taxpayers’ money, but we need a system that operates on the balance of probabilities, applying flexibility, common sense, and, above all, humanity. We must allow caseworkers at IBCA to display the compassion that Members have spoken about this afternoon. I urge the Government to work with IBCA to review the evidence requirements immediately. We must empower caseworkers to make compassionate judgments, rather than forcing them to stick to rigid bureaucratic checklists that punish the victims of state failures.

I know that the Minister shares my desire to see this issue resolved, and the tone of our debate reflects the shared resolve of this House, but good intentions must translate into urgent operational improvements. We need to rapidly scale up the processing of claims for the affected and the estates. We need to ensure that the legal and administrative support that is provided to claimants is truly adequate to help them navigate the hurdles without adding to their distress. The Opposition stand ready to support the Government on any measures needed to expedite the process. We will vote for the necessary resources, support the necessary regulations, and work collaboratively to remove any legislative hurdles.

For more than 50 years, the victims of the infected blood scandal were ignored, gaslit and denied justice. This Parliament promised to do everything that we could to right that wrong. Significant progress has been made; we praise those who have worked hard to deliver it and, above all, the incredible work of the many victims and their families over many years, but our promise is not kept until the final payments are made, until the grieving mother is recognised, and until the families who lost everything finally see the tangible justice that they have fought their entire lives to achieve.

Let us work together, across the political divide, to tear down the remaining bureaucratic barriers. Let us push IBCA to move faster, to act with maximum compassion, and to finally close this darkest of chapters with the dignity and urgency that the victims so deeply deserve.

It is a solemn privilege to close this debate, which has been extraordinarily moving. I start by paying tribute to the Backbench Business Committee and my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham and Chislehurst (Clive Efford). Whenever I see him, he says that he is the person to ask me the awkward questions—quite rightly. He always does so with great courtesy, and he speaks with great passion on behalf of the infected blood community. As has been recognised across the House, he does remarkable work as chair of the APPG. He has an able and loyal deputy in the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross shire (Pete Wishart), who supports that work and puts a great deal of time into it.

I thank the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Kingswinford and South Staffordshire (Mike Wood), for the tone of his remarks. I echo what he said about the right hon. Member for Salisbury (John Glen), who I worked with and faced across the Dispatch Box when I was the shadow; he has continued that work since. I also thank the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Lisa Smart) for the constructive tone that she took.

I thank the right hon. Members for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis) and for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds), the hon. Member for East Grinstead and Uckfield (Mims Davies), and my hon. Friends the Members for Newport East (Jessica Morden), for Sheffield Brightside and Hillsborough (Gill Furniss), for Beckenham and Penge (Liam Conlon), for Blyth and Ashington (Ian Lavery), for Llanelli (Dame Nia Griffith), for Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket (Peter Prinsley), and for Rugby (John Slinger). They all made significant contributions and spoke powerfully on behalf of their constituents.

At the outset, I make the general point that many moving individual cases have been raised in this debate, as well as some specific points. My hon. Friend the Member for Blyth and Ashington raised the case of Sean Cavens, on whose behalf he has spoken many times. To be clear, the change that I made in the third set of regulations allows someone to switch from receiving support scheme or periodic payments to a lump sum. I am concerned to hear what he has said is happening to Sean. I say to my hon. Friend and others that they should follow up this debate with details, so that I can come back to them. I would say exactly the same thing to the hon. Member for East Grinstead and Uckfield. I was very moved, listening to her talk about her constituent Josie. I remember writing to the hon. Lady about that case, so I would very much like the details of what has happened in that claim process.

My hon. Friend the Member for Newport East spoke movingly about the Smith family. Their dignity in the face of extraordinary grief after the loss of Colin has been nothing short of inspirational over the years, and my hon. Friend speaks very powerfully for them. I note that some constituents, including those of my hon. Friend the Member for Rugby, would prefer not to be named, and I completely understand that, but I would be very grateful for the details of their cases.

I would like to acknowledge the contribution of my hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham and Penge, who spoke about his constituent Susan and her two daughters, one of whom, Louise, is in the Public Gallery. He spoke powerfully in memory of George. I pay tribute to the work that my hon. Friend does for them. It is very meaningful that the family have come along to the debate; I am grateful for their time this afternoon.

