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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Politics
Andrew Sparrow

Sunak says infected blood inquiry report marks a ‘day of shame for British state’ and offers ‘unequivocal apology’ – UK politics live

​​Rishi Sunak United Kingdom United States Allie HodgkinsBrown Brian Langstaff John Glen

Sunak's apology in full

Here is the full text of Rishi Sunak’s statement about the infected blood scandal report.

And here is the full apology.

Today, I want to speak directly to the victims and their families – some of whom are with us in the gallery.

I want to make a wholehearted and unequivocal apology for this terrible injustice.

First, to apologise for the failure in blood policy and blood products, and the devastating - and so often fatal – impact this had on so many lives, including the impact of treatments that were known or proved to be contaminated.

The failure to respond to the risk of imported concentrates.

The failure to prioritise self-sufficiency in blood.

The failure to introduce screening services sooner.

And the mismanagement of the response to the emergence of AIDS and hepatitis viruses amongst infected blood victims.

Second, to apologise for the repeated failure of the State and our medical professionals to recognise the harm caused.

This includes the failure of previous payments schemes, the inadequate levels of funding made available, and the failure to recognise Hepatitis B victims.

And third, to apologise for the institutional refusal to face up to these failings – and worse, to deny and even attempt to cover them up.

The dismissing of reports and campaigners’ detailed representations.

The loss and destruction of key documents including Ministerial advice and medical records.

And the appalling length of time it took to secure the public inquiry which has delivered the full truth today.

Mr Speaker, layer upon layer of hurt, endured across decades.

This is an apology from the state - to every … single … person … impacted by this scandal.

It did not have to be this way.

It should never have been this way.

And on behalf of this and every government stretching back to the 1970s, I am truly sorry.

Diana Johnson was the last MP called to ask a question.

After the statement was over Pete Wishart (SNP) used a point of order to complain about Sunak not staying for longer. He asked what could be more important. But he was angrily rebuked by Sir Lindsay Hoyle, the speaker, who claimed he had already addressed this point. He said the decision to keep the PM’s statement very short (normally they last for an hour or more) was intended to ensure that today was “about the families”.

Diana Johnson, the Labour chair of the home affairs committee and chair of the all-party parliamentay group on haemophilia and contaminated blood, asked Sunak if he accepted that his refusal to accept Sir Brian Langstaff’s interim recommendation last year, that he should set up a compensation scheme ahead of publication of the final report, had made situation worse for victims.

Sunak said no one could fail to be moved by hearing the victims’ stories. But he did not address Johnson’s point about the interim recommendation that was ignored.

Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, asked Sunak if he agreed that there should be a new duty of candour on all public officials.

Sunak said the government would offer a fuller response tomorrow.

Theresa May, who was the prime minister who set up the inquiry, said she hoped that in response politicians and civil servants would “recognise that their job is to serve the public and not to protect themselves”.

Stephen Flynn, the SNP leader at Westminster, said that the scandal represented “the very worst of Westminster decades”.

He also offered an apology on behalf of the SNP. He said:

First an apology. I’m incredibly sorry that this happened to you.

(This was more of an ‘I’m sorry this has happened’ apology than a ‘I’m sorry for what I did’ one. Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer are not to blame for what past governments were doing, but their parties were. Flynn could adopt a slightly different tone because the SNP was never in power at Westminster during the period when this scandal was happening and being covered up.)

Starmer also said Labour would work with the government to ensure compensation is paid.

Starmer apologises to infected blood scandal victims on Labour's behalf, saying they were failed by all parties

Keir Starmer said welcomed what Sunak said in his statement, and his promise to pay full compensation.

He said that the victims had been failed by all parties.

I want to acknowledge to every single person who has suffered that in addition to all of the other failings, politics itself failed you.

That failure applies to all parties, including my own.

There is only one word: sorry.

Sunak says government will pay comprehensive compensation, 'whatever it costs'

Sunak ended his speech with what he described as two solemn promises.

He said the government would pay “comprehensive compensation” accepting the principles recommended by Sir Brian Langstaff.

Whatever it costs to deliver this scheme, we will pay it.

And he said the government would respond to Langstaff’s recommendations to address the culture behind this. He said it was necessary to “fundamentally rebalance the system so we finally addressed this pattern, so familiar from other inquiries like Hillsborough, [where] linnocent victims have to fight for decades just to be believed”.

Sunak went on with his apology

Second, [I want to] to apologise for the repeated failure of the state and our medical professionals to recognise the harm caused. This includes the failure of previous payment schemes, the inadequate levels of funding made available, and the failure to recognise Hepatitis C victims.

And third, to apologise for the institutional refusal to face up to these failings and worse, to deny and even attempt to cover them up, the dismissing of reports and campaigners … the loss and destruction of key documents including ministerial advice and medical medical records, and the appalling length of time it took to secure the public inquiry which is delivered the full truth today.

Layer upon layer of hurt, endured across decades.

This is an apology from the state to every single person impacted by the scandal.

It did not have to be this way. It should never have been this way. And on behalf of this and every government stretching back to the 1970s I am truly sorry.

Sunak offers 'wholehearted and unequivocal apology' to victims of infected blood scandal

Sunak says he wants to speak directly to the victims and their families, some of whom are in the gallery.

I want to make a wholehearted and unequivocal apology for this terrible injustice.

First, to apologise for the failure in blood policy … and the devastating and so often fatal impact it has had on so many lives, including the impact of treatments that were known or proven to be contaminated, the failure to respond to the risk of imported concentrates, the failure to prioritise self sufficiency in blood and the failure to introduce screening services sooner, and the mismanagement of the response to the emergence of AIDS and hepatitis C amongst infected blood victims.

Updated

Sunak says he finds it “almost impossible to comprehend how it must have felt to be told you had been infected through no fault of your own with HIV or hepatitis C”

He goes on

Many of those infected went on to develop horrific conditions, including cirrhosis, liver cancer, pneumonia, TB and AIDS, enduring debilitating treatments … for these illnesses, illnesses the NHS had given them.

Many were treated distinctly by healthcare professionals who made appalling assumptions about the origin of their affections.

