Contaminated Blood: The Search for the Truth Panorama

It is the worst disaster in the history of the NHS.

Who's to blame? Are they stupid or just incompetent?

It's one or the other, isn't it? It's somebody's fault.

Over 2,000 have died,

thousands more are still suffering.

I was someone who looked like that classical AIDS case.

I looked like I really hadn't got long for this world at all.

The victims were all given contaminated blood products

more than 25 years ago.

We understood that there were risks.

What we didn't understand was the magnitude of what was about to happen.

At just one school for disabled children,

dozens were infected with lethal viruses.

72 people went to school,

left school, and died.

How did that happen to children?

Even now, new cases are still being diagnosed.

I get angry days and I'm frightened I'm going to die.

This is one of the greatest injustices our country has ever seen.

Thousands of lives lost, and yet,

the truth about it has never been told.

This is the story of Britain's contaminated blood disaster

and the search for the truth.

This is... This is a death sentence.

BIRDS CRY

Twice a week, Janet and Colin Smith visit their son's grave.

Hello, my little boy.

God bless.

Colin died in 1990,

he was just seven years old.

God, I miss him so much sometimes.

Some days it's really hard.

He could have lived a normal life, you know.

He was such a lovely little boy.

Just so unnecessary.

Colin was born with a bleeding disorder, haemophilia.

But it was the treatment he was given that ultimately killed him.

I didn't know that any blood products or anything like that,

you could just get HIV.

We didn't have a clue.

Three decades on,

the Smiths still want the NHS and the government held to account.

Just recognise it, just, you know, you murdered him.

I... I know that's a strong word, but that's how

me and all the other people with tainted blood look at it.

Because it's murder. It's just bloody murder.

-You shouldn't swear.

-I know I shouldn't swear,

but I get angry about it because they don't take any notice.

But the tragedy didn't end with the deaths of patients like Colin.

Michelle Tolley is one of the latest victims.

In 2015, Michelle was working for Tesco.

And she'd been chosen to appear in one of the company's staff videos.

-Hi, I'm Ciaran.

-Hi, I'm Michelle.

I was doing the Christmas Tesco adverts for the television.

Come on, let's go.

'And we had our own little film crew.

'It was after then,'

about a week or two,

that my health suddenly took a turn for the worse.

Michelle went to her GP and had a blood test.

The test was done there and then.

And he actually phoned me at home the next afternoon...

and told me...

..that it had come back positive.

And I was like,

"No, no, no, you're telling me I've had hepatitis C for 28 years?"

Growing silently, because they call it the silent killer.

Hepatitis C has given Michelle sclerosis of the liver,

which can cause cancer.

She is now being treated,

but the damage that's already been done could prove fatal.

You know, there's people out there that have already lost lives,

lost loved ones, etc, through it.

I can't understand why the government won't accept the responsibility.

And it's been allowed to go on for 40 years.

This is the fourth decade.

And I'm frightened I'm going to die.

Michelle and Colin are just two of many thousands infected over

more than a decade by NHS treatments that were supposed to help them.

The victims and their families are still trying to understand

how things could have gone so disastrously wrong.

Hello.

Adrian Goodyear, like Colin, suffers from haemophilia.

Talk to me? No? No.

It means his blood can't clot properly.

And without treatment, he could bleed uncontrollably.

I have a weekly injection to help my blood to clot, basically.

If not, I get internal bleeding,

you get something called a rush bleed when you're really only have

about 20 minutes before the joint or muscle is completely solid

and filled with blood inside.

If you've ever broken a bone, it's the same. It's the same pain.

About one in 10,000 children are born with haemophilia.

Most of them boys.

Their internal bleeds can be life-threatening.

And before modern treatments,

modern haemophiliacs didn't survive beyond their teenage years.

Growing up in the '70s, Adrian had a hard time at his local school.

The first day when I arrived in my middle school,

the headmaster made the mistake of holding me up in front of

the whole school saying, "Do not hit this young boy

"cos he has haemophilia and he will bleed."

Now, could you imagine how that played out the next four years?

At school. "What happens if I hit you?"

Dot, dot, dot.

They couldn't cope with my condition.

It would take four days to get over one bleed.

So you'd be in hospital for a week and you'd miss so much school.

Much school was missed.

But in 1980, Adrian was given the chance

to go to Treloar's, a specialist school for disabled children.

'280 boys and girls, aged eight to 19, attend this remarkable school.'

