THIS IS A DAY OF SHAME FOR BRITISH STATE

PM APOLOGISES FOR 'CHILLING' COVER-UP OF DECADES-LONG BLOOD SCANDAL

- Sam Lister

RISHI Sunak has apologised for the "chilling" cover-up of the infected blood scandal, on what he admitted was a "day of shame" for Britain.

The Prime Minister issued a "wholehearted and unequivocal" apology to 30,000 victims of the worst care disaster in NHS history.

Mr Sunak vowed to MPs that compensation is finally on the way for the scandal which lasted for decades. Blood inquiry chairman Sir Brian Langstaff laid bare yesterday the full horrors of mistreatment and deception that stretch back to the 1970s.

The risk that blood products could pass on disease had been known about since the Second World War, but patients were still given what turned out to be deadly transfusions. Young children were treated as guinea pigs in medical trials most are now dead.

Watched by victims' families in the Commons Mr Sunak, inset, said: "This is a day of shame for the British state.

"Today's report shows a decades-long moral failure at the heart of our national life from the National Health Service to the Civil Service, to ministers in successive Governments, at every level the people and institutions in which we place our trust failed in the most harrowing and devastating way.

"They failed the victims and their families and they failed this country." Mr Sunak pledged that victims will finally be compensated "whatever it costs" - the details are due out today.

He said: "I want to make a whole-hearted and unequivocal apology for this terrible injustice.