Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many people who contracted HIV and hepatitis C following treatment with NHS-supplied blood products signed waivers renouncing their rights to press charges against the Department for Health in the 1980s and 1990s; and how many such individuals are alive.

In 1988 a group of haemophilia patients infected with HIV brought litigation which was settled out of court for £42 million in 1991. A total of 1,437 people received payments from the settlement and a further 93 non-haemophilia patients infected with HIV later received equivalent payments to those made under the settlement. As a condition of receiving payments, these people were required to sign waivers stating that they would not bring any further proceedings against the Department of Health, the Welsh Office, the Licensing Authority, any District or Regional Health Authority, or any other Government body involving allegations concerning the spread of the HIV or hepatitis viruses through Factor VIII or IX (whether cryoprecipitate or concentrate), prior to 13 December 1990. It is not known how many of these people are still alive.