I ended up at the age of ten going to Treloar's.

But it was a boarding school and it was completely unique.

It was an old Elizabethan mansion, it was like Harry Potter's.

It was incredible.

And Treloar's had an NHS haemophilia centre on site.

'The college has many years' experience in managing haemophilia.'

It was the only school in the world like it.

When I went there, there were about 35 haemophilia boys.

There was a medical centre, nurses, physiotherapists.

You would never have to miss a class ever again.

A few years above was Joseph Petie.

I was 13 when I went to Treloar's.

And, yeah, it was a very different experience

to anything I'd ever had before.

There was a lot more freedom, it was almost like a seamless existence.

You were at the college, but the haemophilia centre was there day or night,

you'd come out of your dorm, down the corridor

and you were in there and seeing a doctor.

Being at Treloar's gave me an ability to become

more independent and to kind of gain your own perspective on life,

your own personality, your own character.

Children at Treloar's were given blood clotting treatments

that had revolutionised the care of haemophilia -

factor concentrates.

The most common was called Factor VIII.

Factor VIII made the most unimaginable difference.

Because you could have your jab,

you'd probably be off your feet only for a day,

you weren't worried about getting on your bike or your skateboard or,

you know, going out with your friends up the park.

Factor VIII stopped bleeds quickly and could even prevent them.

And patients could treat themselves.

'At Treloar's all haemophilic boys are taught from an early age

'how to manage their disorder.'

That's my good friend Simon, bless him,

no longer with us any more.

And this is what we would have to do.

We'd have to learn how to mix your Factor VIII up,

pop it in a bottle, give it a mix

and then learn to inject it.

And it wasn't only patients who were impressed by Factor VIII.

I think that people were very excited by the success of Factor VIII.

There were a number of physicians across the country

who saw the enormous benefits and became, I think,

quite overwhelmed by how wonderful things were, really.

But there were some concerns about Factor VIII.

It was made by pooling together the plasma

of thousands of blood donations in huge vats.

And if just one donor had an infection,

it would contaminate the whole batch.

The biggest manufacturers were in America

where people were often paid to give blood.

And those who needed the money

were also those most likely to be carrying infections.

The NHS was already importing American Factor VIII

when David Owen became Health Minister.

There was an appalling situation for collecting blood

from people who were in prisons, from people who were on drugs.

And yet we continued to use these blood supplies.

A common infection was hepatitis.

But doctors felt the benefits of Factor VIII outweighed the risks.

I think it was fair to say that hepatitis didn't seem to be

a serious problem at that time.

The UK did make some of its own Factor VIII.

All blood products have a degree of risk,

but British Factor VIII was thought to be safer

because donors here were not paid.

In Scotland, they tried to avoid using American products altogether.

We took the view that this stuff is lethal.

We took the view that this is sleepwalking to disaster.

Right from the word go.

David Owen was determined

that the rest of the UK should also avoid American imports.

What we had to decide was to increase our own blood supplies

from our own blood transfusion service

at every level of blood transfusion.

And that's a decision we took in '75 - to become self-sufficient.

But David Owen left the Department of Health in 1976.

And self-sufficiency was never achieved.

The winner there is the pharmaceutical industry.

The losers in that situation are the patients.

For the patients to win, they want stuff coming from a safe source.

And that didn't materialise.

As was needed south of the border.

The Department of Health told us they tried to make Britain

self-sufficient, but supply couldn't keep up with demand.

So they had to rely on American products.

We understood that there were risks.

What we didn't understand was the magnitude

of what was about to happen.

'Bobby Campbell is one of a rapidly growing group

'whose battle has fascinated and frightened modern medicine.'

In 1981, reports began to appear in America

about a mysterious new disease.

These were the first signs of what we now call AIDS.

It's definitely transmissible, just how, I don't know.

Is it through blood, is it through saliva?

Nobody knew what it was due to.

People thought it might well be a transmissible agent,

probably a virus.

But people also talked about, of course, the homosexual community,

the possibility that it might be related to things like poppers,

the so-called sexually enhancing drugs that people were using.

AIDS hotline.

Then, in January 1982,

the first American haemophiliac was identified with AIDS.

By the end of the year, there have been nine reported cases,

and eight of them have died.

Newspapers here soon raised questions

about the safety of American blood products.

There was a Daily Mail story...

and it was front page.

Haemophiliacs are at risk from AIDS.

