Angela Walker In Conversation - Inspirational Interviews, Under-Reported News

CONTAMINATED BLOOD SCANDAL: Jason Evans and Des Collins Discuss the Infected Blood Inquiry and the Compensation Chaos

• Angela Walker

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Thousands of people were infected with HIV and Hepatitis after being given contaminated blood by the NHS in the 1970s and 80s. Many have since died - more are gravely ill.  The government has been directed to pay compensation to those affected and quickly, yet hundreds of people haven't received a penny. Jason Evans lost his father when he was four years old as a result of the infected blood scandal. He spearheaded a mission for truth and justice by setting up campaign group Factor 8 to demand a public inquiry and now he's fighting for the compensation agreed to be paid out.  Joined with Des Collins, a formidable solicitor advocating for hundreds of victims, we delve into this shocking chapter of medical history and its ongoing implications. Hear their stories, the relentless hunt for damning documents, and the profound determination of victims fighting for their rights.

Des Collins and Jason Evans share invaluable insights about the bureaucratic red tape that has delayed compensation and justice for those affected. We dive into the intricacies of the Robert Francis report from 2022, the Langstaff report's recommendations, and what these delays mean for those still awaiting compensation.

Through their tales of persistence and resilience, Jason and Des will bring us face to face with the realities of trying to hold government officials accountable. 

#HIVHepatitisScandal #InfectedBloodControversy #NHSCompensation #Factor8Campaign #PublicInquiryDemand #MedicalHistory #CompensationDelays #RobertFrancisReport #LangstaffReport #GovernmentAccountability #VictimsRights #BureaucraticRedTape #JusticeForAll #MedicalInjustice #HealthcareScandal #VictimAdvocacy #TruthAndJustice #CompensationStruggle #GovernmentResponsibility

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Angela Walker:

Thousands of British people died after they were given blood products by the NHS contaminated with Hepatitis C and AIDS in the 1970s and 80s. A public inquiry ended in February this year, so Brian Langstaff, the chair of the inquiry, recommended that compensation be paid, and quickly, as many of the survivors are seriously ill. Yet thousands of victims and their families have still received nothing. I'm journalist Angela Walker, and in this podcast I interview inspirational guests and discuss under-reported issues.

Angela Walker:

Today I'm in conversation with Jason Evans, a leading campaigner in the campaign for justice for victims of the scandal and also solicited Des Collins, who's represented hundreds of victims and their families in a joint action against the British government. Thank you both for joining me. I really want to talk about the compensation scheme and how that's going, but I think for listeners it's really important to understand the background to the infected blood scandal, so I'll explain. There was a shortfall in the UK in the concentrate needed to treat hemophiliacs, and so blood products were imported from the US, where donors were being paid. Jason, thank you so much for joining me today.

Jason Evans:

Good to be here.

Angela Walker:

We've talked many times over the past few years and I know your dad was one of the recipients of infected blood. Would you mind sharing his story with us today?

Jason Evans:

Sure.

Jason Evans:

So my dad was born with hemophilia, a genetic blood clotting disorder, and historically and to this day, the way in which that disorder is treated is to replace the missing protein, the factor 8 protein that characterizes hemophilia, or at least hemophilia A.

Jason Evans:

There are a number of types of hemophilia and in the 70s and 80s, like virtually all hemophiliacs throughout the UK who were given treatment at that time, he was given a new treatment for hemophilia factor 8 concentrate.

Jason Evans:

That product infected him with hepatitis C, hiv, hepatitis B as well, and this treatment, this factor 8 concentrate treatment, had replaced the previous treatment for hemophilia, cryoprecipitate. And cryoprecipitate was the easiest way. I always tell people to think of it as something like a regular blood transfusion, whereas these new factor 8 concentrates were a commercialized product and, unlike cryoprecipitate, where one unit came from one voluntary donor on the NHS, these factor 8 concentrates were made by mixing together tens of thousands of plasma donations from often paid donors, often overseas donors, prison donors, and sold for a profit. So the whole field of hemophilia treatment changed dramatically. My father died as a result of his infections when I was four years old in 1993 and he is one of the approximately 1,250 people who were infected with both HIV and hepatitis C, and we believe there are only somewhere in the region of 200 to 250 such infected persons still alive today.

