Charity's concern over contaminated blood payouts

A compensation payment proposed for men who were infected with HIV and hepatitis as schoolchildren is "wholly inadequate", a charity has said.

During the 1970s and 1980s, the Lord Mayor Treloar School and College in Hampshire offered specialist care for children with haemophilia but pupils received medical treatments using contaminated blood products.

The Hepatitis C Trust has raised "profound concerns" about the payouts for those who underwent the "unethical research" by NHS clinicians.

The government said it remained committed to ensuring justice was "not only delivered but reflected in the way compensation is treated".

The Infected Blood Public Inquiry's report, published in May 2024, said children with bleeding disorders who attended the school were treated as "objects for research".

They have been offered a one-off £15,000 payment on top of the ongoing support, with a £10,000 award available for others in similar, less notorious cases.

Changes to the payment are currently subject to public consultation.

The trust, writing to Cabinet Office minister Nick Thomas-Symonds, said: "The current proposals fall far short of delivering justice and risk sending a dangerous message about the value of human life and the integrity of public institutions in the UK."

It added: "This was not an accident, it was a conscious decision by medical professionals."

Signatories, including the charity and other members of the infected blood community, called for the award to be "fully and transparently reviewed".

Gary Webster, who was infected with HIV and Hepatitis C when he attended Treloar's, said a revised potential offer of £25,000 was still "way off the mark".

He added: "How can you offer £25,000 pounds to someone who's been experimented and researched on and, most of the time, killed?

"It's just ridiculous. It has to be a lot more than what they are offering."

He said of the 122 haemophiliac boys who attended the college, more than 80 were now dead.

"We were forced, basically, to have injections every day," Webster said.

"At the time, we didn't know - we were eight, nine, 10, years old - and we just thought the doctors, who were our friends, who used to come and play sports with us in the evening, we thought they were doing good for us.

"Our parents had no knowledge of anything."

Following the inquiry's findings, the National Police Chiefs' Council instigated a review to determine whether a national criminal investigation could or should take place and, in December, said the review was "ongoing".

The charity's letter said the delay "compounds the injustice and erodes public trust", with signatories calling for a "clear timeline or decisions on criminal accountability".

A government spokesperson said: "The suffering endured by all those subjected to unethical medical research is profound and we remain committed to ensuring that justice is not only delivered but reflected in the way compensation is treated."

It added: "We encourage the community to respond to the government's consultation before 22 January, which seeks respondents' feedback on different ways of designing and calculating the award to reflect unethical research practices."

More than £2bn has now been paid in compensation to victims across the UK of the infected blood scandal.

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