British prime minister Rishi Sunak on Monday, May 20th, apologised on what he described as a “day of shame for the British state” as a long-awaited report revealed how tens of thousands of people contracted deadly diseases such as hepatitis C and HIV after being treated with contaminated blood.
But the focus is now on whether individuals, companies and, indeed, government departments involved in the British infected blood scandal will face justice.
More than 30,000 adults and children were infected with viruses after being contaminated by blood products between the 1970s and 90s. Around 3,000 have already died—people for whom new promises of compensation come too late.
Shortly after Sunak announced a compensation package worth around £10 billion (€11.7bn), former Labour health secretary Andy Burnham stressed:
There must now be full consideration of prosecutions, and I would include in that the potential for corporate manslaughter charges against Whitehall departments.
The prime minister himself apologised to scandal victims for years of “institutional refusal to face up to these failings, and worse, to deny and even attempt to cover them up.”
Such prosecutions would not be unprecedented. Three former pharmaceutical executives were sentenced to prison in 2000 for their role—which involved continuing to sell blood products they knew could be contaminated with the AIDS virus—in the Japanese infected blood scandal. Shortly after, a Japanese court also found a former top official in the health ministry guilty of negligence over the same scandal.
Particular attention in Britain is now turning to Lord Kenneth Clarke of Nottingham, who served as Conservative health secretary under Margaret Thatcher from 1988 to 1990. Victims of the scandal say he should be stripped of his peerage after the official inquiry concluded he misled the public in an “indefensible” way regarding the risks from transfusions. One campaigner also said that the way in which Lord Clarke gave his evidence during the inquiry proceedings was “appalling.”
Current Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride said on Monday that it was “not inconceivable” that politicians and other officials could be prosecuted over the scandal.
But former UKIP leader Nigel Farage is unconvinced. He said during his Monday night presenter slot on GB News:
Here in this country, nothing happens. Nothing happens within the [National Health Service]; nothing happens within the civil service; nothing happens within government [other than that] the odd backbencher asks a question here or there.
It seems to me, whether it’s the postmasters [who were wrongly convicted in the Post Office scandal which blew up earlier this year] or, frankly, whether it’s the COVID inquiry—the one common denominator is that nobody is ever held to account.
Whether convictions are pursued or not, The Daily Telegraph was correct to point out in its Tuesday leader column that “it should be a matter of grave concern that there is still no quick mechanism for addressing institutional failures of these kinds.”
The next such scandal may already be unfolding; will we once again be too slow to avoid it?
This is particularly worth considering given the sorry state Britain’s health service finds itself in after years of mismanagement.
