Government to Announce Final Plans for Contaminated Blood Compensation

Written by Jeff Courtney, August 15, 2024

The Haemophilia Society this afternoon met with Paymaster General Nick Thomas-Symonds and Cabinet Office staff alongside a small group of other charities and campaign groups. We understand that the government intends to accept the vast majority of the recommendations of interim IBCA chair Sir Robert Francis, making some changes to the original compensation proposals published by the previous government, and will publish the expert group report and a statement on the compensation scheme tomorrow, Friday 16 August. Additional documents explaining the scheme in more detail will be published next week.

The most important change is that support payments through the infected blood support schemes will continue for life, and an amount will only be deducted from the compensation figure for future loss and future care needs. This should mean that people who are in receipt of those payments will still get substantial compensation as well as having the security of regular support payments for life.

Many of the other changes are minor or technical in nature but they have heard the feedback we and other groups gave in July in consultation meetings. We hope that as the compensation scheme is established in the autumn these issues continue to be considered.

We welcome the acceptance of the recommendations for legal support and representation and await confirmation of the provision of financial advice and mediation and arbitration services. However, we are still concerned that, for some of the bereaved families, compensation will not be paid in a just way to those most impacted by someone’s infection and death.

There also remains concerns that the tariff levels are not always fair, do not provide sufficient compensation for some, and do not take into account the full extent of people’s suffering and loss. The stigma of treatment with contaminated blood products, illegal testing, the impact of interferon treatment, liver health post treatment and the psychological impact of exposure to vCJD are some of the issues that are not fully compensated in the current tariffs. We await to see more details in the expert group report.

Sir Robert Francis’ recommendations were very critical of the government for its piecemeal engagement with infected and affected people, the secrecy surrounding the expert groups that decided compensation tariffs and the lack of involvement from people infected and affected in the development of the proposals.

Going forward we expect IBCA to engage with representative organisations and the infected and affected people in its work developing processes and procedures and in the proposed review after a year of the working of the scheme.

Further details of the compensation scheme will be published by the government tomorrow and next week.