WHY THE DELAY?
Bereaved families of care home dead want answers
A LAWYER for families who lost loved ones to Covid-19 has questioned the lack of progress of an inquiry into deaths from the virus in care homes.
The Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service said last year its Covid-19 Death Investigation Team had received more than 2000 reports of such cases to be investigated north of the Border.
In the early part of the pandemic, more than 100 people were discharged from hospital into care homes after testing positive, according to a Public Health Scotland report in 2020.
But as the UK Government was found at the High Court to have acted unlawfully in discharging people from hospital into care homes without a Covid-19 test, a lawyer representing Scots families has pushed for answers.
Aamer Anwar said he would be seeking a meeting with the Lord Advocate, Dorothy Bain QC.
Anwar said he would ask her to “to advise the families we represent why her inquiry into deaths in care homes is taking so long and whether charges of corporate homicide will now follow”. The lawyer for the Scottish branch of Covid-19 Bereaved Families also said his clients met Lady Poole – who is to head an inquiry in Scotland into decisions taken during the pandemic. Anwar added: “The relatives left feeling disappointed the Scottish inquiry might not investigate these deaths as the Crown Office and the UK Inquiry will be. “In over three months the families feel very little has happened in Scotland and this is deeply disappointing, whilst it appears the UK inquiry is moving apace. “This isn’t what the relatives campaigned for, nor was it what they were promised by the Scottish Government.” The London court ruling undermines UK Government claims that it put a “protective ring” around the most vulnerable. Campaigners hope it opens the door for more families to seek justice over the “catalogue of failures” overseen by the Government in early 2020. Ex-health secretary Matt Hancock claimed he had been “comprehensively cleared” and blamed Public Health England.