‘People will die before they get compensation from the Infected Blood Scandal’

A victim of the Infected Blood Scandal has accused the government of ‘playing a waiting game’ in paying compensation.

Steve Nicholls, 58, from Surrey, is one of the about 122 infected schoolboys who went to Treloars, a school for disabled children in Hampshire.

He was left with hepatitis A, B, C and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) as a result of the injections he was given. Eighty of the boys have died, he said.

He is now calling on the Government to speed up its payouts to the victims and families of those who have died, adding that he fears people will die before they get compensation.

More than 30,000 people in the UK were infected with hepatitis and HIV after they were given contaminated blood products in the 1970s and 1980s without their knowledge, now known as the Infected Blood Scandal.

The school said it was unaware that the blood products were infected with HIV and hepatitis C and has since apologised to the victims and their families.

Over 3,000 infected people have died since, and the number keeps rising after one of the biggest scandals affecting the NHS.

The victims included boys with haemophilia attending Treloars school, where they were infected without their parents’ consent.

The service engineer, who went to the school when he was nine, told Metro: ‘I got all the infections from Treloars, but I didn’t find out until I was 25. I managed to hold down a full-time job, as all the boys did.  ‘

However, at about 40, his health ‘started to crash.’

Meanwhile, his mum and dad – like hundreds of other parents of the infected – felt ‘tremendously guilty’ as they unknowingly ‘could have signed us up for medical research’ and his mum gave him the injections prescribed by doctors.

Steve, who is married and has grown-up children, said he feels ‘fatigued’ and ‘very tired, but I will not let this go until I see justice’ after 40 years.

He described the delay in compensation as ‘completely unacceptable’

He continued: ‘If people pass away before they make a claim for compensation, in many cases that compensation claim dies with them.

‘It’s hard to draw any conclusion that the government is playing a waiting game. It should be much simpler and faster.’

He said the infection scandal has had ‘a massive impact’ on this family and other victims who ‘continue to suffer today.’

Following years of tireless campaigning by victims and their loved ones, the scandal made headlines, leading to an official inquiry led by Sir Brian Langstaff.

Bombshell documents previously revealed how children were compared to chimpanzees by government-funded agencies as part of their plans to use blood plasma known as Factor VIII.

The inquiry heard that documents from 1970 reveal how the scientists working on the research knew that the Factor blood products ‘have been found to transmit this form of hepatitis to chimpanzees,’ yet they still sent the products to the school and did not inform them.

The infected plasma was bought from the US, where pharmaceutical companies had sourced the blood by mixing it from prisoners and paid donors. It was then sold to hospitals and schools for haemophiliac children in the UK.

To make matters worse, the details of the infections were widely covered up, the a report found last year.

While the inquiry concluded last May and found there were ‘catalogue of failures’ with ‘catastrophic’ consequences, the gruelling wait for compensation continues for many.

Last year, former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak described the inquiry’s findings as a ‘day of shame’ for the state.

Further hearings on the government’s response to compensation were held this week, with victims and campaigners speaking on Wednesday and yesterday.

Nick Thomas-Symonds, a Cabinet Office minister, was heckled when he gave evidence. He apologised and told the victims and families in the room that the ‘government has failed you over decades on behalf of the state. I am sorry.’

When he was asked whether both victims and affected people will die before compensation, he said ‘yes.’

The government has said it has paid £80,000,000 in compensation out of the £11,800,000,000 in total.

Steve, who has been campaigning for the infected, said the morale is ‘at an all-time low.’

He said they could ‘see the light at the end of the tunnel’ last year when the initial inquiry concluded – but the relief was short-lived.

Speaking from the hearing during a break, he told Metro: ‘We felt validated and recognised, we have fought for over 40 years to be recognised, and we thought we had achieved it and the rest would follow very quickly.

‘But within two days, the government had called the General Election, and we knew we were in trouble and could see delays.’

‘Our numbers are diminishing fast,’ he added.

What happens next for victims?

The compensation service is set to open up to around 100 people each week, the independent compensation body told Metro.

A spokesperson for the Infected Blood Compensation Authority said: ‘Those impacted by the infected blood scandal have waited decades for recognition and compensation, and that’s why our priority remains paying as many people as soon as possible. We thank the Infected Blood Inquiry and all those who gave evidence across the two days of further hearings.

‘We have started small, learning from each person making a claim, and have continued to build these learnings into our claim service as we have grown. So far, 677 people have been asked to start their compensation claim and this number continues to grow, with more than £90 million offered in compensation.

‘We are now opening our service to around 100 people every week. We expect that every living and infected person registered with a support scheme will be able to start their claim by the end of 2025, and we are working through these as quickly as possible.’

Treloars School said in a statement: ‘With additional hearings being held this week to address the timeliness and adequacy of the Government’s response to compensation following the publication of the Infected Blood Inquiry’s report 12 months ago, we would like to reiterate the call we made at that time to implement compensation plans without further delay.

‘The Inquiry’s report laid bare the full extent of this horrifying national scandal. We are deeply saddened that some of our former pupils were so tragically infected and their families affected, and we share our former students’ frustration with the time it is taking for compensation to be paid.

‘Separately, we are actively working with our former students and their families to deliver a lasting memorial to those who received infected blood products.’

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