Angela Walker:

At what point, Jason, did you decide to start up the campaign group factor 8?

Jason Evans:

It was in 2016 that factor 8 kind of began more officially. But the trigger for me was in March of 2015, when the Scottish enquiry the Pemrose enquiry reported and it concluded that little could or should have been done differently and for whatever reason, that statement and that moment triggered me into campaigning really to or at least I'm not sure I decided to begin campaigning on that day but it triggered me to begin looking into what happened. I really hadn't kind of fully decided what I was going to do at that point, but I kind of decided I was going to do something. I think I just didn't know quite what was going to be required at that moment.

Jason Evans:

So that was really the trigger for me, and factor 8 as a non-profit organisation came about from a meeting that I had with two people who were themselves infected with hepatitis C and HIV. We'd met at a pub and during a discussion. It was really their idea, more than mine, to start this new organisation that would have one primary goal of trying to achieve a public enquiry and be involved in nothing else. Because I think something that really does epitomise this story and Andy Burnham said this in evidence to the enquiry is that for too many years. I think that the focus got wrapped up in the benefits schemes that some of those impacted can access people who themselves infected or bereaved partners, and I think the focus became so much on that that the attention to the true what had actually happened was less than it should have been And that was going to be the only focus of factor eight, and it was.

Angela Walker:

There's. I first met you in about 2016. We met a gentleman's house in Buckinghamshire and he'd been infected with hepatitis through. He was a hemophilia. He'd been given contaminated blood through the NHS And at that point a public inquiry hadn't even been granted. But you ended up leading the group action for a public inquiry, which was a huge undertaking, and how did that come about?

Des Collins:

It came about essentially because we got into contact with Jason Evans. Jason Evans was, and still is, as we hear, very, very pro public inquiry And we decided that that was probably, if this case was going to be pursued, that that was the right way to go about it. Any calls for public inquiries before time had been unsuccessful. So we took the view that somehow we had to approach it from a different point of view. The initial approach was to commence proceedings legal proceedings for one or two people, to try and get some publicity for it and try and get it back in the focus, back in the media, which was always going to be very difficult, because even when I first became involved in it, i took the view that this had all been done before. Nothing else could come out of this disaster. It was, it's very, very sad, but nothing else could be done. So in order to attract some sort of media interest, we thought something should be done by way of legal proceedings. Legal proceedings on behalf of 123 or four people is not going to cut it. So we took the view that if we could put together a sufficiently large group, that that might attract some media interest and attract the attention of the government. So that's what we did. We decided that we should not go ahead on the basis of one or two people, that we go ahead on the basis of a group. That group rose from 10 or 15 through to about 500 in about four months And to the extent that the first time we wrote to the government legal department saying who we were and why we were we're taking this action and what were their proposals to counter it or were they going to agree to it Well, they were hardly ever likely to agree to it.

Des Collins:

But once we we broached it with the government legal department, they said, well, you are not acting for enough people, and I think that first letter went off sometime, possibly in April 2017. Government League Department, too seriously, probably took two or three months or two or three weeks to reply. By the time, they'd replied that the cohort had gone up from, say, 15 through to 150. So we go back to them and say, well, actually it's not 15. It's I can't remember the fingers Well, those are the sort of indications we had. It's not 150. And so they take another two weeks to write back and then we say, well, no, actually it's 250 now And, putting it bluntly, they thought we were talking absolute rubbish and that we couldn't have acquired that many victims to be represented in that short space of time. But they haven't taken into account was the fact that these people had been out there waiting for something to happen for 20, 30, 40 years, and once they saw the slightest possibility of action, they were right behind it, and they have remained so to today.

Angela Walker:

And how did it feel when it started snowballing and escalating like that?

