The UK government has never accepted responsibility for the BSE crisis, ministers have been briefed to avoid the topic and a leaked Whitehall memo has revealed that it will block any claims for compensation. The battle continues, however, for those who have suffered from the “variant” CJD and believe that the lack of appropriate government action at the onset of the crisis is to blame.
Solicitor David Body, from Sheffield-based Irwin Mitchell, is acting for 75 of the 83 victims of vCJD and has commented that: “We are open to this matter being resolved out of court … But I have many clients who are determined enough to take this to court if necessary. There is a precedent in the litigation over people who contracted CJD from human growth hormone. In that case, we offered the government a scheme to provide for compensation. The government turned it down flat, went to court and lost.”
The bringing of new court cases may rest heavily on the findings of Lord Phillips’ report into BSE, to be presented on 26 October. The investigation is one of the largest in British history, and as Body notes, “for the government to completely rule out compensation at this stage… is premature, because they don’t have the substantive findings of the inquiry in front of them.”
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The damning government memo, leaked to the Daily Express newspaper, said: “There will be considerable pressure on the government to accept the inquiry findings and apportion blame. But to do so would be to risk incurring unforeseeably large expenditure.”
Many of those who have suffered at the hand of BSE however, and even those who will continue to suffer as the incubation period for the disease comes to an end, believe that compensation is not a bonus but a right, and the cost of the final bill presented to the government is impossible to predict. Roger Tomkins lost his daughter to vCJD when she was just 24. He commented: “I feel very strongly that those who are to blame should be accountable. A debt is owed.”