And that was again a mark that was on a coffee table somewhere

and you just see the word haemophiliac and AIDS.

"Hospitals using killer blood."

Well, that is pretty emotive...

..by any standard.

I would arrive in my office about half past seven in the morning,

and very often, I'd still be there at seven o'clock at night,

having spent my entire day with the telephone glued to my ear

with calls from anxiety-ridden patients.

The Haemophilia Society turned to the country's leading specialist,

Professor Arthur Bloom.

He wrote this letter, which was sent out to patients,

saying that it had not been proven that blood products

transmitted AIDS, and that the number of cases

among American haemophiliacs was small.

We felt that there was a reassurance to be given to patients

based on what we knew at that time.

But it's now clear that Professor Bloom knew much more

than he was telling.

Eight weeks before he wrote to patients,

he received this letter,

which has only recently been made public.

In it, a leading American specialist, Dr Bruce Evatt,

tells Bloom that there are already 13 haemophiliacs with AIDS

in the US.

They had all been given Factor VIII.

It would only be a matter of time,

Evatt suspected, before cases appeared in the UK.

And on 6th May, the first UK case was reported,

in Cardiff, where Professor Bloom practised.

At this point, the head of disease control in England and Wales

stepped in.

Dr Spence Galbraith wrote to the Department of Health.

"All blood products made from blood donated in the USA,"

he said, "should be withdrawn from use."

But if that happened, doctors wouldn't have enough Factor VIII

to treat their patients.

If that advice had been followed,

haemophilia care in the United Kingdom would have collapsed.

There were some very difficult decisions to be made

around that time. In that one year leading up to the middle of 1983,

ten people in Britain with haemophilia had died

of bleeding into the brain.

Bleeding was the commonest cause of death.

And in July, the panel that advised the Government on the safety

of medicines rejected Dr Galbraith's advice.

The cause of AIDS was unknown, they said,

and the level of risk did not justify

withdrawing American products.

With the hindsight of what happened next,

you might say, well, actually, perhaps Dr Galbraith was right,

and perhaps we should have stopped treating people with haemophilia,

but it didn't seem like it at the time.

That summer, Adrian Goodyear was spending the school holidays

at home with his family.

I was down in Portsmouth,

I was about 13.

I was mixing up my dose at home

because, by then, I'd learned how to mix up my own injection.

I'd mixed my jab, took it,

but a week after that jab, I felt terrible.

Glands went billy-o.

Mum...

..took me back to our local GP several times in that summer.

So, yeah, '83.

That was my day.

It was definitely HIV coming in.

There was a period where I was ill for 12 months.

It was like the worst case of flu that I've ever had.

I couldn't shake it off.

I was at Treloar's for the whole of that time,

and talking to my mum on the phone and she was,

"I can't believe you've still got that cold. What's wrong?"

Then she raised it with the doctors

and they were, "We just think it's a cold. He's just having a job

"fighting it off."

But looking back, something wasn't right.

Joseph and Adrian's medical records

show that, privately, their doctors were concerned about AIDS.

But both say it was not discussed with them or their parents.

In Newport, Janet and Colin Smith

had only just discovered that their son had haemophilia.

Aw...

-A self-portrait, that one.

-Yeah.

I love that picture.

Baby Colin was nine months old at the time,

and doctors were about to give him Factor VIII.

His parents say they were told nothing about the risks.

They never, ever discussed...

I mean, when Colin had the Factor VIII,

it was just the Factor VIII,

and that was the end of it, do you know what I mean?

We were told that the treatment given was safe, 100% safe.

Turns out it wasn't.

But it's clear senior doctors knew there were risks

and were trying to manage them.

This letter was sent out to haemophilia centres in June 1983,

eight weeks before Colin Smith was first treated.

It recommended that children should be treated with NHS concentrates.

But in baby Colin's case, that advice wasn't followed,

and in August 1983,

he was given his first dose of American Factor VIII,

just before his first birthday.

His parents still don't know why that happened.

By now, questions were also being asked in Parliament,

but the Government, too, seemed keen to avoid discussing the risks

from Factor VIII.

Minister of Health Kenneth Clarke's message to the public was emphatic.

There was no conclusive evidence that AIDS was transmitted

by blood products.

Jason Evans's father was diagnosed with severe haemophilia

in the late 1960s.

By the 1980s, Jonathan Evans was working in a DIY shop.

This is my dad's first job.

He wanted to be a carpenter.

