Claims of blood scandal cover-up after files vanish

Victims and families demand truth from ministers about 950 files that have disappeared

VICTIMS of an NHS blood scandal have accused the Government of a cover-up after it emerged hundreds of files on the medical disaster have gone missing.

Thousands of patients were infected with HIV and hepatitis C via contaminated blood products in the Seventies and Eighties and an inquiry is going on.

However, 950 files on the case have been removed from official archives, a Government Internal Audit Agency (GIAA) investigation revealed.

The agency’s report was released under freedom of information laws to Jason Evans, whose father died in 1993 after having contracted hepatitis and HIV. The 29-year-old, who is suing the Government for negligence, said the removal of documents “probably goes back decades” and could form part of a government cover-up.

Mr Evans, who runs Factor 8, a campaign group, said ministers had indicated that all papers relating to the scandal had been made public or had been destroyed.

“The revelations in this new report prove the ministerial statements were not true,” he said. “The question that arises now from victims and families is: why were the files removed, and was this part of a cover-up to prevent them knowing the full truth?” The contaminated blood scandal may have affected as many as 25,000 people. Many had the blood-clotting disorder haemophilia and needed regular injections of clotting agent Factor VIII, made from human blood plasma.

Britain was running low on supplies and imported products from the US, where prison inmates and others were paid cash for giving blood.

The GIAA report released to Mr Evans and dated Nov 6 last year, said almost 1,000 files relating to blood policy had been checked out by officials. It said: “The records management team has identified that there are c. 450 files relating to blood policy which have been checked out and not returned, and the team is working to recover these.”

It said a group of 500 files was checked out from Department of Health and Social Care archives by “officers from the Department for Education in 2006, and have not been returned”.

Des Collins, Mr Evans’s solicitor, said: “The sad fact is that despite 1,000 crucial files going ‘missing’, there is very little that will surprise me in relation to the facts in this inquiry. We know there has been a government cover-up. We have clear evidence that vast numbers of documents were removed and not returned.

“We need to get to the bottom of why… exactly what was in the files and what the people who in effect ‘made them disappear’ were trying to hide.”

The Department of Health and Social Care said the majority of files had now been accounted for, but would not disclose the content and did not record why they were checked out.