Infected Blood Compensation Scheme (Amendment) Regulations 2025

Motion to Approve

Moved by

That the draft Regulations laid before the House on 30 October be approved.

My Lords, since the publication of the Infected Blood Inquiry’s detailed report in May 2024, the Government have worked to establish a compensation scheme and set up the Infected Blood Compensation Authority, IBCA, to deliver it. Since the compensation service opened last year, IBCA has contacted all infected people registered with a support scheme to start their claim, and made offers of over £2 billion. The service has now been opened to the first claims from living infected people who have never been compensated. I am pleased with this progress and it is a significant step in the right direction toward delivering justice to those impacted. IBCA is now moving toward opening the service for those affected, and for the estates of deceased infected people.

In July, the Infected Blood Inquiry published its additional report, which made 15 recommendations for the Government on the design of the scheme. We immediately accepted seven of those recommendations. The regulations we are considering today will implement the five of those seven that require legislation to achieve. The remaining eight recommendations are subject to an ongoing public consultation, and the Government expect to bring in further legislation next year to implement the further changes following the consultation. The regulations at hand today show that the Government have reflected on and listened to the inquiry’s words on involving those impacted by this dreadful scandal. It is right that we accepted these recommendations and I am pleased that we have been able to bring them forward swiftly.

Hearing the voices of the community is essential. That is why the Chancellor announced changes in the Budget that ensured that infected blood compensation payments are relieved from inheritance tax in cases where the original infected or affected person eligible for compensation has sadly died before the compensation is paid. I am pleased that we have been able to make this change, and that justice is not only delivered but reflected in the way compensation is treated.

I will set out the changes that we are proposing to the scheme in the regulations. These are a result of the Government’s immediate acceptance of some of the inquiry’s recommendations. Regulation 3 responds to the inquiry’s recommendation 3(a) and removes the 1982 start date for eligible HIV infections. This means that anyone who was infected with HIV via infected blood or infected blood products before 1 November 1985 will be eligible for the scheme. Regulation 4 makes changes in line with the inquiry’s recommendation 8(b) on affected estates. Its additional report set out that the time being taken to deliver compensation is disadvantageous to affected people who are older or in ill health. The recommendation is that, where an affected person has sadly passed away during a specified date range, their compensation should become part of their estate. The Government have accepted this recommendation and is going beyond the inquiry’s recommendation, extending the recommended date range by two years to be between 21 May 2024 and 31 March 2031.

My Lords, I thank the Minister for bringing this to the House and going through things so comprehensively. I also thank her for being open to having conversations about the whole scheme at other times, without necessarily requiring us to book an appointment with her.

I have a couple of questions on areas that require clarification. First, is it correct that the compensation scheme does not pay specific damages to people infected as children up to the age of 16, other than a £10,000 unethical research award if the family of the deceased can prove that they were a victim—which is the same for adults? Is it correct that, if the infected child dies, there is no compensation for a lost life? As parents are not classed as dependants, can the Minister clarify what they are eligible for, having lost their child, and how that changes if their child died after the age of 16 or 18?

My Lords, I am grateful that the Minister is keeping in touch about the regulations, not just today but from when we last debated this in November. She will not be surprised to know that most of the concerns from these Benches are about the practicalities. The main concern remains the slowness of progress of the compensation arrangements. Clearly, there is some movement, and I am grateful for the increase in the amount of money that has now been agreed for compensation. That is good news. However, it is still very slow even for some infected victims, because they have not even got to first base. The proposed arrangements for affected victims just seem to drift longer and longer into the future.

The Minister knows that the real problems emerging at the moment actually relate to the detail of the compensation scheme, and specifically to changes that are being made at the moment. I apologise to her that I have a series of questions and some are quite technical. If she cannot reply today, please will she write to me? I do not think that this is the first time I have said that.

The compensation proposals made by Sir Robert Francis in 2022 and by the Infected Blood Inquiry, which the Government claim they are following, now seem to be being overridden by the work on the detail that is going on elsewhere. It is worth remembering that in the Francis review of 2022 on page 127 in paragraph 10.3, he said:

“I have further recommended that no account be taken when calculating compensation of any past payment from a support scheme or one of the preceding trusts and charities. Put simply, all such payments were ex gratia, were without any admission of liability, and were never intended to be compensation. In any event, the inquiry required to establish the full detail of support payments would be burdensome to all, and in some cases impossible because of lost or inaccessible records”.