Des Collins:

very edifying in terms of you realize that this wasn't just, these weren't empty promises being made by potential victims. These were people who wanted to stand up and fight and who had not been given the opportunity to fight effectively at an earlier stage. Every time they had possibly got to a situation where they might move forward, something would happen. The government would say, well, effectively, here's, here's a bowl of nuts and a bag of rice. go where it bother us for a while. And that's what happened time and time again. And by this stage, back in the night 2016, the victims were not going to be bought off like that anymore. A lot of them were second generation, as is Jason, and they had seen the mistakes which had been made in the past and they were quite, quite determined that that wouldn't happen in the future.

Angela Walker:

Certainly, Jason. you did pursue this with a great vigor And I know you've got access to thousands of documents using freedom of information requests. How did you feel when these damning documents came to light, because I know some were destroyed. Others had information that appeared to show that it was known in the NHS that these products were contaminated and even after doctors knew that the blood products were infected, they continued to give them to people. How did you feel reading these documents?

Jason Evans:

It was a very gradual process and you know there had been allegations for decades that risks of infection were known. There had been arguments about what stage the level of risk of different viruses was known. But over time, through making trips to the National Archive, i'd become very interested on the reference numbers that were on the folders, the many folders of documents at the National Archive, and had fairly quickly noticed because you know they were sequentially numbered that there were gaps in some of those numbers And I began to make a very light what became an extremely large spreadsheet of the numbers of all the files. And then would make freedom of information requests to the Department of Health for the specific reference numbers of files which should be there, which weren't there. And so for a long time, at least 10 years, the Department of Health had had towed this line. They'd said it, multiple ministers had said this line to Parliament that all the documents were either in the public domain or they'd been destroyed. And actually, you know, for the media and for campaigners, i think to a degree that line was quite good because that in itself sounded quite scandalous that documents had been destroyed. But actually that was the lie. Not all of the documents were in the public domain or destroyed. They were in fact at least hundreds and I think now thousands of folders, and each folder contains hundreds of pages, which were buried at a third party storage company called Iron Mountain, which the Department of Health uses and many other government departments use to store documents.

Jason Evans:

And so over a period, you know, i began to look at the documents in the National Archive and also facilitate, or begin to facilitate, the transfer of documents from Iron Mountain to the Department of Health, to the National Archives. Then I could get access to them. And you know, if you go forward a couple of years, with the help of Baroness Lynn Featherstone, who's been very helpful to the campaign over the years she has a family member who was infected as well We actually got the Department of Health to accept that not all the documents were in the public domain or destroyed and they agreed to never use that line again. So Iron Mountain began moving folders and documents to the Department of Health. The Department of Health sent them to the National Archive and I managed to start getting at more and more of these documents And so, in addition to, you know, learning more about the risk, about the lack of consent, about how neither the Blub Products Laboratory here or the Pharmaceutical Companies had heat treated their products before sending them into use, which they should have done.

Jason Evans:

That would have heat treatment would have killed viruses. That was known going back to the 1940s. And so learning about all of this stuff, gathering more and more knowledge and aspects which hadn't been reported on before getting that out into the press, that was all one thing, but then another element was how the government had used this line that all the information was out there already or destroyed. They'd been using that line for such a long time and it just wasn't true. And what actually ended up happening during the course of the inquiry was that the permanent secretary who is still the permanent secretary to this day, chris Wormoldt at the Department of Health, wrote to two former ministers who had given that line to parliament Nicola Blackwood and Jane Allison and apologized to them for having provided them with incorrect information, which they subsequently provided to parliament many, many times, and he lists those times in the letters which are now publicly available. So that was all key, you know, as well as learning about the documents was exposing that lie that all the information was out there or destroyed.

Angela Walker:

And, as you kind of revealed more and more information, how did you feel about that?

Jason Evans:

I think 2017 and 2018 in particular were really kind of odd years for me when I look back at them now, because I was definitely, you know you caught up in the momentum of the campaign, the group legal action, you know, being accepted as being able to progress into the court and the media stories, and everything was moving very quickly.

