Don’t cover your backs, just learn from this

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

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

Doing so exposed the most vulnerable people in our country to a deadly virus. It was one of the costliest decisions he has made. It cost lives.

This week, the High Court ruled the policy 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 that no one knew Covid could be passed on by individuals who aren’t displaying symptoms.

It is simply not true.

SAGE, the Government’s independent scientific advisers, first reported signs that Covid could be transmitted asymptomatically on January 28, 2020. On March 16, I raised evidence from UCL’S Professor Costello in the House of

Commons directly with Matt Hancock. It was a month later before the Government finally changed course.

While the Government was claiming to have thrown a “protective ring” around care homes, alarm bells were being sounded right across the country, which ministers ignored.

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

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

The Government cannot claim they weren’t warned at the time – and now they cannot claim to have acted to save lives.

They broke the law and people died.

We owe it to bereaved families to learn the lessons of the pandemic and make sure this never happens again.

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