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Victims of the UK’s contaminated blood scandal will receive tax-free interim payments of £210,000 within weeks, with some entitled to receive up to £2.7mn, as the government vowed to place “no restriction” on the total budget for compensation.
The interim awards will be paid within 90 days as part of a vast compensation package, intended for people “infected and affected” by the scandal, that government officials said could cost more than £10bn.
Individuals infected with multiple diseases could receive up to £2.7mn in final payments while a person infected with HIV could receive up to £2.6mn, according to documents released by the government on Tuesday.
Those who ended up with severe cases of Hepatitis C or Hepatitis B could be entitled to up to £1.5mn.
The compensation comes on top of £100,000 in interim payments already offered to many infected individuals and their bereaved partners. Full payments will begin by the end of the year.
Cabinet office minister John Glen said on Tuesday that beneficiaries would include those infected as well as others including partners, parents, siblings and carers, who can receive up to £110,000 in compensation.
Payments will be exempt from income, capital gains and inheritance tax.
A full estimate of the cost will be announced by chancellor Jeremy Hunt in the Autumn Statement. The level of compensation will be determined based on five criteria: injury, social impact, loss of autonomy, care needs and financial loss.
“As the prime minister made clear yesterday, there is no restriction on the budget,” Glen said on Tuesday. “Where we need to pay, we will pay.”
Conceding that “time is of the essence”, Glen announced that a new Infected Blood Compensation Authority would be set up to administer the scheme at arm’s length from ministers, chaired by Sir Robert Francis KC.
Francis conducted an independent report on the scandal in 2022, which recommended compensation for victims and his appointment as interim chair of the new body was applauded in the House of Commons public gallery by victims and families affected.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak made a “wholehearted and unequivocal apology” on behalf of the British state over the “calamity” of the scandal on Monday.
Sunak acknowledged the British state had mistreated tens of thousands of patients and engaged in a cover-up. He said the affair “should shake our nation to its core”.
Campaigners on behalf of the victims, including Labour MP Diana Johnson, have called on the government to rapidly begin making payments, given that victims are dying without receiving any redress for the damage it has inflicted upon their lives.
Dena Peacock, who contracted hepatitis C virus after receiving a blood transfusion, said: “Do they really want us to believe they only came to a decision like this [on payments] within hours of the report coming out?
“The government already knew they were going to do this and yet they have made us wait as we watch people continue to die each week. They are still making me feel expendable.”
Nick Thomas-Symonds, shadow cabinet office minister, reaffirmed Labour’s “commitment to work on a cross-party basis to help deliver the compensation scheme and get the money, the final money, to victims as soon as possible”.
The public inquiry into the scandal, led by Sir Brian Langstaff, in its final report on Monday called for a full victim compensation scheme to be implemented within a year.
Politicians including Manchester’s Labour mayor Andy Burnham have called for the government to look into prosecutions of individuals involved in the scandal and corporate manslaughter charges against Whitehall departments.
The inquiry’s report found a “catalogue of failures” that led 30,000 NHS patients to receive blood products contaminated with HIV and hepatitis C between the 1970s and early 1990s. More than 3,000 have died so far.
Langstaff accused healthcare staff, ministers and officials of “a lack of openness, transparency and candour . . . such that the truth has been hidden for decades”.
The NHS and successive governments had adopted a culture of defensiveness and oversaw the “deliberate destruction of some documents”, he added.