Jason Evans:

I mean, i guess in a way it still is now, but at the same time it was, you know, distressing to read in meticulous detail about everything that had gone wrong which would lead to the death of my father, and kind of understanding the true scale and the true I don't even know if I'd categorize them as failures you know the true kind of scandalous behavior that went on at so many levels that would lead to those events And it was distressing And it was, yeah, just a very strange time.

Angela Walker:

But I think being caught up in the campaign and kind of being, you know, near or at the forefront of it, kind of distracted from The distressing part of it in a way, Of course, because you were so busy digging deep and trying to uncover the truth that perhaps You didn't even have time to even absorb all this awful information that that was coming to you. This was the largest scale public inquiry ever held in the country. It was looking at how people were given contaminated blood by the NHS. It's also looked at what was known or should have been known and the extent that people were warned of the risks or not and The impact on those affected, and it looked at whether there were attempts to cover up what happened, which is what we've just been talking about there. It was a huge remit, des. Can you tell us where the inquiries at now?

Des Collins:

The inquiry has. Some people say the inquiry has concluded. It hasn't concluded. The inquire powered To all intents and purposes.

Des Collins:

The inquiry finished hearing evidence earlier this year. It then went into recess and the Approach was widely accepted that an interim report on compensation would be issued After about Easter, with a final report dealing not with compensation But all the issues of what happened, why it happened and why it shouldn't have happened, being made available to the public on production in the autumn of this year. That position has slightly altered because what has happened is that The inquiry stopped hearing evidence. We all went away to look at that evidence and await the reports of the chair. The chair produced what's known as an interim report In just before Easter and that interim report is in fact the final report on compensation.

Des Collins:

That final report on compensation, which was unfortunately called an interim report, but that's just what happened Whilst distributed. It was published and the intention of the inquiry as far as we can determine the chairs intention Was that the government would react fully and properly to that report and make sure that compensation, a compensation framework, was put in place pretty much immediately. That was just before Easter. We're now halfway through court with law towards the end of of July and, to all intents and purposes, no action has been taken with the view to implementation of the The recommendations in the report.

Angela Walker:

Let's hear from Sir Brian Langstaff, who he's chairing the inquiry. This is a clip recorded from the second interim report statement, which I believe you're referring to there, on the 5th of April this year, that's 2023.

Sir Brian Langstaff:

When hearings finished in Old Witch House in February, i told you that I would be making a further interim report about the framework for compensation before Easter. Today the inquiry has published that report. It's an unusual step to publish recommendations about redress in advance of detailed findings, but I could not in conscience Add to the decades-long delays many of you have already experienced Due to failures to recognize the depth of your losses. Those delays have themselves been harmful. As you know, the government has recognized that wrongs were done and that compensation should follow. I've made interim payments in October. I Believe that the government was right to accept this. My conclusion is That wrongs were done at individual, collective and systemic levels. I will set out the detail of what happened and why in my full report, but my judgment is that not only do the infections themselves and their consequences merit compensation, but so too Do the wrongs done by authority, whose response served to compound people suffering.

Angela Walker:

So we heard Sir Brian there saying he could not in any conscience add to the decades-long delays in compensation. And yet still so many people are waiting. How has the government justified this delay?

Des Collins:

The government sought to justify the delay on the Simple premise that it's a it's a long, complicated story and it's got to investigate it fully and determine how A compensation framework should be set up and in what form.

Des Collins:

That doesn't bear any close examination, because what the government doesn't readily accept although it knows that's the position that back in 2022, the government obtained a report from its own Consultant, sir Robert Francis.

Des Collins:

Now that Robert Francis report dealt with the question of compensation, compensation and it was intended to deal with compensation, according to the The government at the time, in order that when the when the inquiry fully reported on compensation, they were able, they would be able to react fully, properly and Appropriately to that.

Des Collins:

So that report has been with them since 2022, perhaps Surprisingly perhaps not surprisingly when, once that report came into that, they came into the possession in 2022, they didn't respond to it. They produced no response to it whatsoever. They then waited till until April when the first Langstaff report in compensation the interim report which we've just heard about came out, and what we find is that Sir Brian Langstaff, the chair of the inquiry, has pretty much adopted the findings or the conclusions reached by Robert Langstaff the year earlier. So the government's now been in possession of reports for quite long enough to be able to react fully, properly and appropriately. Everyone accepts it's a complicated exercise and requires careful thought, but it doesn't require careful thought to the extent that it's delayed indefinitely, particularly against a background where the chair has said it must be done immediately.

