Campaign & Accountability

When the Process Becomes the Penalty: A Campaigner’s Story

Why Mark Lawler Is Speaking Out: When the Process Becomes the Penalty Behind every infected blood compensation claim is a person, a family and a history that cannot be reduced to paperwork. In this personal statement, Mark Lawler describes the emotional, physical and financial strain of pursuing a compensation claim for his late mother, Margaret Angela Lawler. He recounts months of delays, repeated administrative requirements and uncertainty about when the process will finally reach a conclusion. Mark is a peer supporter for the Hepatitis B Positive Trust and has spent years supporting members of the infected blood community. His account highlights a difficult reality: those who spend their time helping others can also find themselves struggling under the weight of the system they are navigating. His statement raises important questions about transparency, consistency and the impact prolonged delays can have on claimants and their families. Compensation is intended to address historic harm. The process of seeking it should not create avoidable additional distress. This is Mark’s personal experience, shared in his own words. It is not a finding that every claimant has experienced the same problems. It is, however, a reminder that behind every claim is a human being waiting for answers, recognition and a fair outcome. **The Unheard Voice** believes lived experience must be heard alongside official updates and policy explanations. Mark’s account adds an important perspective to the ongoing conversation about how the infected blood compensation scheme operates in practice.

By Anonymous · Oct 13, 2026

A sombre memorial-style graphic for The Unheard Voice shows a lit candle, a framed photo of a blurred figure, and white flowers on a wooden table by a softly lit window. Large text reads, “The Families Still Waiting for Someone to Say Their Death Mattered.” Smaller text explains that many bereaved families feel the compensation process acknowledges illness, care and financial loss more clearly than the fact that a person died, and asks whether death itself has been properly recognised. Handwritten notes say, “Not just a statistic. A person. A family. A life.” and “Because they mattered. Still do.”

“A scheme built for justice should not become another source of trauma for the living.”

A community submission from Mark Lawler

Behind every reference number is a human life. In this personal account, Mark Lawler describes the emotional, physical and financial toll of navigating a prolonged compensation claim for his late mother.

We often talk about the Infected Blood Scandal in terms of frameworks, severity bands, and legal mechanics. But behind every reference number is a human life, and behind every stalled claim is a family carrying a weight they should never have had to bear.

Consider the reality of what it means to seek justice decades later.

For months, claims managers talk of “mandatory internal reviews,” quality assurance checks, and files moving through queues. Families are told there are “no issues,” yet weeks stretch into months of waiting in the dark, caught between changing administrative hurdles and a profound lack of transparency.

The toll this takes is heavy enough for anyone. But what happens when the person waiting for justice is someone who has spent years standing on the front lines for others?

My name is Mark Lawler. As a peer supporter for the Hepatitis B Positive Trust, I have spent years assisting the IBCA, attending endless stakeholder and engagement meetings, and running weekly support meetings for others—even organising support while away on holiday. In my daily life, I literally hold the hands of the dying within our community.

Yet, behind the advocacy, the reality of this process has taken a devastating personal toll.

For months, the timeline has been an exhausting cycle of constant delays. We have repeatedly been given the apparent “green light” to proceed, only to be pulled back into administrative loops—navigating multiple rounds of declaration formatting, clinician reviews, quality assurance sign-offs, and promises that everything is resolved, only for weeks to pass and new document requests from Trusts to suddenly appear out of nowhere.

Instead of closure, I find myself sitting at home, off work ill with insulin-dependent diabetes, suffering from severe depression, and struggling financially because of this protracted, opaque process. I spend my nights unable to sleep, staring at an inbox, wondering how a system designed to right historic wrongs can leave families stranded in bureaucratic limbo.

We have sat through endless engagement meetings and discussions with authorities, only to watch real transparency get lost in red tape. When a compensation scheme subjects claimants to months of shifting goals and administrative goalposts, it risks punishing the very people it was built to help.

This claim is for my late mother, Margaret Angela Lawler. She and our family did not create this delay, and we should not be left paying the price through our health and well-being. A scheme built for justice should not become another source of trauma for the living.