Infected Blood Compensation Scheme

Debate between Lee Pitcher and Nick Thomas-Symonds

Monday 2nd September 2024 Commons Chamber

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

The thoughts of the whole House will be with the right hon. Gentleman’s constituent, and I know from my own service in this House in previous Parliaments that he has raised this issue on a number of occasions before. I would say to him, and indeed to this House, that there is no dispute that decades have passed when people should have achieved justice and did not. We had this scandal of infected blood and infected blood products in the 1970s and 1980s, but it was compounded by the failure since to recognise what had gone wrong and to try to make recompense for it; there is no doubt about that. The undertaking I give him is that the Government will push this forward as quickly as we possibly can, and I hope finally we will get to where he wants, which is the position where compensation has finally been paid to those who so richly deserve it.

[Lee Pitcher (Doncaster East and the Isle of Axholme) (Lab)]

What progress been made in establishing the Infected Blood Compensation Authority?

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

Now that the regulations have been laid, as I indicated, it is operationalised, and I know Sir Robert Francis will now be moving as swiftly as he can to be in a position to deliver that final compensation to the infected down the core route and to start those payments by the end of the year.