MINISTERS have admitted that haemophiliacs were given virtually no chance of avoiding a deadly virus through exposure to contaminated blood products.

In a letter to campaigners, health minister Lord Hunt said the risk of hepatitis C from imported plasma was almost 100 per cent, meaning almost all haemophiliacs receiving treatment had been infected.

The admission has fuelled calls by North-East group Haemophilia Action UK for a public inquiry into the scandal of hepatitis C, which is now the biggest killer among haemophiliacs.

And it has raised questions over why the Government introduced a treatment before it was known to be safe, and why warnings not to import blood from the United States were ignored.

Lord Hunt's letter followed a meeting with Haemophilia Action UK campaigners, including Newcastle-based spokeswoman Carol Grayson.

The health minister said the clotting treatment introduced in the 1970s required the pooling of plasma from thousands of different donors.

He said: "No matter who made these products or what plasma was used, the risk of hepatitis C from them was almost 100 per cent because of the need for pooling and the incidence of the virus in blood donor populations around the world.

"By the time viral inactivation technology was introduced in the mid-1980s, almost all people with haemophilia receiving treatment had unwittingly been infected."

The plasma was used to create Factor Eight clotting treatments, which replaced an almost completely safe treatment.

Ms Grayson, whose haemophiliac partner has been infected with both hepatitis C and HIV through contaminated blood, said: "They had admitted for the first time that there was a 100 per cent infection rate.

"The question then is why they introduced a treatment before any attempt had been made to eradicate the virus, when they had a perfectly safe alternative treatment?

"They never told patients there was a 100 per cent risk and haemophiliacs were never given the chance to make a choice."

She said the Government had ignored a World Health Organisation warning in 1975 not to import blood from countries where hepatitis C infection was relatively high, such as the United States, where donors were paid to give blood.

And the Government failed to fulfil a pledge to make the UK self-sufficient in blood products, which would almost certainly have prevented the widespread introduction of hepatitis C into this country.