Sunak outlines two promises.

The first to pay comprehensive compensation to those infected and affected - he says that whatever it costs "we will pay it".

The details of this will be set out tomorrow.

The second promise is that it cannot be a case of saying sorry, paying compensation and moving on.

Sunak says the recommendations in the report will be studied in detail and he will return to the House with a full response.

Moving to address the campaigners, he says that "throughout it all victims and their loved ones have had to fight for justice, fight to be believed, fight to uncover the whole truth".

He mentions medical records that were withheld and destroyed.

Echoing Sir Brian Langstaff's words in the report, he says: "Was there a cover-up? Let me directly quote him - there has been".

The PM describes the more "pervasive and chilling implications", saying that "to save space and expense, there has been "a hiding of much of the truth".

Image source, UK Parliament

Rishi Sunak says he finds it "impossible to comprehend" how victims felt when they were injected with these deadly diseases through no fault of their own.

"Many of those infected went to develop horrific conditions such as TB [and] Aids" and endured debilitating treatments for "illnesses the NHS had given them".

The PM says victims were treated "appallingly" by healthcare professionals and those who contracted HIV were subjected to social vilification.

The PM says the report found an attitude of denial towards the risks of treatment - in some cases, allowing victims to become "objects for research".

Many including children at Lord Mayor Treloar's College who in the 1970s and 1980s were part of trials conducted without their - or their parents' - knowledge or consent.

He adds that many people were infected through whole blood transfusions, others through partners and loved ones - often where diagnoses had been "deliberately withheld" for months or even years.

More than 3,000 people died without knowing the truth or an apology, Rishi Sunak says.

He adds: "They died without seeing anyone held account."

"Today I want to speak directly to the victims and their families - some of whom are in the gallery."

"I want to make a whole-hearted and unequivocal apology to victims."

Image source, UK Parliament

More from Rishi Sunak who tells MPs in a hushed Commons that report author Sir Brian Langstaff "found a catalogue of systemic failures".

This amounted to a "calamity", the PM says, adding that the result of the inquiry "should shake our nation to its core".

"Warnings were ignored repeatedly," he says.

"Time and again people had the power to stop transmissions of infections.

"Time and again they failed."

The PM begins by telling the Commons that "this is a day of shame for the British state".

He says the blood inquiry report reveals a "decade-long moral failure" from the NHS to the Civil Service, from ministers in successive governments.

Image source, UK Parliament

Rishi Sunak is making a statement after the Infected Blood Inquiry found successive governments, doctors and the NHS tried to cover up the scandal.

More than 30,000 people were infected with HIV and hepatitis C from 1970 to 1991 by contaminated products. Three thousand of them have since died.

How could the scale of suffering been avoided?published at 17:16 British Summer Time 20 May

17:16 BST 20 May

Nick Triggle
Health Correspondent

A common phrase used by government – certainly during the 1980s and 1990s – was that patients had received the “best treatment available”.

But that was not true – as the public inquiry has clearly laid out.

In fact, the scale of suffering could and should have been largely avoided it said. But how?

Firstly the blood products imported from the US to treat people with bleeding disorders – known as Factor VIII and IX - should simply never have been licensed for use.

Drug companies were allowed to pay people for their blood – and did so by offering drug addicts and prisoners money. The risks of this was known about when the practice started in the 1970s. This was despite there being safe alternative treatments.

There were other examples too.

Ways of testing for signs of hepatitis infection started being introduced in European countries from 1965. But not in the UK.

When an accurate screening test was identified for hepatitis C in 1989 it took two years for the UK to embrace it. When it finally did it became one of the last developed countries to do so.

Heat-treating of blood products to eliminate HIV took too long to be introduced. And when it did, old products were still used.

Failures such as these led the inquiry to conclude people have been failed, that safety was not paramount – and lives were needlessly put at risk.

Instead, patient safety was not paramount.

Rajini Vaidyanathan
Reporting from Westminster

As people here wait for the prime minister to issue an apology - they're very clear that it has to be about more than just words.

Dena Peacock was infected with hepatitis C after receiving a transfusion in the early 1980s, following child birth.

She hopes Rishi Sunak will take decisive action this time - after he didn't take up an interim recommendation a year ago, to expand compensation for victims.

It's a similar sentiment from Craig Smith who chairs The Haemophilia Society, and lost his friend to hepatitis C, contracted as a result of the scandal.

"I don't just want hollow words, I want actions," he tells me.

Image source, UK Parliament

The prime minister is due to address the House of Commons shortly - at around 17:15 BST - after the Infected Blood Inquiry accused doctors, the government and NHS of trying to cover up the scandal of what happened to people.

Inquiry chair Sir Brian Langstaff found that victims' suffering was compounded by the "sluggish pace" on compensation.

By insisting on waiting for the inquiry to conclude before making a final decision on redress, Rishi Sunak had "perpetuated the injustice", Sir Brian said.

