The abject failure to compensate victims of the infected blood scandal continues today, a scathing report has found.
Officials are still not transparent, with decision-making made ‘behind closed doors’, amid allegations of moving goalposts and delays exacerbating their grief.
Campaigners including those infected and affected by the worst treatment disaster in NHS history said they felt completely ignored after being excluded from the expert group set up to compensate them for receiving contaminated blood products in the 1970s and 1980s.
Yet only 460 payments have been paid to date, despite a damning report last year laying bare the extent of the scandal and the state’s responsibility for it.
A fresh report today by Sir Brian Langstaff, who led the Infected Blood Inquiry, again pointed the finger at the Government for dragging its feet.
He said: ‘For decades, people who suffered because of infected blood have not been listened to.
‘Once again, decisions have been made behind closed doors leading to obvious injustices.
‘The UK Government has known for years that compensation for thousands of people was inevitable and had identified many of those who should have it.
‘It is not too late to get this right. We are calling for compensation to be faster, and more than that, fairer.’
The Infected Blood Compensation Authority (ICBA) was set up last May under then-Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, a day after Sir Brian’s initial report.
But a general election meant progress stalled, with officials initially describing how the organisation consisted of two men, a laptop and a phone.
Today’s report describes how those affected have been further harmed due to the ordeal of attempting to get their compensation.
And Sir Brian said his conclusions from last year’s report regarding the Government’s ‘failure to act on compensation were, and remain, well-founded’.
He accused the IBCA of ‘not yet living up to its commitment to be transparent’, amid criticism the compensation body was ‘set up without any direct involvement of the people it most affected’ – victims and their families.
He said the guidance, advice, and instructions to claim managers processing bids for compensation have not been published, while the work undertaken by IBCA with the Cabinet Office to understand the policy intentions behind each regulation has not been shared.
None of IBCA’s policy papers have been published, he found, nor has information regarding its approach to important issues, within the regulations, nor the minutes of the meetings of IBCA’s board.
IBCA also missed an opportunity to have worked more closely with the recognised legal representatives of people infected and affected, in the drawing up of policies, procedures and guidance.
The report added: ‘An almost universal concern voiced to the inquiry is the slowness of the start made by IBCA in making and the likely delay before compensation is received.
‘The lack of clear timescales and the uncertainty as to when any individual might expect to receive compensation has been a source of considerable distress and anger.
‘Although it is fair to note that the numbers who have received compensation to date have increased significantly in recent weeks, they were profoundly unsatisfactory at the start of May, when the inquiry hearings began.’
Victims described ‘moving goalposts’, with compensation claims picked ‘at random’.
Carolyn Challis, who was infected with hepatitis between 1992 and 1993 after receiving three blood transfusions for pregnancy- and chemotherapy-related anaemia, said in a statement: ‘The impact of the delays on this community has been devastating.
‘We’re suffering from compounded trauma, anger, frustration, exhaustion and a loss of hope.
‘We’re experiencing an even further decline in our physical and mental health.
‘I have heard several reports of individuals who feel suicidal.
‘We don’t feel heard, and it’s as if there is contempt towards us. We have been left confused by conflicting and incorrect information and moving goalposts.’
And Sir Brian called on the removal of a restriction preventing those infected before 1982 from being eligible for compensation.
Andrew Evans, who was infected with HIV and Hepatitis C aged five and who chairs the Tainted Blood campaign group, said people ‘brought to tears by relief of the publication of the inquiry’s final report’ have felt ‘nothing but despair’ since.
‘They have lost all hope of ever getting justice,’ he said.
‘The scheme was effectively written in stone before we even laid eyes on it/ The way that this has been handled since the second interim report to date is, to my mind, the same line to take tactics, defensiveness and lack of candour that we’ve been fighting for the past four decades.’
Sir Brian’s report said Mr Evans’ comments were ‘fully justified’.
The contaminated blood products were imported cheaply from the US where blood was being collected from paid donors such as prisoners, the homeless and drug addicts.
Most of those infected were people who received treatment for blood disorders such as haemophilia and those who had transfusions.
Some £11.8 billion has been allocated to compensate victims.
Cabinet Office minister Nick Thomas-Symonds denied the government was ‘dragging our heels’ over compensation payments to victims, and said he did not want to impose any further delays after ‘decades of injustice’.
Campaigner vows: We will not give up our quest for compensation
A former deputy headteacher whose husband died after contracting HIV from contaminated blood today warned the Government: We are not going to go away.
Sue Threakall has been campaigning for justice since 1985 when her husband Bob was diagnosed with HIV after being treated with the contaminated blood product Factor VIII.
Bob, a father-of-three with haemophilia, died in Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham in 1991 aged 47.
His case was typical of many haemophiliacs treated with the blood-clotting product in the 1970s and 1980s.
Mrs Threakall, who now lives near Barnstaple in North Devon, said she was buoyed by Sir Brian Langstaff’s report into compensation payment delays, which he said prolonged the agony for those infected and affected.
She told the Mail: ‘The report perfectly expressed everything we’ve been saying – how we have been treated and how gravely unfair parts of the compensation scheme are.
‘I think the Government will prevaricate and will say they are “working at pace”, but I think they will be forced into accepting Sir Brian’s report.
‘There is a feeling that the Government wants us to go away, but our track record shows we won’t be doing that.’
Mrs Threakall said the 12 months since Sir Brian’s original damning report into the scandal, published last summer, had been the ‘hardest’ of her 40-year fight for justice.
She said: ‘I’ve been campaigning on this since 1985, I’ve been to demos, sat in committee rooms, up til 2am writing letters and preparing for legal action, and I can honestly say the last 12 months have been the hardest because we just felt like we have been ignored. There has been no respect for us.
‘My son is 42 and he said to me: I lost two parents – my dad to HIV and my mum to the campaign.
Inmagine how hard that is as a mum to hear that?
‘You can do one of two things, you can either cut your losses and disappear or you can fight for justice, and that’s what I have done and will continue to do.’
