Completely forgot about that. Yes, that is going to be a very important report when it gets released. Next month? Wow, didn't think that was coming so soon.
Hopefully the inquiry into the Post Office shambles will result in laws being passed to prevent anything like this happening again. Even if laws aren't passed, I think it will be harder for this to happen in the future as people can always remind others of this sad state of affairs and get people thinking "Well the Post Office said everyone was guilty and that wasn't true then so could the accused be innocent this time?".
Don't be so quick to give Gov. the benefit of the doubt: Bishop James Jones' Hillsborough Inquiry findings ("
The patronising disposition of unaccountable power") recommended a Statutory Duty of Candour (the Hillsborough Law) be passed, which would make it a criminal offence for a public servant to lie/omit the truth from any investigation (it's currently not unlawful for a Politician, Doctor or Policeman to lie!).
That was nearly 7 years ago and has only just been brought in with the Public Accountability bill. The law wasn't extended to cover MP's - imagine our surprise.
The Contaminated Blood Inquiry was due to report in November, but the sheer scale of criticism over the 50 year scandal has meant it was postponed twice (since anyone facing criticism has to be informed and given right-to-respond), now due on the 20th May.
Inquiry Char, Sir Brian Langstaff made a second interim report last April, instructing Government to setup an arms-length compensation body by the end of 2023 and to start making payments as soon as possible, as we're losing victims at a rate of 2 every four days.
Government have sat on the compensation framework for over 2 years, with 4 different Paymaster Generals telling us they're working "at pace" to get it set up.
We've now learned there's a Compensation Board being set-up that is government-led (not arms-length) and a consulting panel chaired by a former Bayer executive (Bayer were responsible for many of the infected, when they chose to resell known contaminated blood products around the world).
As we get closer to the 20th May, you'll see the Tories brag about the £400M they've already paid out (as interim payments of £100k). Those payments went only to those Infected already registered with a support scheme. Parents of children (and children of parents) who died before those schemes were set-up, along with infected victims who later cleared the virus (I'm one of these), haven't received a single penny in support.
Government will also try to claim there's "over 30,000 potential victims" and the compensation bill is likely to reach £20-30 Billion - this is also a massive over-inflation of the true numbers, in order to complain that the Treasury can't afford to pay full & fair restitution.
It's been a long, painful 7 years to get through the Inquiry process, but the amount of evidence showing the sheer scale of criminal conspiracy, ethical violations, illegal experimentation and decades of gaslighting & cover-up wouldn't have been fully discovered without it.