Victims and family members affected by the contaminated blood scandal are calling for criminal charges to be considered as the public inquiry into the tragedy draws to a close.
While the inquiry, which will begin to hear closing submissions on Tuesday, cannot determine civil or criminal liability, people affected by the scandal are keen for the mass of documents and evidence accumulated over more than four years to be handed over to prosecutors to see whether charges can be brought.
About 3,000 people are believed to have died and thousands more were infected in what has been described as the biggest treatment disaster in the history of the NHS. The inquiry has heard evidence that civil servants, the government and senior doctors knew of the problem long before action was taken to address it and that the scandal was avoidable. But no one has ever faced prosecution.
Eileen Burkert, whose father, Edward, died aged 54 in 1992 after – like thousands of others – contracting HIV and hepatitis C through factor VIII blood products used to treat his haemophilia, said the inquiry had shown there was a “massive cover-up”.
She said: “In my eyes it’s corporate manslaughter. You can’t go giving people something that you know is dangerous, and they just carried on doing it. As far as my family’s concerned, they killed our dad and they killed thousands of other people and there’s been no recognition for him since he died, there’s been nothing.
“If there are no prosecutions, I’ll feel that justice won’t have been done, because nobody has been held to account. They’ll all still be able to sleep at night – we’ve had 30-odd years of not being able to sleep properly at night.”
Factor VIII blood products imported from the US in the 1970s and 80s were used in the UK, untreated and unscreened, for years. Other people were infected as a result of being exposed to contaminated blood through transfusions or after childbirth.
In written closing submissions, Collins Solicitors, which represents 1,037 infected and affected individual core participants including Burkert, as well as three campaigning organisations, ask that the inquiry pass all relevant evidence to the relevant prosecuting authorities in the four nations to allow them to consider whether criminal proceedings should be brought.
Similarly, written closing submissions by Leigh Day, on behalf of 297 individual core participants and the Hepatitis C Trust, state that “our CPs [core participants] agree with Andy Burnham that the nature of failings requires careful consideration by prosecutorial authorities”. Burnham, a former health secretary and now mayor of Greater Manchester, gave evidence to the inquiry in July last year, suggesting that there may be a case for charges of corporate manslaughter.
Milners, another law firm acting for core participants, describes continued treatment using imported blood products even after a 1982 report by the US Centers for Disease Control raised concerns as “morally, ethically and criminally wrong”.
Des Collins, the senior partner at Collins Solicitors, said: “Any corporate manslaughter prosecution would turn on whether the Department of Health was managed or organised in such a way that the blood products it administered resulted in death. For all practical purposes there must have been a gross breach of duty of care.
“It has long been the view of many of our clients that this test has been met and they are of course fully aware of the criminal prosecutions in France in similar circumstances.”
Written submissions from Collins Solicitors also include recommendations for a duty of candour for the civil service and national memorials for the victims in each of the home nations, as well as a specific one for the scores of children infected at Treloar College in Hampshire.
The government said it would not comment on such matters until the inquiry has concluded and made its recommendations.
