Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, when ongoing Skipton payments for Stage 2 HCV infectees were introduced in 2011, what efforts were made to contact all Skipton registrants who had previously received Stage 2 lump sums to inform them that new ongoing payments were available to them to apply for.

When ongoing Skipton payments for Stage 2 hepatitis C infectees were introduced in 2011, the changes to the scheme were advertised on the Skipton Fund website and everybody who registered a telephone number with the Fund was telephoned on multiple occasions. Three ring-round exercises have been carried out since the announcement but many telephone numbers were found to be defunct or had new owners. Where a person could not be traced via telephone or email, the Skipton Fund wrote to the doctor who completed their stage 2 application form.