Infected blood scandal inquiry latest: Inquiry chair Sir Brian Langstaff calls for compensation as victims ‘betrayed’

The prime minister has “wholeheartedly and unequivocally apologised to the victims of the infected blood scandal.

Speaking in the House of Commons on Monday, Rishi Sunak said: “Today I want to speak directly to the victims and their families, some of whom are with us in the gallery – I want to make a wholehearted and unequivocal apology for this terrible injustice.”

Rishi Sunak has called the damning revelations of the inquiry into the infected blood scandal “a day of shame for the British state”.

Addressing the House of Commons on Monday in the wake of the publishing of the inquiry’s findings, the prime minister said: “This is a day of shame for the British state. Today’s reprot shows decades-long national failure at the heart of our national life.”

Rishi Sunak is set to give a statement in parliament over the infected blood scandal.

The prime minister is expected to apologise as he addresses the House of Commons at 5pm today, said the chair of the damning inquiry, Sir Brian Langstaff.

Former health secretary Lord Kenneth Clarke has been exposed as one of multiple “villains” complicit in the failures identified by the infected blood inquiry today.

Lord Ken Clarke was health minister between 1982 and 1985 when the government was warned about using blood products from prisons in the US by a leading epidemiologist.

Margaret Thatcher, it was found, was key in the peddling of the false argument that people infected with HIV from blood products “had been given the best treatment available on the then current medical advice, and without it many of the haemophiliacs would have died”, according to the inquiry.

On 22 November 1989, the former prime minister rebuffed a proposal by an MP that the government should take special action on moral and political grounds.

Multiple ministers have opposed compensation during the decades-long fight, including Stephen Dorrell, minister for health between 1995 and 1997, and Alan Milburn who was Secretary of State for Health, from 1999 to 2003.

Rishi Sunak’s, who is expected to make an announcement at 5pm today, compounded the suffering of the victims, the inquiry said, with the “sluggish pace” and lack of transparency on compensation.

One of the most shocking stories within the scandal was the infection of 122 young boys who were “experimented” Dr Anthony Aronstam, who has since died.

Another clinician professor Arthur Bloom, who has also since died, was the director of the Cardiff Haemophilia Centre, and considered one of the UK’s leading haematologists during the 1970s and 80s, “overly influenced” the way the government view the emergence of aids and played down the threat posed to people.

Sir Brian Langstaff vowed to “do what I properly can within my powers” to prevent “unreasonable delay” in the Government response to his report.

The chairman of the probe said: “In the context of this Inquiry, perhaps beyond all other, it is unconscionable to allow a state of affairs to exist in which people’s fears that the lessons and recommendations of this Inquiry will collect dust on a Cabinet Office shelf are realised…

“It is for the Government to respond as it will, but I intend to use my position as far as I properly can to prevent unreasonable delay in its doing so.”

Sir Brian concluded his statement by saying: “It may be late, but it is not too late: now is the time, finally, for national recognition of this disaster, for proper compensation and for vindication for all those have been so terribly wronged.”

Those responsible in the infected blood disaster should be blamed for keeping silent, Sir Brian Langstaff said as he listed his recommendations.

Where an individual is responsible for something going wrong “they should certainly be blamed if they keep silent” and be obliged to report “near misses” as well as actual wrongs, the inquiry chairman said.

Leaders in healthcare should be made subject to a statutory duty of candour, the regulatory landscape for patient safety should be “decluttered”, and the NHS should establish a safety management system, he also said.