Worse still, they were made to think that they were imagining it made to feel stupid.

Sunak says patients were let down.

And he expresses particular horror at what happened to children at the Lord Mayor Treloar College. (See 1.37pm.)

Sunak says publication of infected blood inquiry report 'day of shame for British state'

Rishi Sunak is speaking now. Sir Lindsay Hoyle, the speaker, says he will only take a few MPs today, because there will be a longer statement on this from the Cabinet Office minister John Glen tomorrow.

Sunak says this is a day of shame.

This is a day of shame for the British state.

Today’s report shows a decade-long moral failure at the heart of our national life, from the National Health Service to the civil service to ministers in successive governments at every level, that people and institutions in which we place our trust failed in the most harrowing and devastating way.

Rishi Sunak gives statement to MPs about infected blood scandal

Rishi Sunak is about to give his statement to MP on the infected blood scandal.

Clive Smith, chair of the Haemophilia Society, is one of the campaigners who has been invited to the Commons to hear it.

Politicians should ‘hang heads in shame’ over UK infected blood scandal, victims say

Politicians “should hang their heads in shame” over the contaminated blood scandal, victims’ groups have said, and warned of future disasters because lessons have not been learned. Rachel Hall has the story here.

The Conservative MP whose constituents are affected by the Brixham water contamination incident in Devon told the Commons that it was “totally unacceptable” that thousands of people still could not trust their water supply.

Anthony Mangnall, MP for Totness, told MPs during an urgent question:

The anger in Brixham is palpable, the frustration is apparent, and the sheer inconvenience that has been put on them by South West Water is absolutely abhorrent.”

For 24 hours people were still able to drink the water, South West Water continued to say there was no problem. The reason that people are ill and 46 is most certainly an underestimation, is because of that time period in which people were able to go on drinking it.

Now of course it is welcome news that the Alston reservoir has been lifted and cleared and the independent monitoring and verification has been undertaken by UKHSA and the Drinking Water Inspectorate, but it is still wholly unacceptable that Hillhead reservoir and residents of that area, the 8,000 of them are still dependent on bottled water and cannot trust their water systems.

This is a totally unacceptable position for us to be in the 21st century.

Steve Barclay, the environment secretary, told MPs that there have been at least 46 confirmed cases of cryptosporidium because of the water contamination, but that that number may rise. Two people have been hospitalised, he said.

He said that daily testing of the Alston reservoir will continue for the foreseeable future, despite tests coming back clear.

And Robin Swann, health minister in the Northern Ireland executive, has also apologised to victims of the infected blood scandal. In a statement he said:

Today has been both humbling and emotional. First and most importantly, I want to acknowledge the suffering and loss that people from Northern Ireland have experienced as a result of receiving contaminated blood.

I believe it is right that I reiterate my department’s apology again today. The infected and/or affected were failed by the system that should have been there to help them and for that I am deeply sorry.

Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester and a former health secretary, has said that all political parties need to explain why it took so long for the victims of the infected blood scandal to get justice.

Eluned Morgan, the Welsh government’s health minister, has issued an apology to Welsh vicims of the infected blood scandal.

Labour's David Lammy attacks government for refusing to back ICC's right to seek arrest warrant for Israeli PM

In the Commons David Lammy, the shadow foreign secretary, has just attacked the government over its response to the decision of the international criminal court to apply for arrest warrants senior Hamas and Israeli officials for war crimes and crimes against humanity, including the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

Downing Street said this afternoon that it did not think the ICC had jurisdiction in this case and that its action today would do “nothing to help reach a pause in the fighting, get hostages out or get humanitarian aid in, and make progress towards that sustainable ceasefire that we want to see”.

In the Commons Lammy said that Labour believed the independence of the ICC had to be respected. He described it as “a cornerstone of the international legal system” and he challenged Andrew Mitchell, the deputy foreign secretary, to say whether or not the government supported the international rule of law.

In response, Mitchell said the government did support the rule of law.

And he claimed that the difference between the government’s position and Labour’s wa not as great as Lammy implied. He said that the government’s view was that the ICC did not have jurisdication in this case because Israel is not a member of the court and does not recognise it.

Lammy’s intervention was significant because, until now, the shadow cabinet has largely adopted the same position on the Israel-Gaza war as the government.

UPDATE: Lammy said:

In his statement today, the government has backtracked, U-turning on one of Britain’s most fundamental principles – respect of the rule of law. Labour has been clear throughout this conflict that international law must be upheld, that the independence of international courts must be respected and that all sides must be accountable for their actions.

I ask the minister very simply: does he agree? Arrest warrants are not a conviction or determination of guilt, but they do reflect the evidence and judgment of the prosecutor about the grounds for individual criminal responsibility. Labour’s position is that the decision by the international criminal court chief prosecutor to apply for arrest warrants is an independent matter for the court and the prosecutor.

Updated

YouGov has published some polling on Westminster voting intention in Scotland suggesting that the resignation of Humza Yousaf has coincided with Labour opening up a wide lead over the SNP.

Rob Ford, a politics professor and elections expert, says a lead of this kind, if sustained,

Will need a few more polls to see whether this is an outlier but, if it holds, this kind of lead gets Labour into the territory where they flip a *lot* of SNP seats

Changes from GE 2019:
Lab 39 (+20)
SNP 29 (-16)

This would be an 18 point national swing. Maybe higher in SNP-Lab marginals. Every SNP seat with a majority over Labour of less than 40 points would be vulnerable. That is...almost every SNP seat

I did a substack piece early last year looking at seats that could be vulnerable if SNP fell back after Nicola Sturgeon’s departure. The largest SNP to Lab swing I looked at was 13 points - anything larger seemed implausible. Maybe not.

And here’s what I wrote in September of last year on why a sea change in Scotland could happen, with major consequences for the election result

Stephen Dorrell, who was health secretary from 1995 to 1997, told Times Radio that teh findings of the infected blood inquiry were “shaming to all of us who passed through the Department of Health”.

Echoing what has been said by Ed Davey and other former Post Office minister who now say they were misled about the Post Office Horizon scandal, Dorrell said that officials did not tell him the truth when he asked about the infected blood victims. He said”

In my time as health secretary, I was aware of the issue. We did indeed ask questions about how this tragedy came to happen and whether it was true that the care provided to these patients was the best available, complied with best practice at the time.

