Mordaunt: Government not dragging feet on infected blood victims’ compensation

Penny Mordaunt said she does not believe the Government has been dragging its feet on the issue of paying full compensation to those affected by the NHS infected blood scandal.

She was giving evidence to the Infected Blood Inquiry, as bereaved relatives of victims of the scandal called on the Government to pay wider compensation.

The current Commons Leader, formerly the minister responsible for the Infected Blood Inquiry as paymaster general between February 2020 and September 2021, insisted there was “no let-up” in her time in the role.

But she also described how she had tried and failed to secure a meeting with then chancellor Rishi Sunak and other Treasury ministers about preparing for the possibility of paying compensation in 2020, with Government bandwidth “very stretched” by the pandemic.

Ms Mordaunt said the Covid pandemic had been an “all-consuming” issue, and there was a “pretty chaotic situation” at the Treasury and Department of Health at the time.

Concerns of delays in the Government’s approach to compensation were put to Ms Mordaunt, and she was asked if, hypothetically, the Government was deliberately dragging its feet, whether that would be morally objectionable.

Ms Mordaunt replied saying “yes”, it would be, but added: “That has not been my experience in my current role.”

Elsewhere in her evidence, she said: “I do not think there is any delay to moving as quickly as we can on these matters, and it would have been pointless to have set up this inquiry and the (compensation framework) study not to then proceed with making redress.”

The inquiry was established in 2017 to examine how thousands of patients in the UK were infected with HIV and hepatitis C through contaminated blood products in the 1970s and 1980s.

About 2,400 people died in what has been labelled the worst treatment disaster in the history of the NHS.

Inquiry chairman Sir Brian Langstaff has said that an interim compensation scheme should be widened so more people – including orphaned children and parents who lost children – could be compensated.

Sir Brian said in April that he was taking the unusual step of publishing the recommendation ahead of the publication of the full report into the scandal so that victims would not face any more delays.

Under the initial scheme, victims themselves or bereaved partners can receive an interim payment of around £100,000.

The inquiry has recommended the Government establish an arms-length compensation body now and definitely before the final report in the autumn.