Covid Pandemic: Testing of Care Home Residents

Question

Throughout the covid pandemic, Ministers repeatedly claimed that they had thrown a protective ring around England’s care homes and that they had always followed the evidence and scientific advice. However, WhatsApp messages from the former Health Secretary revealed in today’s Daily Telegraph suggest otherwise. The MP questioned why the Government rejected the chief medical officer's advice to test all residents going into care homes and failed to introduce community testing until August 14th despite significant deaths.

Question

My hon. Friend will agree that it was Labour that called for a public inquiry, and the Government agreed to it. It is a full public inquiry with a distinguished judge leading it. Does my hon. Friend agree that what we are seeing today is a bit of trial by media and party politics?

Question

On 2 April 2020, I wrote to the former Health and Social Care Secretary highlighting the urgent need for testing in care homes. In July 2021, during a session of the Select Committee on Health and Social Care, I asked why the Government had not taken up an offer from care providers to isolate patients before admitting them to care homes. Will the Minister admit that the Department failed to understand social care's role in pandemic decisions and ignored offers for help?

Question

The Opposition wants to rewrite history. The then Secretary of State faced a complex situation with limited information, having to make tough decisions based on advice received. Shouldn't the public inquiry be the right forum for such matters? Can we expedite the inquiry's report?

Question

Leaked WhatsApp messages show that despite test shortages in September 2020, an adviser sent a test to the home of Mr Rees-Mogg by courier. Can the Minister confirm how many Government Ministers and Conservative MPs received priority tests during the pandemic when there was a shortage?

Question

During limited testing supplies, calls were made to prioritise certain groups. In hindsight, some decisions may have been incorrect but it was an urgent situation. Can my hon. Friend confirm that Wales took two weeks longer than England to mandate care home resident testing? Why isn't the Opposition outraged by this?

Question

Even if we now know that the Secretary of State was not following scientific advice, can the Minister explain why she did not do the right thing at the time? Was she not listening to the chief medical officer?

Question

I remember Opposition Members repeatedly saying we had the worst death toll in Europe, which was misleading based on recent studies showing a different picture. Have they apologised for this misleading information?

Question

The Government entered unprepared, ignored lessons from Operation Cygnus, and ran NHS at 96% capacity. Families deserve more detail on what happened to ease their suffering before the public inquiry.

Question

This is a serious matter of life and death, so it's right to conduct a thorough public inquiry. Can my hon. Friend assure us that the Government will be as transparent and open as possible during this process?

Question

The emails and WhatsApp messages show that scientific advice was ignored. The Minister has said other priorities were considered, but what did the Government know that Professor Whitty didn't when they decided not to follow his advice?

Question

Is it not regrettable, if all too typical, that the Labour party ignores the fact that when the pandemic struck there was capacity for only 2,000 tests a day—ignoring, too, the huge, successful efforts to massively increase that capacity—and instead chooses to leap on partial information to make political points rather than listen to the full facts of the public inquiry?

Question

The Minister said that what my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester West (Liz Kendall) said was shocking. What is shocking is the number of people who died but who might have been saved in the first place. Is the Minister really saying that, at the beginning of the pandemic, there was no rush to get people out of hospital and back into the community without being tested?

Question

I am very proud of this Conservative Government’s record during the pandemic: 400 million tests, a world-leading and world-beating vaccine programme, and £400 billion spent to keep jobs and people’s prospects going. Clearly, hard decisions were made, and hindsight is a wonderful thing, but we should not be reflecting with hindsight now; we should deal with the facts at hand. Does the Minister agree that this Government will continue to take measures, and that if—God forbid—there is another pandemic, we will not let party politicking get in the way of making decisions to protect lives, fund jobs and keep our country going?

Question

In April 2020, now-disappeared Government guidance in relation to hospital discharges stated: “Negative tests are not required prior to transfers/admissions into the care home.” It was later reported that the Minister then leaned on Public Health England to alter its proposed advice to care homes from ensuring that those discharged from hospitals tested negative to not requiring any testing at all. Why, at every stage, were the Government content to send people to their deaths in our care homes?

Question

Leaked WhatsApp messages will be partial and selective, but in reading even those I note that the Minister was doing her job on behalf of my constituents. In a message on 8 April, she spoke up for a care home in Newcastle-under-Lyme and raised it with the Government and her fellow Ministers. Everyone was doing their best. I served in the lessons learned inquiry, and there are lessons that can be learned with the benefit of hindsight, but the hindsight that we have seen from the Labour Front Bench is opportunistic. Does she agree that the Government were doing everything they could to respond to an unprecedented situation under severe pressure and severe supply and capacity constraints?

Question

Care home residents and their families were failed not just at the beginning of the pandemic but in the months and years that followed, as families and loved ones were prevented from visiting. The leaked WhatsApps show that the Minister was arguing against the ban on visiting. Can she say why the ban was sustained for so long throughout the pandemic, and what plans she has to ensure that families with loved ones in care homes have the right to visit if this ever happens again?

Question

The front page of today’s Telegraph, which reveals that the medical advice was not followed, will be heartbreaking for so many families up and down the country, re-opening the grief that so many felt about the loss of their loved ones. I have listened carefully to the Minister’s responses, and she has basically said that she is unable to compel the public inquiry to move more quickly—that it is above her pay grade. But what she could do now is commit to lobbying the Government to complete that public inquiry before the end of the year, and to doing everything she can to bring those answers forward for all those families who are today feeling so deeply hurt and upset.

Question

To reiterate the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy) just made, every time there is a statement, every time there is a revelation, every time such an issue is raised, whether in this House or in the press, it triggers trauma for many people who have not healed from losing their loved ones, who were not able to go to funerals, and who were not able to seek closure. I hope that the Minister will reflect on her response in that context.

Question

As the Minister will recall, I spoke for the Opposition on dozens of regulations to do with the pandemic, and on occasions I questioned some of the decisions that were made. The suspicion was that sometimes political rather than medical or scientific decisions were taken. What has come out overnight has caused me to question that again, and I hope she can understand why. It is an important question of trust for us as politicians but also for the wider public.

Question

My heart goes out to the bereaved families and I cannot imagine what they must be feeling again today. My heart also goes out to care workers, many of whom lost their lives having contracted covid. Many also survived but are now living with long covid and have lost their livelihoods. The Minister may be aware that advice from the Industrial Injuries Advisory Council that would give compensation to just some of those brave workers is currently with the Department for Work and Pensions. In a recent meeting with me, the Minister told me that it could take years for that to be taken up. What conversations has this Minister had with the DWP and, if it will take years, will her Department set up a compensation scheme so that those brave workers get the support they deserve?

Question

I thank the Minister for her answers. Everyone’s thoughts and prayers are with those who lost loved ones. The impact of the covid lockdown on mental health was felt most keenly in care homes. To see what the elderly people were put through, and learn that the full protections were not in place and they could not see loved ones at the end of life, is totally unacceptable. What would the Minister offer to those who lost precious hours with those they loved and adored on hearing this tragic news today?