Care homes boss: ‘We have been betrayed’
The First Minister is making soothing statements but not conceding her fatal errors, writes Brian Monteith
Nicola Sturgeon has defended the Scottish Government’s record on care homes after the head of a leading care provider accused ministers of having “betrayed” the sector and its residents.
Tony Banks, chairman and founder of the Balhousie Care Group, claimed there had been “three months of mixed messages, mismanagement and missed opportunities” over protecting the sector from the coronavirus pandemic, and said care homes “may as well just have crossed our fingers”.
Nicola Sturgeon has defended her government’s record on care homes during the coronavirus outbreak as the head of a leading care provider accused ministers of having “betrayed” the sector and its residents.
Tony Banks, chairman and founder of the Balhousie Care Group, claimed there had been “three months of mixed messages, mismanagement and missed opportunities”.
He said care homes “may as well just have crossed our fingers” when hospital patients were being discharged from hospitals to their care without testing for coronavirus.
Mr Banks, whose company operates 26 care homes across Scotland with some 940 residents, claimed testing “promised” in care settings had “simply not been delivered”, meaning hundreds of elderly people in homes had died “before their time”.
Scottish Government figures disclosed more than 900 elderly patients were discharged from hospital into care homes in March, before a requirement for them to be tested for Covid-19 was introduced.
The First Minister defended the policy in an interview with Sky News’ Sophy Ridge yesterday, arguing that, “back then, the view was that people who didn’t have symptoms, either because they were presymptomatic or asymptomatic, didn’t shed the virus.”
Ms Sturgeon added: “What people like me were advised back then is that the tests weren’t reliable in people who didn’t have symptoms.”
But she admitted: “Some of these decisions and the implications of what has happened over the past couple of months will live with me for probably the rest of my life.”
The World Health Organisation issued an alert on 2 April that “transmission from a presymptomatic case can occur before symptom onset” but guidance from the Scottish Government to care homes stating that patients being transferred from hospital do not routinely need confirmation of a negative Covid test was in force until 22 April.
Writing in the Herald on Sunday newspaper, Mr Banks said: “We asked for the patients to be tested for Covid-19 before we took them and were told no. In at least one of our care homes we can directly attribute the first positive cases of Covid-19 to a new admission from hospital.”
He added: “It was 62 days between March 1 – the date of the first positive test in Scotland – and May 1 when the Scottish Government promised sample testing in homes without the virus, and testing of all residents and staff where there were cases.”
He said it was now “crucial” that there was “enough testing” for staff and residents in homes.
The First Minister told Sky News: “The older people that were in hospital, the so-called delayed discharges, they didn’t need to be in hospital, they had no medical need to be in hospital, we were expecting, and in some cases saw, an influx of coronavirus patients into our hospitals.
“It would have been unthinkable simply to leave older patients where they were in hospital, that would also have put them at serious risk.
“Whatwedidwasputinplace a system of risk assessment for older people being discharged from hospitals and gave guidance to care home providers about the isolation and infection prevention and control procedures they should have been following.”
Health Secretary Jeane Freeman said she would be “very happy” to meet Mr Banks and “hear what he has got to say”.
The First Minister also claimed England is “underreporting” the levels of coronavirus deaths in care homes.
Deaths in care homes between mid-march and the end of May were 94 per cent higher than average, and 46 per cent of deaths linked to coronavirus in Scotland have taken place in care homes, compared with 28 per cent in England and Wales.
It was Ben Bradlee, the editor of the Washington Post at the time of the Watergate scandal, that is credited with coining the phrase “a non-denial denial” in regard to the Nixon administration’s repudiation of allegations in a manner that did not deny they might indeed be accurate.
Nearly 50 years later, our First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, is using what I can only describe as a “nonadmission admission” in regard to allegations that she made a fatal misjudgment about transferring patients from hospitals into care homes without first testing them for having coronavirus.
The First Minister has a reputation for being Teflon-coated or bullet-proof, of being able to swat away difficult questions with reasoned if somewhat verbose explanations that shift any blame for errors on to Westminster – or some other suitable grievance-creating target like private care home owners.
