Bonuses for What? The Infected Blood Community Is at Breaking Point

The infected blood community has already spent decades fighting to be believed.

The disaster took health, livelihoods, parents, partners, children and futures. Families then fought for the truth, an inquiry and recognition of what had been done to them.

Compensation should have marked the beginning of relief.

Instead, accounts shared with The Unheard Voice describe another struggle: uncertain invitations, disputed medical evidence, changing expectations and relatives wondering whether the people they love will live long enough to receive their awards.

Now executive bonuses have brought that contrast into sharp focus.

Private Eye’s “Clots in charge” article reports performance-related bonuses for three senior IBCA executives. A remuneration table supplied to The Unheard Voice lists each bonus in the £10,000–£15,000 band—a combined reported range of £30,000–£45,000.

The same table lists the chief executive’s salary paid in 2025–26 in the £130,000–£135,000 band, with a full-year equivalent of £140,000–£145,000. Two other senior executives are each listed in the £110,000–£115,000 salary-paid band, with full-year equivalents of £115,000–£120,000.

These are reported bands, not exact payments. The table supplied is an extract; the figures should be read alongside the original accounts and their explanatory notes.

The question is what performance justified additional rewards—and whether the measures used reflect what claimants are experiencing.

Evidence supplied, expectations raised, still waiting

One bereaved son, who also supports others in the infected blood community, has publicly described the impact of pursuing compensation for his late mother.

He says he provided everything available to him to support an evidence-based claim. Approximately 18 weeks into the process, he describes himself as broken by it.

His statement reports nine weeks away from work on limited pay, continuing anxiety and depression, and a return to work driven by financial necessity rather than recovery.

His account describes a claim beginning in late June, followed by questions about hepatitis C and the implications of co-infection.

He says the family was offered the possibility of proceeding on hepatitis B alone. Later updates indicated that a revised declaration was approaching completion and quality checks.

Then the position changed again: further information was needed from NHS trusts about severity levels.

A family being told that evidence is still being assessed faces one expectation. A family being led to believe its declaration is nearly ready faces another.

Repeatedly raising that expectation and then reversing it has consequences.

The son also describes concern for an elderly surviving relative whose health is poor. His fear is painfully straightforward: will compensation arrive while there is still time for it to help?

This is someone who has supported other families through illness and loss. He now describes struggling to keep himself afloat while navigating the process intended to provide redress.

Grief put through another examination

A bereaved daughter describes a separate struggle over the assessment of her mother’s hepatitis B severity.

Her mother was infected in the early 1970s and later died with liver cirrhosis. The daughter says hepatitis C also appears in the medical records.

She describes … being recommended she provide a picture of her Mum for recollection and verification purposes. She provided a picture of her Mum in a hospital bed soon after being transferred from ICU.

These are her allegations about the process, rather than findings independently established by this article.

But the human issue is unmistakable: a daughter trying to establish what happened to her mother describes feeling that her own honesty is under examination.

It is an appalling position for a bereaved person to feel placed in.

Medical evidence must be assessed carefully. That responsibility must include recognising the age of the records, the circumstances in which they were created and the distress caused by repeatedly asking relatives to reconstruct a loved one’s decline.

A family’s grief must not become an endless examination they feel they can never pass.

The balance of probabilities must mean something

The concerns explored in The Unheard Voice’s reporting on the balance of probabilities belong at the centre of this discussion.

Families are trying to establish infections and treatment histories from decades ago. Some records have been lost or destroyed. Some diagnoses were recorded long after the likely exposure.

A missing document does not automatically prove a claim. Equally, its absence must not be treated as though it disproves what the surviving evidence supports.

The task is to weigh the available evidence together and explain the conclusion fairly.

People should not face an impossible evidential burden because the institutions responsible for their treatment no longer hold a complete account of it.

The balance of probabilities cannot become a reassuring phrase attached to a process that families experience as demanding certainty they cannot recover.

HIV mono-infection: opening a claim is not resolving it

Concerns about stalled HIV mono-infection claims also need to be heard.

Reports received by The Unheard Voice raise questions about cases failing to progress. Those accounts do not establish that every HIV mono-infection claim is paused. They expose a question that headline invitation figures cannot answer: what happens after someone enters the service?

A person can have a claim manager and still be waiting without a clear route to a decision.

Progress must be measured through assessment, resolution and payment—not simply the opening of a claim.

People living with the consequences of HIV should not have to spend their remaining strength trying to discover what is preventing their case from moving forward.

Previously unregistered living infected people

Living infected people who were not previously registered with a support scheme must also remain visible.

Their experiences cannot be overlooked when assessing whether compensation is reaching everyone entitled to it.

IBCA stated on 8 October that it had asked every living infected person registered with the authority by the end of September to start their claim. It asked anyone who believed they fell within that group but had not heard to contact it. Registration with IBCA is distinct from previous support-scheme registration.

That is a significant stated milestone. It does not establish that those claims are progressing smoothly or reaching payment.

Being invited is the beginning. It must not become the achievement behind which unresolved cases disappear.

Campaigners warned them—and were told it was a Government decision

A campaign source has told The Unheard Voice that, during meetings in September 2024, campaign representatives advised against separating the processing of living infected people’s claims from those of deceased infected people.