He's 18 here.

He's looking very fresh-faced.

I think Factor VIII certainly made life easier for him.

Jason wasn't born when this film was shot,

but he's recently discovered that, in late 1984,

Jonathan Evans raised concerns with his doctors about Factor VIII.

He switched over to another treatment for haemophilia

that had been used in the 1960s - cryoprecipitate.

-NEWS REPORT:

-This precipitate, containing the missing Factor VIII,

must be thawed in warm water...

Each bag of cryoprecipitate came from just one donor,

so was far less likely to be contaminated than Factor VIII.

But it was cumbersome and less effective.

Cryoprecipitate is very difficult to use,

it's difficult to thaw out, it's difficult to mix,

it's difficult to give,

and it causes more allergic responses.

Reverting to cryoprecipitate was not recommended by most doctors.

After one treatment, Jonathan Evans went back to Factor VIII.

I know, through speaking to my mother, obviously,

he'd spoken to her, and the physicians had advised him

that it was really nothing to worry about,

this is kind of sensationalism and not to pay attention to it,

and he trusted his doctor.

I think the moment there was a suspicion that

the AIDS virus may be in these products,

patients should have been given the choice of whether

they wanted to take that gamble

and play Russian roulette with their life,

and I can almost guarantee you that 99% of them

would not have taken that gamble.

The virus causing AIDS was finally identified in April 1984.

It would become known as HIV.

Later that year, a test became available,

and doctors began to discover the scale of the disaster

that they'd been part of.

We were asked to bleed all our regularly treated patients,

and send those blood samples for testing.

And about a month later,

I got into my office

and there were 31 brown envelopes on my desk,

and I opened the first one and it said, "Positive."

And I opened the second one and it said, "Positive."

And I opened the third one and it said, "Positive."

And after about nine or ten, I came to one that said, "Negative."

But all the rest were positive.

You don't go into medicine

to harm people.

In my case, the treatment I gave

not only didn't help, it actually killed patients.

It was absolutely desperate

to see a group of people who were being harmed by their treatment.

This was uncharted territory.

Doctors had no guidelines about testing patients

or how to break the news to them.

Adrian Goodyear was just 14 when he was called in

for a meeting with his doctors at Treloar's.

He had no idea that he'd even been tested for HIV.

We were asked to go as a group of five.

They went round the room one by one

and they went, "You have.

"You haven't.

"You have. You haven't."

Slowly and calmly,

who had HIV and who didn't.

Three out of the five boys in that room that day

were HIV positive.

And I was one of them.

I looked out the windows, the sunshine was coming in.

And there was a moment of, that's my last sun.

That is my last sun.

We've had it. We're dead. We're all dead.

Colin Smith was in hospital being given more Factor VIII

when his parents were given the news.

-We were told in a corridor, actually.

-Yeah.

We weren't taken into a room and,

"Sit down, we need to tell you something."

They said, "Colin's tested positive for HIV."

Well, we didn't even know what it was, really. We just went, "OK."

That's how we were told.

In the corridor of a ward with other children running past us.

Joseph Peaty was 19

and had just left Treloar's.

I was in hospital with a bleed

and it was a registrar that was going around in the evening,

and he said, "Do you mind me having a chat to you about haemophilia?"

And he was going through my notes and,

"Oh, I see that you're HIV positive."

By now, Joseph had a girlfriend

and was thinking of going to university.

That's a bit of a mind-blowing thing to suddenly have to

get your head round.

This is...

This is a death sentence.

Your life has just kind of been mapped out

and you've got two or three years,

and as far as you know, that's going to be it.

You know? Turmoil.

Complete turmoil.

Jonathan Evans was also tested without his knowledge.

It was seven months later before he was told.

My mum was with him, and they were called in to the doctor's office

and the doctor basically told them both quite bluntly

that my dad had tested positive for HIV.

He first tested positive in 1984.

He wasn't told about that

till mid-1985, which is, you know, shocking in itself,

that they would withhold that knowledge,

obviously putting my mum at risk

and putting his family at risk.

Across the world,

scientists were desperately trying to discover

how to make blood products safe from HIV.

They thought that heating the Factor VIII might work.

And even before the research was conclusive,

some doctors had switched to experimental heat-treated products.

We were criticised quite heavily.

It was just one of those, frankly,

very rare moments, as a doctor,

where you have to make a decision which, later on, you look back on

and say, "Well, I got plenty of decisions wrong,

"but that one was right,"

and I, actually, probably did save some lives.

