Baroness Brinton
Main Page: Baroness Brinton (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)Infected Blood Compensation Scheme Regulations 2025
Baroness Brinton Excerpts(2 days, 20 hours ago)
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Baroness Brinton
At end insert “but this House regrets that the draft Infected Blood Compensation Scheme Regulations 2025 diverge from the proposals set out in the Infected Blood Inquiry Report and the Government’s response; introduce exclusions leading to inconsistent treatment of victims; downgrade some previously agreed awards; disregard expert advisory recommendations by imposing new evidence requirements for certain support scheme payments; and discriminate against carers and those receiving care through the proposed care awards framework.”
Baroness Brinton (LD)
I thank the infected blood individuals and groups, including the Hepatitis C Trust, the Haemophilia Society and Tainted Blood, and many others, both infected and affected, who have been in touch with me about their concerns around the direction of the compensation scheme.
The fact is that four people are dying every week, and over 3,000 have died so far. Only a handful of victims have had full payment, which means that there is still much to do, and, as we will hear, much that is worrying about the direction of the compensation scheme.
Above all, I believe we all stand with the infected and affected victims, and join them in wanting to see Sir Brian Langstaff’s recommendations delivered. Until all claimants have received what is due, they are being revictimised by this appalling dereliction of duty by the state, for over 50 years and counting.
I thank the Minister and her officials for last week’s meeting with a number of noble Lords about the regulation and for answering queries on the actual implementation of the infected blood compensation scheme. I thank her for her call today to let me know about the error.
There is one person who is not with us tonight, and that is the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell of Surbiton, who has real personal experience of infected blood. In your Lordships’ House, we miss her voice of experience, as well as her expertise. Given that she cannot come out in the evenings because of her oxygen, I hope that, in future, the officials will consider when we timetable debates such as this, so that she can join us. We echo her frustration with the failure of IBCA to quickly and appropriately compensate eligible people.
I want to make it clear right from the start that I will not call a vote on my regret amendment. There are two reasons for that. First, I do not want to delay the regulation. Too many eligible people are horrified to hear that only one person had received their compensation by the end of 2024 and that only a very few affected people—perhaps also single numbers—will receive their compensation by December 2025. Secondly, many of the issues I want to raise are about the way that the scheme is being operated, both by IBCA and through the Cabinet Office’s involvement.
When I laid the amendment, I talked to some of those affected. I am particularly grateful to them, because they showed me that there were problems with elements of the regulation. Since it was laid, more has come to light about what is happening in the complex and invisible web of arrangements for the infected blood compensation scheme—so much so that I am hearing that any good will and trust that had started to develop last year, as the first regulations were laid, appears to have been trashed again. Indeed, last week, Sir Brian Langstaff took the extremely rare action, as the chair of a public inquiry, of telling the Government that he is so concerned with what he is hearing that he will be issuing an extra report on the speed and details of the implementation of the scheme.
My first question to the Minister is this: what action will the Government be taking to address the concerns of Sir Brian? I recognise that he has not published his comments yet, but we know they are coming and soon. Will she undertake that Parliament should have a proper debate on the problems and issues raised by the infected and affected victims and groups, as well as on the updates that were promised during the passage of the Victims and Prisoners Act which set up IBCA last year?
Last year, we were told that the second set of regulations would cover principally arrangements just for affected victims, because the regulation laid and commenced last August, while Parliament was in recess, covered only infected victims. The Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee in its 18th report notes that the Explanatory Memorandum on this second set is much easier to understand than the first—so, thank you officials, that is helpful. However, it takes as read the restate and expand of the first regulations into the ones we are seeing today. In our meeting with the Minister last week, I said that I was not clear about what has changed from that first regulation, and I am very grateful for the paper that was sent through today. However, had we not raised it, I fear that realistic scrutiny of the regulation on such a long SI would have been difficult.
I am very grateful to the Minister for her introduction this evening, especially as she has explained the error in the formula in the first regulation, which has to date resulted in less compensation being paid to around 50 claimants. However, there follows from that the question of whether there are any other hidden elements of restate and expand that have resulted in the wrong amount of compensation being allocated.
In the regret amendment, I set out a handful of different concerns that I have heard directly from infected and affected victims and groups. These are not minor and often diverge from Sir Brian’s interim and final inquiry report, Sir Robert Francis’s report and even some expert group reports. I am particularly grateful to the umbrella group of victims and organisations which passed me a copy of its November 2024 paper sent to IBCA and to the Cabinet Office setting out in full detail—21 pages’ worth— where things are not going right. I understand that this has been sent also to Sir Brian Langstaff and will be part of the evidence on his website.
The group’s concern falls into four areas, and I will broadly follow them with what I am saying, with examples that I am aware of to demonstrate the problem. It says that there are 57 issues still to resolve—and, clearly, I am not going to cover anywhere near a small amount of them. The context and approach of Getting It Right sets out how the IB community feels that both the Cabinet Office and IBCA are assuming that the community is in step with the way things are progressing.
However, when concerns are expressed about divergence from original principles, for example, that makes things not fit for purpose and/or unworkable, or that delays some from accessing compensation, then that is fundamentally not acceptable. For example, during the passage of the Victims and Prisoners Bill last year, Ministers—such as the noble Earl, Lord Howe, sitting very close to me in the House—said that everything would happen at pace for all victims. Only after the Bill became law did it become clear that there are now two classes of victims: infected, because they had the consequence of the first regulation last August, and affected, who definitely feel that they are now not as much of a priority. That has caused consternation.
The unfinished business section of the Getting It Right report has elements, again, that highlight divergence with Sir Brian’s inquiry report and recommendations. The problem is that IBCA is not truly independent. To be frank, it is not even the arm’s-length body as set out in the Act which the previous Government were so keen to set up. Why? It has staff, including senior staff, seconded from the Cabinet Office—surely still a conflict of interest there—as well as staff from HMRC, who are trained specifically never to invite a claim. So, I ask the Minister: why is the community not involved in the drafting of training courses for new staff seconded from elsewhere with other practice? It is vital that IBCA is independent of the Cabinet Office, otherwise it cannot be arm’s-length. Also, as was much discussed during the Victims and Prisoners Bill, it needs to be accountable to Parliament. So, what will the Government do to ensure that IBCA is truly independent of government?
The son of a victim has written to me to say that the draft regulations do not take account of what the expert advisory group says and, worse still, are trying to attach conditions that are specifically not recommended to be attached to those victims already in the special category mechanism, or SCM. Rather, the recommendations explicitly state that new applicants should have to show one of the six so-called rare conditions. Victims already accepted as SCM recipients, as recommended by the expert advisory group, will have their past care and losses calculated automatically on the basis of the enhanced supplementary route, irrespective now of the much narrower so-called six severe health conditions. The problem is that this is not true for everybody.
My Front-Bench portfolio covers all the current inquiries and compensation schemes. Rebecca Hilsenrath, the parliamentary ombudsman, published a blunt report about Windrush that says:
“Our report found people who had applied for compensation were being wrongly denied the money they were owed. We found recurrent reasons for this, suggesting these were not one-off issues but systemic problems”.
She also thought it would be useful to provide lessons for public bodies starting to offer compensation to people affected by the Post Office Horizon and infected blood scandals.
Baroness Brinton (LD)
I am very grateful for the Minister’s comments and look forward to meeting her, along with other colleagues, and indeed to future sessions. As I said earlier, I will not detain the House any more at the moment. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.