Infected Blood Compensation Scheme

Seamus Logan Excerpts

Thursday 13th February 2025 Commons Chamber

[Seamus Logan (Aberdeenshire North and Moray East) (SNP)]

I thank the Paymaster General for an advance copy of his statement. I recognise his sincerity, and the hard work that he and his colleagues are putting into progressing this vital compensation scheme. I also understand the need for him and his colleagues to take small initial steps to test their systems and processes, but as others have said, legal representatives fear that many will die while they wait, and justice delayed is justice denied. Does he really think that is good enough, given the numbers involved? Will he consider strengthening the authority’s teams who are processing these claims, so that the pace can be rapidly accelerated, and so that they can meet the forthcoming key performance indicators to which he referred? Finally, the last time we spoke about the scheme in the Chamber, he undertook to look at the role of voluntary organisations that provide vital support to claimants, and to consider putting funding for them on a statutory basis. Will he comment on that as well, please?

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

On the hon. Gentleman’s first point, he mentioned me and my colleagues, but of course IBCA is an arm’s length body—it is operationally independent—so it takes operationally independent decisions on how best to pay out the money to as many people as possible, as quickly as possible. As I said, it has decided to adopt a test-and-learn approach to make that possible.

One of Sir Brian Langstaff’s recommendations is that we look at support for voluntary organisations. That will be covered in an update that I will give to the House in due course on all 12 recommendations. However, I give the hon. Gentleman the general assurance that I am, and will continue to be, restless for progress. On his point about IBCA scaling up and having more staff and claims managers, that is precisely what it is doing at the moment.