Ministers urged to guarantee funding for infected blood victims 'forever'

Funding to support survivors of the infected blood scandal should be "guaranteed forever", victims have said.

Former pupils of a specialist school where boys with haemophilia were given contaminated blood in the 1970s and 80s said people affected by the scandal should be given a "lifetime commitment" of financial aid, like victims of the thalidomide scandal.

Several pupils who attended the Lord Mayor Treloar College, a boarding school in Hampshire, in the 1970s and 1980s were given treatment for haemophilia at an on-site NHS centre while receiving their education.

But it was later found that many pupils with the condition had been treated with plasma blood products which were infected with hepatitis and HIV.

Some 75 have since died.

Survivors, known as the Treloar's boys, have met with Cabinet Office minister John Glen.

Gary Webster, Steve Nicholls, Adrian Goodyear and Richard Warwick, along with their lawyer Dani Holliday from Collins Solicitors, had a discussion with the minister ahead of the final report of the Infected Blood Inquiry, which will be published on May 20.

The former pupils said in a statement: "We made reference to the commitment that was made within the 2021 budget by then chancellor Rishi Sunak, when he announced a lifetime commitment guaranteeing funding forever for the victims of thalidomide, and we expressed if it was good enough for them it is good enough for us."

In 2021, the then chancellor announced a "lifetime commitment, guaranteeing funding forever" for victims of the thalidomide scandal.

The pupils added: "We stressed the importance of ongoing support payments, which is a safety net not only for us but also for the Government. The current people on the support schemes are quantifiable and this number is only going to decline. We rely on these payments and they should not be taken away.

"We made it crystal clear that any proposed compensation package that did not include parents, partners and children of the 75 now deceased haemophiliac boys of Treloar's would not in any way be acceptable to us and would only force future litigation."

Tens of thousands of people were infected with contaminated blood through infected blood products or blood transfusions between the 1970s and early 1990s.

An estimated 3,000 people have died as a result, while those who survived have lived with life-long health implications.

Officials have indicated the funding pot to compensate people affected by the scandal could be upwards of £10 billion.

A number of details about the compensation scheme emerged last week, including:

• The full UK-wide compensation body, which will be arm's length of Government, will be called the Infected Blood Compensation Authority.

• This will be established no later than three months after the Victims and Prisoners Bill becomes law.

• Once established, people living with chronic infections will be "prioritised" by the compensation scheme.

• More people affected by the scandal will be eligible for interim compensation payments of £100,000. The first interim payments were only available to infected people and bereaved partners but now ministers have extended the scope so the payments can also be paid to the "estates of the deceased infected people who were registered with existing or former support schemes".