Families call for criminal investigation into disaster in care homes

Hancock urged to come clean over testing policy as his ‘protective ring’ is shown to be an ‘insult’

‘Hancock rejected Whitty’s advice to test everyone coming into care homes – utter, shameless charlatan’

CARE home bosses have told Matt Hancock there is “no hiding from the truth” about the decisions he made on Covid testing thanks to The Daily Telegraph’s Lockdown Files investigation.

The former health secretary was accused of “insulting” staff who put their lives at risk to protect the vulnerable, by insisting that he had thrown a “protective ring” around care homes during the pandemic.

Bereaved relatives also spoke of their “pain and anger” at reading the Whatsapp messages between Mr Hancock and his colleagues and called for a police investigation into “thousands of unnecessary deaths” in care homes.

Yesterday, it was revealed that in April 2020 Mr Hancock had rejected advice from Prof Sir Chris Whitty, England’s Chief Medical Officer, to test all residents going into care homes. Instead, he decided that only those entering from hospitals, rather than the community, should be screened, saying that testing all new residents only “muddies the waters”.

It was another four months before Sir Chris’s advice was fully put into practice, by which time 17,678 people had died of Covid in English care homes.

Nadra Ahmed, executive chairman of the National Care Association, said: “The facts continue to emerge confirming the reality of the nightmare care homes went through at the outset of the pandemic. The lies that emerged about a ‘protective ring’ were an insult to those who put their own lives at risk to protect the residents in our services.

“This highlights, once again, that expert advice was ignored and the only mantra was to ‘protect’ the NHS. There is no hiding from the truth.”

Mr Hancock has denied ignoring or rejecting advice from Sir Chris, saying the Whatsapp messages published by The Telegraph had been “spun to fit an anti-lockdown agenda”.

A spokesman for Mr Hancock also said the former minister had “enthusiastically accepted” Sir Chris’s request for care home testing, but was “advised it was not currently possible to test everyone entering care homes”.

He added: “Matt concluded that the testing of people leaving hospital for care homes should be prioritised because of the higher risks of transmission, as it wasn’t possible to mandate [that] everyone going into care homes got tested.”

A Whatsapp exchange was also reproduced in which Mr Hancock expressed concerns that expanding testing in care homes would “get in the way” of his self-imposed target of 100,000 Covid tests per day by the end of April 2020.

Lindsay Jackson, from Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice, said: “This looks like evidence that Matt Hancock refused to follow the scientific advice and test everyone going into care homes in case it set back his arbitrary target of 100,000 tests a day, which he thought would make a good headline.

“What is certain is that the failure to protect care homes led to thousands of unnecessary deaths, like my mum’s, and meant hospitals became even more overwhelmed and even longer lockdowns were required to prevent further loss of life. The consequences of this could not be more horrific and there needs to be an immediate and serious police investigation in parallel with the inquiry [into the Covid response].

“Sadly, the inquiry has so far been incredibly disappointing. These revelations show why it must allow families to be heard in the hearings and for our lawyers to cross-examine key people like Matt Hancock, so we can get full answers to our questions in the right setting instead of having to relive the horrors of our loss through exposés.”

In an urgent question tabled in Parliament, Liz Kendall, Labour’s shadow social care minister, asked Helen Whately, the social care minister: “Throughout the Covid pandemic, ministers repeatedly claimed they threw a protective ring around England’s care homes and always followed the evidence and scientific advice, but Whatsapp messages from the former health secretary, revealed in The Telegraph, suggest nothing could be further from the truth.

“Can the minister now confirm that the Chief Medical Officer first advised the Government to test all residents going into care homes in early April 2020? Can she explain why the former health secretary rejected this advice and failed to introduce community testing until Aug 14, a staggering four months later?

“She should know, because she was responsible for care homes at the time.”

Ms Whately replied: “There’s very selective information that she is basing her comments on. [She] knows how the Government and me personally strained every sinew, worked day and night, did everything in our power to help people and specifically the most vulnerable during the pandemic.”

Helen Wildbore, director of the Relatives & Residents Association, a charity for older people needing care, said that families would be angry to see that Ms Whately had told Mr Hancock that restrictions on visits to care homes were “inhumane” months before the restrictions were eventually eased.

In a Whatsapp message sent in October 2020, Ms Whately said: “Where care homes have Covid-secure visiting we should be allowing it. To prevent husbands seeing wives, because they happen to live in care homes, for months and months is inhumane.”

Two days later, when the Government imposed the new “tiers” system of lockdowns in England, those living in areas with tighter restrictions were banned from having any visitors except in “exceptional circumstances” such as “end of life”.

Ms Wildbore said: “To hear the Government knew that isolating people from their family was inhumane will add to the pain and anger many families feel. The Government must introduce a new legal right for people needing care to have the support of their family carers across health and care settings.”

Rachel Clarke, an NHS palliative care doctor, tweeted: “Hancock rejected Chris Whitty’s advice to Covid test everyone coming into care homes. Utter, shameless charlatan.”

Ms Whately told MPS the importance of testing was never in doubt but “tough decisions about prioritisation had to be made” with the advice available.