Sarwar: FM to blame for care deaths
RESPONSIBILTY rests with First Minister Nicola Sturgeon for the excess deaths in care homes caused by moving Covid patients into care homes at the start of the pandemic, Anas Sarwar claimed yesterday.
The Scottish Labour leader said: “I think the buck stops with the First Minister, so she has got some serious questions to answer.”
The charge came following an admission by Health Secretary Jeane Freeman that her biggest mistake during the Covid pandemic was to move older people from hospital into care homes without proper precautions.
Sturgeon’s minister made the startling admission in an interview with the BBC’s Nick Robinson on Thursday.
But Sarwar claimed Freeman, who is standing down from Parliament this May, was being set up as a “fall person”.
He said yesterday: “I don’t think the government should hide behind Jeane Freeman because it’s convenient that she happens to be retiring.
“The reality is that these decisions were being fronted and taken by the First Minister. She was in full knowledge.
“These decisions all had her approval. They were flagged to her repeatedly in Parliament and the mistakes continued to be made.”
Care homes were at the forefront of the battle against Covid with some residences reporting dozens of deaths in the early stages of the pandemic when 900 elderly people were transferred untested from hospitals to residential settings.
Almost a third of Scotland’s 10,000 Covid deaths occurred in care homes.
In a clip released for an upcoming BBC interview, Freeman said: “We didn’t take the right precautions to make sure that older people leaving hospital going into care homes were as safe as they could be and that was a mistake.”