**When the Damage Keeps Growing but the Compensation Stops**

The human body does not stop deteriorating because a compensation table has reached its final row.

That is the uncomfortable issue now being raised with the Cabinet Office by the Infected Blood Family Support Network.

Under the Infected Blood Compensation Scheme, the Core Injury Award for chronic Hepatitis B or C increases according to the recognised severity of the infection:

Level 2 — £60,000

Level 3 — £120,000

Level 4 — £180,000

The principle appears clear: as the physical injury becomes more severe, the compensation increases.

But for people living with chronic Hepatitis B or C, that progression effectively stops at Level 4—even when their suffering does not.

Level 4 covers devastating consequences including decompensated cirrhosis, liver cancer and liver transplantation. Yet an infected person may experience multiple serious complications, prolonged deterioration and years of cumulative physical injury after reaching that threshold.

Ultimately, the infection may contribute to or cause their death.

The official scheme does now contain a category described as Level 5 Hepatitis, but this is very narrowly defined. It applies to acute Hepatitis B where a person dies from acute liver failure within 12 months of infection, or where reactivation results in death.

It is not a general fifth level recognising the continued progression of chronic Hepatitis B or C beyond Level 4.

That distinction matters.

Current government guidance confirms that there is no supplementary Injury Award for infected people or the estates of those who have died. Supplementary payments may be available in defined circumstances for increased care needs or financial loss—but not as an increased Injury Award recognising the additional physical suffering itself.

This creates a fundamental inconsistency at the heart of the scheme.

If increasing physical severity justifies raising the Injury Award from £60,000 to £120,000, and then to £180,000, why does further severity cease to matter after Level 4?

A person does not become incapable of suffering additional injury simply because they have already suffered enough to enter the scheme’s highest chronic-infection band.

This is not a demand to assign a separate tariff to every symptom. Nor is it an attempt to compare one person’s suffering with another’s.

It is a request for the Government to explain its own logic.

Earlier government statements said that a supplementary route would provide additional compensation where losses were not adequately covered by the core route.

A health-impact supplementary route was also announced for conditions not recognised within the core scheme. However, the additional support available through that route appears to be directed towards care requirements and a person’s capacity to earn.

That still leaves the physical injury itself unanswered.

The Infected Blood Family Support Network has therefore written to the Cabinet Office asking it to clarify:

Why was Level 4 selected as the maximum Core Injury Award level for progressive chronic Hepatitis B and C?

Why does the scheme recognise increasing physical severity between Levels 2, 3 and 4, but stop recognising further increases once Level 4 has been reached?

What provision, if any, allows exceptional or cumulative physical injury beyond the Level 4 criteria to be recognised within an individual’s compensation?

If no such provision exists, was its exclusion a deliberate policy decision—and what was the rationale behind that decision?

How does the final scheme accord with earlier statements that additional and cumulative harm would be capable of recognition through supplementary awards?

These are precise and reasonable questions.

They deserve a substantive response addressing the policy rationale—not simply another explanation of the existing eligibility criteria and tariffs.

A compensation scheme cannot claim that increasing severity matters, but then refuse to explain why that same principle suddenly ends at an administrative boundary.

A tariff may have an endpoint.

Human suffering does not.

The Cabinet Office should explain why the compensation stops while the damage continues.

— The Unheard Voice