Draft Infected Blood Compensation Scheme (Amendment) Regulations 2025
(Limited Text - Ministerial Extracts only)
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The Paymaster General and Minister for the Cabinet Office (Nick Thomas-Symonds)
I beg to move,
That the Committee has considered the draft Infected Blood Compensation Scheme (Amendment) Regulations 2025.
It is a pleasure to serve under you for the first time in your new elevated capacity as Chair, Dr Murrison.
Since the publication of the infected blood inquiry’s detailed report in May 2024, the Government have worked to establish a compensation scheme and to set up the Infected Blood Compensation Authority, known as IBCA, to deliver it. I can tell the Committee that since the compensation scheme opened last year, IBCA has contacted all infected people registered with a support scheme to start their claim and made offers of more than £2 billion. It has now opened the service to the first claims from living infected people who have never been compensated. I am pleased with this progress, which is a significant step in the right direction towards delivering justice to those impacted, with IBCA now moving towards opening the service for those affected and for the estates of deceased infected people.
Colleagues may be aware that I, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care and the shadow Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, the right hon. Member for Daventry (Stuart Andrew), among others, spoke at the World AIDS Day event hosted by the Terrence Higgins Trust in Speaker’s House on Monday. It was important that the Government marked that important day. I am proud to say that IBCA has made offers to over 90% of those infected with HIV who are registered with a support scheme, and it hopes to have made offers to the remaining eligible living HIV claimants by the end of this year.
In July, the infected blood inquiry published its additional report, which made 15 recommendations to the Government on the design of the scheme. I immediately accepted seven of those recommendations, and the regulations we are considering today will implement the five that require legislation to achieve. The remaining eight recommendations are subject to an ongoing public consultation, as per Sir Brian Langstaff’s recommendation, and the Government expect to bring in further legislation next year to implement the changes we will need following that consultation.
Listening to the voices of the community is essential. That is why, in the Budget last week, the Chancellor announced changes that will ensure that infected blood compensation payments are relieved from inheritance tax in cases where the original infected or affected person eligible for compensation has died before the compensation is paid. I am pleased that we have been able to make that change; it is something that was raised with me by Members across the House when I last made a statement, and it is really important that justice is not only delivered, but reflected in the way the compensation is treated.
Turning to the regulations at hand, I will set out the changes we are proposing to the scheme in direct response to the inquiry’s recommendations. Regulation 3 responds to the inquiry’s recommendation 3(a) by removing the 1982 start date for eligible HIV infections, meaning that anyone who was infected with HIV via infected blood or infected blood products before 1 November 1985 will be eligible for the scheme.
Regulation 4 makes changes in line with the inquiry’s recommendation 8(b) on affected estates. Its additional report sets out that the time being taken to deliver compensation is disadvantageous to affected people who are older or are in ill health. The inquiry recommended that where an affected person has sadly passed away during a specified date range, their compensation should become part of their estate. The Government have not only accepted this recommendation but gone beyond it, extending the recommended date range by two additional years, to be between 21 May 2024 and 31 March 2031.
Regulation 6 actions the inquiry’s recommendation 4(e), which recommends that the Government remove the need for applicants with hepatitis C or B to evidence their date of diagnosis. The date of diagnosis does not have a bearing on the calculation of an individual’s compensation. Therefore, making this change removes an unnecessary burden and will allow swifter processing of claims by IBCA.
Regulation 7 implements the inquiry’s recommend-ation 4(d), which relates to how the scheme deems the level of severity of someone’s hepatitis infection. Where somebody shows a level 4 diagnosis of hepatitis, but no level 3 diagnosis, we are amending the scheme so that they are deemed to have spent six years at level 3 prior to the level 4 diagnosis. That will uplift the overall compensation package; it is also a recognition that the burden of evidence shall not fall on the claimant, which is of crucial importance, particularly in light of Sir Brian Langstaff’s original finding about lost medical records.
We have heard from the community and the inquiry that the use of effective treatment dates under the scheme does not reflect the lived experience of many victims as not all infected people were able to resume work after treatment for various reasons, including continued illness or stigma, and that some people received effective treatment much later than it was introduced. In line with the inquiry’s recommendation 4(c), regulation 9 rectifies that by removing the earnings floor on the exceptional loss award for financial loss supplementary route. There is therefore a route available for infected people to present evidence on their actual earning loss.