We were repeatedly told that that was true.

It wasn’t true and we clearly should have asked more effective questions to unearth the truth.

Dorrell also claimed that NHS was particularly bad at cover-ups. He explained:

The health service is a repeat offender, persuading itself that because it’s an organisation that has strong public support, therefore what it does is somehow the best that can be done and should be defended.

Where we need to learn, as people who care about the health service, is to be much more rigorous at questioning practices within the Health Service and being less willing to accept the proposition that this was the best we could have done at the time.

Langstaff ended his statement by referring to Perry Evans, who had haemophilia, and was infected with HIV in the 1980s, and he gave evidence to the inquiry on the first day it opened. He had been able to lead an active life. But he died five weeks ago, Langstaff said.

He said justice, recognition and compensation may too too late for Evans, but it is not too late for other people to get them.

UPDATE: Langstaff said:

It may be late, but it is not too late: now is the time, finally, for national recognition of this disaster, for proper compensation and for vindication for all those have been so terribly wronged.

Updated

Langstaff says he intends to hold government to account to ensure recommendations are implemented

Langstaff said he wanted to ensure his recommendations were implemented.

He said that, in his letter to John Glen, the Cabinet Office minister handling the inquiry, he said that he was not yet able to say the inquiry had fulfilled its term of reference in terms of the “nature, adequacy and timeliness” of its conclusion

The reference to “timeliness” provoked a round of applause.

He said that he wanted to ensure the recommendations of the report were not allowed to “collect dust on the Cabinet Office shelf are realised”. He said he would do everything in his power to stop that happening.

In his report he says that he expects the government to say, before the end of the year, what progress it is making on implementing his recommendation. He says that, until that happens, he will not accept that he has fulfilled his terms of reference (ie, that the inquiry process is over).

UPDATE: Langstaff said:

In the context of this inquiry, perhaps beyond all other, it is unconscionable to allow a state of affairs to exist in which people’s fears that the lessons and recommendations of this inquiry will collect dust on a Cabinet Office shelf are realised …

It is for the government to respond as it will, but I intend to use my position as far as I properly can to prevent unreasonable delay in its doing so.

Updated

Langstaff proposes new rule to make it harder for government to avoid holding public inquiries when they're needed

Langstaff said that he was making recommendatons to empower the patient voice, and to improve patient advocacy.

He said he also wanted to ensure that it is harder for the government to avoid holding an inquiry when one is needed.

He said that he was recommending that, if the Commons public administration and constitututional affairs committee says a public inquiry should take place, the government should have to give a statement explaining in detail why it disagreed.

Updated

Langstaff implicitly criticises government for ignoring his recommendation last year on compensation

Langstaff says he expects the government to apologise. He goes on:

To be meaningful, though, that apology must explain what the apology is for.

It should recognise and acknowledge not just the suffering, but the fact that the suffering was the result of errors, wrongs done and delays incurred. It should provide vindication to those who have waited for that for so long.

And it should be accompanied by action.

Action, obviously to recognise and remember what happened to so many people and to learn for the inquiry. Action to implement recommendations I made over a year ago to set up a proper compensation scheme.

That sounded like a rebuke. The government always said it would not announce a compensation scheme until the final report was out, but Langstaff said it should start work earlier.

There have been suspicions that ministers were dragging their feet partly on cost grounds.

Langstaff says some official documents were deliberately destroyed to cover up infected blood scandal

Langstaff says he has not been able to find some of the documents he wanted to look at.

In some cases, it is not clear why they have disappeared, he says.

But in other cases he says he has concluded “they were deliberately and wrongly destroyed in an attempt to make the truth more difficult to reveal”.

How civil servant complained about health minister whose sympathy for victims was 'uppermost in his mind'

Langstaff says 23 countries introduced screening for blood products before the UK did.

He says the government told patients they were getting the best available treatment, and that screening for blood was not available, when both those things were untrue.

And he says much of the blame for this “institutional defensiveness” lies with the civil service.

He says some of what was said by civil servants could have come from a Yes Minister script. As an example, he quotes from this note written by an official in the Department of Health in the 1990s when John Horam, a new minister, expressed an interest in the case for paying compensation to people with haemophilia given infected blood. The official wrote:

The permanent secretary may wish to be aware of the attached minute. I mentioned to him the other day that PS (H) [Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health] was clearly not happy with the firm line ministers have taken up to now on compensation for haemophiliacs infected with hepatitis C. It is quite clear that he is trying to change the line, little by little. He has had plenty of briefing (written and oral) on the subject, but his sympathy for those concerned is clearly uppermost in his mind. Cost comes second – hence his readiness to consider proposals for a scheme limited to those who have actually developed chronic illness, rather than extending to all who have been infected.

UPDATE: Langstaff said:

The failures in decision-making that led to the original infections were then compounded by institutional defensiveness.

This pattern of institutional defensiveness must stop. When citizens have concerns that something has gone seriously wrong, fairness should mean they get answers …

Much of the responsibility for this institutional defensiveness lies with the civil service.

Updated

Langstaff criticised the way children were used as objects for research. (See 1.17pm.)

As an example of the health profession failing to take the risk from infected blood seriously, Langstaff refers to Prof Arthur Bloom, a Welsh specialist in haemophilia, who is now dead. Here is an extract from what Langstaff said about Bloom in the report.

Concern about AIDS became more widespread when the BBC screened a Horizon programme which identified “the 4 Hs” in the major risk groups – “Homosexual males, IV Drug (Heroin) users, Haitians and Haemophiliacs” on 25 April 1983. There were also reports in the mainstream press at the start of May 1983, notably an article by Susan Douglas in The Mail on Sunday on 1 May, with the banner headline “Hospitals using killer blood”. She reported an epidemiologist as saying “It seems madness that our blood supplies are coming from a country suffering from an epidemic”.

