Infected blood scandal victims will get paid quicker, minister promises

Victims of the infected blood scandal will get their payments more quickly, ministers have promised.

Cabinet Office Minister Nick Thomas-Symonds has told officials to "do what is necessary to remove barriers and speed up payments."

The body set up to pay out compensation to victims and families will learn from programmes set up to deliver financial support during the pandemic, and will use records from the public inquiry into the scandal to help claimants prove their eligibility.

The Cabinet Office says it will also "accept greater commercial risk" to make sure compensation payments come more quickly. Mr Thomas-Symonds said: "While no amount of money will compensate for the suffering that people have endured, I want to ensure that we're delivering payments as quickly as possible.”

Some 30,000 people in the UK are thought to have been given infected blood or blood products up until the mid-1990s. More than 25,000 got hepatitis C, while a further 1,200 ended up with HIV in treatments for haemophilia.

An estimated 3,000 people have died as a result.

The 2,527-page report from the Infected Blood Inquiry, published last year (2024), found the scandal “could largely have been avoided” and there was a "pervasive" cover-up to hide the truth.

It identified a "catalogue of systemic, collective and individual failures" that amounted to a "calamity".

Former prime minister Rishi Sunak issued a "wholehearted and unequivocal" apology to the victims, saying the publication of the report into the disaster was “a day of shame for the British state”.