Angela Walker:

So let's clarify who's had compensation so far and how much have they had?

Des Collins:

The compensation so far has been to the bereaved, and that was the first interim report which came out back at the end of 2022.

Jason Evans:

That was for those infected still alive and bereaved partners. I think that one.

Des Collins:

That's right. That's right. The then government responded very quickly. That was a recommendation made by the inquiry back in July 22. The then government responded very, very quickly and the payments were made pursuant to those recommendations by October 22.

Angela Walker:

So who hasn't received? because there are an awful lot of people that haven't received compensation. Who are those people then, and why?

Des Collins:

Pretty much everyone else who might be entitled to compensation either under the Langstaff recommendations or the Robert Francis internal report, which is I can put it in simple terms The payments were led to believe under that first interim report in July last year, which payments were made in October about £400 million. No one is quite sure what the total payout will be in terms of further compensation payments being made, but that is probably going to be in terms of billions. So what's been paid at the moment is really a drop in the ocean, and what's more worrying is that there's no indication whatsoever as to when further payments will be made or if further payments will be made.

Angela Walker:

Well, i've been in touch with the Cabinet Office and they see this very brief statement today. It says this the government accepts the moral case for compensation and work is ongoing across the UK government and in consultation with the devolved administrations to consider as quickly as possible the recommendations put forward in the enquiries second interim report. So that's the statement that I've been sent and they've also referred me to the 22nd of June in the Commons when the Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General, jeremy Quinn, addressed the House of Commons and he said then he chairs a small ministerial group to bring together the expertise of different departments. He talks about the complexity of the issue. It does sound like they're doing something, jason. Are they doing enough?

Jason Evans:

Yeah, i mean that all sounds pretty good, but from what we've been able to get again through freedom of information on the area of what, if anything, is happening with compensation, it hasn't been very encouraging. So, as Des said, they've had Sir Robert Francis' compensation study since March last year And when we managed to get some documents to look at what work had because all last year they were saying work is ongoing to consider that And when we actually looked at what they've been doing, the answer unfortunately was not a lot. They'd set up quarterly meetings So they were meeting once every few months at best And even that appears to have only happened towards the end of the year And when I had sent FOIs to virtually every government department that might possibly be involved in the issue of compensation. So we're talking the Treasury, the Department of Health, many of the departments, cabinet Office I won't go through all of them now, but it was surprising because we were told there was a permanent secretary level group And now we've got a small ministerial group as well. We told there was a permanent secretary level group of different departments taking forward work.

Jason Evans:

Strands was the wording that we heard in December last year And many of the departments came back on FOI and held no information at permanent secretary level about the issue at all.

Jason Evans:

And that was information I presented to the All Party parliamentary group earlier in the year And I had bought the documents with me to show that. So it doesn't seem very encouraging And I always I think many of us in the community pay very close attention to the wording that comes back from government. So if you look at the wording there, they say they are working to consider And I don't know if working to consider something is the same as actually considering something. And also, you know, in the debate that took place in the Commons we heard that basically the government was unable to say anything because it's complex. But the whole point of the compensation framework study by Robert Francis, the point of to Ryan Langstaff's recommendations, was to deal And they have dealt with that complexity. It's been scrutinized in great deal through the inquiry. So there's a lot of excuses but I just I don't really see how any of it holds up And the wording isn't encouraging.

Angela Walker:

I want you know. We're talking about meetings and ministerial groups and processes and so on, but ultimately there's a group of people who have been seriously affected. They've those people that have died. There are the bereaved, there are people living with terrible illnesses And among those people, a lot of them, you know, waiting for a public inquiry. A lot of people died before the public inquiry even got started, and and and since, people are still dying. How are people feeling about this process just dragging on?