Despite this, and despite having reported to the CDSC on 26 April a probable case of AIDS in a young man with haemophilia treated at the Cardiff Haemophilia Centre, on 4 May 1983 a statement from Professor Bloom was sent to Haemophilia Society members saying that the “cause of AIDS is quite unknown and it has not been proven to result from transmission of a specific infective agent in blood products”, that the number of AIDS cases was small and that “in spite of inaccurate statements in the press” he was unaware of any proven case in “our own haemophilic population”. Professor Bloom advised no change to therapy with factor concentrates.

Professor Bloom may have been saying one thing for public consumption, whilst advocating a different tack within his own haemophilia centre …

If what Professor Bloom had said had been faithful to the facts, and he had advised the Haemophilia Society that there was a real risk that taking factor concentrates risked contracting AIDS, and that the likelihood of the risk becoming a certainty appeared to be growing stronger by the month, it is not difficult to see that the events that followed might have taken a different turn.

Langstaff says around 1,250 people with bleeding disorders were infected with HIV. Three quarters of them died, he says.

He says that number is roughly equivalent to the number of people in Westminster Central Hall. To bring home how many people died, he asks people in the audience to imagine only a quarter of them being there.

Updated

Langstaff says the use of surrogate testing could have reduced the risk. But he says there was a four-year delay in the UK before it was introduced.

He says a test for HIV was developed in August 1984. But it was not used to screen blood donations until October 1985, he says.

UPDATE: Longstaff said:

In the case of HIV, a test had been developed by August 1984 but was not introduced for the screening of blood donations until October 1985.

I have concluded that we lost months, for no clear reason, by delays and indecision when setting up a process to evaluate each available make of test. Yet a number were commercially available, and being used elsewhere in the world. Patients receiving transfusions in the UK were needlessly exposed to the risk of HIV as a result.

In the case of hepatitis C the delays were even worse: screening of blood donations was not introduced until September 1991. Even when a screening test was available, and approved, its use had to wait till all regions could introduce it on the same date – in other words, to go at the pace of the slowest.

When the government claimed that screening for hepatitis C had been introduced as soon as the technology became available, they ignored the long list of countries that introduced screening before the UK.

Updated

Langstaff said that the risk of infection from blood transfusions were known at least from the 1940s.

He quotes various pieces of evidence from health officials confirming this, including one person saying in 1946 that blood was a “potentially lethal fluid”.

And people knew that the risk was dependent on who the donors were, he says. The government knew there was a risk of collected blood from people in prison because of the increased danger from hepatitis. But that continued until 1984, he says.

He says in the UK people give blood voluntarily. But in the US people are paid to donate, and that is known to increase the risk of people with an infection donating, he says.

Despite this risk, in the 1970s the UK allowed the importation of blood products from America. That was wrong, he says.

Langstaff says 'this disaster was not an accident'

Langstaff says: “This disaster was not an accident.”

That generates a round of applause.

He says inquiries normally have a backward-looking aspect, into what happened, and a forward-looking one, into what should happen next.

But this one has had a third element: how did the government respond.

The NHS and successive governments compounded the agony by refusing to accept that wrong had been done.

More than that, the government repeatedly maintained that people received the best available treatment and that testing of blood donations began as soon as the technology was available, and both claims were untrue.

He says that means it is important for the inquiry to ensure that in future people are not treated like this, and that the government responds “in a way which reflects the true facts”.

Langstaff says the report was handed to the Cabinet Office at 7am, and shown to campaigners, under embargo, from 8am.

He says there are seven volumes, with “quite a lot of detail”.

But he sums it up like this.

Families across the UK, people, adults and children, were treated in hospital and at home with blood and blood products and that NHS treatment resulted in over 30,000 people being infected with viruses, which were life shattering.

Over 3000 have already died. And that number is climbing week by week.

He says he could not adequately put into words what people suffered. Parents had to watch their children die, he says. And children watched their parents die.

He says the trauma continues to this day.

And he says in the past treatments for HIV and hepatitis C were often worse than the illness itself.

The side effects linger for a number of those infected with hepatitis C. The damage down over so many years to the liver has left them at risk of developing cancer, requiring liver transplants.

Every aspect of their lives have been defined by their infections – childhood education, career, leisure relationships marriages homeownership, travel, finances, dreams. Ambitions have been lost, relationships broken.

Brian Langstaff pays tribute to victims and campaigners as he makes statement about his report

Sir Brian Langstaff is now speaking in Westminster Central Hall.

He receives a long round of applause from campaigners before he even starts.

He says that the applause is for the wrong person. He mentions his team. But he says the words in the report come from the campaigners and victims, the people in the room. He urges people to look around at each other. He goes on

Those are the people who have written this report, all from your very different perspectives.

The applause is loud, and sustained – and very moving.

Here is more from the Haemophilia Society on today’s report.

Theresa May ordered the infected blood inquiry when she was prime minister. She posted this reponse to the publication of its final report on X.

I hope that all those infected and affected by the contaminated blood scandal have got the answers they deserve today. Yet again, a community has had to fight for decades for the truth to come out. They shouldn’t have had to fight so hard or for so long for this day to come.

Sir Brian Langstaff is about to make a statement about his report. There will be a live feed here.

Jenni Minto, the Scottish government’s public health minister, has said the Scottish government will work with the UK government on compensation for victims of the infected blood scandal. In a statement she said:

On behalf of the Scottish government, I reiterate our sincere apology to those who have been infected or affected by NHS blood or blood products.

The Scottish government has already accepted the moral case for compensation for infected blood victims and is committed to working with the UK government to ensure any compensation scheme works as well as possible for victims.

The Scottish government has set up an oversight group to consider the inquiry’s recommendations for Scotland. That group will involve senior staff from NHS Boards and the Scottish government, along with charities representing the infected and affected.

We are determined to use the inquiry’s report to ensure lessons have been learned so a tragedy like this can never happen again.

At the press conference earlier Clive Smith, chair of the Haemophilia Society, said that many of those responsible for the infected blood inquiry would escape justice because it had taken so long to get to the truth of what happened. He said:

One of the aspects that sadly, the delay has caused, is the fact that there are doctors out there who should have been prosecuted for manslaughter, gross negligence manslaughter, doctors who were testing their patients for HIV without consent, not telling them about their infections.