This is really worrying. At the moment we are seeing that the Government cannot possibly on one hand delay compensation payments for 40-plus years and to have been found guilty of evasion, and then, on the other hand, argue that they cannot set up the scheme until after they have read the final report, which is what happened under the previous Government, and fix eligibility to said ex gratia scheme set up as late as 2017. The Government’s advisors recommended that past payments should be discounted. There was a specific argument that this was not compensation but now it appears that everyone is insisting it must be fixed to it, which conveniently denies those who died before the schemes were established 40 years ago. After the fact, they have lost their right to claim special injuries, suffering or mental injury. I apologise; I realise this is highly technical. Can the Minister help explain why these changes are happening? They are so different from Sir Brian’s initial report, his subsequent report and the Francis review.

I also want to ask—I am sorry to do this—about the special category mechanism details in response to Sir Brian Langstaff’s scathing analysis in his extra report of how the Government are making statements in Parliament only to row back on them without consultation or notice. Specifically, on the eligibility of the SCM—special category mechanism—I am referring to additional pages 83 to 106 in of Sir Brian’s May 2025 report. On eligibility, he said:

“Living infected people or the estates of infected people who are receiving SCM or equivalent payments (or received them before they died) would be automatically eligible for this award”.

This means that only those who were on the support schemes and who have died would be automatically eligible. Sir Brian went on to say:

“Living infected people who are not currently receiving SCM or equivalent payments from an IBSS would be able to apply to be assessed by IBCA against the EIBSS assessment criteria and if they meet them, will receive the award”.

But, once again, there is no mention of the estates of the deceased. This is clearly only for living infected people, meaning that every dead child or adult who died before the SCM was introduced will have no right of appeal or compensation for actual injuries to them.

I know that there will be some discussions at IBCA next week. I understand that initially none of the groups was invited to be party to them, but some have now been invited. Not to include victims who have decades of experience of things going wrong seems questionable.

I have some questions about eligibility for the SCM that I will not go through here, but I think the Minister needs to understand that there is a very large group of victims who are extremely concerned about what is going on. Some of them are actually outraged; they feel that this is worse as they are allowed only to make written submissions regarding the SCM and the expert group—the TEG. This seems to really get close to infringing human rights for these victims. I am not expecting the noble Baroness to answer on the detail. The big message I would like the Government to hear is that in the space of one month, in which the Government have been trying to rebuild trust with the victims, things are changing that they are not aware of and not able to get to. Please will the Minister review this with IBCA as a matter of extreme urgency?

My Lords, I welcome the progress that has been made by the Infected Blood Compensation Authority—IBCA—and the Government in delivering payments. I pay tribute to the work of Sir Brian Langstaff and all those involved in the Infected Blood Inquiry and its additional report. This report made a number of recommendations to improve the compensation scheme. The Government have broadly accepted the recommendations, five of which are given effect by the regulations before us. After the catastrophic failures that led to the infected blood scandal, it is vital that justice is delivered swiftly and fairly to all who were affected.

I also take this opportunity to thank the noble Baroness opposite for her letter of 27 November, which addressed some of the questions that were raised when we discussed this matter on 4 November. In particular, I am glad to see in response to my question about the steps the Government and IBCA are taking to ensure that those who should be prioritised for compensation are being identified that the noble Baroness has confirmed that IBCA will prioritise claims in the order recommended by the inquiry.

In line with my colleagues in the other place, I make it clear at the outset that His Majesty’s Opposition support these regulations. There are no substantive differences between the position of the Government and that of the Opposition, or even of the previous Government. However, we cannot forget that we are discussing one of the most egregious and profound injustices: the infliction, collectively, of grievous harm upon thousands of people by the state. It is paramount that we have a scheme which delivers justice and redress compassionately, quickly and fairly. We support the five recommendations that the Government are accepting and legislating for today. I welcome that they go some way to making this ambition a reality.

The changes include: provision to remove the 1982 start date for eligible HIV infections; removing the need for applicants with hepatitis C or B to evidence their date of diagnosis, which does not have a bearing on the calculation of an individual’s compensation; and removing the earnings floor on the exceptional loss award for the financial loss supplementary route, thereby creating a route for infected people to present evidence on their actual earning loss.