Haemophiliacs in England and Wales infected with the liver-damaging hepatitis C virus through tainted blood transfusions had no case for NHS compensation, the government said yesterday, after it appeared that those in Scotland would get payments.
Yesterday the Scottish executive's health minister, Mal colm Chisholm, welcomed a report recommending that a fund be set up immediately for those with hepatitis C who could prove they had been given infected blood or blood products by the health service.
The executive "would very much like to do something to help them", he said, undertaking to consider how to set up a compensation scheme.
The Department of Health in London reiterated the government's long-held position that the infections took place at a time when the NHS did not know that the blood was tainted.
"We deeply regret that so many people were infected," it said in a statement, adding: "However this government and its predecessor have held that compensation is only paid to patients when the NHS has been at fault, and that an exception to this rule is not justified in the case of people infected with hepatitis C."
Different attitudes north and south of the border to financial help for those whose prospects for life and health are seriously undermined by the virus angered sufferers and their supporters.
"The prospect of a compensation scheme in Scotland ... is wonderful news and I welcome it whole-heartedly," said Paddy Tipping MP, a long-time supporter of the haemophiliac community.
"However, we cannot allow the situation where affected people in my constituency in Nottinghamshire receive an inferior level of support ... London needs to look at the findings of the Scottish executive expert group as a matter of urgency, together with the proposals already submitted by the Haemophilia Society.
"It will be a tragedy if it is only England and Wales left without a financial assistance scheme. This is postcode compensation on a very large scale."
Of 5,000 people with haemophilia in Britain, 2,800 live with hepatitis C after tainted blood transfusions - 320 in Scotland but the vast majority in England and Wales.
The virus causes chronic liver damage in 80% of those infected, cirrhosis in a quarter, and liver cancer in 1% to 5%. Some 1,200 were also infected with HIV.
Around 1,000 have died from these viruses.
The Haemophilia Society has for a long time argued for compensation, pointing to the help given in other countries. "The mass infection of so many people from their medical treatment is one of the greatest tragedies in the history of the NHS," said Karin Pappenheim, the society's chief executive.
The society has put proposals for a UK-wide compensation scheme to the health minister, Hazel Blears, that would cost £52m a year.
