Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent

I would like it all out of the door today but, candidly, it will take longer than that. The noble Baroness is absolutely right: we pledged £11.8 billion in the Autumn Budget, and this week we announced another further £1 billion of costings. At the next Autumn Budget, we will confirm, after consultation with the community, how much the wider changes will cost; we assume it will be £1 billion, but that number is subject to ongoing consultation. We will expedite this as quickly as possible. With those in the infected community who are already subject to payment schemes, that is more straightforward. There is a wider challenge about the affected community, because obviously we do not know how many of them there are, and we always have to make sure that we are balancing protecting public funds while supporting those people who have been touched by this. The only challenge from the noble Baroness on which I would slightly push back is that, in fact, £1.2 billion has already been distributed in interim payments, which is a significant amount of money, and £411 million—a much smaller sum—has been paid out so far to those people who have come forward to IBCA, as part of £602 million that has currently gone forward in offers. So, although the final settlements are a smaller figure, £1.2 billion been allocated.