In the Guardian today:
Revealed: key files shredded as UK government panic grew over infected blood deaths lawsuit. Lost documents prevented victims from finding out the truth, official inquiry told. Several batches of files involving the work of a blood safety advisory committee were shredded as the government faced the threat of legal action, documents show. Patients who were given contaminated blood when they were children have also told the infected blood inquiry how their hospital medical files were destroyed or initially withheld.
The scheme to import blood from US prisoners was approved in the UK in August 1976. The UK Government was then Labour. The Scottish Secretary of State was in the Cabinet at the time and so will have seen the documents.
How do we know the shredding began under Labour? This:
In 1987 David Owen, a former health minister, asked for his ministerial papers because he was concerned officials had not heeded his advice in the 1970s for the UK to become self-sufficient in concentrated blood products, which would have prevented many deaths.
And, as Labour returned to power in both the UK and in Scotland, in 1997:
The inquiry has also heard how several batches of minutes and background papers involving the work of the Advisory Committee on the Virological Safety of Blood were shredded between 1994 and 1998. The files were destroyed at a time when officials were told there was “considerable potential for litigation” over infected blood and after ministers were charged in France over the scandal in poisoning haemophiliacs.
Around 300 Scots died due to this mistake.
Sources:
Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 