From my observation of Nicola Sturgeon’s style two things are liable to trip her up; the first is when an interviewer is well enough briefed to look her straight in the eyes and ask her detailed questions and follow-ups that expose her evasiveness or sheer ignorance of the detail.
This phenomenon exists in such examples as the interviews by Andrew Neil for the BBC (25 November, 2019) and Channel 4’s Ciaran Jenkins (8 June, 2018) – but there are others of similar type that show these were not outriders. The other failing is an elephant trap where the First Minister is allowed to ramble on so much that she rather loses the point from which she started and says something that on later investigation shows she was at best forgetful, or worse, denying the truth. Neither can be called a good look.
The First Minister has said previously she has made mistakes in her management of the coronavirus pandemic, yet when pressed on what they are will not admit to any. This is a non-admission admission.
Yesterday the First Minister was interviewed by Sophie Ridge on Sky and when questioned on the tragic and shocking number of Covid-19 related deaths in Scottish care homes – at 45 per cent against 21 per cent, more than twice the percentage of such deaths in English care homes – she claimed the English statistics must be incorrect.
Then, when questioned if it was a mistake to transfer patients from hospitals into care homes without testing them first she admitted that given the chance again she would have done things differently – but that her judgment had not been mistaken because it was based on the information available to her at the time. This again was a nonadmission admission.
A non-denial denial is classically understood to sound like a denial is being made but does not actually deny an accusation is true; a nonadmission admission is exactly the same, it sounds like an admission is being made but does not actually admit an accusation is true.
Thus the First Minister might sound contrite and caring but there is in fact no acceptance of regret, culpability, blame or responsibility – because there is no admission of error. If only I had known what I know now…
Well, the First Minister is being disingenuous, for it is self-evident that she must have known that it was a fatal error of judgment – because there were appeals for her to act differently at the time and indeed there were examples of governments acting differently that she could have followed.
Care home owners are on record
of appealing to the First Minister about the need for testing in early April before they were receiving patients from Scottish hospitals without the benefit of screening for Covid-19.
Some of these appeals received news coverage, many were circulated to politicians of all parties. It is beyond the bounds of rational expectations that the Scottish Government did not have press cuttings or receive notice of such appeals for greater testing to be put in place.
Is the First Minister really saying her government was not aware of the care homes’ concern about receiving patients from hospitals without being proof they were not infected? That was the clearly what Sophie Ridge was being told.
Nevertheless, let us give the First Minister the benefit of the doubt, maybe she did not understand the seriousness of the care home owners’ concerns.
Unfortunately for the First Minister, that does not leave her blameless – for the UK Government, in the shape of Health Secretary Matt Hancock took the decision to insist on testing for patients being moved out of hospitals on 15 April. Is Nicola Sturgeon saying she was unaware England was introducing such tests, even though this would be communicated at the Cobra meetings and be reported in official guidance? Why did she wait until 21 April to take the same action?
It is as simple as this: if Hancock knew he had to introduce testing why did Sturgeon not know? Let us be under no illusions, the delayed decision was a failure of the First Minister that cost lives, certainly hundreds of lives, possibly over 1,000 lives.
Was the science in Scotland somehow different for dealing with the same virus? Or was it another example of delaying interventions in Scotland purely for creating a sense that we must be different, or does our Scottish Government believe it knows better? The evidence suggests lives have been lost by taking longer to follow the UK Government’s advice.
The First Minister is telling us we must be cautious in unlocking the lockdown and will bring severe restrictions back if we do not adhere to the regulations – and yet in Scotland groups of eight people will be able to meet when in England it is only six. Allowing 33 per cent more human contact is the antithesis of being cautious – but it is certainly being different. What science justified that?
There is no obvious logic to what the Scottish Government decides, being more or less restrictive than the rest of the UK without obvious reason – when faced with the same virus.
The First Minister repeatedly seeks to justify her actions and deny any culpability by blaming others. The same approach of shifting blame has been used in response to allegations she covered up the Nike conference Covid-19 outbreak. It is time she ended her non-admission admissions and took personal responsibility.
People have died because of bad decisions she must have realised could be wrong, it is time the First Minister simply admitted that.
● Brian Monteith is editor of Thinkscotland.org