Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, if he will publish the grounds of justification for the reduction in hepatitis C Financial Loss Awards from 2017 due to the introduction of new effective treatments; and if he will make a statement.

The compensation scheme assumes that the introduction of effective treatments in 2016 improved most infected people’s ability to effectively manage their infection. This assumption is applied when calculating financial loss for living infected people.

The Government recognises that some people did not receive effective treatment for their particular infection in the year it was introduced, and not everyone was able to continue working for a range of reasons including continued illness, or due to the length of time out of the workforce.

In line with the recommendation made in the Inquiry’s Additional Report, the Compensation Scheme now offers a route through which infected people can show that they were unable to return to work, or unable to work at the assumed level, even after the introduction of effective treatments. The Infected Blood Compensation Scheme (Amendment) Regulations 2025 do this by removing the earnings floor on the supplementary route Exceptional Loss award for Financial Loss, to ensure that a route is available for infected people to present evidence on their actual earnings loss.

This change offers people the ability to demonstrate they had continued financial loss, even after the introduction of effective treatments, so they can be compensated fairly for this under the compensation scheme.