Offer of £60k to contaminated blood pupils ‘nowhere near enough’
An MP has criticised the offer to former Treloar School pupis who were infected
The government’s offer of £60,000 to former Treloar School pupils infected with contaminated blood “is nowhere near enough”, a Labour MP has said.
Clive Efford, chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Haemophilia and Contaminated Blood, suggested the payments do not address the gravity of the situation.
The Lord Mayor Treloar College in Hampshire offered specialist care for children with haemophilia during the 1970s and 1980s and pupils undergoing treatment for the disorder were experimented on without their knowledge by clinicians.
Cabinet Office minister Nick Thomas-Symonds increased the compensation payments for the former students from £25,000 to £60,000, earlier this year.
More than 30,000 people in the UK were infected with HIV and hepatitis C after they were given contaminated blood and blood products between the 1970s and early 1990s.
More than 3,000 people have died as a result while survivors are living with lifelong health implications.
Mr Thomas-Symonds said the compensation “must reflect and embody” infected patients’ experiences “if it is to truly deliver justice”, when announcing the increase in April.
Leading a debate on the infected blood compensation scheme on Thursday, Mr Efford urged ministers to withdraw the offer.
He said: “These children, without their knowledge, were given contaminated products, so that their effects could be studied by the state that should have been there to protect them.
“Imagine being one of the victims, reflecting on what the state has done to you, knowing your life has been altered, shortened, friends you have lost.
“I spoke to one parent who’s described to me, looking at her three children, knowing she would never see them grow up to be adults, not see them married, never see her grandchildren.
“The top price for that is £60,000. If you’re a pharmaceutical company, come to Britain, we set the price low enough that you can carry out experiments on everyone, and then you can pay the fine and still make money.
“It is priceless what these people have lost, £60,000 is nowhere near enough.
“It’s not just the size of the compensation, but the gravity of what took place, and the immorality of it, and this has to be addressed, and these payments go nowhere near it.
“They should be withdrawn to allow proper dialogue to take place with those infected and affected to arrive at an appropriate solution. We must recognise the losses that these people have endured since childhood.”
Mr Efford did earlier acknowledge the rise from £25,000 to £60,000 was a “welcome step in the right direction”.
The MP for Eltham and Chislehurst also pressed for a timescale for distributing compensation.