More broadly, I want to mark all the progress that has been made. As so many right hon. and hon. Members have said, this scandal was decades in the making, and many decades passed before any form of acknowledgement or justice started to be delivered. As has been pointed out, over £2.7 billion of compensation offers have been made, and more than £2.1 billion has been paid in compensation.

Members have quite rightly sought to hold me to account today on speed of delivery, and I will come back to that in a moment, but we should acknowledge in this debate those who waited so long, especially those who are no longer with us. We owe it to them to take the time to recognise the hardships that they suffered. We must also recognise the extraordinary resolve of the infected blood community.

The topic has been debated many times in this House, and I hope that Members will have seen that I always try to make every effort to be here for the debates. I think it is important that I personally hear what right hon. and hon. Members are saying. Indeed, when my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North and Cottingham (Dame Diana Johnson) brought forward her amendment to the Victims and Prisoners Bill in 2023, I supported it, while in opposition.

Driving forward this work has been a key priority for the Government. Since I became the Minister responsible for this issue, I have brought three sets of regulations before the House. Most recently, we held a public consultation that asked for feedback on proposed changes to the compensation scheme, and I updated the House in April with the changes that the Government will be putting in place. I will shortly bring before the House a fourth set of regulations to make those legislative changes, and I am very grateful to the shadow Minister for saying that his party will support those regulations.

The compensation scheme is rightly the largest that any Government have ever launched. Alongside the £1.4 billion of interim payments, over £2.1 billion has now been paid out, but I totally recognise and hear that there is still a great deal of work to be done. Let me pick up the issue of IBCA’s approach to payments. IBCA is operationally independent, and it is very important that it is, given Sir Brian Langstaff’s recommendations. That said, IBCA uses a test and learn approach to delivery. That means that at the start of a process, the numbers are small, but then there will be an exponential increase. That is what happened with the number of infected people who were paid towards the end of 2025.

As the House has rightly observed, the target of paying the first affected person before the end of 2025 was met, but the affected numbers are relatively small at the moment because they will go into that exponential phase. As I have said to the House before on many occasions, yes, we have what I call the backstops, which are the bulk of infected people being paid by the end of 2027 and the bulk of affected people being paid by the end of 2029, but those are not targets. I stand ready to assist IBCA to ensure that we can drive forward with delivery as quickly as possible. The reason the numbers of affected people are small is precisely because of the test and learn approach, and I will hold IBCA to account on the moment at which the speed of those payments increases.

I have been on more than one occasion to IBCA’s office in Newcastle. As a number of right hon. and hon. Members have reflected today, the claims managers and the staff are dedicated and diligent, and are certainly building a system that, I believe, is sympathetic. I will be frank with the House: I am troubled by some of the contributions that have mentioned the level of evidence being required, and I say that for two reasons. First, there is often an ask for evidence of things that happened a long time ago, and secondly, we know from Sir Brian Langstaff’s inquiry that there was deliberate document destruction. For those two reasons, I have repeatedly said from the Dispatch Box that I expect not just a sympathetic approach to evidence but some assistance and pointers as to where evidence, if required, might be obtained. I hope that when Members write to me about individual cases, they give me specific examples of where there have been issues regarding the level of evidence. I am more than happy to take up that issue.

I have set up a new feedback mechanism for the scheme. That was one of the things that I was expected to do, and Sir Brian Langstaff was clear that he expected that to be done. I was not prepared to just create some sort of correspondence sifting mechanism; I wanted to create a system whereby the concerns raised went to the appropriate level. In some cases that will be IBCA’s board, but in others it will be things that have to be elevated back to the Cabinet Office and to me. I expect to publish the first quarterly summary of issues raised through the mechanism in early July, but I will continue to push forward to ensure that it is working in the way it should and that victims have a voice going forward.

I will try and go through the different themes.

I pay tribute to the work of my right hon. Friend to move things forward. When he receives representations from the infected and affected community, how does he intend to put those into effect and change the compensation process? That is what they approach us about and we are all raising a number of those representations, asking for changes in the regulations he is about to lay before the House.

