Rishi Sunak said it was “a day of shame for the British state” on Monday as victims of the infected blood scandal were finally given an apology.
The Prime Minister said the worst treatment scandal in NHS history had resulted from a “moral failure at the heart of our national life” in which doctors, civil servants and ministers had put reputations above patient safety.
Thousands of people were infected with HIV and hepatitis C by contaminated blood products used in the NHS between the 1970s and 1990s.
A plan for compensation will be announced on Tuesday and is expected to top £10 billion.
The final report of a five-year inquiry into the scandal, which has so far claimed more than 3,000 lives, concluded that the health service and governments took part in a “chilling” cover-up, as they “closed ranks” to hide the truth, even destroying documents to keep patients in the dark.
Sir Brian Langstaff, the inquiry chairman, said the “horrifying” scandal could and should have been avoided, but a “catalogue of failures” led to “calamity”.
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The Prime Minister told the House of Commons: “This is a day of shame for the British state.
“Today’s report shows a decades-long moral failure at the heart of our national life – from the National Health Service to the Civil Service, to ministers in successive governments, at every level the people and institutions in which we place our trust failed in the most harrowing and devastating way.
“They failed the victims and their families and they failed this country.”
He added: “On behalf of this and every government stretching back to the 1970s, I am truly sorry.”
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Campaigners had dubbed the publication of the inquiry’s final report their “day of truth”.
Delivering his conclusions, Sir Brian was given a standing ovation as emotions ran high on a day that thousands of people did not live to see, and others thought might never come.
Patients “died or suffered miserably” as a result of being given contaminated blood products between 1970 and 1998 because medics and successive governments “did not put patient safety first”, he said. When the scandal was exposed, “the response of those in authority served to compound people’s suffering”.
He recommended that a compensation scheme be set up immediately for victims and bereaved families, which the Government is expected formally to accept.
“Now is the time for national recognition of this disaster and for proper compensation to all those who have been wronged,” he said.
Mr Sunak promised: “Whatever it costs to deliver this scheme, we will pay it.”
He added: “The result of this inquiry should shake our nation to its core. This should have been avoided. It was known these treatments were contaminated, warnings were ignored repeatedly.
“Time and again people in positions of power and trust had the chance to stop the transmission of those infections. Time and again they failed to do so.”
Sir Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, told the victims: “Politics itself failed you – that failure applies to all parties including my own. There is only one word: sorry.”
Medicines for haemophiliacs, including one called Factor VIII, were imported from the US in the 1970s and 1980s and prescribed by the NHS. However, the treatments were made from blood plasma donations which often came from groups at high risk for HIV and hepatitis C such as gay men, sex workers and prisoners and were often contaminated.
Contaminated blood was also used in blood transfusions.
Jason Evans, whose father died after contracting HIV and hepatitis C from infected blood, said the inquiry’s final report meant the “fight for truth is over” but that “no amount of truth” could help those who had suffered emotional trauma and physical illness.
Lord Clarke, the former health secretary, faces calls to be stripped of his peerage after he was condemned by Sir Brian for maintaining in the 1980s that there was no conclusive proof of HIV being spread through blood products – a position the inquiry chairman said was “indefensible”. The report said the former health secretary had misled the public.
Almost all of the doctors criticised in the report are now dead, with victims complaining that they have been denied justice after Sir Brian said there had been grounds for an inquiry as long ago as the 1980s.
Andy Burnham, the Greater Manchester mayor, suggested there were grounds for corporate manslaughter charges to be considered against Whitehall departments.
Sir Brian said of the scandal: “I have to report that it could largely, though not entirely, have been avoided. And I have to report that it should have been.”
In his 2,527-page report, Sir Brian also warned that a substantial number of people remained unaware that they were given transfusions or other products of infected blood, and were therefore undiagnosed.
They include around 900 people infected with hepatitis C and around 200 people who were infected with HIV, the virus that causes Aids, as children.
One of the most shocking episodes in the scandal happened at Lord Mayor Treloar School for children with disabilities in Alton, Hants, where many of the pupils were haemophiliacs.
Children there were “betrayed” when they were used as “objects” of experimental trials, and were not always told they were part of a trial, then suffered a “nightmare of tragic proportion” after being given disease-ridden drugs.
Young boys at the school were told in batches of five whether they had or had not tested positive for HIV in front of each other before being immediately sent back to class.
In other cases, doctors made the “unconscionable” decision not to tell pupils and parents they had tested positive for the virus at all.
Sir Brian said of the overall scandal: “It will be astonishing to anyone who reads this report that these events could have happened in the UK…that a level of suffering which it is difficult to comprehend, still less understand, has been caused to so many”.
He said victims of the scandal “have been forced into a decades-long battle for the truth” and added: “Successive governments claimed that patients had received the best medical treatment available at the time, and that blood screening had been introduced at the earliest opportunity. Both claims were untrue.
“Standing back, and viewing the response of the NHS and of government overall, the answer to the question ‘was there a cover-up?’ is that there has been.
“Not in the sense of a handful of people plotting in an orchestrated conspiracy to mislead, but in a way that was more subtle, more pervasive and more chilling in its implications.
“In this way there has been a hiding of much of the truth.”
Sir Brian’s recommendations include that the statutory duty of candour that currently applies to doctors should be extended to NHS managers, executives and board members and that the “culture of defensiveness” in the NHS must end.
He also said that the Government should pay for a memorial to the victims and for a second memorial at Treloar’s School.
Amanda Pritchard, the chief executive of NHS England, also issued a public apology, saying: “Tens of thousands of people put their trust in the care they got from the NHS over many years, and they were badly let down.
“I therefore offer my deepest and heartfelt apologies for the role the NHS played in the suffering and the loss of all those infected and affected.
“I know that the apologies I can offer now do not begin to do justice to the scale of personal tragedy set out in this report, but we are committed to demonstrating this in our actions as we respond to its recommendations.”
Listen to Bed of Lies, a six-part Telegraph podcast laying bare one of the biggest medical disasters in history, the Infected Blood scandal, on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your preferred podcast app.