Those people should have been in the dock for both gross negligence manslaughter. And sadly, because of the delay, that’s one of the consequences that so many people will not see justice as a result.

Children used as 'objects for research' while infection risks ignored, report says

Children were used as “objects for research” while the risks of contracting hepatitis and HIV were ignored at a specialist school where boys were treated for haemophilia, the final report of the infected blood inquiry has found. PA Media says:

Of the pupils that attended the Lord Mayor Treloar College in the 1970s and 80s, “very few escaped being infected” and of the 122 pupils with haemophilia that attended the school between 1970 and 1987, only 30 are still alive.

Several pupils at the boarding school in Hampshire 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.

Haemophilia is an inherited disorder where the blood does not clot properly.

Most people with the condition have a shortage of the protein that enables human blood to clot, known as factor 8.

In the 1970s, a new treatment was developed – factor concentrate – to replace the missing clotting agent, which was made from donated human blood plasma.

The 2,527-page report, written by inquiry chair Sir Brian Langstaff, concluded that children at Treloar’s were treated with multiple commercial concentrates that were known to carry higher risks of infection and that staff favoured the “advancement of research” above the best interests of the children.

The report found that from 1977, medical research was carried out at Treloar’s “to an extent which appears unparalleled elsewhere” and that children were treated unnecessarily with concentrates, particularly commercial ones rather than alternative safer treatments.

Langstaff said: “The pupils were often regarded as objects for research, rather than first and foremost as children whose treatment should be firmly focused on their individual best interests alone. This was unethical and wrong.”

His report found there is “no doubt” that the healthcare professionals at Treloar’s were aware of the risks of virus transmission through blood and blood products.

He wrote: “Not only was it a pre-requisite for research, a fundamental aspect of Treloar’s, but knowledge of the risks is displayed in what the clinicians there wrote at the time. Practise at Treloar’s shows that the clinical staff were well aware that their heavy use of commercial concentrate risked causing Aids.”

Despite knowledge of the dangers, clinicians proceeded with higher-risk treatments in attempts to further their research, the report concluded.

Langstaff said: “It is difficult to avoid a conclusion that the advancement of research was favoured above the immediate best interest of the patient.”

The Lord Mayor Treloar College, which has since been rebranded as Treloar’s, was established in 1908 as a school which gave disabled children a better chance to receive an education alongside any medical treatment they might need.

It was originally a boys’ school but then merged with a girls’ school in 1978 to become co-educational.

From 1956, boys with haemophilia began attending the school. After it was discovered pupils had been given infected blood plasma, the NHS clinic at the school closed.

Updated

Inquiry chair Brian Langstaff says infected blood scandal suffering 'very difficult to put into words'

Sir Brian Langstaff, the chair of the infected blood inquiry, told broadcasters after his report was published that it was hard to explain the scale of the suffering involved. He said:

The scale speaks for itself, if you have over 30,000 people who go into hospital and come out with infections which were life-shattering that in itself is huge and the suffering for them and others is huge.

When you add that the fact that over 3,000 have died and deaths keep on happening week after week, you not only have a disaster that has happened over years but is still happening.

What that brings with it is suffering which is very difficult to put into words, you really have to listen to people who have lived with it to hear and understand.

He also said that the government made things worse.

What I have been looking at are people from families across the UK who have gone into hospital for treatment and over 30,000 have come out with infections which were life-shattering.

And 3,000 of those have died and deaths keep on happening week-by-week. What I have found is that disaster was no accident. People put their trust in doctors and the government to keep them safe and that trust was betrayed.

Then the government compounded that agony by telling them that nothing wrong had been done, that they’d had the best available treatment and that as soon as tests were available they were introduced and both of those statements were untrue.

That’s why what I’m recommending is that compensation must be paid now and I have made various other recommendations to help make the future of the NHS better and treatment safer.

‘Suffering that is hard to comprehend’: key takeaways from UK infected blood report

Here is Rachel Hall’s summary of the key takeaways from the report.

Ken Clarke criticised by infected blood scandal victims at press conference after inquiry report published

At the Tainted Blood press conference several of the campaigners were very critical of Ken Clarke, now a Tory peer, who was a health minister, and then health secretary, in the 1980s. One said that Clarke was “patronising in the extreme” when he gave evidence, and that he lacked humanity and compassion during the hearing. Another said he showed “disdain for the inquiry itself”. And another said he was astonished that, when Clarke gave evidence, he did not even seem to know what factor 8 (the protein needed by people with haemophilia) was.

The inquiry report is critical of decisions taken by Clarke when he was health minister. In one passage it says:

The government decided against any form of “compensation” to people infected with HIV at an early stage. On 25 February 1985, Kenneth Clarke, minister of state for health, stated, “There has never been a general state scheme to compensate those who suffer the unavoidable adverse effects which can unhappily arise from many medical procedures.” The characterisation of AIDS, with high mortality and lack of treatment, as one such “unavoidable adverse effect” was ill-considered and demonstrated some lack of curiosity about what had actually happened. It set the tone for the government’s response for many years.

This is from Rachel Halford, CEO of the Hepatitis C Trust, on the inquiry’s report.

Among its shocking findings, the report has brought to light evidence that much more could have been done to prevent hepatitis C and HIV infections from blood and blood products, and to help those infected. But far beyond these failings, it makes clear that people - including many children - were deliberately given deadly viruses, treated as “objects for research”.

Over decades, instead of acting to protect people, the Government and the health system have sought to delay, defer, and hide the truth from the people they’d harmed.

They must now take full responsibility. We urge the Government to stop its endless delays and to act. Already 3,000 people did not live to see this day, and time remains of the essence.

The government must now quickly and comprehensively respond. This response must accept their responsibility, and give concrete timelines for paying compensation to everyone affected. And it must commit to implementing all of the recommendations of this report transparently collaboratively with the communities whose lives have been so blighted by its actions, and to taking the lessons learned to ensure absolutely nothing like this can ever happen again.

