Scottish Infected Blood Support Scheme (SIBSS) ex-gratia payments and budget: FOI release

Information requested

You asked:

"Are the ex-gratia payments received through the SIBSS (Scottish Infected Blood Support Scheme) protected legally for life? What is the current annual budget for SIBSS? In the last financial budget, how much reserves were carried over into the next year?"

Response

The answer to your questions are:

The Scottish Infected Blood Support Scheme 2017 (as amended) makes clear that payments to both those who are infected and their widows, widowers, civil partners or long-term cohabiting partners are expected to continue throughout the beneficiary’s life. Whilst any future Scottish administration would have the ability to alter SIBSS payments or eligibility, the Scottish Ministers have made a commitment to make these ex gratia payments, and this is reflected in the statutory power in section 28 of the Smoking, Health and Social Care (Scotland) Act 2005. The making of a statutory power was considered the appropriate approach to ensure that payments can continue in the long term. It is also worth noting that not only the current Scottish Government, but also current members of the Scottish Parliament have indicated that it is important to ensure that those infected or affected by infected blood are sufficiently supported financially.

The 2019/20 budget for SIBSS following Spring Budget Revision is expected to be £8.75 million. This information was published in the SIBSS Newsletter publicly available at
https://nhsnss.org/media/3657/sibss-newsletter-issue-4.pdf.

No reserves were carried over from 2018/19 to 2019/20 for the SIBSS budget as the 2018/19 budget was spent in full.

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