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.

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.

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:

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.”

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.