Deborah Doyle, of Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice UK, gave a powerful address in front of the National Covid Memorial Wall opposite Parliament after the Covid Inquiry report was published
Families who lost loved ones during the pandemic hit out at the Tory government’s handling of the crisis in the wake of a damning Covid inquiry report.
Deborah Doyle, of Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice UK, gave a powerful address in front of the National Covid Memorial Wall opposite Parliament. The campaigner spoke out after a public inquiry concluded chaos at the heart of government and a failure to take Covid-19 seriously cost 23,000 in the first wave.
Ex-PM Boris Johnson presided over a “toxic” culture in Number 10 and regularly changed his mind, while cabinet members including health secretary Matt Hancock plus key scientists all failed to act with the urgency needed to tackle the virus, the report found.
READ MORE: Covid Inquiry concludes Boris Johnson’s late lockdowns killed thousands
Deborah, whose mum died during the pandemic, said: “The evidence from the inquiry is clear. Boris Johnson is blamed in black and white for the catastrophic mishandling of the pandemic. The government’s catastrophic mishandling of the pandemic led to thousands of avoidable deaths.
“We now know that many of our family members would still be alive today if it wasn’t for the leadership of Boris Johnson and his colleagues. As the report has found, the government’s approach to the pandemic was undermined from the beginning. If Johnson had listened to scientific advice and locked down even a week earlier, around 23,000 people could have been saved.
“Instead, throughout the pandemic Boris Johnson put his political reputation ahead of public safety. He pandered to his critics when the UK needed decisive action. In delaying lockdowns he made them longer, more damaging to the economy and less effective. He ignored scientific advice that didn’t fit his agenda and he ignored the impact of his decision on the frontline, repeating the mistakes of the first wave and prolonging the second.”
She added: “While we reflect and mourn what could have been, what extra years, days and hours we could have spent with our loved ones, we need to reflect on how we the public were left so vulnerable. We can’t just hope that we have better leaders in the future. The government must implement the safeguards recommended by the inquiry immediately otherwise we are no safer now than we were during the darkest days in the UK’s living memory.”
Mandy Phillips, 64, from Surrey, who lost her dad during the pandemic, told the Mirror : “I think it [the report] vindicated everything that I thought and lots of other people thought about what was actually going on at the time. So, personally, I’m very pleased. I’m particularly pleased about comments that were made or recorded about the behaviour of our Prime Minister at the time, Boris Johnson.”
Larry Byrne, 65, from Windsor, whose dad died during the first Covid wave, said: “I’m just gobsmacked because… it’s known they should have acted so much more quicker but they didn’t. And I just think, considering they were running our country, they acted unbelievably bad the way they did everything.”
The report included testimony from bereaved families who have become spokespeople for others across the UK. One of those is Joanna Goodman, co-founder of Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice. In her testimony she said: “I think I immediately found it very difficult to grieve.
“Not in the traditional sense, in terms of the funeral, obviously that was not available to us, but I found it very hard emotionally to feel the – to go through the natural emotional process of grieving. I think what was blocking me was that I felt very strongly that his death was not an inevitability.”
A member of Scottish Covid Bereaved said: “I feel that my mother was getting more and more nervous going into the second lockdown. I feel the Government were on TV every day talking about all these different things and there was no equality for her as an elderly lady.
“It was a case of ‘keep away from the elderly and vulnerable to protect them’. Meanwhile other people were in and out of each other’s bubbles and houses. There was no consideration for the elderly. I feel they were just numbers. My mum caught covid and died in the hospital.”