At the end of 1984,

US researchers concluded that heat treatment

did inactivate HIV.

But there had just been another devastating discovery.

For the first time, HIV was found in UK blood donations.

Now not even British Factor VIII was safe from the virus.

In Scotland, they immediately started making their own

heat-treated products,

but in England, things moved much more slowly.

The evidence was there in the autumn of 1984,

that heat treatment did inactivate HIV,

so there was very strong evidence there that the Department of Health

should have been looking at,

and yet it takes another nine months for the country

to be switched over to safer treatment,

during which time some people probably got infected.

Sarah's husband was treated at just this time.

She avoided infection, but wants to remain anonymous.

She's never told his story publicly before.

Was my heart broken? Yes.

Did he suffer? Yes.

Was it prejudice? Was it pain?

Was it fear? Was it humiliation?

Yes, yes, yes and yes.

On December 16th 1984,

Sarah's husband had to go to hospital with a serious bleed.

It was the first time he'd needed treatment for his haemophilia

in 13 years.

The significance of this is that when he went for that treatment,

he would not have been previously exposed to HIV

and, more importantly, they knew that.

In fact, just a few days earlier,

senior doctors had issued new guidelines which said

that patients not previously exposed to untreated blood products

should be given cryoprecipitate

or heated NHS Factor VIII if available.

Sarah's husband was given unheated Factor VIII.

Bearing in mind that they knew that there was this massive risk

from unheated product,

not only did they give him an unheated product,

which they shouldn't have done,

but they actually gave him multiple batches,

multiplying his risk several times over.

And when he was tested eight months later,

Sarah's husband was HIV positive.

He died in 1998, aged 40.

The proper treatment for my husband was heated Factor VIII.

Now, if it were that the clinician did not have access

to that clotting factor,

then it just means that the person who is responsible

is further up the chain.

What I want people to go away with is not how sad it was,

but how wrong it was.

It wasn't until September 1985

that most Factor VIII in Britain was safe from HIV,

but for those who'd been infected, the damage had been done...

AIDS has reached epidemic proportions.

..and the entire country was now

in the grip of an AIDS scare.

48% believed AIDS victims only had themselves to blame.

Later that night, it's claimed, the man's home was firebombed.

We were known as "the AIDS family".

We weren't known as the Smith family.

We were the AIDS family.

It was written on the side of the house, yeah.

-That was huge.

-That was, just, "AIDS", in big capital letters.

So that was the time we said,

"We've got to move, can't stay here."

You'd get horrible phone calls in the middle of the night

and things like that.

It was a horrendous time. It was horrendous.

At Treloar's, journalists turned up looking for a story.

There was two guys standing at the gate

and asked us, "Hello, boys.

"Are you haemophiliacs?"

And a friend of mine went, "Yeah," as you do, a bit defensive.

Um...and they said,

"So, what you think about AIDS, then? Have you got AIDS?"

Luckily, the older boy said, "No comment."

You know, that's crazy, isn't it?

You're going down to the shops to get your sweets and your tin of pop,

and there's two journalists at the gate, asking you questions.

And that happened two or three times.

For Jason Evans' parents,

AIDS meant having to make an agonising decision.

-VIDEO:

-'And what have you called him?'

'Jason. JJ, for short.'

'That got anything to do with Dallas, do you reckon?'

'No, nothing to do with Dallas. That's JR.'

My mum and dad wanted a child,

but obviously, my dad didn't want to infect my mum,

and my mum didn't want to be infected.

But they took a risk, and here I am.

-VIDEO:

-'JJ at three days old, on video.'

'Four.'

'Four days old.'

'He's forgotten the day already!'

The reason why he and my mum were taking videos

was for me to have something when I was older, to look back on.

-VIDEO:

-'# Happy birthday to you. #'

'Give it a blow.'

'Blow it out!'

My first memory of my dad is the last time I ever saw him.

CHILD YELLS ON VIDEO

It was my birthday, and obviously, I was four years old.

I remember walking into the room and he was on a bed.

I remember just being stood in that room for a period of time

and just, kind of, looking at him,

but not really understanding what was happening.

Six weeks after Jason's fourth birthday,

Jonathan Evans died.

He was 31 years old.

Colin Smith was only seven.

Towards the end, we were picking our son up in sheepskin,

because we hurt him.

He'd lost so much weight.

