Ten people have been offered a settlement worth over £13m in total, with thousands more applications due to be processed from January
A Minister paid tribute to infected blood campaigners as the first compensation payments were offered to victims of the scandal.
Ten people have been offered a settlement worth over £13m in total, with thousands more applications due to be processed from January.
Some £11.8bn has been set aside for victims, in what is thought will be be the largest payment of its kind in NHS history.
Around 4,000 survivors and bereaved partners have already received a series of interim payments worth up to £310,000 each.
“It is hard to conceive the scale of damage done, and the incredible suffering of all those impacted,” Paymaster General Nick Thomas-Symonds wrote for Mirror Online.
“I hope those who have fought so hard for justice can feel the power of their achievements and know that they have delivered change to so many lives.”
£11.8 billion in compensation is entirely right given the scale of this injustice
By NICK THOMAS-SYMONDS, Paymaster General
The Prime Minister and I have always been determined to deliver justice for the victims of the Infected Blood Scandal.
Lives have been shattered, people have watched their loved ones die, and – in one of the most harrowing findings that the Infected Blood Inquiry uncovered – children were used as objects of research. It is hard to conceive the scale of damage done, and the incredible suffering of all those impacted.
That is why we are going further than any other government has before. We have set aside £11.8 billion of funding for the compensation scheme, which is one of the biggest in our country’s history – and that is entirely right given the scale of this injustice.
We are now determined to deliver that compensation to infected and affected victims of this scandal as soon as possible.
This week we have made considerable progress. The Infected Blood Compensation Authority – an arms length body, independent of government – has offered compensation to ten people, totalling over £13 million. This is a significant step, building on over £1 billion which infected and affected victims have received so far in interim payments.
The plan is now to ramp up the process to get final compensation payments out to more and more victims, while ensuring that the process is managed correctly.
I understand that every day waiting for compensation is a day too many, after what has been decades of injustice and delay. It has fallen to this government to deliver concrete action, which is what we have begun to do.
The Infected Blood Compensation Authority (IBCA), which is chaired by Sir Robert Francis KC, will work with the first group of people receiving money, as well as the wider community, to improve and scale up the compensation service.
I have asked IBCA to do everything possible to make applying for compensation as simple as it can be, so people can receive the payments they are owed without further delay and administrative burden.
Although of course delivering justice is about much more than financial compensation. To that end, the government is taking forward the Infected Blood Inquiry’s recommendations to ensure everything possible is done to prevent scandals like this happening again.
That requires real change, not just to the law, but to culture as well. That is why the Prime Minister and I are so committed to delivering on the Hillsborough Law and the related Duty of Candour, to ensure institutions work in the interests of justice and the people they are meant to serve, not their own reputation.
Nothing can ever undo the decades of injustice, pain and suffering. Yet as compensation payments are made this week, I hope those who have fought so hard for justice can feel the power of their achievements and know that they have delivered change to so many lives.