It depends on the nature of the change. For example, on the issue being described as burden of proof, I have already repeatedly mentioned from the Dispatch Box the sympathetic approach that I expect. It depends on the specific issue being raised. In some cases, they will be things that I expect IBCA’s board, rather than me as a Minister, to deal with. The point is that I want the issue raised to go to the appropriate level to ensure that it has an appropriate response. We will see how the mechanism works, and I am sure that my hon. Friend, through the all party parliamentary group, will start to see people having experience of it. I will be interested to hear that feedback.

Unethical research has been raised across the House today. I do not think that any amount of money could ever make up for the experimentation on children that happened as a consequence of this scandal. The right hon. Member for East Hampshire, who represents Treloar’s, will be aware from his constituents of how frankly heinous the situation was.

When I became the responsible Minister, I accepted a recommendation—it was one of the first things across my desk—from Sir Robert Francis, who had conducted a review of the scheme. He recommended that there should be an amount of money that does not in any sense reflect the totality of the harm done, but that is there, as an amount within a much larger amount, as a marker of what was particularly heinous in the experimentation. That is the context behind the unethical research awards; they were lower sums than those before the House today, but I accepted the recommendation because I thought it important to have that in the scheme. The amounts that we see are not the totality of the settlement.

The right hon. Member for New Forest East asked about the differences between the compensation awarded to living and deceased infected people. I recognise that financial loss awards may be lower for awards to estates— I think that was his point—but that is because the future financial losses for estate claims are paid to the infected person’s dependants rather than the estate.

A point was made about psychiatric disorders. The Government have certainly been looking at how to make the severe health condition award for psychiatric disorders more accessible, with a less intrusive ask for evidence. We examined using types of evidence—these are such difficult issues—such as suicide to qualify for the award, but in my view imposing a retraumatising requirement would place an unconscionable burden on families who have already been through decades of mental suffering. When designing any compensation scheme, the Government have to ensure that no mechanism or award criterion inadvertently creates a risk to potentially vulnerable people. Instead, the new special category mechanism of a severe health condition award allows applicants to access more compensation for mental health problems that they have experienced, in excess of the core route—without, I repeat, an unreasonable ask for evidence.

A really important point was raised about the recognition of carers. The care award is provided to a person making a claim as an infected person or as the representative of a deceased infected person’s estate. A living infected person claiming compensation can, however, instruct IBCA to pay all or some of the award to an eligible affected person who provided them with care.

The right hon. Member for East Hampshire asked about criminal prosecutions. The House will realise that it is not for me as a Minister, or indeed for any other Minister, to make prosecutorial decisions—that is rightly independent of Government and is a matter for the Crown Prosecution Service—but I thought that the House would welcome an update.

Given the nationwide scope of the independent infected blood inquiry, and in the absence of a clear lead police force, the National Police Chiefs’ Council has engaged experienced senior investigators to conduct a review of the available evidence. They have been assessing extensive information provided by the inquiry, which has been supporting the investigation fully, and legal advice to look at next steps.

In March, I wrote to the National Police Chiefs’ Council to reaffirm my and the Government’s commitment to make any and all relevant information around the infected blood inquiry available to the prosecuting authorities, where requested, so that an informed decision could be based on the evidence. In May, as the right hon. Member for East Hampshire may already be aware, the National Police Chiefs’ Council published a statement that its initial review, which focused on events at Treloar’s, did not provide sufficient information for a viable criminal investigation. However, terms of reference are now being developed for a further review of the remaining chapters. Decisions on that investigation and the timeframe are obviously for the NPCC, but the House should be assured that I stand ready to assist in providing evidence in any way possible.

My hon. Friend the Member for Llanelli asked about the eligibility of affected estates. It is right that following the inquiry’s additional report, we have amended the scheme so that the estate of a deceased affected person is now eligible to claim compensation where an affected person passed away between 21 May 2024 and 31 March 2031. The recommendation from Sir Brian Langstaff was a cut off of 31 December 2029, but we have actually extended that a couple of years further.

The issue of interferon was raised by a number of Members. The Government have accepted the inquiry’s recommendation to introduce a new higher level award for infected people who were treated with interferon. The new level 2b core compensation award will provide more financial loss and care compensation for the full two years after treatment and will be available to anyone treated with interferon who would otherwise be receiving a level 2 award. I did not recognise the point made by the hon. Member for East Grinstead and Uckfield about a 12-week minimum, but when I look at the detail of the case, I can look into that.

