The Infected Blood Inquiry resumed for two days, to investigate the government’s response to the Inquiry’s findings made in 2024. This follows legislation passed in August 2024 and February 2025, intended to compensate victims, with only 106 infected persons compensated to date out of thousands of infected and affected victims.
Brian Cummins was again instructed as part of the counsel legal team, representing the largest cohort (>1200) of infected and affected core participants, along with Steven Snowden KC and Dr Achas Burin, instructed by Collins Solicitors.
The Inquiry set out recommendations for compensation in its initial report dated April 2023. At the time, the government stated compensation would not be paid until the Chair’s final report. The final report was handed down on 20 May 2024. It vindicated what infected patients, and their affected families had been campaigning for and trying to draw to the public’s attention since the 1970s.
Hepatitis and HIV infections were transmitted by medical treatments for haemophilia (to treat clotting diseases) and others involving blood (e.g. transfusions after childbirth or accident traumas), with clinical products derived from human blood. Those whole blood and blood products were contaminated with infectious diseases of HIV, hepatitis, or both and were imported into the UK as well as being sourced and manufactured here.
On Tuesday 21 May 2024, the government announced victims would receive £210,000 as interim compensation payments from as early as this summer (2024). However, the BBC reported that as of 24 April 2025, payment had only been made to only 77 victims. This week it transpired only 106 individuals compensation payments have been made, with delays anticipated to continue until 2029 for those affected.
The IBI is the largest scandal to implicate the Department of Health, wider Government, and the NHS. Resumption of the Inquiry has gained considerable media attention, and is reported by the BBC on the following links here and here.
