THE Government has announced a £130m boost in support for people who contracted hepatitis C after being treated with contaminated blood.

Payments to patients who develop serious liver conditions as a result of transfusions of tainted blood during the Seventies and Eighties will see their lump sum payments double to £50,000, with an annual payment of £12,800.

The ex-gratia scheme will also be extended to allow posthumous payments to hepatitis C sufferers who died before August 29, 2003, following what Health Secretary Andrew Lansley described as “one of the great tragedies in modern health care”.

Mr Lansley also announced that patients infected with hepatitis C or HIV would receive free prescriptions and a £300,000 fund would provide counselling for sufferers over the next three years.

But the increased offer was dismissed by Newcastle campaigner Carol Grayson, whose research helped win a High Court decision last year that the Government’s decision not to award compensation at the generous levels agreed in the Republic of Ireland was flawed.

Ms Grayson, whose haemophiliac husband, Peter, 46, died in 2005 after being given blood contaminated with HIV and hepatitis C, said: “Far from bringing resolution, this is going to bring huge anger.

I will be challenging this legally.”

In a Commons statement Mr Lansley said: “I hope these measures can at least bring some comfort, some consolation and perhaps even some closure for those affected.”