Contaminated Blood Scandal: Interim Payments for Victims

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Wednesday 20th July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

One of Sir Robert’s recommendations, and the focus of the Urgent Question in the other place, is that the Government should consider making interim compensation payments to infected support scheme beneficiaries before a compensation scheme is established, in the interests of speeding up justice and to give some level of assurance and security to those who may not live to see the end of the inquiry. My right honourable friend in the other place, the Minister for the Cabinet Office, and all colleagues in government, are keenly aware of that reality. We are working carefully to consider the recommendations in the report, and making haste to address this as quickly and as thoroughly as possible.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend keeps using the word “quickly”. Some of us were around when this terrible scandal broke many years ago—I heard heart-rending stories in my own constituency surgery. We really need to get things sorted out within this year, at the very latest. Can she give an assurance that, by the end of this year, everything will have been dealt with, in so far as it can be?

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

The assurance I can give noble Lords is that we are extremely cognisant of the time pressures in this scenario. We know that those infected and affected have been waiting for decades, so we are aware of the time pressures and are working as quickly as we can on the recommendations from Sir Robert’s study. The work of the inquiry continues, and its chair has made it clear that he is aware of the need to conduct it as quickly as the thoroughness that is needed will allow.