Rishi Sunak declared Monday a “day of shame for the British state” as he apologised for the failures of successive governments over the infected blood scandal and promised to pay whatever it takes to compensate the victims.
The prime minister issued his apology in a packed House of Commons chamber, hours after Brian Langstaff published his report that accused the British government of covering up the disaster.
Sunak spared no element of the British government in his criticism, which highlighted failures by ministers, civil servants and the NHS. But he was also accused of deepening victims’ pain by not setting up a compensation scheme a year ago when it was first recommended by Langstaff.
He said: “This is a day of shame for the British state. Today’s report shows a decades-long moral failure at the heart of our national life – from the National Health Service to the civil service to ministers in successive governments at every level – that people and institutions in which we place our trust failed in the most harrowing and devastating way.”
Sunak added: “This is an apology from the state – to every single person impacted by this scandal. It did not have to be this way; it should never have been this way. And on behalf of this and every government stretching back to the 1970s, I am truly sorry.”
Ministers will reveal on Tuesday how much they will set aside for compensation payment to victims and their families: 30,000 people were infected and 3,000 died. “Whatever it costs to deliver this scheme, we will pay it,” Sunak promised on Monday.
He was speaking after Langstaff unveiled the findings of his 2,500-page report just across the road in Westminster’s Methodist Central Hall. The report found much of the damage done by the scandal could have been avoided, but that successive governments “did not put patient safety first”.
Sunak’s address to the Commons followed in a line of prime ministerial apologies on behalf of the British state, including those by David Cameron for the Bloody Sunday massacre and the Hillsborough tragedy.
John Glen, the paymaster general, will give full details of the compensation scheme on Tuesday. Sunak is reported to have authorised payments worth about £10bn, which will be funded by extra borrowing and counted as capital spending to avoid breaching the government’s borrowing targets.
Labour is expected to back the scheme and promise to keep it in place should it come to power later this year.
Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, said: “Politics itself failed you. That failure applies to all parties including my own. There is only one word: sorry.
“And by that apology, I acknowledge that this suffering was caused by wrongdoing, delay and systemic failure across the board, compounded by institutional defensiveness.”
Theresa May, who commissioned Langstaff’s report when she was prime minister, said there had been “a devastating and abject failure of the British state – medical professionals, civil servants, politicians – all of whom felt their job was to protect their own reputation rather than to serve and look after the public who they were there to serve”.
Amid the political consensus, however, there was also criticism of the government’s failure to bring in a compensation scheme earlier.
Diana Johnson, the chair of the home affairs select committee, told the Commons: “The failure of his government to act on the second interim report by Sir Brian [Langstaff] in April 2023 has added another layer of hurt.”
Moments before the prime minister stood up to deliver his apology, Johnson had appeared at a press conference elsewhere in parliament alongside other parliamentary campaigners for victims’ justice, including the former health secretaries Andy Burnham and David Owen.
She told that press conference she wanted police to investigate what had happened at Treloar’s college, a specialist school in Hampshire for haemophiliacs, where Langstaff found pupils had been treated as “objects of research”, resulting in the deaths of dozens of children.
“I think there are some real questions there because that, to me, is a very clear indication of criminal behaviour,” she said. “And that’s something that the police should be investigating.”
Burnham said he believed entire government departments should also face prosecution. “There must now be full consideration of prosecutions, and I would include in that the potential for corporate manslaughter charges against Whitehall departments,” he said.
