Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many haemophiliac registrant victims of the contaminated blood scandal were paid the full £20,000 from the £10 million that the Government allocated in 1989 to the Haemophilia Society.

The Haemophilia Society is a national charity founded in 1950 to provide support and services to the haemophilia community. The Department gave an ex gratia grant of £10 million to the Haemophilia Society in 1987 to enable them to establish a special trust fund so that payments could be made to meet the needs of the individuals with haemophilia affected and infected with HIV/AIDS because of receiving contaminated blood and blood products. This trust fund was called the Macfarlane Trust and it began administering the scheme in 1988.

The Macfarlane Trust was wound up in November 2017 and the English Infected Blood Support Scheme took over this scheme from November 2017 along with all other schemes supporting those affected and infected by contaminated blood and blood products.

The Department does not hold data in respect of numbers of people receiving an ex gratia payment.