Infected Blood Compensation Scheme (Amendment) Regulations 2026

Lord Pack Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Pack (LD)]

I am deeply conscious of how much knowledge many noble Lords have on this topic, knowledge that has often been tragically accumulated through their own personal experiences and those of their families. I pay tribute to those, both in this House and outside it, who have done so much to expose the scandal and to push for justice, including of course several noble Lords who have so eloquently spoken in this debate. If I may, I will briefly mention one other: my noble friend Lady Featherstone’s late sister, Della, who I remember as always such a smiling and happy person, but who was also such a formidable campaigner, driven by her own family’s tragedy.

Of course, one issue of widespread concern, as the noble Lord, Lord Patten, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, in particular have touched on, is the speed with which compensation payments are being made and will be made, especially given the steady death toll, sadly, of victims of this tragedy. I very much welcomed the Government’s response when the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, of which I am a member, dug into this SI, confirming that they expect the “vast majority” of payments for infected people to be made by 2027 and for those affected by 2029.

Last year, however, the noble Baroness, Lady Anderson, the Minister, went a little further on 19 March, when she talked of IBCA’s

“aim to have made the majority of payments far ahead of those dates”.—[Official Report, 19/3/25; col. 1316.]

I hope she might be able to tell us what progress is being made on those more ambitious dates. When, for example, can we expect the majority of payments to be made by, and have those dates changed since the original profile of compensation spending was agreed with the Treasury?

However, even with the best possible answers on those points, it will still be several years before payments are concluded, so the fixed financial figures set in this statutory instrument and other related legislation will, as we have heard, continue to be eroded by inflation, reducing what people receive before everything is settled. I must admit that I found the Government’s explanation to the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee for not uprating figures to cater for inflation to be a little puzzling, because it was a two-pronged justification, the first being that it

“would not be consistent with a tariff-based approach”,

and the second being that it would be “administratively burdensome”. I find that puzzling, because there are many other SIs that come through Parliament that appear to manage both those things. Conscious of time, I will mention only one.

The Armed Forces and Reserve Forces (Compensation Scheme) (Amendment) Order 2026 takes several financial numbers related to compensation that are fixed in legislation and updates them explicitly in response to those figures having been eroded by inflation over time. The Government’s Explanatory Memorandum also talks of plans to regularly review the relevant lump sum to uprate it in future in line with inflation. That is just one of many different examples of other schemes and compensation arrangements where the Government regularly update figures in line with inflation. They do not find it inconsistent with tariff-based approaches in those other areas, and they do not find it unnecessarily administratively burdensome.

I therefore hope the Minister can, if not necessarily promise future uprating to deal with inflation, at least set out a clear path to look further at this issue. This is not just an abstract matter of geeky maths and statistical detail; it goes to the heart of whether victims of this appalling tragedy will finally be properly treated and respected by the systems that govern us. I very much hope that the Minister will respond positively on those points and on the others that we have heard in this debate.