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Blood and Blood Products

My Lords, I am heartened by and grateful for the welcome given by the noble Baroness to this Statement and the package of support that was announced in it. We think that it represents a fair and reasonable recognition of the suffering that many of these victims endure. We wanted to recognise that and I hope, as I said in the Statement, that it will be of some comfort to them and their families that they will receive better support. The noble Baroness asked me some specific questions. She asked me first about the new trust and in what respects it will be different from the trusts that currently exist. I can say to her that we intend to set up the new charitable trust as quickly as possible. Its primary task will be to administer the discretionary elements of the payments that we have announced. In the mean time, the payments will begin immediately; in other words, there will be an in-year pro rata payment for the current financial year where people are due for an annual payment, and we can proceed with that speedily. As she will see in the paper that we have published, our advice is that those who feel that they have a claim should contact the Skipton Fund. There will also be a notice on the department’s website to direct them appropriately. The new trust will be essentially a charitable trust with the kind of mandate that we have seen with the Macfarlane and Eileen trusts and the Skipton Fund, but for a different cohort of people. The noble Baroness also asked me about prescription charges. What we concluded was that, while many of the victims of this tragedy are already in receipt of free prescriptions, there are some who are not. We have received vociferous representations from them and their representatives. Therefore, we will make arrangements through one of the charitable trusts, probably the new one, to pay those who are eligible a sum equivalent to the cost of an annual prepayment certificate, so that in practice all their prescriptions will be free of charge. The noble Baroness asked about insurance and what consideration we had given to the requests made by campaigning groups on that score. The review highlighted to us that making provision for access to insurance was, first, unlikely to represent value for money because the administrative costs would be enormous in comparison with the benefits obtained. Also, and crucially, it would have been fraught with difficulty, including administrative complexity. There is no need to remind the noble Baroness that the current fiscal context makes it even more imperative that we achieve value for money in everything that we do. We judged that it was more important to set up a discretionary fund where, if necessary, people who were in particular hardship could look for additional support and perhaps fund insurance premiums from that support. However, an across-the-board arrangement for insurance premiums, as will be apparent from the report that we have published—I should also tell her that we took advice on this from the Association of British Insurers and various specialist insurers—ruled itself out for a number of reasons. We intend support for the Haemophilia Society to continue. The noble Baroness also asked where the money is coming from. There will be a significant immediate cost to the departmental budget during this current year. I am pleased to say that we have found savings in our current expenditure for this year, which enables us to make room for these payments. We have had this in mind for some considerable time and I am pleased that it has come to fruition. In future years, we have found room in our central budgets for the ongoing annual payments. As regards Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, obviously it would have been preferable if there could have been a UK-wide announcement, but clearly it is not for us to prescribe to the devolved Administrations what they should do. However, as I indicated, we are talking to them actively and it is up to them to consider whether this is something that they wish to do for those infected in hospitals in the various devolved regions.