Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)

I put on record my thanks to the noble Baronesses, Lady Finlay and—I think I can call her a noble friend, even though she is not on my Benches—Lady Campbell, who is much missed; I am pleased that she will be returning to us in the new year. As ever, the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, raises very important points. I think trust has increased, but that is difficult to tell in an environment where misinformation is rife; making sure that people have access to genuine information is truly one of the most challenging parts of this. We have discussed in your Lordships’ House many times the ability of IBCA to communicate and the need to make sure that it is providing relevant information. That said, the claim managers have played an incredibly important role. We are seeing that when claims are finished—obviously this is a small community, relatively speaking—people are asking the claim managers who have just finished with them if they will be the claim manager for their friends, or for other members of the community, by name. This suggests that trust in the claim managers, at least, is clear, which is an important part of this. The noble Baroness makes two incredibly important points. One is about access to medical records. Our claim managers are not investigators but, where there is clearly paperwork missing, they are working with the recipients to help them find the paperwork; so the onus is not just on the members of the infected blood community—there is someone helping them get the paperwork. We still have challenges in making sure that we can access some of the medical records. Noble Lords will appreciate that, as we move forward away from registered infected cases and towards estates and other areas, that may well be challenging, but we are working on what new technologies we can use to harness some of that material. As regards advice to recipients who want to be protected, we are offering paid financial advice to make sure that it is easily accessed. We have to appreciate that these are very vulnerable people who have had horrendous experiences and could be targeted again, so making sure that we can work to protect them will be an incredibly important part of what we do going forward.