The report recommends that groups previously excluded from financial support - such as bereaved parents and children, people who contracted hepatitis B and the people who received infected blood transfusions after 1991 - are included in the compensation scheme. We urge the government to clarify its plans for redress for these groups as soon as possible. After so many years of being shut out from support payments, these individuals have waited long enough to receive the recognition that their lived experiences are part of this horrific scandal.

The government is expected to make an announcement about compensation tomorrow. It is says it is holding off making an announcement today because it does not want to divert media attention away from what the report says, and from the response of victims.

At the press conference Andy Evans says that the report says there was enough evidence to justify an inquiry into this in 1986. He says, if there had been an investigation then, doctors guilty of gross negligence manslaugter could have been prosecuted.

Here is the passage in the report making this point. It says:

By 1986 the government can have been under no illusion about the scale of what had happened to people with haemophilia – many had been infected with HIV, a virus with an exceptionally high mortality rate for which there was no known treatment, and sufferers experienced public hostility. The government knew that the direct cause of this disaster was the treatment which they had received from the NHS. Public inquiries were not unknown in the 1980s. Yet there is no documentary evidence to show that it occurred to anyone within government before 1989 either that there might be an important public interest in investigating and understanding precisely how this had occurred, or that those whose lives had been devastated in this way might deserve answers as to how and why it had happened. It ought to have been clear that there were lessons to be learned for the future if something similar were not to recur.

Victims of infected blood scandal hail ‘momentous day’ and say they feel vindicated by report

Victims of the infected blood inquiry are holding a press conference.

Andy Evans, chairman of the Tainted Blood campaign group, told a press conference that it was a “momentous day”. He said:

Sometimes we felt like we were shouting into the wind during the last 40 years…

Today proves that it can happen in the UK and I just feel validated and vindicated by Sir Brian and his report today.

Updated

Rishi Sunak is due to make his statement to MPs about the infected blood inquiry’s report at about 5pm.

Before he speaks, there will be defence questions at 2.30pm, an urgent question on the Brixham water contamination, and a statement from Andrew Mitchell, the deputy foreign minister, on Israel and Gaza.

UK infected blood scandal made worse by cover-up, inquiry concludes

Here is our story, by Haroon Siddique and Rachel Hall, on what the infected blood inquiry report says.

And this is how it starts.

The scandal that caused thousands of people in the UK to become infected or die from contaminated blood was avoidable and inflamed by a “subtle, pervasive and chilling” cover-up by the NHS and government, a scathing report has concluded.

In the long-awaited conclusion to a five-year public inquiry, Sir Brian Langstaff, who chaired the investigation, said the calamity could “largely, though not entirely, have been avoided” – but successive governments and others in authority “did not put patient safety first”.

More than 30,000 people in the UK, 3,000 of whom have died, were infected with tainted blood from the 1970s through to the early 90s, either from receiving transfusions during surgery, or through products created using blood plasma and imported from the US to treat haemophiliacs.

The 2,527-page final report found that patients were lied to about the risks and, in some cases, infected during research carried out without their consent, or, in the case of children, that of their parents. There were also delays informing patients of their infections, stretching to years in some cases.

Infected blood inquiry report published, in seven volumes

The final report from the infected blood inquiry is out.

It has been published in seven sections and, and all seven of them are here.

And here is the 295-page overview, with recommendations.

And this is from Sir Brian Langstaff’s summary.

The chapters that follow make clear who is responsible for each of these failings, though in general I can say that responsibility for much lies with successive governments, even though others may share some of it.

It will be astonishing to anyone who reads this report that these events could have happened in the UK. It may also be surprising that the questions why so many deaths and infections occurred have not had answers before now. Those answers cannot be as complete as they might have been thirty years ago, and I acknowledge that despite the vast number of pages of documents which the Inquiry has examined, some questions must remain unanswered. Any errors, any omissions, any shortcomings are mine alone.

I have no doubt however that, despite the difficulties of time and scale, the conclusion that wrongs were done on individual, collective and systemic levels is fully justified by the pages that follow; that a level of suffering which it is difficult to comprehend, still less understand, has been caused to so many, and that this harm has, for those who survived long enough to face it and for those who, infected and affected, are now able to read this, been compounded by the reaction of the government, NHS bodies, other public bodies, the medical professions and others as described in the report.

Updated

78% of people think Tory government has done 'a poor job', poll suggests

The polling firm Ipsos has now published all the charts from its May political monitor. Here are the ones that show there has been a sharp rise over the past month in economic optimism. (See 9.28am.)

Some of the other figures in the report are dismal for the Conservatives. In terms of headline voting intention figures, Ipsos has Labour on 41% and the Tories on 20%. But other results from the survey suggest the number of people who want the Conservative party out at the next election is well above 41%. Here are three of them.

1) Only 14% of people think Rishi Sunak’s government is doing a competent job, the poll suggests.

2) Two out of three people (65%) think the Conservative government has done “a poor job” and “it is time for a change at the next election”, the poll suggests.

3) Some 78% of people think the government has done a poor job, the poll suggests.

Ministers deliberately ignored blood scandal victims for years, says IFS director and former civil servant Paul Johnson

Paul Johnson, director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, told Times Radio this morning that for many years ministers chose to do nothing to help victims of the infected blood scandal. He said that he worked as a civil servant in the Treasury in the middle of the first decade of the century and that at the time ministers were deliberately ignoring the problem.

He explained:

I worked in the Treasury back in the mid 2000s and ministers back then were perfectly well aware of this and quite deliberately decided not to do things to help.

This really has been probably the most appalling miscarriage [of justice], and there have been quite a lot that I can think of, in my lifetime. This has been known about for a very, very, very long time and governments have quite deliberately decided not to do anything about it, quite deliberately decided not to offer this kind of compensation.

It is absolutely morally incomprehensible to me that this has taken so long.

So yes, absolutely the government can, should and must afford to do this. I mean, this is of course a one-off payment. So it’s different to an increase in spending which is permanent.

Asked to clarify who was in power at the time, Johnson said he was talking about the period when Gordon Brown was chancellor and Tony Blair was prime minister. But he said other governments were at fault. “Everyone in government since that moment, or indeed since before that moment, has been culpable,” he said.

