Infected blood inquiry finds ‘chilling’ cover-up of decades-long UK scandal

The British state is guilty of a “chilling” and “pervasive” cover-up of the decades-long infected blood scandal, according to a damning public inquiry that called for a full victim compensation scheme within a year. 

Sir Brian Langstaff, chair of the infected blood inquiry, said on Monday that 30,000 men, women and children had been “knowingly exposed to unacceptable risks of infection” through blood transfusions given by the NHS.

“Standing back and reviewing the response of the NHS and government, the answer to the question ‘was there a cover-up?’ is that there has been,” Langstaff wrote.

“Not in the sense of a handful of people plotting in an orchestrated way to mislead, but in a way that was more subtle, more pervasive and more chilling in its implications,” the report said.

The former High Court judge pointed to knowledge dating back to the second world war of the risks of severe infection from blood transfusions, and the “repeated use of inaccurate, misleading and defensive lines . . . which cruelly told people that they had received the best treatment available”.

Citing the government’s refusal to hold a public inquiry until 2017, he also accused healthcare staff, ministers and officials of “a lack of openness, transparency and candour . . . such that the truth has been hidden for decades”.

The NHS and successive governments adopted a culture of defensiveness and oversaw the “deliberate destruction of some documents”, he added.

The inquiry found some patients with bleeding disorders, including children, had been experimented on without their or their parents’ informed consent.

One site for these experiments, the report said, was Treloar’s, a Hampshire boarding school for children with disabilities, where pupils “were often regarded as objects for research” and the risks of treatment were “well known” to clinicians.

He also found that patients tested for HIV and hepatitis C were not told of the results of their tests “for weeks, months or even years”, affecting their ability to manage health conditions. 

Langstaff said it was not in his remit to suggest civil or criminal proceedings be brought. No one in the UK has ever been prosecuted in relation to the scandal, unlike in countries such as France.

His final report of the six-year inquiry found a “catalogue of failures” that led tens of thousands of NHS patients to receive blood products contaminated with HIV and hepatitis C between 1970 and the early 1990s.

The infections could largely have been avoided, Langstaff added.

The tainted blood products originated in the US at the height of the Aids epidemic. Over 3,000 people who received the infected blood in the UK are believed to have died. Many victims had haemophilia, a condition that inhibits blood clotting.

“The government is right to accept that compensation must be paid,” Langstaff said. “Now is the time for national recognition of this disaster and for proper compensation to all who have been wronged.”

Inquiry officials said there were probably hundreds more victims who had yet to be identified because they would have been children when infected. 

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on Monday issued an official apology for the scandal and vowed to pay comprehensive compensation to those affected, details of which will be set out on Tuesday. “I want to make a whole-hearted and unequivocal apology for this terrible injustice,” he said, including for the repeated failure of the state and medical professionals to recognise the problem and for an “institutional refusal to face up to those failing”.

The UK government has already distributed about £400mn to infected individuals and bereaved partners via interim payments of £100,000.

Langstaff did not specify a compensation figure in his 2,500-page report, but urged the government to commit to implementing a victim compensation scheme within the next 12 months.

While Langstaff noted that the government had supported his inquiry’s work, he said it was not “clear what lessons it has learned . . . from the history it accepts”.

He added that it was “deeply regrettable” that ministers had not yet given a “substantive response” to his second interim report, published in April 2023.

Langstaff also criticised the “combative” witness testimony of Lord Ken Clarke, the former Conservative chancellor who served as health secretary between 1988 and 1990.

Clarke had told the inquiry it was “daft” to pose him detailed questions “about events 40 years ago in a busy government department where this was a tiny, tiny proportion of my activity”.