Victims could receive compensation payouts of more than £2.5m

Victims of the contaminated blood scandal could receive more than £2.5m in compensation under a multibillion-pound scheme announced a day after a damning report found the NHS and the government culpable for the tragedy.

- Haroon Siddique, Peter Walker

The paymaster general, John Glen, outlined details of the scheme in parliament yesterday, following criticism in Sir Brian Langstaff's final report of the government's failure to set up a compensation framework for those affected by the scandal, which he had called for last year.

Reiterating Rishi Sunak's apology over the scandal, Glen announced that Sir Robert Francis, who wrote the report on compensation that informed Langstaff's recommendations on payments, would be interim chair of a new infected blood compensation authority.

Acknowledging that people were "still dying each week from their infections" and might fear they would not live to receive compensation, Glen said that ahead of the establishment of the full scheme, payments of £210,000 would be made to infected people who have already received interim payments of £100,000, within 90 days "so that they can reach those who need it so urgently most".

He told MPS: "To be crystal clear, if you have been directly or indirectly infected by NHS blood, blood products or tissue contaminated with HIV or hepatitis C or have developed a chronic infection from blood contaminated with hepatitis B, you will be eligible to claim compensation under the scheme and, where an infected person has died but would have been eligible under these criteria, compensation will be paid to their estate.