Downing Street meeting for St Neots man Tony Farrugia

A letter is being delivered to Chancellor Jeremy Hunt at 11 Downing Street, demanding that the government urgently acts on the Infected Blood Inquiry's final compensation recommendations.

Mr Djanogly will be joining Tony Farrugia, from St Neots, who lost his father and two of his uncles who contracted HIV and Hepatitis C after they were given infected blood products.

Tony Farrugia has been campaigning for justice for his family. (Image: Newsquest)

Also attending the meeting will be Labour MP Catherine West.

In April, Infected Blood Inquiry chair Sir Brian Langstaff recommended that a full compensation scheme be operational before the end of this year and that interim payments of £100,000 should be made to each bereaved family.

Eight months on, neither of those things has happened, and an estimated 59 victims have died since the publication of the April report. It is estimated that one victim dies every four days.

The Chancellor has given evidence to the Infected Blood Inquiry on two occasions, most recently in July of this year.

In August 2022, Mr Hunt co-signed a letter along with Andy Burnham and Matt Hancock, calling for compensation to be paid, but since becoming Chancellor, progress has stalled for victims.

In his compensation report, Sir Brian said interim compensation payments to parents and children should be made now to "alleviate immediate suffering".

In October 2022, the government made interim payments to those infected still alive and bereaved partners, leaving two-thirds of bereaved families without any compensation - Sir Brian said in April that it was "time to put this right".

Victims will ask the Chancellor to honour what he said under oath to the Inquiry in July: "It is a terrible scandal, and we have a moral duty to resolve it as quickly as we possibly can, and not to make the injustice worse by adding in further unnecessary delays.”