Why Is the Fight for Justice Still Continuing?

The infected blood scandal has been investigated.

The Government has apologised.

A compensation authority has been established.

So why are people still campaigning?

Because an inquiry report does not automatically repair decades of harm.

And a compensation scheme does not become complete simply because it exists.

The Inquiry ended — but implementation did not

The Infected Blood Inquiry published its main report in May 2024 after years of evidence from infected and affected people, clinicians, officials and institutions.

The Government later published formal responses to the Inquiry’s recommendations and accepted the need for a compensation scheme. The Victims and Prisoners Act 2024 established the legal basis for the Infected Blood Compensation Authority, known as IBCA.

Those were major developments.

But they were not the end of the process.

Compensation still had to be designed, regulated, administered and delivered to thousands of people whose circumstances are often complicated by bereavement, destroyed records, historic treatment and decades of medical history.

Compensation is still being delivered

IBCA is responsible for administering compensation to eligible infected and affected people and, in some circumstances, estates.

That means people are still moving through registration, evidence gathering, assessment, decision-making and payment.

Some people have already received compensation.

Others are still waiting to begin or complete their claims.

The pace of that process became one of the major concerns examined by the Inquiry after its main report.

The Inquiry returned to compensation in 2025

In July 2025, the Infected Blood Inquiry published an additional report specifically examining compensation.

It said that trust in the compensation process had been seriously damaged and that action was needed to rebuild it.

The report highlighted several priorities:

speed of delivery, clearer information about when claims are likely to be handled, greater transparency, meaningful involvement of infected and affected people, access to legal support and changes aimed at improving fairness.

That is significant.

The body that conducted the original Inquiry was itself saying that questions remained about how redress was being delivered.

Speed matters because time matters

Many of the people entitled to compensation are older.

Some are seriously ill.

Some families are pursuing claims for people who have already died.

For those people, delay is not an abstract administrative problem.

The 2025 additional report said that uncertainty about when an application would be dealt with was causing anxiety and concern that some people might never receive payment in their lifetime.

That is one reason campaigners continue to push for clearer timelines and faster processing.

Fairness remains contested

The compensation scheme contains detailed rules about eligibility, severity, relationships, financial loss, care and supplementary awards.

Those rules do not affect every family in the same way.

The Inquiry’s 2025 report identified areas where it believed anomalies or circumstances had not been properly taken into account and recommended changes aimed at greater fairness.

That does not mean every criticism of the scheme is automatically correct.

It does mean that the design and operation of compensation remain legitimate subjects of scrutiny.

Affected people continue to raise concerns

The scandal harmed more than the people who were medically infected.

Partners, parents, children, siblings and unpaid carers also lived with the consequences.

The Inquiry’s additional report noted that some affected people experienced serious and sometimes lifelong psychological harm, as well as impacts on education, employment, health and caring responsibilities.

It also identified areas where the compensation scheme did not provide a route for some of those harms.

That helps explain why many affected families continue to campaign even after the establishment of IBCA.

Missing and destroyed records remain a problem

Many infections occurred decades ago.

Medical records may be incomplete, missing or destroyed.

Some people were treated before modern testing was available.

Others may be trying to establish what happened to a relative who died many years ago.

That creates a difficult tension.

A compensation authority needs evidence in order to make decisions.

But families argue that people should not be unfairly disadvantaged because records disappeared during the very decades now being investigated.

Questions about evidence and historical proof therefore remain central to many claims.

Recognition is not only about money

For some people, compensation is only one part of justice.

They also want recognition of what happened.

That can include acknowledgement of the circumstances of a person’s death, the effect on children and carers, the consequences of stigma, or the fact that a family spent decades seeking answers.

The Government has formally apologised and has said that the Inquiry exposed serious failures and injustice.

But institutional recognition and individual recognition are not always experienced in the same way.

That gap helps explain why some families continue to campaign for specific changes.

Transparency and trust still matter

Trust is a recurring theme throughout the history of infected blood.

People were exposed to serious risks through treatment.

Some were not properly informed.

Some struggled to obtain records or answers.

Many spent years feeling that institutions were not listening.

The 2025 additional report said transparency was fundamental to rebuilding trust and recommended stronger mechanisms for involving infected and affected people in the compensation process.

That history means communication is not a minor issue.

For this community, the way decisions are explained can matter almost as much as the decisions themselves.

So what does “justice” mean now?

There is no single answer.

For some people, it means receiving compensation quickly and fairly.

For others, it means recognition of a loved one who died.

For some, it means ensuring that affected family members are not overlooked.

Others want transparency, accountability or guarantees that the failures exposed by the Inquiry cannot happen again.

Those aims can overlap, but they are not identical.

That is why campaigning did not simply stop when the Inquiry ended.

The scandal is historical. Its consequences are current.

The infected blood scandal began decades ago.

Its consequences are still being dealt with now.

Claims are still being processed.

Families are still navigating evidence.

Rules are still being debated.

Recommendations are still being implemented.

And trust is still being rebuilt.

The existence of an Inquiry, an apology and a compensation scheme are significant steps.

But justice is not measured only by whether a system has been created.

It is also measured by whether that system delivers what was promised — fairly, transparently and in time.

That is why the fight for justice is still continuing.

Last updated: September 2026

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