The government is nearly out of time as it dithers over compensation. So no more platitudes, no more delays
- Diana Johnson MP is chair of the home affairs select committee
Rishi Sunak is used to being heckled on Wednesdays. Each week, he stands at the dispatch box where he and MPs on both sides interrupt, laugh and heckle at one another for a set time of 30 minutes. This week, however, the prime minister’s Wednesday hecklers were an unfamiliar audience.
The rowdy atmosphere was gone, replaced with hushed solemnity, and Sunak had to sit in front of his hecklers for nearly three hours. The individuals before him were women and men infected and affected by the contaminated blood scandal – the biggest treatment disaster in the history of the NHS. And what played out in that room provided a glimpse of what victims have been subjected to for more than four decades: justice delayed and denied to many.
