Infected blood’s Post Office parallels

Reading the excellent Gazette article by Neil Hickman, ‘Post Office prosecutions follow a familiar script’ I was struck by the parallels of the experience of subpostmasters in the Horizon fiasco with that of my clients who have been victims of the infected blood scandal.

While thankfully none of this community have been convicted of a crime, they have suffered for years at the hands of government authorities due to persistent denials and dogged stonewalling, and for some the fact they contracted HIV or hepatitis as a result of their NHS treatment was akin to a prison sentence before, in some cases, premature death.

Mr Hickman says: ‘The Post Office fought tooth and nail to avoid accepting that there could be any problem with the Horizon accounting system, to the extent that the judge in the High Court, Mr Justice Fraser, remarked in exasperation that the Post Office’s approach was “the 21st century equivalent of maintaining that the earth is flat”.’

He also highlighted a phrase from Fraser’s judgment that ‘the Post Office… has resisted timely resolution of this group litigation whenever it can’. This resonated with me.

Lastly, he cited Charles Dickens’ reference in Bleak House to the Court of Chancery ‘giving to monied might the means abundantly of wearying out the right’. My clients can tell a similar story.

They too received paltry ex-gratia payments without the government actually admitting any liability. Our group litigation order, which seeks to nail the liability point, has been stayed while Sir Brian Langstaff conducts the Infected Blood Inquiry.

They too have waited for justice for many years and are still waiting, both for an admission that the NHS and other officials continued to allow the use of infected blood products knowing they were problematic, and for proper meaningful compensation for lives destroyed and families devastated due to government intransigence.

It is great news that the wheels of the justice system are finally turning in the direction of those wronged in the Post Office fiasco, although calls for a statutory inquiry into the saga may, in my opinion, only delay that justice given how protracted such a process can be.

In any event, I continue to hope that those in the infected blood community may receive similar recognition and justice in times to come.

Des Collins,
Senior partner, Collins Solicitors (represents 1,500 individuals and families affected by the infected blood scandal in the 1970s and 1980s)

The letter can be found online here