Updated

GB News says Ofcom's finding it broke impartiality rules 'alarming development' and part of 'attempt to silence us'

GB News has described the Ofcom ruling against it today (see 10.51am and 11.01am) as an “alarming development” that should “terrify” anyone who believes in a free media. Here is its response to the judgment in full.

Ofcom’s finding against GB News today is an alarming development in its attempt to silence us by standing in the way of a forum that allows the public to question politicians directly.

The regulator’s threat to punish a news organisation with sanctions for enabling people to challenge their own prime minister strikes at the heart of democracy at a time when it could not be more vital.

GB News is the people’s channel. That is why we created a new broadcasting format, The People’s Forum, which placed the public - not journalists - firmly in charge of questioning Rishi Sunak.

Our live programme gave an independently selected group of undecided voters the freedom to challenge the prime minister without interference.

They did this robustly, intelligently, and freely. Their 15 questions, which neither we nor the prime minister saw beforehand, kept him under constant pressure and covered a clearly diverse range of topics. These were their words on the issues that mattered to them.

Among many other challenges, the prime minister was criticised over the ‘chronic underfunding’ of social care, the housing shortage, the likely failure of his government’s Rwanda plan, the betrayal of those injured by the Covid vaccine, and asked why the LGBT community should vote for him.

We cannot fathom how Ofcom can claim this programme lacked the “appropriately wide range of significant views” required to uphold due impartiality. It did not.

We maintain that the programme was in line with the broadcasting code.

Ofcom is obliged by law to uphold freedom of speech and not to interfere with the right of all news organisations to make their own editorial decisions within the law.

Its finding today is a watershed moment that should terrify anyone who believes, as we do, that the media’s role is to give a voice to the people of the United Kingdom, especially those who all too often feel unheard or ignored by their politicians.

We are proud to be the people’s channel and we will never stop fighting for the right of everyone in the UK, whatever their political persuasion, to have their perspective heard.

Ofcom says GB News' compliance with impartiality rules 'wholly insufficient' as it explains why it now faces possible fine

Here is the full statement from Ofcom saying it is considering imposing a sanction on GB News for breaking impartiality rules.

Here is an extract from the news release explaining why Ofcom concluded that the “People’s Forum” Q&A with Rishi Sunak broadcast by the channel broke impartiality rules.

In considering whether the programme was duly impartial, we took into account a range of factors, such as: the audience’s questions to the prime minister; the prime minister’s responses; the presenter’s contribution; and whether due impartiality was preserved through clearly linked and timely programmes. Our investigation found, in summary, that:

-while some of the audience’s questions provided some challenge to, and criticism of, the government’s policies and performance, audience members were not able to challenge the prime minister’s responses and the presenter did not do this to any meaningful extent;

-the prime minister was able to set out future policies that his government planned to implement, if re-elected in the forthcoming UK general election. Neither the audience nor the presenter challenged or otherwise referred to significant alternative views on these;

-the prime minister criticised aspects of the Labour party’s policies and performance. While politicians are of course able to do this in programmes, broadcasters must ensure that due impartiality is preserved. Neither the Labour party’s views or positions on those issues, or any other significant views on those issues were included in the programme or given due weight; and

-GB News did not, and was not able to, include a reference in the programme to an agreed future programme in which an appropriately wide range of significant views on the major matter would be presented and given due weight.

We also took into account that, during the course of our investigation, GB News said: it had purposefully not been aware of the questions which audience members would ask the prime minister; made an editorial decision that the presenter would not intervene or challenge views expressed; and that there were no other editorial means for alternative views to be included in the programme.

Here is Ofcom’s explanation of why it is taking action.

Given the very high compliance risks this programme presented, we found GB News’s approach to compliance to be wholly insufficient, and consider it could have, and should have, taken additional steps to mitigate these risks.

We found that an appropriately wide range of significant viewpoints were not presented and given due weight in the People’s Forum: The Prime Minister, nor was due impartiality preserved through clearly linked and timely programmes. As a result, we consider that the prime minister had a mostly uncontested platform to promote the policies and performance of his government in a period preceding a UK general election.

We have therefore recorded a breach of Rules 5.11 and 5.12 of the broadcasting code against GB News.

Ofcom considers GB News’s failure to preserve due impartiality in this case to be serious and – given its two previous breaches of these rules – repeated. We are therefore now starting our process for consideration of a statutory sanction against GB News.

And here is the full Ofcom report into the programme.

Updated

Ofcom says it is considering imposing sanction on GB News for breaking impartiality rules

Ofcom, the media regulator, has said it is “starting the process for consideration of a statutory sanction against GB News” after finding that a “People’s Forum” featuring prime minister Rishi Sunak broke broadcasting due impartiality rules, PA Media reports.

A sanction would probably involve a fine (although other options are available to Ofcom).

Post-Brexit border checks forecast to cost UK £4.7bn, says NAO

The government expects to have spent at least £4.7bn on introducing post-Brexit border controls, which have been repeatedly hit by delays, the National Audit Office has warned. Jack Simpson has the story here.

Many MPs have been paying tribute to those who have campaigned on behalf of victims of the infected blood scandal ahead of the publication of the inquiry’s report at lunchtime. Here are some of the messages they have posted on X.

From Rachel Reeves, shadow chancellor

Truth and justice are long overdue for those infected and affected by contaminated blood.

Today, I am thinking of all those who have suffered from this scandal and those who made change happen.

Proud of my colleague and friend @DianaJohnsonMP, whose amendment changed so much.

From Labour’s Ian Lavery

From Penny Mordaunt, leader of the Commons

In recent years it has been my privilege to get to know many of those affected by the Infected Blood Scandal, and hear their stories. I will be thinking of them all today. My thanks to all who testified and campaigned, and to Sir Brian Langstaff, Sir Robert Francis and all who got us to this moment.

From Nick Thomas-Symonds, the shadow Cabinet Office minister

Few books I have read have been as shocking & powerful as ‘Death in the Blood’ by @cazjwheeler [Caroline Wheeler, Sunday Times political editor]

The stories of victims she shared & her campaigning have been vital to driving the campaign for justice forward.

I know how much today will mean to her & those she fought alongside.

