Local MP Robbie Moore has called on the Government to accept the recommendations of the Infected Blood Inquiry, saying that “time is of the essence” for victims and families.
Speaking in the House of Commons, Keighley & Ilkley’s MP urged Government to immediately accept the recommendations in full of the Infected Blood Inquiry to give compensation to victims, saying:
“Two of most valuable assets that all of us in this Chamber have are our health and our time. Unfortunately, all those who have been infected and affected throughout these terrible circumstances, going back to the 1970s and 1980s, have had both of those valuable assets impacted or removed from them one way or another. Both their health and their time have been taken away from them.”
“Time is of the essence, and I call on the Government to act with the quickest of speed, because one person is dying from their original infection every four days, and that is not fair.”
The MP also paid tribute to Ilkley resident Clive Smith, who is chair of the Haemophilia Society and first brought the issue to Mr Moore’s attention shortly after the 2019 election in one of the MP’s first weekly constituency surgeries, saying:
We never forget those first meetings. Clive kindly explained to me all the complexities associated with the infected blood inquiry and I gave him my reassurance that I would do all I could in my role as his constituency MP to raise that case.
In August 2022, the government agreed to make the first interim compensation payments of £100,000 each to about 4,000 surviving victims, and bereaved partners. In an interim report, inquiry chairman Brian Langstaff said that the compensation scheme should be extended to cover those infected, their spouses or civil partners, long term cohabitees, children, and the parents of children who had died. In a second set of recommendations, he said interim payments should be extended to children who have lost a parent.
Approximately 5,000 persons with haemophilia and other bleeding disorders were infected with HIV and hepatitis viruses through the use of tainted clotting factors in the 1970s and 1980s, with some unintentionally passing it on to their partners.
More than 3,000 individuals have died since then, and only around 250 of the 1,250 persons afflicted with HIV are still living, thanks to breakthroughs in therapy that were not accessible at the time of their first infection.