Infected blood victims to receive payouts within months
Victims of the infected blood scandal will receive new interim compensation payments this summer, The Telegraph can reveal.
Around 4,000 people, including surviving infected people and bereaved spouses, had been given “interim” payments of around £100,000 in October 2022 but there has been uncertainty about next steps.
The infected blood inquiry’s final report is due on Monday and Government ministers are expected to say that the worst affected victims will receive another “interim” payment by the beginning of September.
The fresh interim payments means that some of the hardest hit victims of the scandal will get additional support before the general election, if, as expected, it takes place in the autumn.
Campaigners and survivors had called for a prioritisation of payments to infected people amid concerns of the deteriorating health of some victims.
The Government is next week expected to announce when full compensation will be made, but the body to deliver the full payments, the infected blood compensation authority, will be operational in the next three months.
The total cost of compensation to the Treasury could be anywhere between £10 and 20 billion. No overall figure is expected to be announced, with the Office of Budget Responsibility (OBR) to forecast the cost at the next fiscal event.
The Government has accepted the “moral case” for compensation but has not yet paid interim payments to grieving parents or orphaned children. There has been no update on when these payments will be made.
An apology is expected to be issued by the Government to the victims for the first time, acknowledging errors and the suffering caused. The Infected Blood Scandal saw around 1,250 haemophiliacs infected with HIV from medicines prescribed by the NHS. A further 5,000 contracted Hepatitis C. Around 3,000 people have died as a result.
The new payments to infected people will help improve the quality of life of many of the survivors living with chronic health conditions brought about by decades of living with HIV and Hepatitis. There had been concerns that some survivors would die before they received full compensation. The interim payments are understood to have been well received by victims and a full announcement on compensation is expected to come later next week.
The Government had planned to announce the compensation plans on Monday along wth the release of the final report, but this has been moved back at the request of survivors to enable the focus to be on the victims.
Sir Brian Langstaff, the inquiry chairman, published a second interim report in April 2023 in which he took “the unusual step” of publishing recommendations on compensation ahead of the full report. He said compensation payments should have been started to be paid by the end of 2023, but the Government missed this deadline.
The chairman also said it was now time “to put right” the fact that the parents of 380 children infected with HIV had never received compensation and that children orphaned by the tragedy had “never had their losses recognised”.