He was skeletal, wasn't he?

They did actually say that he was not going to recover.

My exact words to the doctors then were,

"Well, if he's going to die, he's going to do it at home.

"Not here."

He said to his brother, Daniel, "You'll miss me when I'm gone."

So he did know.

We used to have some long discussions,

cos he couldn't sleep.

"Why me?"

I couldn't explain that one to him.

Saturday, 4:40.

He just suddenly sat up and said, "Daddy, I can't see."

So we knew something was going on then.

-He was dead within a couple of minutes, wasn't he?

-Yeah.

-Yeah.

-Very peacefully.

I picked him up in my arms, for about two-and-a-half hours,

and then the undertakers came, then, and we had to say goodbye.

The group which represents Britain's haemophiliacs

is calling on the government to pay up to £200 million in compensation.

By 1989, more than 1,200 people in the UK

were known to have been infected with HIV from contaminated blood

and over 900 of them decided to sue the government for negligence.

Surely, Mr Speaker, they would urgently compensate

haemophiliacs who have contracted the HIV virus.

The government offered a package of financial support

without admitting liability.

-REPORTER:

-Haemophiliacs who were given infected blood are expected

to receive a lump sum payment in the region of £20,000.

I did...I did think of pounds.

"How much? How much for my life?"

I was eyeing up stereos in Curry's.

No, genuinely, I was.

We were going to die of this.

In that period, we were going to die.

So £23,500 was an awful lot of money

for a 22, 21, 23-year-old.

But the final settlement had a catch.

We had to sign a waiver

to say that we wouldn't take any further action in respect of HIV,

but tagged on to the end of it - in the last hours, it seems -

was "and hepatitis viruses".

The victims agreed to sign.

But scientists had only recently identified the virus

for hepatitis C

and the severity of the disease was only now becoming apparent.

Later that year, when a test became available,

haemophiliacs with HIV began to discover

they also had hepatitis C.

We felt conned.

Definitely conned.

Because three months after we signed our legal rights away,

we had hep C.

I think it was devious. It was downright underhand.

It just makes me plain angry, really,

to think that they were playing with our lives

and they were still looking for the cheapest way out.

Hepatitis C can cause permanent liver damage and even cancer.

The virus was present in British blood and blood products

as well as American.

So it wasn't only haemophiliacs who were affected -

anyone who had a blood transfusion was also at risk.

Michelle Tolley is 52.

She was given blood twice after having children.

I had my first child in 1987.

I haemorrhaged quite a lot, actually,

to the point of needing half of my blood...body's blood.

And then with the twins, when they were born,

I had to have two pints.

So if it wasn't '87, it was definitely '91.

A few years later, the NHS ran a campaign

to encourage people who had been given transfusions to get tested.

I went along to my GP at the time then,

to enquire, to just be told to...

"Don't be silly, you won't have that."

Um...which made me feel like a silly little child

that was just wasting somebody's time.

If Michelle had been tested in the 1990s,

she could have been treated sooner.

She wasn't diagnosed until the end of 2015.

Within six months, she was too ill to work.

I get angry days - really, really angry -

where I feel like...I'm being deprived of my life.

Michelle was put on a course of treatment to clear her infection,

but she has had to endure terrible side effects.

-VOICE BREAKING:

-I've really got no energy at all.

All I'm doing is sleeping.

Sleeping and sleeping and sleeping.

I've got a really horrible feeling...

that I'm not going to survive this.

I've never felt this emotional before. Ever.

I've still got seven weeks to go.

For people with HIV,

the damage caused by hepatitis C can be even worse.

Adrian has only recently finished his own course of treatment.

He's never developed AIDS,

but he has to keep taking life-saving drugs for his HIV.

In the '80s, he was well enough to get a job in the music industry.

First stage pass was this one here,

which was a UK Bucks Fizz tour.

Subsequently employed by them for about seven years.

I became their tour manager for a little while as well,

which was quite good.

I did Ant and Dec, that's a standout.

Up here we have Mr Gary Numan, of all people.

Some good stuff. I loved every single minute of it.

Then, after four years of UK gigs,

Adrian got his big break - the chance to go on a world tour.

The problem was that I found out I couldn't get insurance.

Because of HIV, I could not go abroad.

The minute I said HIV, over.

I knew then that the game was up.

I was getting a bit poorly.

I kind of backed off from it all, really.

I thought, "Well, I've had my moment,"

so my career was cut short.

