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The Secretary of State for Health, Alan Milburn, was opposed to a compensation scheme or payments, largely on the basis that they would set a precedent, especially since his view was that no fault had been demonstrated.

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Susan Deacon ordered an inquiry into whether people with haemophilia in Scotland had been exposed to unnecessary risk of Hepatitis C through infected blood products in the mid 1980s.

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The Health and Community Care Committee of the Scottish Parliament considered the Haemophilia Society petition calling for a public inquiry, and a second petition from a person who had contracted Hepatitis C as a result of a blood transfusion during a routine operation in 1989.

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The Health and Community Care Committee called Susan Deacon to give evidence on 25 October 2000.

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Alan Milburn told the Treasury that the legal advice for the Government was that there was a very limited chance of success following the recommendations in the judgment of the High Court (in England) in "A and Others v the National Blood Authority" and the decision should not be appealed.

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The Skipton Appeals Panel met quarterly. A guidance note was provided to applicants which clarified that they could provide evidence of a transfusion.

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In "A and Others v the National Blood Authority" Mr Justice Burton concluded that routine screening ought to have been introduced by 1 March 1990, and surrogate testing should have been in place by March 1988.

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An amendment to the Skipton Fund occurred in 2016 which made specific clauses applicable to each UK nation.

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The Scottish Executive announced that an expert group, to be chaired by a Court of Session Judge, Lord Donald Ross, was to be set up to look at the pros and cons of a system of financial and other support for those harmed by health service treatment where the NHS was not at fault.

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The report which Susan Deacon had requested was delivered to her in draft by departmental officials. They sought to steer her "very firmly in the direction of not agreeing to compensation or special priority treatment for Hep C sufferers who may have been infected by NHS treatment", keeping in step with her English counterparts.

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Malcolm Chisholm said he would make £20,000 available for those diagnosed with Hepatitis C, with a further £25,000 paid to sufferers who developed conditions such as cirrhosis and cancer of the liver.

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Following the Secretary of State's agreement to the various component parts of the payment scheme, a Scottish email threw into doubt payment for people who had cleared Hepatitis C following treatment.

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Generally those who cleared Hepatitis C would statistically be likely to do so within the first six months. There was no opportunity for a person to explain why they considered that they had continued to suffer Hepatitis C infection beyond six months, nor could the Skipton Fund examine their evidence on the point. This was a function of the design of the Fund, and the way in which the Department of Health set out to operate it

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The note of an advisory group meeting on hepatitis recorded that "the experts were asked for their initial thoughts on the medical trigger for the second (higher) payment. It was felt that this should be a recognised stage of the disease, rather than subjective symptoms of illness."

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Guidance on assessing applications for the £20,000 payment from the Skipton Fund did not include first-hand evidence of the applicant in their definition of evidence, so this could not be used to support an application. There was no opportunity for an applicant who could be considered a natural clearer to explain why they considered that their Hepatitis C infection caused suffering beyond 6 months, and the Fund could not examine evidence on this point.

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The Fund worked with Professor Thomas to create a model of determining whether a person infected with Hepatitis C had reached stage 2 before dying, as their estate would be entitled to payments. This model estimated the likely speed of progression from infection to cirrhosis, differentiating those also coinfected with HIV.

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Dr Hewitt wrote to Nicholas Fish about Hepatitis C and intramuscular gamma-globulin and the fact that the transmission of the virus had not been documented with its use, despite more than half of preparations containing detectable HCV RNA. However, the intravenous intramuscular immunoglobulin had caused patients to develop non-A non-B Hepatitis, whereas the intramuscular immunoglobulin had not.

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Dr Hewitt wrote to Keith Foster stating that anti-D immunoglobulin produced in the UK had an "unparalleled safety record with regard to transmission of viruses", but there had been known cases of transmission episodes from anti-D produced outside of the UK including the Irish Transfusion board in the 1970s and early 1980s. These were a different method of manufacture and were intravenous preparations.

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Dr Mary Ramsay of the Health Protection Agency Centre for Infections was asked for advice by Nicholas Fish, acting as secretary to the appeals panel, on the extent to which science and statistics showed that injecting drug use for less than two years was likely to be a cause of an Hepatitis C infection, where the sufferer also had a history of blood transfusion and reported on in March 2007.

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The Skipton Appeals Panel would not hear from affected individuals personally.

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