Campaigners have demanded urgent action after a cabinet minister admitted that victims of the infected blood scandal had been forced to wait too long for compensation.
A landmark inquiry will set out today how decades of failures led to one of the worst disasters in NHS history. Lives were devastated when more than 30,000 people were given contaminated blood or blood products between the 1970s and the early 1990s.
Compensation worth more than £10bn is set to be announced by ministers after Jeremy Hunt said it would fulfil a personal promise he made to one of his constituents 10 years ago. The prime minister is also expected to make an official apology after the inquiry unveils its damning findings.
The defence secretary Grant Shapps said that families affected by the fiasco have been “let down” over decades, and that their cases constitute one of the most shameful failures of government he has seen. Asked if the process of compensation had taken too long, even in recent years, Mr Shapps told Sky News: “Yes, I think it has been too slow, of course I do.”
The scandal is a “massive injustice which needs to be put right”, he added, promising that ministers would act on the report.
Esta historia es de la edición May 20, 2024 de The Independent.
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