The Government also recognise that concerns have been raised about bereaved partners’ access to support scheme payments following the tragic loss of their spouse. In response to that and to the inquiry’s recommendation 9(a), the Government reopened bereaved partner applications to the infected blood support scheme on 22 October. I should place on record my thanks to colleagues in the devolved Administrations for working with us to ensure that we could achieve this quickly.
One of the key themes of the inquiry’s additional report was the need for IBCA to increase the speed at which it delivers compensation. In order to achieve that, regulation 10 delays by one calendar year the transfer of responsibility to make support scheme payments from IBSS to IBCA. That has been done to allow IBCA to focus its resources on continuing to build an effective compensation scheme. Again, I am very grateful to the devolved Administrations for their collaborative work on making that happen.
Outside the inquiry’s report, regulation 14 makes a number of technical changes to ensure that the compensation scheme functions correctly and that its administration is improved. They are minor corrections that do not impact overall policy.
This compensation scheme is for people who have had their lives changed by unimaginable pain and suffering. These regulations are a direct response to those people’s calls for change that meets their expectations of this Government and carry forward a sense of justice. As Members of the House of Commons, we all share the sentiment that the victims of this scandal should be at the heart of this work. I believe that the regulations are a significant step in ensuring that the compensation scheme delivers for those impacted and I commend them to the Committee.
Nick Thomas-Symonds
I thank both the shadow Minister and the Liberal Democrat spokesperson for their tone and their constructive approach. They quite rightly hold me to account on the compensation scheme, but, just as it was when I was shadow to the Paymaster General, it is important that we maintain cross-party consensus on this issue; I know it is very important to the victims that this does not descend into being some sort of political football. It never has done so, to be fair, and that is extremely helpful.
On the shadow Minister’s specific questions, I expect the first payment to be made to an affected person by the end of the calendar year, which is what I have consistently said over the past 18 months. On the issue of the start date, when giving evidence before Sir Brian back in May, I promised to go back and look at it again. The Government of the day was from 1979 a Conservative one, though that does not really matter; there was an argument as to the date after which liability should fall, but I decided that such a debate was not becoming, and that we should just remove the start date altogether, which is precisely what I have done.
I also entirely agree with the shadow Minister’s point about record keeping. It is not just that these events happened a long time ago, which they did; Sir Brian found evidence of deliberate document destruction. In those circumstances, while Members will realise that IBCA is operationally independent, I have always insisted that there should be a sympathetic and facilitating approach to evidence when dealing with claimants. Rather than simply saying that particular evidence is not available, it should be constructively looking for alternative ways to find that evidence. When I visited IBCA to see the training and work of its caseworkers, both the chair and the chief executive of the organisation very much shared that approach.
The heinous medical experimentation that happened, including at times on children, is also part of the consultation, and we are currently in the 12-week consultation period. Finally, I entirely agree with the shadow Minister that there must be regular communication from both the Government, through the consultation, and IBCA. There must also be plain English in official documents—that is one my passions and I repeatedly asking for it.
The Liberal Democrat spokesperson raised the special category mechanism, the changes to which are in the public consultation at the moment. After the 12-week consultation period, the Government will have 12 weeks to respond. My plan is then to introduce what will be the full set of regulations, so another Committee will be reconvening as soon as possible to make the necessary changes to the scheme on the basis of that consultation.
Tessa Munt
Is it possible to have some vague timeframe? The Minister is saying that there is a 12-week consultation, which I absolutely understand, but so many of these people are desperately ill. Can he give me any idea of when that might come into action?
Nick Thomas-Symonds
It has already started; we are in the first 12-week period. After that, the Government then have another 12 weeks to respond, at which point I will bring forward a set of regulations. I have already committed to Sir Brian Langstaff, and on the Floor of the House, to changing the special category mechanism. I am fully aware of the issue the hon. Lady has highlighted, and we will certainly move as quickly as we can to introduce the regulations. There is the 12-week consultation period that we are in, there will be 12 weeks for the Government to respond, and then there will be the time that it takes to draft and introduce regulations, but I want to do that as quickly as possible.
Finally, while we are here debating Sir Brian Langstaff’s important recommendations on compensation, he also made a range of other recommendations on trying to prevent something as awful as this from happening again. While this work is hugely important, the work on implementing the other recommendations continues.
Question put and agreed to.