HL Deb 26 January 2004 vol 656 c6WS
Lord Warner

My right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Health has made the following Written Ministerial Statement.

The department announced in August of last year the setting up of an ex-gratia payment scheme for people infected with hepatitis C from National Health Service blood or blood products. Since that announcement, work has progressed on the detail of the scheme.

The UK scheme will award eligible claimants with initial lump sum payments, of £20,000 to all those who now have hepatitis C from blood or blood products, with a further £25,000 being awarded when people reach a more advanced stage of illness.

We feel that these are fair and reasonable payments and hope that they will help to alleviate some of the problems people who have been affected in this way are experiencing.

Work is ongoing to set up the independent body that will administer the scheme and to introduce the necessary legislation so that people will not lose their social security benefits as a result.

In the course of negotiations we have been able to define a further level of detail on eligibility and scheme administration which will be advantageous to claimants. In particular, bureaucracy will be minimised for people making a claim, in recognition that it will be difficult for some people to gather evidence from 20 years ago.

The scope of the scheme has also been extended to include people who have cleared the virus as a result of treatment and to those infected as a result of the virus being transmitted from someone who was infected from blood or blood products. The scheme will also consider people who were mfected with HIV as well as hepatitis C in the same way as those only infected with the hepatitis C virus.

Work is progressing on finalising the application process for awards and setting up the independent body that will administer the scheme. Organisations such as the Haemophilia Society and Hepatitis C Trust will be fully involved in that work to help to ensure that the procedures are as user-friendly as possible.

We will work with the relevant organisations to ensure that claimants know what to do to make an application.