Bereaved families have accused ministers of “sickening and despicable lies” after a court ruled the government acted unlawfully by failing to protect residents from Covid in care homes.
Relatives whose loved ones died from the virus in residential care said the High Court judgement disproved the claim by former health secretary Matt Hancock that a “protective ring” had been thrown around society’s most vulnerable during the pandemic.
By not requiring the transferred hospital patients to test negative for Covid, the High Court ruled, the government failed to consider the risk to vulnerable residents from non-symptomatic transmission in the early months of the pandemic.
Mandatory testing was not introduced for hospital patients discharged into care homes until April 2020, by which point thousands of infected elderly people had passed on the virus to fellow residents. Between March and June 2020, there were 20,000 care home deaths linked to Covid-19, data show.
Charlie Williams, whose father Rex died in April 2020 in a Coventry care home, said: “We’ve always known that our loved ones were thrown to the wolves by the government, and the claims made by Matt Hancock that a ‘protective ring’ was made around care homes was a sickening lie.
“Now a court has found their decisions unlawful and it’s clear the decisions taken led to people dying who may otherwise still be with their loved ones today.”
The High Court’s ruling has reiterated calls for the government to urgently launch its Covid inquiry, which is not scheduled to hold public hearings until 2023.
“After Partygate, the billions in public money wasted and today’s ruling, the need for a public inquiry to begin immediately is clear,” said Layla Moran MP, chair of the all-party parliamentary group on coronavirus. “Lessons must be urgently learned.”
In a ruling on Wednesday, Lord Justice Bean and Mr Justice Garnham concluded that the government’s care home policies at the beginning of the pandemic were unlawful because they failed to take into account the risk to elderly and vulnerable residents from non-symptomatic transmission of the virus.
They said that, despite “growing awareness” of the risk of asymptomatic transmission throughout March 2020, there was no evidence that Mr Hancock addressed the issue of the risk to care homes.
Labour’s Wes Streeting, the shadow health secretary, said ministers “broke the law” and “cannot claim to have acted to save lives”.
A spokesperson for Mr Hancock said Public Health England had failed to tell ministers what they knew about asymptomatic transmission and he wished it had been brought to his attention sooner.
Lindsay Jackson’s mother died on 17 April 2020 as a result of a suspected Covid infection. Sylvia Jackson, who suffered from dementia, passed away in her care home in Buxton at the age of 87.
Ms Jackson remembers visiting her mother in early April when another resident was being brought to the care home from hospital.
“I’m personally convinced that Covid entered the home via someone being discharged from hospital because one day when I arrived to see Mum, I was following in a resident who’d come back home from hospital,” she said. “I thought at the time I hope she’s been tested.”
Sylvia subsequently fell ill on 10 April and died a week later in the home. “The last day I saw her was Mothering Sunday,” said Ms Jackson.
“I think it’s been criminal and this judgement hints at that doesn’t it, that the decision was illegal,” she added. “I used to visit my mum every day. She had dementia but loved music, so we’d sing together every afternoon for two or three hours. That brought her some comfort.
“When it was becoming clearer that Covid was spreading in this country, I would ring up in advance and ask if I will still allowed to come. They’d say ‘Yes, we’re doing what the government told us.’
“When I heard that people were being discharged without being tested, and at the same time Hancock is saying a protective ring has been placed around the care sector, my heart was in my mouth on an hourly basis. I just knew she would catch it. I thought it’s just a matter of time.”
Describing the government’s handling of the care home sector throughout the pandemic as “disgraceful,” Ms Jackson said “it’s apparent they just don’t care”.
Dr Cathy Gardner, one of two grieving daughters who brought the High Court case against the government after their fathers died from Covid in care homes in spring of 2020, called on prime minister Boris Johnson to resign after the ruling.
“Matt Hancock’s claim that the government threw a protective ring around care homes in the first wave of the pandemic was nothing more than a despicable lie of which he ought to be ashamed and for which he ought to apologise,” said Dr Gardner after Wednesday’s judgement.
“I think absolutely the prime minister should resign,” Dr Gardner added. “There are so many reasons why the prime minister should resign.”
The Relatives & Residents Association, a national charity for people in care and their family members, said the elderly had been “abandoned at the outset of the pandemic” and “let down by the very systems designed to protect their rights”.
Director Helen Wildbore said: “The ruling is very welcome as a first step to justice but bereaved families will be left asking why more wasn’t done to protect their loved ones.”
Speaking after the ruling the prime minister said: “Of course I want to renew my apologies and sympathies for all those who lost loved ones during the pandemic.
“The thing we didn’t know in particular was that Covid could be transmitted asymptomatically in the way that it was and that was something that I wish we had known more about at the time.”
However, the risks of asymptomatic transmission had been highlighted by figures including the government’s chief scientific adviser for England, Sir Patrick Vallance, who said this was “quite likely” as early as 13 March.
