No sensible reason for the government to continue to delay compensation for Infected Blood victims - Ben Harrison

In hearings in July this year, the Prime Minister and Richmond MP Rishi Sunak was called to give evidence. He resolutely refused to provide any useful information about when the victims can expect financial resolution to the injustices which have been perpetrated upon them over the last five decades.

Those injustices began with the administration of contaminated blood products and continued for decades with successive governments refusing to provide any proper explanation as to how haemophiliacs and their families had been infected with and affected by HIV, Hepatitis C, and Hepatitis B, through treatments provided by the NHS as well as, in many cases, being exposed to vCJD. A cynical observer might conclude that the Prime Minister was coy about the government’s response because he was waiting to see how culpable it would be before agreeing a level of compensation.

If that was Mr Sunak’s position, then he should be in no doubt now that the government and its various bodies will be heavily criticised.

The chairman of the Inquiry, Sir Brian Langstaff, wrote of the reasons for delay: “The sheer volume of criticisms in the Inquiry Report to detail wrongs done over more than 50 years requires time for warning letters under the Inquiry Rules 2006.”

It is therefore clear that there is no sensible reason for the government to leave the issue of compensation in abeyance any longer. It is imperative that it now rows back on the position that no response to the Infected Blood Inquiry’s compensation report will be made until the final report is published.

This should after all, be no stretch for a Government that, up until the inquiry’s announcement, was anticipating providing its response to the inquiry’s recommendations in Autumn of this year. The alternative will be yet another layer of injustice being heaped upon those infected and affected. The simple and terrible fact is that after 50 years of campaigning and fighting ill health, the victims of this scandal no longer have the time to wait whilst the government procrastinates.

Sir Brian concluded his remarks to the Prime Minister in July, by saying of the delay to the implementation of the compensation recommendations “… if it troubles my conscience I would think it would trouble the conscience of a caring Government and you have said that’s what you would wish to be.” The longer the Government procrastinates, the more it becomes apparent how uncaring they really are.

The current situation with the Infected Blood Inquiry is increasingly typical of the current administration’s approach to responding to public inquiries.

Public inquiries can be a vehicle for real and positive change but only when the government of the day approaches them with good faith and stops viewing them as a political tool with which to kick the can of a troublesome issue down the road for a few years.

Ben Harrison is head of public law at Milners Solicitors in Leeds.