The point being made to me was twofold. The first point about evidence and transparency was made by the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross shire. A technical expert group gives advice to Government. One of the things I have said is that we need transparency on its members, its minutes and its evidence, and my attitude is that we should publish it so that it is out there and people can see it. The second point about the long term impact was raised by a couple of Members. If someone has experienced long term impacts following interferon treatment that have impacted on their ability to work or their need for care, they may be eligible for additional compensation through the special category mechanism severe health condition award. That ensures that those with long term side effects receive additional financial support.

The hon. Member for Rutland and Stamford (Alicia Kearns), who is no longer in her place, raised a point about inheritance tax and secondary transfers. That is a matter that I hope I have rectified and that was announced in the Budget last year, but I will certainly follow up with her on the specific case that she raised.

A number of Members mentioned the duty of candour. The House should be in no doubt about my commitment to the Hillsborough law and the duty of candour. I believe that we are well over 90% of the way there. As the House has been told in previous updates, the outstanding issue on the Hillsborough law is how exactly we strike that balance between a duty of candour and the work of the security and intelligence services, but I am very confident that we can resolve that satisfactorily. I look forward to driving forward the work on the Hillsborough law, which will be a landmark moment in terms of the legal duty that we are talking about in this House.

When we think of so many of the scandals that have come before us, even in my 11 years as a Member of Parliament, they all have a similarity. Sir Brian Langstaff said in his inquiry that it was not really about specific people who were involved in a conspiracy—if that was the case, we could identify them and they could be prosecuted. He said it was about a culture of institutional defensiveness—that, actually, what people do when terrible things happen is to protect either their own reputation or the reputation of the institution in which they serve. We will have a landmark moment when that law goes on the statute book, but beyond that there will be a need to drive cultural change to ensure that terrible scandals such as this do not happen in the future.

This compensation scheme exists because it is absolutely the right thing to do, but it exists because of the way that campaigners over many, many years continued in the face of state denial to drive this forward because of their suffering and that of their families. We cannot in this House change the past, but we certainly can mark it and remember it. It was a solemn privilege for me to attend the service of remembrance organised by the Infected Blood Memorial Committee in St Paul’s cathedral last month. It was designed by the community, for the community, and it was a profoundly moving moment, and I was privileged to speak to the members of the committee, very ably chaired by Clive Smith. They are continuing their important work towards a national memorial, and I know they take a very open approach to seeking the community’s views at every opportunity.

For me, that service of remembrance underscored the importance of getting this right. As my hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham and Penge pointed out, it is absolutely crucial to get the compensation scheme right, but it is one of a number of Sir Brian Langstaff’s recommendations. We owe it collectively as a House to get that right for future generations, to ensure that nothing like this can happen again. I believe that is the very least we can do.

I will not detain the House for long. I just want to thank everyone who contributed to the debate, and I thank my right hon. Friend the Minister for his thoughtful consideration of all the points raised. I just have one request: could I meet with him before he lays the regulations, so that we can discuss some of the issues raised today?

I thank again everyone who contributed to the debate. I hope we have done justice to the people who are concerned about this issue, and to the infected and the affected who are watching the proceedings today.

Question put and agreed to. Resolved, That this House has considered the Infected Blood Compensation Scheme.

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I wonder if you could assist the House. The Department for Transport has this afternoon published the Heathrow expansion national policy statement, the HENPS, alongside supporting documents in a major consultation. Given the significance of this decision, with implications for communities across a wide area, for the Government’s own climate commitments and for connectivity across the whole of the United Kingdom, could you confirm whether the Secretary of State for Transport has given any indication to Mr Speaker that she intends to come to this House to make an oral statement? If not, do you agree that this House ought to expect the Government to come here first, rather than learning of major consultations through a written ministerial statement?

I thank the hon. Member for giving notice of her point of order. I have received no notice from Ministers that they intend to make a statement on this matter. The House knows that I have no power to compel a Minister to make a statement, but Mr Speaker has repeatedly stated how important it is that significant announcements are made here in this House first. Ministers on the Front Bench will have heard the hon. Member and I, and no doubt they will respond in due course.

The hon. Member for Thornbury and Yate (Claire Young) has also informed Mr Speaker that she will not proceed today with her debate on the potential merits of a full ban on fracking.