For the victims and their families who have had their lives decimated by ill-health for up to two decades because of contaminated blood, an apology is long overdue and much wanted.

But the bottom line, which successive governments have done their utmost to avoid, is the need for compensation.

The Archer inquiry does not put a figure on the financial support needed by people who have lost their jobs, lost their health insurance and, as has so often been the case, lost the breadwinners in their families.

But the report concludes that compensation equivalent to that offered by the Irish Government — which equates to around 400,000 Euros a person — should be a starting point. Money should not be assessed on a means tested basis, but on the facts of each individual’s case, it states.

With more than 4,000 people affected by ‘bad blood’, the current Government’s silence is perhaps understandable. The compensation required would be in the billions. But that is no excuse for trying to sweep the issue under the carpet.

To date, the Government has offered no financial support to the inquiry, which has fought hard to keep its cost down to under £75,000.

Lord Morris of Manchester, who first called for an inquiry in December 1988, set up the privately-funded review after successive governments resolutely resisted holding a public inquiry — preferring in-house inquiries at the Department of Health, dealing only with narrowly-defined aspects of the disaster, with no opportunity for afflicted patients, bereaved families, or even former ministers to be heard.

Lord Morris felt an independent inquiry, held in public, was the only way for the views of those most affected to be heard, and the only way to restore public confidence in the safety of blood product supplies. He petitioned potential donors — who gave anonymously — and raised sufficient funds for it to be carried out.

The results — a 112-page document summarising two years of evidence — is now with Alan Johnson, the Health Secretary. The inquiry has no legal status compelling action from the Government (it was not even able to compel witnesses to come before it, as shown by the ever-absent Department of Health).

But the haemophilia community, and the wider public, are rightly concerned about how the most horrific of NHS treatment errors is addressed, the chapter closed, the lessons learnt. And to do this requires — demands — a positive, forthright and active government response.

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