The Infected Blood Inquiry announced today that its final report will be expected on 20 May 2024.
In response, Rachel Halford, CEO of The Hepatitis C Trust, said:
“The final report of the Infected Blood Inquiry was expected in Autumn 2023 and pushed to March 2024. Now, it appears that it will not be published until May. This delay is extremely disappointing for a community that has already been forced to wait half a century for justice. We hope that there will be no further delays in this process.
“Irrespective of when the report is published, the Government has had recommendations from Sir Brian Langstaff to proceed with setting up a compensation scheme for victims for almost a year. Yet the Government has repeatedly refused to act on the Inquiry’s recommendations. When he gave evidence to the Inquiry in July, Rishi Sunak spoke of the ‘enormous amount of work’ underway across Government that would ensure that upon receipt of the final report Government can ‘act as quickly as possible to make decisions and provide people with the recognition of the justice that they deserve’.
“With a date now set for the final report, it’s time for the Prime Minister to prove he meant those words. We now expect the Government to immediately establish a full compensation scheme, and extend compensation to everyone affected, including people given hepatitis B, people infected through transfusions after 1991, and every parent who watched their child die as a result of this horrific scandal. The clock is ticking and the Government has nowhere left to hide.”
The Infected Blood Inquiry was established to examine the circumstances in which patients treated by the NHS between 1970 and the early 1990s received infected blood and blood products.
The inquiry began in 2018 and the last evidence session took place in July 2023. You can read more about the inquiry and the contaminated blood scandal on our website.