Matt Fox
BBC News NI

Image source, PA Media

Northern Ireland’s Health minister, Robin Swann, says he will personally apologise to those people who have been affected by the “abhorrent” blood scandal.

He has called for a “UK-wide response”, adding “there can be no difference in response depending on post code”.

“The money will come from a central UK pot… because everyone across the United Kingdom no matter what one of the four nations, are all treated equally… because they were all failed equally,” he tells BBC News NI.

“My department has apologised, I’ll apologise to those people who have been infected and affected by this abhorrent scandal.”

Sir Brian Langstaff's report found that pupils at specialist school Lord Mayor Treloar College were used as "objects for research" in the 1970s and 1980s, while the risks of contracting hepatitis and HIV were ignored.

It found that from 1977, medical research was carried out at Treloar's in Hampshire "to an extent which appears unparalleled elsewhere".

In a statement, the school - now known as Treloar School and College - says it is "devastated" that some former pupils were "so tragically affected", and wants the government to urgently establish a proper compensation scheme.

"We'll now be taking the time to reflect on the report's wider recommendations," it says.

Image source, Reuters

Former Prime Minister Theresa May says she hopes all those affected by the contaminated blood scandal have "got the answers they deserve today."

"Yet again, a community has had to fight for decades for the truth to come out," she wrote in a post on X.

"They shouldn't have had to fight so hard or for so long for this day to come."

The inquiry's chair Sir Brian Langstaff has been critical of the delays to calling a public inquiry - the then-Prime Minister Theresa May only announced it in 2017 when under political pressure.

Sunday Times political editor Caroline Wheeler has been covering the infected blood story for 20 years and says there is “a culture of cover-up at our institutions.” “We became increasingly reliant on importing [blood] from the United States," she tells BBC 5 Live.

"In 1975, Granada’s World In Action programme revealed a lot of this blood was being sourced cheaply in a kind of “ooze for booze” programme, as it became known, from sex workers, drug addicts and prisons.”

“The idea that you wouldn’t have known the risks at this time was for the birds."

She adds: "It wasn’t just the individual haematologists that were making decisions about treatment, it was the Whitehall mandarins that were not taking heed of those warnings, it was the ministers that then delivered or in this case failed to deliver the policy of self-sufficiency, and it was the prime ministers who ducked the issues and failed to give answers and to hold public inquiries in the years that followed.”

Dr Phillipa Whitford was a surgeon who campaigned for decades on behalf of those affected by the blood scandal.

The SNP MP tells BBC Radio 5 Live that rumours of infected blood in the NHS system impacted on her early career as a surgeon.

“I became obsessed with how to avoid spilling blood so I very rarely needed to transfuse," she says.

There were warnings “right at the beginning in the early 70s”, she adds, but by the late 80s and early 90s the thinking was “‘transfusion's not a good thing, keep it to a minimum’”.

“There were things that could have been done but this kind of denial of the problem meant that action wasn’t taken and there were more victims than should have been.

She says now that the report has been published, "there’s really nowhere left to hide".

Chris Mason
Political editor

The Office of the former Prime Minister Sir John Major tells the BBC that the former PM is “shocked by what he has heard of its findings.

"He hopes the government will give the report full and serious consideration and that its response will be comprehensive and swift.”

Sir John Major did not hold a position in government in the 1970s or early 1980s when most of those infected were treated with contaminated blood products.

But he did hold senior positions, including as Chancellor and PM, when financial support for the families affected were being discussed in the late 80s and early 90s.

Shelley Phelps
BBC Wales Westminster Correspondent

Wales' health secretary has apologised to the Welsh victims of the UK-wide infected blood scandal, calling it a "terrible tragedy".

Around 400 people in Wales are known to have been infected, but this does not include others who have died or may not have known they were infected.

Evidence was heard from families in Wales in the summer of 2019, when the inquiry held hearings in Cardiff.

"This was the worst treatment scandal in the NHS," says Eluned Morgan.

"While it pre-dates devolution, as the cabinet secretary for health and social care in Wales, I want to apologise to all those who were infected and have been affected by this terrible tragedy."

The report makes a number of criticisms specific to Wales , external- including the influence of a leading Welsh haematologist - as well as the role played by the Welsh Office and later by the Welsh government.

Watch BBC Wales Investigates: Blood Money on BBC iPlayer here.

The prime minister should apologise in full to those affected by the infected blood scandal, a lawyer for the victims says.

Sarah Westoby says there has been a cover-up in terms of documents being destroyed and lost, and authorities giving "inaccurate", sometimes defensive, lines.

She applauds the report's 12 recommendations, saying such a situation should never happen again, and calls for compensation without delay and lifelong care for those affected.

The Langstaff report into the infected blood scandal shows a "systemic, governmental, political failure", a senior Conservative MP says.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4, Steve Brine, chair of the health and social care select committee, says "we have a story here of systemic governmental, political failure and cover up".

He says he expects the government will accept the report's recommendations in full tomorrow, but adds "if they're not going to do that, they have to have a very, very good reason given this amount of time".