Disabled peer returns to the Lords to fight for victims of infected blood scandal

A disabled peer who lost her first husband through the contaminated blood scandal has called on the government to end its repeated delays in establishing a compensation scheme for those affected.

Baroness [Jane] Campbell was speaking for the first time in the Lords since she took a year-long leave of absence due to “severe burnout” caused by her parliamentary workload.

She told the Lords that her first husband, Graham, had haemophilia and received blood products through the NHS that infected him with both hepatitis C and HIV.

He and his younger brother Anthony had been told in 1987 that they had been infected with HIV from contaminated factor eight clotting agents.

Baroness Campbell told her fellow peers on Monday (pictured): “Anthony was first to die, leaving a widow and a one-year-old daughter.

“Graham endured five years of misery, a barrage of associated illnesses, including pneumocystis pneumonia, epilepsy and intermittent blindness.

“He died 18 months after his brother. It must have been unbearable for him to watch what he knew was in store for him, but his courage took my breath away.”

He died on 19 December 1993.

Baroness Campbell said: “I count myself lucky. I eventually found a way to move on, enough to lead a good, purposeful life after Graham died, but the memory and the flashbacks do not fade.

“Many wives of infected men lost their childbearing years. Parents and countless partners gave up jobs to care for loved ones at a time when HIV/AIDS was stigmatising and isolating.

“There have been over 3,000 deaths to date, with an average of one more every four days.”

In 2017, prime minister Theresa May ordered a public inquiry into how contaminated blood transfusions infected thousands of people with hepatitis C and HIV.

Although interim payments have since been made to many of those affected, a proper compensation scheme has yet to be set up.

Baroness Campbell, a crossbench peer, said the inquiry’s chair, Sir Brian Langstaff, had expressed frustration with government delays in setting up such a scheme.

She said the government had “procrastinated”, and she called on ministers to pledge that a scheme would be ready to “go live” after the publication of the final inquiry report on 20 May.

She said: “The government accept the ‘moral case for compensation’, but these words are meaningless if actioning the inquiry’s recommendations is further delayed.

“Each delay means countless more deaths without the comfort of knowing that justice has been served for the infected victims, and their affected partners and children.”

She was speaking in the Lords as peers – including her fellow disabled peer Baroness [Sal] Brinton – pressed the government to act more quickly on compensation, during the committee stage of its victims and prisoners bill.

Baroness Brinton, former president of the Liberal Democrats, called for an interim payment of £100,000 for relatives of victims who have died and whose compensation claims have not yet been recognised.

She said compensation was due to those whose lives “over the last four decades have been severely affected or destroyed by acts of the NHS, and therefore also by the government”.

She said that nearly 5,000 people with haemophilia and other bleeding disorders were infected with HIV and hepatitis through contaminated clotting factors, with some of them unknowingly infecting their partners.

Since then, 3,000 people have died and of the 1,243 infected with HIV, fewer than 250 are still alive.

Baroness Brinton said that those infected and their families “have been victimised time and again by the NHS and by governments fighting them and all other victims over the years” and sometimes this had been done “with lies and prevarication”.

Her fellow Liberal Democrat peer Baroness [Lynne] Featherstone – whose nephew Nicholas Hirsch had haemophilia and contracted hepatitis C and died aged 35 – told the Lords that she and the head of Haemophilia Wales had met with Chris Wormald, the permanent secretary of the Department of Health*, to “show him the proof of obfuscation and lies”.

She said: “He lied to us there and then, and then he lied in writing – a lie for which he later apologised in writing, and which I submitted in evidence to the inquiry.

“It was shameful how many lies were told by officials to victims, as well as to the parents and families of those who were contaminated.

“The very least the government can do is to act, right now, before any more victims die.”

Earl Howe, for the government, said the “story of those who received infected blood as part of their NHS care and treatment is one of unimaginable suffering and terrible tragedy over more than four decades” and it was “still not yet over”.

He said: “The government accept the will of parliament that arrangements should be put in place to ensure, as far as reasonably practicable, that the victims receive justice as quickly and efficiently as possible.”

He said a new clause had been added to the victims and prisoners bill to speed up the compensation process, and that the government was “eager to avoid more needless delay”.

He said the government would deliver a statement in response to the inquiry report within 25 parliamentary working days of its publication, and that interim payments of £440 million had already been made to infected individuals or bereaved partners registered with the existing support schemes.

He said one of the reasons for delays in announcing the details of compensation was the need for discussions with UK devolved governments, which were continuing.

The prime minister, Rishi Sunak, was asked about the compensation delays in parliament yesterday (Wednesday) by Labour’s Dame Diana Johnson.

He told MPs he was “acutely aware of the strength of feeling on this issue, and the suffering of all those impacted by this dreadful scandal” and that the government had “consistently acknowledged that justice should be delivered”.

*Now the Department of Health and Social Care. Wormald is still permanent secretary

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