Ministers ignored “alarms bells” over Covid care homes policy, Labour says

Labour’s Wes Streeting has accused the government of ignoring the “alarms bells” sounded over its approach to care homes at the start of the Covid pandemic after the High Court ruled today that its policy broke the law.

The High Court concluded that the government’s policy of discharging untested patients from hospitals into care homes was unlawful because it failed to take into account the risk to residents from non-symptomatic transmission.

Commenting on the ruling, the Shadow Health Secretary said: “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.

“They 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 make sure that this never happens again.”

Dr Cathy Gardner and Fay Harris brought the case against former Health Secretary Matt Hancock and Public Health England after their fathers died after contracting Covid while living in care homes in the spring of 2020.

Gardner told Sky News that she wanted to “hold the government to account” for failing to protect her father, as well as other care home residents. She strongly criticised Hancock, saying that her “chin nearly hit the floor” when she heard him claim he had thrown a “protective ring” around care homes.

“All of us who were involved in any way with care homes at the start of the pandemic knew that was absolutely not true. It was a lie. It was a lie then and it is a lie now,” she said.

“They didn’t do anything to protect my father, there was no help given to care homes and the death toll in those first few weeks of the pandemic was catastrophic.”

Government guidance issued on April 2nd 2020 stated: “Negative tests are not required prior to transfers/admissions into the care home.” Testing and isolation requirements for discharges and new admissions were first introduced on April 15th.

Hancock said in a press conference in May 2020: “Right from the start, we’ve tried to throw a protective ring around our care homes. We set out our first advice in February and as the virus grew, we strengthened it throughout. We’ve made sure that care homes have the resources they need to control the spread of infection.”

The former Health Secretary later claimed he had not said the phrase “protective ring” until much later in the pandemic, in reference to what the government was doing for its ‘winter plan’. Labour’s then Shadow Health Secretary Jonathan Ashworth accused him of a “clumsily blatant attempt to rewrite history”.