Jason Evans:

The distress is massive. I mean, on a daily basis I receive emails and phone calls and I'm sure Des and various members of his team do from people who are fed up, angry, upset, you know, just in a state. Basically because you know Sir Brian Langstaff himself in the interim report said time without redress causes further harm, and in fact the minister, jeremy Quinn, has also echoed that as well. So that's accepted by everybody, that the longer this takes, the more harm is done. And that is the truth. You know that that really there's no more to say than that wording.

Jason Evans:

The more this goes on, the more harm is done, and there's some, really you know tragic stories out there And in particular you know, i think of you know, the parents whose children died of HIV, often at a very young age, and it's not just now. You know those infected who continue to die. It's also people in that position but because many of whom are quite elderly, have been waiting for justice or some form of justice, i should say, for such a long time, and now quite elderly and send me email saying you know, we're in our 80s now And we don't think we're going to kind of actually see any recognition of the life of our son or sons, and those are people that I particularly feel for because I fear they may well be right.

Angela Walker:

I think what we should talk about as well is the stigma, because I know there was a family who lost a son. He had, he developed HIV, he died from AIDS And they were receiving letters through the letterbox from people who were saying we don't want your sort living here this kind of thing because of the stigma. And there was another gentleman that I met at the inquiry And he told me that to this day his family don't know that he was infected with HIV because he couldn't bring himself to tell them. So it's about the recognition, isn't it, jason? It's not about the monetary compensation, although that is obviously important, because a lot of these people haven't been able to work.

Jason Evans:

Well, i think it's really important for people to understand that this compensation, if it ever happens, at least no one is being enriched by it And in fact, i doubt that the compensation will ever really truly cover the full extent of people's financial losses. No one's being enriched by it. This is, you know, an attempt to make up for the true financial losses that people and other losses that people have actually suffered. People lost their homes, they couldn't get life insurance, they were unable to have the education that they would have had, and there's so many other things. You know the list of losses that I have heard from people infected, people affected and you know there's obviously know a lot more about the legal specifics of this than me, but just hearing the basic things people have lost because of what happened, it is almost endless And I think the minimum that can should be done, given that this was preventable and shouldn't have happened which the government themselves, you know, say that's their line. They like to say the infected blood scandal should never have happened.

Jason Evans:

The least that should be done is an attempt to give back some of what was taken away from people, and I think it's really important for people to understand that And there are so many elements, and stigma is a massive one as well. It took away you know people's basic. You know right to you know things like a private, a private life to not you know have it known. You know what their medical conditions were And it was you know, thrown all about the community to. Just the right to have a relatively normal life was taken away from people And a big part of the reason was the stigma.

Angela Walker:

So, Des, what happens from a legal point of view now? We've had the interim report around about Easter. It seems that we're waiting for some development to do with the compensation scheme. Where are we at? What's happening next?

Des Collins:

What will happen next is that the enquiries already decided that government witnesses should be recalled towards the end of July, effectively to explain precisely why there has been a delay in implementation of the report which came out in April. We'll have to see what that brings. Meanwhile, the final report, which deals of the inquiry, which will deal with address issues of what went wrong, why it went wrong and how it might have been avoided, will come out at some time in the autumn. Meanwhile, the group action which was started in 2017, has been put on ice. It was put on ice in 2017, essentially because you couldn't have a high court judge looking at the same issues as a chair to a public inquiry and possibly just possibly reaching different conclusions, so that the group action will be restored, if necessary, once the when I say restored, it will be brought back before the court. It's in a vacuum or on ice, as I say, it will be brought back before the court at the end of this year, if and as far as necessary.

Des Collins:

The word on the street from the government legal department is well, you're being far too premature on this, because wait to see what the compensation framework is going to produce, and what we're saying is, we have been waiting and we've got victims who've been waiting for 40 years and nothing's been produced so far. Even over the past three months, nothing's been produced. So we will press as quickly, as hard as we can, as effectively as we can, to bring that action back before the court. Because if the compensation framework is not to pay out anything to the victims, then there only their last refuge, as it will be the group action, and we intend to make sure that they're entitled to the recovery in its fullest sense from that action as fast as possible.

