Patient threatens legal action over lack of compensation for hepatitis C contaminated blood

A man infected with hepatitis C through NHS treatment with contaminated blood is threatening legal action against the government over a new discretionary compensation scheme, which he claims is unlawful.

Lawyers for Alex Smith, 61, have written to Jeremy Hunt, health secretary for England, threatening to go to the High Court unless he makes changes to the scheme to put those with hepatitis C on an equal footing with those infected with HIV through blood.

The dispute has its roots in what was described by the medical peer Robert Winston as “the worst treatment disaster in the history of …