New regulations to be published imminently

Written by Jessica Bomford, February 6, 2025

Draft regulations for the next stage of compensation payments are likely to be put before parliament within the next few weeks, the government has confirmed.

At a meeting with the Haemophilia Society (THS) and other campaign groups on 30 January, the minister with responsibility for implementing the Infected Blood Inquiry’s recommendations, Nick Thomas-Symonds MP, said the regulations should become law by 31 March 2025.

There was concern that there is very little, if any, scope for amending the draft regulations which have been written without consulting the infected blood community.

The meeting, which was attended by our Chair, Conan McIlwrath, also included representatives from the Hepatitis C Trust, Tainted Blood, Wholeblood and the Terrence Higgins Trust.

Conan told Mr Thomas-Symonds that expectations had not been met around hepatitis C tariffs and repeated our belief that the proposed sum on unethical testing is far too low. Compensation, he said, needed to be lifted by many magnitudes and told the minister that all people with haemophilia were subject to unethical testing the minute they received pooled plasma products. He said THS was spending huge amounts of time supporting members through the compensation process as well as lobbying government which was placing a significant strain on our resources.

Conan raised concern that information released about the proposed ‘supplementary route’, which will be contained in the draft regulations, suggested that the government was making it difficult to qualify for extra payments. He said there appeared to be a far higher burden of proof in place, compared with the UK’s support schemes, as well as a more narrow set of criterion for applications.

Andy Evans, founder of Tainted Blood, told the minister that the delays in the compensation process meant that many more ‘affected’ people were likely to die before they could make their claims, which would then die with them.

Leila Reid, from the Hepatitis C Trust, said the evidence burden for hepatitis C claims is too high and repeated the concerns of many that there is no recognition of the impact of hepatitis C treatment in the compensation scheme.

The minister told the meeting that the government had made ‘substantial’ changes in response to consultation with the infected blood community, such as widening sibling eligibility and accepting the majority of Sir Robert Francis’ recommendations on unethical testing.

After the meeting Conan said: ‘The meeting was respectful, but there’s very little flexibility about the compensation scheme from the government. It still feels like the government thinks it knows best, which means that mistakes will continue to be made. Every error causes pain to our community and delays the delivery of a fair and just compensation payment.’

We will update you when the government publishes the secondary regulations relating to its Infected Blood Compensation Scheme.