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Infected blood inquiry chair calls for more victims to be compensated Parents and children of infected blood victims should get compensation, inquiry rules
(about 2 hours later)
Bereaved parents and orphaned children unrecognised, says Brian Langstaff ahead of full report into NHS’s ‘biggest treatment disaster’ Brian Langstaff recommends interim £100,000 payments be extended to those who had not had ‘their losses recognised’
More people who lost loved ones during the “biggest treatment disaster in the NHS” should be entitled to compensation, the chair of the infected blood inquiry has said. Parents and children who suffered bereavements as a result of the infected blood scandal should receive £100,000 interim compensation payments, the chair of the public inquiry into the tragedy has said.
It has been estimated that thousands of people were infected with HIV and hepatitis by contaminated blood between 1970 and 1991. In a report published on Wednesday, Sir Brian Langstaff said the interim payments, already made in October last year to infected individuals and bereaved partners, should be extended to “recognise deaths to date unrecognised”.
In July last year, the inquiry recommended that victims of the contaminated blood scandal should each receive interim compensation of £100,000. He said: “I believe this is necessary to alleviate immediate suffering. It is a fact that around 380 children with bleeding disorders were infected with HIV. Some of them died in childhood. But their parents have never received compensation.
However, the inquiry chair, Sir Brian Langstaff, a former high court judge, said some family members – including parents who lost children and children orphaned when their parents died – remained “unrecognised” when it came to compensation. “Children were orphaned as a result of infections transmitted by blood transfusions and blood products and have never had their losses recognised. It is time to put this right.”
He has recommended that the government should make further interim compensation payments to those affected by the scandal. Langstaff also said the compensation scheme, which would determine the amount each person ultimately receives, should be set up as soon as possible and begin work this year, rather than waiting for the inquiry’s final report.
Langstaff said he was taking the unusual step of publishing the recommendation ahead of the publication of the full report into the scandal so victims would not face any further delays. He said he had published the interim report because delaying recommendations on compensation would cause further harm to people who had already been failed by the government.
“I could not in conscience add to the decades-long delays many of you have already experienced due to failures to recognise the depth of your losses,” he said in his statement. “It will clearly take political will to act quickly but the circumstances here warrant it,” he wrote. “Delay often defeats justice. This is especially so, as here, where fairness demands swift recompense.”
He said that “wrongs were done at individual, collective and systemic levels”. The scandal has been described as the worst treatment disaster in the history of the NHS. People were infected after being given factor VIII blood products that were contaminated with HIV and hepatitis C imported from the US in the 1970s and 80s, or after being exposed to tainted blood through transfusions or after childbirth.
Langstaff said that “not only do the infections themselves and their consequences merit compensation, but so too do the wrongs done by authority, whose response served to compound people’s suffering”. Figures published by the inquiry on Wednesday estimate that 1,350 people were infected with HIV of whom more than 1,000 had died by the end of 2019. About 26,8000 people are estimated to have contracted hepatitis C, of whom 1,820 had died from causes related to the disease by 2019.
He said: “This has been described as the worst treatment disaster in the history of the NHS, and we have much to learn as a nation to help ensure that people never suffer in a similar way again. I will be setting that out in my full report.” The government has already made interim payments of around £400m to people infected and bereaved partners. It is not known how much that figure will increase as a result of Langstaff’s recommendations.
On further compensation payments, he added: “I am also recommending further interim compensation payments to recognise the deaths of people who have so far gone unrecognised, as I believe this is necessary to alleviate immediate suffering. Rosemary Calder’s son, Nicky, a haemophiliac, died in 1999 aged 25, having been infected with HIV when he was eight or nine.
“It is a fact that around 380 children with bleeding disorders were infected with HIV. Some of them died in childhood. But their parents have never received compensation. Children who were orphaned as a result of infections transmitted by blood transfusions and blood products have never had their losses recognised.” She said because her son was married, his widow had already received an interim payment and so she would not be entitled to an interim payment but the principle established was still important.
In Octoberlast year, the government said thousands of victims of the infected blood scandal would receive interim compensation payments of £100,000– and it has already made interim payments of about £400m to people infected and to bereaved partners. “I welcome it as an acknowledgment of what our children suffered, their loss, what we suffered as parents, and recognition of their lives,” she said. “There are many, many children, who have never had any compensation or parents that never had any acknowledgment of their lives and they constantly felt that they were being pushed aside.
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“We’ve now got to wait for the government’s response and hope that they have a speedy response to it as Sir Brian has asked for today. Nicky died 23 years ago, many of them died a lot longer [ago] than that, we’re all getting on, none of us are young.”
Langstaff said the compensation scheme should be chaired by a high court judge or someone of equivalent status within the UK and there should be an advisory panel which should include beneficiaries. “It is important that decisions about those who should receive compensation are not made without them,” he said.
He also recommended that there should be an appeal body. Langstaff’s recommendations also included extending the criteria for payments beyond the parameters suggested by Sir Robert Francis in his compensation framework for the affected and infected.
He said there should not be a cut off date of 1 September 1991 where the infection was hepatitis C, as suggested by Francis, because the “critical question is not one of date, but one of cause and effect”.
Langstaff also said people who were infected with chronic hepatitis B should also be included within the compensation scheme, something which Francis had questioned was necessary.
He said that he would set out what happened and why in his final report, but his conclusion was that “wrongs were done at individual, collective and systemic levels”.