Today’s Infected Blood Inquiry Report publication is a profound moment. The victims of this scandal have suffered for so long: their stories must be heard and long-overdue justice delivered. I pay tribute to campaigners who fought so hard, including my friend @DianaJohnsonMP

From the Liberal Democrat Layla Moran

My heart goes out to the families of the infected blood scandal as the report is released today. I met a woman whose husband died of it decades ago. Her children still live the scars. Justice should never have taken this long. Restitution must be swift.

Yesterday Wes Streeting, the shadow health secretary, forgot one of Labour’s new six pledges in an interview with the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg. Sarah Jones, a shadow business minister, did not make the same mistake this morning, but in an interview with Talk TV she got the detail of one of them wrong, claiming Labour was committed to “40,000 new appointments or operations every day”.

The Conservative party has put a gleeful press notice. It quotes Richard Holden, the Tory chair, saying:

A second member of Sir Keir Starmer’s top team has forgotten his latest batch of ‘pledges’. They change so quickly his own team don’t even bother to remember what they are.

But there are consolations for Labour, because these stories are a useful way of getting the pledges back into the news. Jones should have said 40,000 more appointments each week. Here is the health pledge in full.

Cut NHS waiting times with 40,000 more evening and weekend appointments each week, paid for by cracking down on tax avoidance and non-doms.

Last year the Labour party revealed that it was dropping plans to allow people to change gender (by obtaining a gender recognition certificate) through so-called “self-ID”, without having to obtain a medical diagnosis.

At the time Anneliese Dodds, the Labour chair and shadow minister for women and equalities, said Labour would still require medical evidence, but that the current process, which is long, complicated and seen as demeaning by trans people, would be simplified. She said transitioning would no longer have to be approved by a panel, and that “a diagnosis provided by one doctor … should be enough”.

In a story in the Times today, Geraldine Scott says Labour may allow a GP to approve an application for a gender recognition certificate. She says:

The Times understands that one option under consideration is that the doctor could be a GP. Labour would ­also ­remove the ability of a spouse to object to the change. A source said the party wanted to make the process “less medicalised” but added that the plans would retain the involvement of a doctor and would not allow people to self-identify in order to obtain legal changes.

They said it had not yet been decided whether the medical professional would be a GP or a gender specialist, with the issue likely to go to consultation if the party wins the next election.

The discussions centre on concerns that if the single doctor was a specialist, a GP would still need to make the ­referral, therefore retaining the two-step process that Labour wants to drop.

According to new polling from Ipsos, reported in the Standard, people are a lot less gloomy about the state of the economy than they were last month – but this has not had much impact on how they say they are likely to vote.

In his story, Nicholas Cecil reports:

The Ipsos survey for The Standard showed 33 per cent of adults expect the country’s economic conditions to improve in the next year, 37 per cent to get worse, and 25 per cent “stay the same”, giving an Economic Optimism Index of -4 for May.

The figures are noticeably better than in April when 21 per cent thought there were be an economic improvement, 52 per cent a deterioration, and 21 per cent “stay the same”, an EOI of -31.

But the Conservatives do not seem to be getting much credit. Over the same period, their support has risen by just one point. Keiran Pedley from Ipsos has the figures.

🚨New from @IpsosUK: Labour lead at 21 🚨

Labour 41% (-3 from April)
Conservative 20% (+1)
Lib Dems 11% (+2)
Greens 11% (+2)
Reform 9% (-4)
Others 8% (+2)

N=1,008. fieldwork 8-14 May

Tables & more to follow. Key trends on our elections website here

‘We’ve got to give these people justice’: infected blood report could lead to prosecutions, minister says

Good morning. We have not been short of news recently about scandals involving grotesque failings by state organisations, and decades-long attempts to cover them up, and today we are going to get the final report from the inquiry into one of the worst of them all, the process that saw more than 30,000 NHS patients being infected with HIV or hepatitis C because they were treated with contaminated blood imported from the US. Here is our preview story by Rachel Hall, Matthew Weaver and Peter Walker about what to expect.

And here is an explainer from Haroon Siddique with background about the scandal.

A lot of the coverage this morning is focusing on the apology that Rishi Sunak is expected to deliver later. Hillsborough was a disaster that happened in 1989, the Waspi women state pension age scandal originated in decisions taken in the 1990s, and the Post Office Horizon scandal is about prosecutions that mostly took place in the first decade of this century, but the infected blood scandal goes back to the 1970s and so Sunak will be apologising, on behalf of the state, for things that happened in some cases before he was even born.

John Glen, the Cabinet Office minister dealing with the scandal on behalf of the government, has been giving interviews this morning. The government is expected to approve a compensation package worth more than £10bn, but he told Times Radio this morning that the government would not be giving full details today because it wanted to ensure that today the media focus is on the report, and on what victims have to say.

But he did not rule out the report leading to criminal proceedings being brought against some of the perpetrators. Asked if people might be taken to court, Glen told LBC:

If there’s clear evidence and there is a pathway to that, then it’s obviously something the government will have to address. I can’t be sure, but we’ve got to give these people justice.

Here is the agenda for the day.

11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.

12.30pm: Sir Brian Langstaff publishes the final report of the infected blood inquiry. Campaigners will hold a press conference immediately afterwards, and Langstaff himself is due to speak.

1.15pm: Gillian Keegan, the education secretary, gives a speech to the Education World Forum in London.

3pm: David Cameron, foreign secretary, gives evidence to the Commons European scrutiny committee about “the UK’s new relationship with the EU”.

After 3.30pm: Rishi Sunak is expected to make a statement to MPs about the infected blood inquiry report.

If you want to contact me, please post a message below the line (BTL) or message me on X (Twitter). I can’t read all the messages BTL, but if you put “Andrew” in a message aimed at me, I am more likely to see it because I search for posts containing that word. If you want to flag something up urgently, it is best to use X; I’ll see something addressed to @AndrewSparrow very quickly. I find it very helpful when readers point out mistakes, even minor typos (no error is too small to correct). And I find your questions very interesting too. I can’t promise to reply to them all, but I will try to reply to as many as I can, either BTL or sometimes in the blog.

Updated

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