Justice for care home sufferers

No price can be put on human life. But that does not mean those grieving over care home relatives taken by Covid should not be compensated. It was gross negligence by ministers to move 25,000 hospital patients into care homes without testing them for Covid first.

Judges have now declared that it was also unlawful.

It’s true we knew little about Covid in the early days, but we did know it was both highly transmissible and deadly for older people.

The failure to act on that cost at least 20,000 care home residents their lives.

That is why ministers must now brace themselves for five-figure payouts to families, which the Sunday Mirror reveals will cost £200million.

It is too late for Matt Hancock to pay the price for his negligence with his job – he has already lost it through his stupidity.

But we hope he remembers for the rest of his life the falsehood he told about throwing a “protective ring” around care homes.

What he really did was condemn thousands to death, and if corporate manslaughter charges follow, it is what he deserves.

The only way lessons will be learned for the future is if ministers take responsibility and admit how wrong they were.

But it would take a big man to do that.

And Mr Hancock is a moral pygmy.