They also urged an early registration process to establish the number of affected people intending to claim, challenging estimates they considered substantially overstated.

The source says supporting evidence from the meeting exists. Crucially, he recalls attendees being told that the decision under discussion had been made by the Cabinet Office, rather than IBCA.

The underlying meeting record has not been examined for this article. The account nevertheless raises questions about the Government’s policy decisions, how campaigners’ warnings were communicated and how the consequences were managed.

These concerns were about people whose remaining time was limited. Elderly affected relatives needed their circumstances understood before a timetable was built around assumptions about them.

The source describes people dying without seeing justice and questions whether the financial consequences have been adequately scrutinised.

That account does not establish that processing decisions caused particular deaths or generated savings. But the warning deserves examination: campaigners say they identified the risks early, proposed alternatives and were left watching families continue to wait.

Death must never become an administrative saving. Any financial consequences of claimants dying before resolution deserve transparent scrutiny, including what remains payable to their estates.

Invitation sequencing: families should not have to guess

Reports of younger people receiving invitations while older people remain waiting have created understandable anger and confusion.

Age alone cannot establish whether a particular invitation was wrong. Different claim groups, linked cases and other priority circumstances may explain individual decisions.

But families should not have to discover those explanations through speculation.

IBCA’s published prioritisation has included people nearing the end of life, those with advanced liver disease and people aged 75 or over. The authority must make clear how those priorities operate across different groups.

For someone watching an elderly relative deteriorate, an unexplained queue is a source of fear.

Every uncertain week raises the same question: will they still be here when their turn comes?

A community being asked to break again

The community is at breaking point.

When families repeatedly explain that the process is damaging their health, threatening their financial security and consuming their remaining strength, yet the same problems continue, they are left feeling that IBCA does not care.

Compassion must be visible in how claims are handled: evidence considered fairly, commitments honoured, delays explained and vulnerable people protected.

Families cannot live on assurances while their health deteriorates and time runs out.

Living infected people are navigating compensation while managing the consequences of their infections. Bereaved relatives are searching records, challenging assessments and repeatedly explaining the suffering of someone they loved.

Some describe losing sleep, becoming afraid of the next email and struggling to work or meet their bills. Others are trying to support fellow campaigners while their own strength disappears.

The system established to provide redress is itself being described as another source of trauma.

That should be a warning at the highest level.

Families still have to campaign for death recognition

Fundamental injustices remain unresolved. Among them is the demand for a separate Death Award: explicit recognition of the lives lost because of infected blood.

An estate payment does not, in itself, provide the separate recognition of death that these families are seeking.

Compensation calculated around infection and its consequences does not settle their demand for recognition of the life that was taken.

Why must bereaved families keep making that case? Why must they spend another day calling, writing and campaigning to explain that their loved one’s death deserves recognition?

The principle is simple: those who died must count.

Families describing a “discount on death” are expressing a profound objection to a framework they believe fails to recognise fully the life lost. The distinction between compensation for illness and recognition of death matters to them. It cannot be dismissed as a misunderstanding of a calculation.

The Government is responsible for the scheme’s design. IBCA is responsible for administering it. Both must confront the consequences of their decisions.

Where is the political support now?

The community also remembers the political figures who stood alongside it and promised support.

Charities and campaign groups have publicly sought urgent engagement and changes to the scheme. A delegation delivered handwritten letters describing loss, trauma and the need for fair, timely compensation.

Private Eye reports that a request to meet campaigners remained unanswered at its publication deadline.

For people who trusted those earlier expressions of solidarity, the absence of the engagement they sought feels like abandonment.

Standing with a traumatised community creates an expectation that support will continue when the difficult work of delivery begins.

Families should not have to campaign again to make former supporters notice what is happening to them now.

Does this warrant a performance bonus?

The strongest challenge raised in the messages shared with The Unheard Voice is straightforward: what achievement was rewarded?

What targets were met? What period did the bonuses recognise? How were delays, disputed assessments, complaints and claimant distress reflected in the assessment?

A performance-related payment does not establish that someone exceeded their targets. That makes the criteria more important.

There is a profound ethical question about rewarding the administration of redress for state-caused harm while people using that system describe further avoidable suffering.

Internal targets cannot be the only measure of success. A scheme can meet an administrative milestone and still fail the family whose case remains unresolved.

Enough is enough

This article is being published because these experiences deserve to be heard.

The community is exhausted by having to demonstrate its suffering repeatedly: first to establish what happened, then to secure recognition, and now to navigate compensation.

These accounts do not establish that every claim is mishandled. They raise serious concerns that cannot be dismissed by pointing to progress elsewhere.

A bereaved son describes his health and livelihood suffering. A daughter describes feeling disbelieved while trying to establish her mother’s illness. Living infected people face uncertainty about progression. Elderly affected people and bereaved families fear time running out.

Meanwhile, senior executives receive performance-related bonuses.

A system established to redress harm must be judged by whether it delivers justice without inflicting further avoidable suffering.

When families describe themselves as breaking under that system, the Government and IBCA must confront a question more fundamental than any internal target:

Have these people not endured enough?

And until their experience changes, another question remains:

Performance bonuses—for what?