Angela Walker:

Jason, when I spoke to you in February, i think the hearings of the inquiry were just finishing and there was a sense that you know it was the beginning of the end. But even then you had your doubts that it was going to kind of wind up swiftly. What are your feelings towards the government now? What's your message right now to the government?

Jason Evans:

Cut through the bureaucracy and do the right thing.

Jason Evans:

I think there's a weird sense of history repeating itself because through looking and anyone that has followed the inquiry closely will know that when you look at the documents and you see all of the bureaucracy of what happened in the 70s and 80s that contributed to the decisions that led to the infections, to the deaths, that same bureaucracy is, from what I've seen at least, going on now, where you've got layers of civil servants talking to civil servants, having a nice chat about we could do this on one hand, this on the other hand, this, and it just takes ages to actually get something to happen.

Jason Evans:

And I do think it takes a bold minister with confidence and courage to actually get the civil servants to do what they want them to do and to do the right thing. And I think we did see an example of that with when Penny Mordent was paymaster general and she wrote to Rishi Sunak saying it's inevitable, compensation will have to be paid and she went on to set up the compensation framework study that we've been campaigning for, and so she's an example, i think, of a minister that did make things happen. I've always took the approach of not playing into the party political element of it. This is a scandal that's gone on through governments of all colours, so I think that's what's needed and I think it is stuck in that system again and it needs someone to drive it forward now.

Angela Walker:

Do you think people have lost sight that it's people's lives that we're talking about here?

Jason Evans:

I mean it inevitably ends up people's lives do end up being the numbers. You see that historically, and I'm sure it's the case now, that the cold hard calculations of quality of life, adjusted years and all that sort of thing that goes on. And yeah, i'm sure those calculations are being made about how many people are going to die between this date and that date and how many estates are there and how many infected people might progress to cirrhosis and how much is that going to. I'm sure all those calculations, if they haven't already, will be done and will be taken into account And I think it would help the government a lot more to speak to a broader range or to have spoken to a broader range directly of people infected and affected. What we don't need now is any more consultation. In my view, we've gone through several rounds of intense consultation over the last couple of years to get to the point of the inquiry recommendations.

Jason Evans:

But I have over the years witnessed whether it's a reluctance of the ministers or the blocking by the officials of the messages getting to the ministers There is a resistance to meeting directly with people. I know that the current Paymaster, jeremy Quinn, has met once with some campaigners, but I mean, for instance, michael Ellis, the previous Paymaster General, and just to clarify, it's the Paymaster General, the Cabinet Minister, who has responsibility for our area, our inquiry in this compensation area. Michael Ellis never had such a meeting. I don't think there was a minister before him. I think Edward Arga. He was only there for a month or two. He was only there for a month or two. He never met with anybody. The current Department of Health ministers, i don't think they've met with anybody. And so you can see how, for the ministers, the ones that have never met anyone infected or affected or at least if they have, it's maybe a constituent, it's not a broad range of people You can see how they would just look at this as numbers.

Angela Walker:

You want to meet with them. Jason, do you want to stand there and say what are you doing? Speed things up. People are dying. People have died.

Jason Evans:

Yeah, I mean we regularly try to reach out and set up meetings with various ministers And, by and large, they don't happen. We did manage to obtain a meeting with the Shadow Paymaster General, which happened earlier this year, But obviously it's always going to be easier to get meetings with those in opposition Because they don't have and I think this brings it back the same level of officials that are going to get in the way. And so, yeah, I mean we would like to meet with government ministers and we try to, And, by and large, we are unsuccessful.

Angela Walker:

Jason Evans, thank you for joining us. Dez Collins, thank you so much. Thank you, thank you. You've been listening to Angela Walker in Conversation. I hope you've enjoyed the show And for more information, check out my website, AngelaWalkerReportscom, where you'll find information about other podcasts in the series And you can see more of my work. And if you know someone who's inspirational or if there's a story you think is underreported, then drop me a line through my website. I look forward to hearing from you. Until next time, take care.

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