TEARS of elation were shed by Oxfordshire's victims of the contaminated blood scandal and their families yesterday as an inquiry was ordered into the historic disaster.


In a shock announcement, Prime Minister Theresa May declared a UK-wide investigation into the case, which occurred in the 1970s and 1980s and has led to the deaths of 2,400 British people.

Thousands more have been infected with HIV and hepatitis C due after treatment for haemophilia with tainted blood clotting agents.

Campaigners up and down the country, including hundreds with connections to the Oxford Haemophilia Centre at the Churchill Hospital, have been calling for such an inquiry for decades.

Among those celebrating yesterday was Neil Weller, of Southmoor, who contracted hepatitis C after being treated at centre as a boy.

He said: "I had to walk outside and get some fresh air. It was too much. I couldn't have asked for better news; fists are being punched in the air today.

"There has been so much pressure and with all the evidence that had been dug up they can't skim over it anymore; they have got to do a root and branch inquiry."

Mr Weller, 46, has attended the funerals of seven fellow patients from Oxford over the decades and last year joined the Tainted Blood campaign for justice.

He said: "Too many people have died. Too many people have suffered. There has been flapping and stalling but the finishing line is in the distance; bring it on."

In recent months, former Oxford West MP Nicola Blackwood, who was a junior health minister prior to losing her seat at the General Election last month, and the Prime Minister had rejected calls for an inquiry.

However, pressure continued to mount from MPs and last week 400 'impacted parties' launched legal action against the department of health.

At a Westminster briefing yesterday, a spokesman for Mrs May said the scandal had caused 'unimaginable hardship' and the inquiry would be 'wide-ranging'.

Consultation will take place with people affected to decide whether the inquiry will feature a Hillsborough-style independent panel or be a judge-led statutory inquiry.

In the early 1980s, the Oxford Haemophilia Centre was one of the most prominent centres in the country for treatment of the condition and distributing contaminated blood clotting agents meaning many victims have links to the area.

Yesterday's announcement follows two previous inquiries led by Lord Archer and Lord Penrose, neither of which are accepted by campaigners as having gone far enough, and goodwill payments have been handed out by the Government but never compensation, as it has never admitted culpability.

Jason Evans, whose father Jonathan died from HIV after being treated at Oxford and Coventry, said the news was 'amazing'.

He said: "It's a vindication for the last two years worth of almost non-stop work we have put in. The amount of wrongdoing you can find when you look is almost endless.

"People stand to be in very serious trouble in the Department of Health, pharmaceutical companies and parts of the senior medical profession."

Janette Johnson, of Woodstock, whose son Graham died aged 15 after an infected blood transfusion at the Churchill, said her daughter had called her in tears with the news.

She said: "For five years Graham could have been tested on, and we didn't know. At last something is going to come of it.

"The doctors said all the paperwork was lost, but it wasn't; for this inquiry to be successful they need to admit it was their fault and they knew."

Senior officials in the Department of Health stand accused of using patients as 'guinea pigs' by allowing potentially unsafe batches of Factor VIII to be distributed by the NHS.

In 1982, doctors in Oxford wrote to other haemophilia centre directors across the country advising them to test batches for 'infectivity' on human patients.

Both of Oxford's MPs, Anneliese Dodds and Layla Moran, were present at an emergency debate in the Commons yesterday in which this point was discussed.

Mrs Moran said: "The Oxford centre was the domino that allowed the rest to fall. Anneliese said how ashamed we both are as Oxford MPs that this was happening in our community; it's frankly disgusting that they knew. I'm delighted the government has listened and have asked that all information is turned over to the police."