Too busy dodging the blame

BORIS Johnson likes to claim that he gets the big calls right.

In the early months of the pandemic, the Government decided to discharge hospital patients to care homes without testing them for Covid.

Doing so exposed the most vulnerable in our country to a deadly virus. It cost lives.

This week, the High Court ruled the policy was unlawful.

The ruling will offer some sense of justice to Dr Cathy Gardner and Fay Harris, who took the Government to court after losing their fathers.

Typically, Boris Johnson still refuses to take responsibility.

He only offers excuses, claiming no one knew Covid could be passed on by people who aren’t displaying symptoms. It is simply not true.

SAGE, the Government’s independent scientific advisers, reported on January 28, 2020 on signs that Covid could be transmitted asymptomatically.

On March 16, I raised evidence from UCL’s Professor Anthony Costello directly with Matt Hancock in the Commons.

It was a month before the Government changed course.

Ministers ignored alarm bells that were being sounded right across the country.

The Sunday People was first to report on the Covid timebomb in social care.

In the end, 25,000 hospital patients were sent into care homes untested. It’s impossible to know the number of lives lost as a result.

The Government can’t claim they weren’t warned at the time. And they now can’t claim they acted to save lives. They broke the law and people died.

We owe it to families to make sure this never happens again.

The Conservatives are too busy covering their backs to learn from their mistakes.