- More than 30k were infected with HIV & hepatitis C due to contaminated blood
- Over 2,900 thought to have died because of the scandal in the 1970s and 1980s
Victims of the infected blood scandal are set for a £10billion compensation package as Jeremy Hunt insisted the huge payout will honour a promise to a dying constituent.
The ‘life-changing’ sums will go to tens of thousands of people given contaminated blood in what is widely regarded as the biggest treatment disaster in NHS history.
Siblings, children and parents of those who were infected will also get money.
The Chancellor signalled his intent ahead of an independent inquiry report tomorrow, with Rishi Sunak expected to respond formally.
Mr Hunt told the Sunday Times he promised to ‘sort’ a fair and full settlement during a meeting with campaigner Mike Dorricott in 2014.
Mr Dorricott was 46 at the time, and had learned just weeks before meeting Mr Hunt that he had terminal liver cancer – a disease linked to the hepatitis C he contracted as a teenager from contaminated Factor 8 blood products.
After telling his family the news that he only had months to live, he visited Mr Hunt, then health secretary, in Whitehall.
Demonstrators pictured holding placards at a protest in London in July 2023
Victims of the infected blood scandal are set for a £10billion compensation package as Jeremy Hunt insisted the huge payout will honour a promise to a dying constituent
He told the minister he was angry that infected patients and their families had not received a full and fair settlement.
Towards the end of the meeting, Mr Hunt shook his hand and said: ‘Don’t worry about this, we’ll sort it.’
Just a few months later, Mr Dorricott died, aged just 47.
Mr Hunt said the new compensation package of at least £10billion for those affected by the scandal will be ‘thanks to Mike more than anyone else’.
He added: And it’s one of the saddest things that he’s not around to see it.’
The Chancellor told the paper that Mr Dorricott was ‘so gentle, so decent’.
‘I imagine after that meeting that Mike thought that he’d been fobbed off by yet another politician giving him the runaround,’ he said, adding: ‘But what Mike didn’t know was that he really had made a huge impression on me.’
Mr Hunt said the money will be funded through Government borrowing.
However, insiders suggested the multi-billion-pound scale of the scheme would not stop Mr Hunt from holding an expected pre-election ‘fiscal event’ with the potential offer of tax cuts.
He said the Government would look ‘very sympathetically’ on any request from the victims or families for a national memorial.
The Prime Minister is expected to address MPs at the close of an official inquiry into what has been condemned as the biggest treatment disaster in NHS history (pictured: undated NHS Blood and Transplant)
More than 30,000 people in the UK were infected with HIV and hepatitis C after receiving contaminated blood products in the 1970s and 1980s.
So far, more than 2,900 people are thought to have died because of the scandal.
Former judge Sir Brian Langstaff will tomorrow deliver his final report, almost seven years after the inquiry was announced.
The PM is then likely to make a Commons statement, although government sources would not be drawn on whether he would issue a formal apology.
Mr Sunak has previously told Sir Brian’s inquiry that victims of the scandal had suffered a ‘litany of broken promises and dashed expectations’.
Some 4,000 people have already received interim payments of about £100,000. That came after a 32-year campaign by the Daily Mail which highlighted the plight of haemophiliacs who were given tainted blood products.
On Tuesday, ministers will set out the detail of the final compensation scheme which will then go to a ‘rapid’ five-week consultation.
A government source said it would be a ‘tariff-based scheme’ based on what each individual – ‘infected and affected’ – had had to endure, based on Sir Brian’s previous suggestions of issues such as ‘social impact, injury, autonomy, care costs and loss of income’.
The source added: ‘It will weigh up all those things and gives relative amounts according to different conditions that people have suffered.’
He was unable to say what the average amount of compensation would be because it varies so massively but said ‘it will be life-changing amounts for them’.
He added that the Government would not give an overall figure for the size of the bill but confirmed it would be ‘a lot of money’.
Former judge Sir Brian Langstaff (pictured, in 2021) will tomorrow deliver his final report, almost seven years after the inquiry was announced
Mr Sunak (pictured) has previously told Sir Brian’s inquiry that victims of the scandal had suffered a ‘litany of broken promises and dashed expectations’
The Government has already accepted the need for further compensation but has said it would be ‘inappropriate’ to respond before the inquiry’s full report.
Last month ministers agreed to support a Labour amendment to a Bill which means that the final compensation scheme must be set up within three months of the legislation becoming law.
Many other countries have been affected by the same scandal. In the US, firms that supplied infected products have paid millions in out-of-court settlements.