Mike Wood

I thank right hon. and hon. Members from across the House for their thoughtful, measured and often heartbreaking contributions. I would particularly mention the hon. Member for Eltham and Chislehurst (Clive Efford) for securing and leading this debate, and my right hon. Friends the Members for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis) and for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) and my hon. Friend the Member for East Grinstead and Uckfield (Mims Davies), who spoke movingly about cases involving their constituents and the heartbreaking effects this scandal has had on them. The infected blood scandal remains the most devastating treatment disaster in the history of our national health service. The scale of the tragedy—the lives cut short, the families shattered, the trust destroyed—is something this House and indeed the entire country must never forget. The victims of this scandal, those infected and those affected, have spent decades fighting the establishment for truth and justice. Now that the truth has been laid bare by Sir Brian Langstaff’s inquiry, it is the duty of the state—and that means all of us in this House—to deliver that justice without further delay. It is entirely right that we begin by recognising the significant progress that has been made, because the establishment of the Infected Blood Compensation Authority, with the commencement of actual payments, represents a monumental milestone in this decades-long journey. In doing so, I again place on record my profound gratitude for the foundational work done by my right hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (John Glen) when he was the Paymaster General. It was under his determined stewardship that the Government accepted the moral case for compensation and passed the legislation needed to establish the delivery body to administer this scheme. He faced an incredibly complex technical challenge, but his deep personal commitment to the infected and the affected communities ensured that the crucial groundwork, including the initial framework for multibillion-pound interim payments, was laid. I know that the Paymaster General and the dedicated civil servants at IBCA are building on that foundation and working intensely to stand up a complex compensation scheme from scratch. We welcome the fact that more than £2.1 billion has been paid out to more than 3,200 victims. For those living infected victims who are already registered with existing support schemes, these payments offer a long-overdue measure of financial security and tangible recognition of the horrific wrongs that they have endured. Getting billions of pounds out of the door to those who need it is no small administrative feat, and we support the progress that the Minister and the Government have made on that front. However, it is exactly because we share the Government’s desire to see the scheme succeed that we must urgently raise the profound frustration being voiced by those who are still waiting. Progress for living infected victims on existing schemes has accelerated, but the reality for the thousands of affected victims and the estates of infected victims who have tragically passed away is still one of agonising delay. Since the registration of intent opened, more than 18,500 registrations have been made, yet we know from IBCA’s own figures that the number of payments made to affected individuals—the widows, the widowers, the parents and the children of those who died—remains painfully low. The same is true for the number of payments to those claiming on behalf of deceased infected individuals. There have been thousands of registrations, but only a tiny fraction of claims from estates and affected people have been fully processed and paid. We hear from families across the country who feel that they are stuck in an unbearable limbo. They have watched the inquiry conclude; they have heard the apologies from the Dispatch Box; and they have seen the compensation scheme launched, yet they still wake up every day wondering when their claim will even be assessed. For the families who have lost loved ones, time is a cruel companion. Of course, many of those waiting are now very elderly. Tragically, victims and affected family members are dying before they receive the compensation that they are owed. We must ask ourselves: what comfort is a compensation scheme if it arrives too late? IBCA has stated that it expects to bring in all currently registered claims from living infected people and estates by March 2027. We must push to see if that timeline can be safely accelerated, because for some, even next year is simply too far away. Of course, as more time passes, the real value of the offers reduces. Will the Minister look again at uprating payments in line with the consumer prices index, so that victims and their families are not financially disadvantaged because their claims take longer to process? That brings me to a specific, acute concern that has been raised repeatedly by victims and their families, as well as by hon. Members today. It is one that I urge the Minister to address. It is the issue of the burden of proof, and the requirement to provide evidence that is, in many cases, practically impossible to access. Let me give the House a harrowing example. There are parents who suffered the unimaginable trauma of watching their children die as a result of infected blood products decades ago. Under the current requirements, some of those mothers and fathers are being told that for the claim to be processed, they must provide documentary evidence that they lived with their child at the time. Think about what is being asked here. We are asking grieving parents to source official paperwork from 40 or 50 years ago to prove that their own child lived under their roof. How many of us in this House could easily produce a four-decade-old document proving our living arrangements with our own families? It is not just an administrative burden; it is deeply distressing and re-traumatising. It makes victims feel as though they are not believed. We see similar issues for estates; they are trying to track down decades-old medical records, or navigating complex probate rules relating to relatives who died in the 1980s or 1990s. We understand that the authority has a duty to protect public funds and to ensure that claims are valid. However, we cannot allow the pursuit of administrative perfection to become the enemy of compassion. When the state has been responsible for the systemic cover-up and destruction of medical records, as the inquiry so damningly revealed, it cannot turn around and demand that victims produce those same missing records. The burden of proof must be relaxed. We must always be mindful that we are talking about huge sums of taxpayers’ money, but we need a system that operates on the balance of probabilities, applying flexibility, common sense, and, above all, humanity. We must allow caseworkers at IBCA to display the compassion that Members have spoken about this afternoon. I urge the Government to work with IBCA to review the evidence requirements immediately. We must empower caseworkers to make compassionate judgments, rather than forcing them to stick to rigid bureaucratic checklists that punish the victims of state failures. I know that the Minister shares my desire to see this issue resolved, and the tone of our debate reflects the shared resolve of this House, but good intentions must translate into urgent operational improvements. We need to rapidly scale up the processing of claims for the affected and the estates. We need to ensure that the legal and administrative support that is provided to claimants is truly adequate to help them navigate the hurdles without adding to their distress. The Opposition stand ready to support the Government on any measures needed to expedite the process. We will vote for the necessary resources, support the necessary regulations, and work collaboratively to remove any legislative hurdles. For more than 50 years, the victims of the infected blood scandal were ignored, gaslit and denied justice. This Parliament promised to do everything that we could to right that wrong. Significant progress has been made; we praise those who have worked hard to deliver it and, above all, the incredible work of the many victims and their families over many years, but our promise is not kept until the final payments are made, until the grieving mother is recognised, and until the families who lost everything finally see the tangible justice that they have fought their entire lives to achieve. Let us work together, across the political divide, to tear down the remaining bureaucratic barriers. Let us push IBCA to move faster, to act with maximum compassion, and to finally close this darkest of chapters with the dignity and urgency that the victims so deeply deserve.