Victims of the contaminated blood scandal renewed their calls for compensation yesterday, as evidence emerged that the Government was told about the dangers of using “skid row” blood products as early as 1975.

At an independent public inquiry into the supply of tainted blood to haemophiliacs during the 1970s and 1980s, survivors and relatives of those who died said that questions still needed to be answered about what successive governments knew.

At least 4,500 haemophiliacs were infected with HIV and hepatitis C from contaminated plasma. A total of 1,757 have died and thousands more are terminally ill.

One letter presented to the inquiry showed that in January 1975 the Wilson Government was warned that one of the US companies it bought plasma treatments from sourced all its blood from “skid row derelicts”. The letter, written by Stanford University Medical Centre to the Blood Products Laboratory at the Lister Institute, said that these clotting products, known as Factor 8, had proven to be “extremely hazardous”, with recipients having a 50 to 90 per cent chance of developing hepatitis.

The inquiry, chaired by Lord Archer of Sandwell, a former Solicitor-General, heard that other products were bought from companies that acquired blood from prisoners in America.

Those giving evidence yesterday spoke of their harrowing ordeals. Sue Threakall, whose husband died in 1991, aged 47, after contracting HIV following the use of Factor 8, told the inquiry: “This terrible tragedy should never have happened; it was wholly avoidable. Warnings were ignored, lessons were not learnt and our community was lied to by the people it should have trusted most.”

The Government has not confirmed whether it will allow ministers or civil servants to give evidence to the inquiry, which is scheduled to report by late summer.

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