Infected Blood Inquiry: compensation

Background to the public inquiry

Between the 1970s and early 1990s thousands of UK patients contracted HIV, hepatitis viruses, or both, after receiving contaminated blood, blood products and tissue as part of medical treatments and procedures, such as blood transfusions.

The Infected Blood Inquiry, chaired by Sir Brian Langstaff, a retired High Court judge, examined the circumstances that led to individuals being given contaminated blood and blood products in the UK. It also scrutinised the response of the government, health services and professionals. The public inquiry was ordered by the then prime minister, Theresa May, in July 2017 and the final oral evidence sessions took place in July 2023.

The final report of the inquiry was published on 20 May 2024.

The inquiry’s primary recommendation was that the government should immediately establish a compensation scheme for those “infected and affected”.  Affected people are “those who have suffered the impacts of infected blood through their relationship with a living or deceased infected person”.

This Library briefing on infected blood compensation examines the design and implementation of the compensation scheme. A separate Library briefing examines recommendations made by the inquiry that are focused on improving safety and patient care: Infected Blood Inquiry: recommendations for recognition, healthcare and patient safety.

Establishing a framework for compensation

During the public inquiry, three reports were published that set out potential plans for delivering compensation.

The first, published in June 2022, was undertaken by Sir Robert Francis KC and was commissioned by the government, separately from the public inquiry. Sir Robert outlined a possible compensation model and recommended that interim payments, of no less than £100,000, should be made ahead of the establishment of a compensation scheme.

The public inquiry chair, Sir Brian Langstaff, then issued two interim reports on compensation. The first interim report, published in July 2022, agreed with Sir Robert’s proposal for the government to make interim payments, of “no less than £100,000”, without delay, to those who were infected or their bereaved partners. They would be eligible for the payment if they registered (or were already registered) with the existing infected blood support schemes before any future compensation scheme was established.

The government accepted the recommendations and interim payments of £100,000 were made by October 2022 to over 4,000 people.

A second interim report on compensation was published in April 2023. The report’s principal recommendation was that a “compensation scheme should be set up now”, and that eligibility for compensation should be extended to cover bereaved parents, children or siblings of infected people (this was also recommended by Sir Robert Francis). The report emphasised that the establishment of the compensation scheme did not need to wait for the final inquiry report because the second interim report fully covered the inquiry’s “recommendations on financial redress”.

The previous Conservative government responded to some individual recommendations made by the three reports (such as the interim compensation proposals). At the time of writing, standalone government responses to these reports have not been published.

Pressure on the government to introduce compensation

By summer 2023 some stakeholders, including affected families, were expressing frustration about the absence of any formal government response to the three compensation reports and the lack of progress on compensation. Parliamentarians and stakeholders took several steps to encourage the government to deliver compensation.

For example, additional public inquiry hearings were held in July 2023 with the Prime Minister, Chancellor and former Paymaster General. One aim of the hearings was to get “clarity and action from the Government” on compensation. In addition, a Labour amendment to the (then) Victims and Prisoners Bill was agreed; it required the government to establish the compensation scheme, by regulations, “within three months of the passing” of the act. The bill received Royal Assent on 24 May 2024 meaning that regulations establishing the compensation scheme had to be in place by 24 August 2024.

Setting up the Infected Blood Compensation Authority (IBCA)

The Paymaster General made a statement to the House on compensation arrangements on 21 May 2024, the day after the publication of the final inquiry report. In the statement, the government:

• accepted Sir Brian’s recommended five categories of pay awards (injury, social impact, autonomy, care, and financial loss)
• appointed Sir Robert Francis as the interim chair of the Infected Blood Compensation Authority (IBCA, the arms length body responsible for administering the compensation scheme)
• announced that Sir Robert would be seeking views from the infected blood community about the proposed compensation scheme
• confirmed additional interim compensation payments of £210,000 to living infected beneficiaries.

Compensation scheme regulations

The government had to make regulations that formally established the compensation scheme and gave the IBCA powers to pay compensation. The Infected Blood Compensation Scheme Regulations 2024 came into force on 23 August 2024. At the time of writing, the IBCA scheme is not yet open for applications.

These regulations enable compensation payments to be made via the ‘core route’, namely to infected persons, both living and deceased. The government said that a second set of regulations would follow to “ensure that the IBCA can begin compensation payments to affected persons in 2025”.

Assessing the amount of compensation

Under the scheme, compensation will be assessed according to a tariff-based approach using set criteria and rates. This means that the amount of compensation due to an infected person will be the total of that awarded across the different compensation categories: the injury impact, social impact, autonomy, financial loss, and care awards.

Some of these awards will be a fixed payment and some will vary (for example, based on the earnings someone lost because of their infection and treatment). For the injury impact, social impact and autonomy awards, the compensation assessment will take into account the severity of infection and whether someone had multiple infections.

Response to the scheme

While stakeholders have broadly welcomed the the scheme, they have criticised the time taken to set it up, its complexity, the absence of basic information about the scheme (such as the basis on which each claim will be assessed) and disparities in “compensation awards between people given hepatitis B and C and HIV”.