Dropped a bit of that.

Adrian still helps out occasionally, but it's not a living any more.

That's all I wanted to do.

It's a rock and roll cliche, but it was all about the gig.

I wanted the gig.

Joseph Peaty has been left severely disabled by his illnesses,

and dependant on others for his daily care.

My immune system had got to a point where it was crippled,

and any immunity I had left just went over a cliff.

I was someone who looked like that classical AIDS case.

I looked like I really hadn't got long for this world at all.

Intensive treatment saved Joseph's life,

but he had to give up his job in a school finance department.

I can try and make the best out of life now, such as it is,

there's no way that it's ever going to restore to me

all those hopes and dreams I had as a teenager.

No way I'm going to have a family.

But if I want to carry on, then I've got to keep taking this.

That comes with it a really heavy burden and a reminder, every day,

of what happened and why I reached this point.

Joseph and Adrian have survived,

but of the haemophiliacs who were at Treloar's,

72 have died after being infected with hepatitis C

or HIV or both.

Every year, The Haemophilia Society holds a service

to remember the victims of contaminated blood.

More than 1,200 people with bleeding disorders were infected with HIV,

and around 4,700 were infected with hepatitis C.

Each candle represents a life lost.

Contaminated blood was an international disaster

that cost thousands of lives.

In the 1990s, investigations began to find out who was to blame.

In America, the companies that supplied the infected products

had to pay millions in global out-of-court settlements.

In France, the former health minister

was found guilty of manslaughter,

and the former head of the blood transfusion service

and his deputy were jailed.

In Japan, three company executives went to prison,

and a former top official in the health ministry

was convicted on a charge of negligence resulting in death.

In Britain, nothing like that happened...

..and no-one was held responsible.

The victims and their families

were left wanting answers from the government.

Why did they keep importing American products

knowing that people were getting infected with HIV?

They knew the risks when they imported it.

They've devastated so many families and they're still burying

their head in the sand and denying any knowledge.

It took more than 20 years for the first inquiry to be held in the UK.

It was chaired by Lord Archer and reported in 2009.

The procrastination in achieving national self-sufficiency

had disastrous consequences.

Lord Archer criticised the government

for being slow to react to the crisis,

but he didn't find anyone to blame.

The Archer Inquiry was not a statutory inquiry.

It couldn't compel witnesses to attend,

and none of the ministers or civil servants

who dealt with the crisis did.

In Scotland, there was an official inquiry,

chaired by Lord Penrose, which took six years and cost £12 million.

But his report focused on Scotland,

and, once again, no-one from Westminster gave evidence.

Lord Penrose concluded that in Scotland, in relation to AIDS,

all that could reasonably be done was done,

and no-one was to blame.

Many of the victims were furious.

..service cover-up!

But it did prompt an apology from the Prime Minister.

I would like to say sorry on behalf of the government

for something that should not have happened.

Pardon?

Is that...? Six, seven... Is that all you're going to give us?

You're going to give us nothing. Nothing.

We were shocked. Shocked, shocked, shocked.

But after the Penrose report,

one thing became clear -

in England, where the government relied on American Factor VIII,

haemophiliacs were twice as likely to be infected with HIV

as those in Scotland, which made almost all its own supplies.

If you look at the difference in England and Scotland

in terms of the outcomes...

..you have to conclude that...

..it was not unavoidable. It was avoidable.

If you're a haemophilia doctor, it was beyond your control,

but in terms of the broad thrust of the difference between

England and Scotland, that's about government.

That's about government.

The truth about that has not yet been told.

Campaigners agree that despite the Archer and Penrose Inquiries,

ministers have never been properly held to account.

The former health minister Kenneth Clarke

would not give us an interview,

but he told us that blood products

were never his area of responsibility

and he would have attended the Penrose Inquiry if he'd been asked.

Jason is now trying to find out for himself

how his father came to be infected.

He expected the answers to be in his father's medical records.

My dad actually tried to get his medical records

at a time when there would have been obviously a legal obligation

on the hospital to have these records, however,

despite many attempts, he never actually got the medical records.

The best he got was this 11-page summary.

When Jason contacted the hospital 25 years later,

they told him they had no records at all for his father.

Had I never met the rest of the affected community,

I probably could have accepted that and thought, "Out of time, too bad."

Then when I speak to the rest of the community,

almost every single one has exactly the same story,

and I don't think you can help but be suspicious.

