Calls for pharmaceutical giants to foot compensation invoice

Pharmaceutical giants which supplied infected blood products should foot the estimated £10billion compensation bill, MPs and campaigners have demanded.

They called on the Government to pursue legal action against the drug firms implicated in the appalling scandal.

Victims in the US, Germany and Japan have received settlements worth hundreds of millions of pounds from companies whose products were contaminated.

The scandal saw more than 30,000 people infected with HIV and hepatitis C at the hands of the NHS between 1970 and 1991.

Victims in the US, Germany and Japan have received settlements worth hundreds of millions of pounds from companies whose products were contaminated. Demonstrators hold placards reading message related to the NHS infected blood scandal

Sir Brian Langstaff’s inquiry last week found that contaminated products made by subsidiaries of Bayer, Baxter and other groups should not have been licensed (stock image)

Diana Johnson, who leads the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Haemophilia and Contaminated Blood, said it was ‘outrageous’ that payments had not been made in the UK. 

‘Companies need to apologise and there needs to be a claim against them for some of this money,’ the Labour MP told The Observer.

Sir Brian Langstaff’s inquiry last week found that contaminated products made by subsidiaries of Bayer, Baxter and other groups should not have been licensed. 

The Government announced it would pay interim compensation of up to £2,735,000 to the victims.

Sam Roddick, whose businesswoman mother Anita died from complications of hepatitis C, said: ‘It should be the corporations that pay… It needs to hurt and it needs to hurt the right people.’

Jason Evans’s father Jonathan died in 1993 after becoming infected with HIV and hepatitis C. 

He called for a ‘proper apology from all of the pharmaceutical companies’.