Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, with reference to page 15 of his Department's report of Self-Sufficiency in Blood Products in England and Wales, published in 2007, what year in the 1970s his Department became aware of the higher risks of infection for commercially-supplied blood products.

By the early 1980s, although there was some evidence that plasma concentrates carried a risk of transmitting hepatitis C, international experts, at the time, were divided in their views about the infection risk associated with blood, especially clotting factors which were made from pooled donations. Hepatitis C was then thought to be a mild and often asymptomatic infection.

By mid 1980s the risks became better understood and measures to assure the safety and quality of human blood and blood components and blood products manufactured became available.

All the historical evidence of the time was carefully and clearly evaluated in Lord Penrose’s report published in March 2015.