But Panorama has discovered

the hospital does still have records for Jonathan Evans.

Three volumes of them.

Jason has now requested copies once more.

It's not only medical records that have proved hard to find.

It came as quite a surprise to me,

following my departure from the Haemophilia Society,

to learn that the files connected with the HIV crisis,

correspondence with members,

correspondence with the Department of Health, had all been destroyed.

You're bound to ask the question - why?

The trail of disappearing documents leads

right to the heart of government.

When David Owen asked for his ministerial papers

from the Department of Health, he was told that they'd been destroyed.

There are many of us who think that one of the reasons why you

can't get out a lot of these documents

was they cleaned them up

because there was a panic going around the world

in the middle '80s

that these issues would reach court.

The Department of Health told us Lord Archer had found

that no documents had been destroyed maliciously,

and there was no evidence of missing or amended medical records.

No evidence has been found of government negligence either.

But if it were, the victims could claim compensation,

which, they say, should be much more than the financial support they currently receive.

Not enough. We don't have enough.

If they called it compensation and gave us a proper package,

you would buy your house, you will become part of society,

you would not be on the sidelines of society.

That's how the money makes me feel,

that we are on the sidelines of society.

The wounds that exist now don't just come from the initial infections,

they come from the way it's been handled over three decades,

maybe longer.

If they want to heal these wounds properly,

then they've got to stop dealing with us on the cheap.

The Department of Health told us they are paying out

significantly more to victims now than any previous government.

Michelle has had six months of treatment,

and it seems to be working.

But even now it's not known how many others may have been infected

with hepatitis C, but not diagnosed.

So many people out there that are infected and they don't even know.

And as the years are going on, so many people have died,

and are still dying, and...

..I think that's probably what I'll die off in the end.

For three decades, appeals to the government

for a UK-wide public inquiry have fallen on deaf ears,

but in recent weeks the Haemophilia Society has intensified the debate.

They say they now have evidence the society was misled about Factor VIII.

The government, the pharmaceutical industry,

and UK doctors had information

that was not shared with

the Haemophilia Society and the community,

and that led to tragic consequences.

It's essential that we have an inquiry that can compel witnesses,

that can look and see if there was negligence,

can give the whole picture,

and can lead to compensation for the thousands of families

affected by this. We have to have the truth.

But public inquiries are lengthy and expensive,

and many people are not in favour.

Personally, I don't think there is any reason to undertake another

public inquiry in this area, I think it would lead to more distress

than it would lead to enlightenment.

It would create really no benefit in my view to anybody -

least of all, I'm afraid, to the people who were affected

at the time and who have my undying sympathy.

The Department of Health agrees.

It says all relevant documents have been released.

And, like her predecessors, Labour and Conservative,

the Prime Minister has ruled out a public inquiry.

# Walk on. Walk on... #

But the outcome of another tragedy might provide a way forward.

For the families of the 96 Liverpool fans who died at Hillsborough,

justice was achieved after an independent panel of inquiry

investigated the disaster.

Andy Burnham helped set it up.

Because it wasn't an adversarial courtroom process,

I think in the end it allows the truth to find its way out.

And I feel the same is needed here,

so that people can understand what has happened.

And in his final speech in the Commons, Andy Burnham made his case.

From what I know, I believe that this scandal

amounts to a criminal cover-up on an industrial scale.

Following today's debate, I will ask the Secretary of State

to set up a Hillsborough-style inquiry

straight after the general election.

And if the government don't do that,

I will refer the evidence that I have uncovered to the police

and request that a widespread criminal investigation commences.

Jason Evans now feels he has enough evidence to go to court.

I have now decided to instruct a legal firm to take a case

alleging negligence and breach of statutory duty

against the government and various bodies

for their role in this scandal, that ultimately led to

infecting my father with HIV through a product they knew to be dangerous.

I want the truth to go down on record about what happened here.

I think that truth is what everyone needs.

If Jason is successful it could open the way for many others

to get the answers they're still looking for.

It's 27 years since Colin died and we are still fighting.

There's thousands of people that have been,

their lives have been wrecked through imported blood, and

it should never, ever have happened, and I get angry about that.

I just think it's outrageous.

It's astonishing that something of that magnitude

still hasn't warranted an inquiry which the Department of Health

have to take part and answer for their actions.

The picture is still not complete, and what is needed is disclosure,

if they're ever going to bring about any form of healing at all

before everybody's dead and buried.