The basis in which the Equality and Human Rights Commission said the Labour Party committed unlawful harassment of Jewish people has been undermined after a court challenge was settled.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission’s report on anti-Semitism in the Labour Party, when it finally appeared in late October 2020, stated that it could find only two instances in which Labour members had broken the law – involving Ken Livingstone and Pam Bromley.
Mr Livingstone and Ms Bromley launched a judicial review of this finding in January 2021 – and that has now been settled out of court in a humiliating climbdown, not only for the EHRC but for the Labour Party and so-called charity the Campaign Against Antisemitism.
You see, it was the EHRC that made the offer for a settlement.
Here’s the Morning Star:
The two politicians accepted a deal offered by the EHRC, in which each side withdraws from the case and bears its own costs.
Mr Livingstone and Ms Bromley said in response to the settlement offer: “We believe that, deep down, the EHRC understands that its investigation was flawed and that it acted unlawfully.
“That’s probably why they were willing to settle the case without recovering a penny of their exorbitant costs.”
[They said:] “We were worried that the purpose and effect of the EHRC report would be to shut down criticism of Israel by giving credence to false accusations of anti-semitism.
“Rather than fighting this case for potentially another year or more, we believe we need to refocus our resources on tackling the Israel lobby’s current efforts to stifle pro-Palestine speech in schools, universities and other sectors.”
It is understood the EHRC legal costs were over £215,000, while the Labour Party and the Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA) also spent tens of thousands of pounds in legal fees.
Mr Livingstone’s and Ms Bromley’s costs amounted to £35,000 and were funded from a fighting fund established at the end of 2019 by former Labour MP Chris Williamson from the costs he won from the Labour Party.
The EHRC has said that it stands by its report.
But it is a claim that doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. If the EHRC was so sure its investigation and the report that followed it was correct, then why make an offer to settle the matter before any of the evidence has been heard?
Why deny the Labour Party – and the Campaign Against Antisemitism, that got involved for reasons that escape This Writer – the opportunity even to have their say?
If you’re sure of your facts, then wouldn’t the only reason you’d withdraw from a court case be if you could extract a statement from the other side that they were wrong?
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Off the hook? Baroness Mone. One wonders whether she has darkened the doors of the House of Lords again, now Rishi Sunak appears to have cancelled any court action over the PPE procurement scandal involving her.
It seems that – under pressure from UK prime minister Rishi Sunak, whose government green-lit a torrent of corrupt PPE procurement deals during the Covid-19 crisis – judges in our courts have withdrawn permission to challenge PPE procurement deals on any level at all.
Despite the fact that enormous amounts of public money were handed over to friends and cronies of the Conservative government in return for nothing at all useful, these judges have said there is no public interest in how that public money is spent.
Jolyon Maugham of the Good Law Project, which brought judicial review cases on many of these PPE deals, has taken to ‘X’ (formerly Twitter) to explain what has happened:
Before that threat, we were generally being allowed to bring public interest procurement challenges, and other judicial reviews. Since that threat there has not been a single case, of any kind, in which a court has accepted that Good Law Project has a right to access the courts.
And after that statement – of course correlation is not causation but the correlation is striking – Good Law Project felt obliged to settle all of its cases about the Conservative Party's corrupt procurement practices. More here. https://t.co/T2iX4BthZE
In these pages from 'Bringing Down Goliath' (https://t.co/vcioQXl3De) I analyse the Courts' response in terms which are depressing – but also unsurprising to those who know how England works. pic.twitter.com/Jj1WfX9Skg
The pages from Mr Maugham’s book carry two stand-out passages for This Writer. First is this:
“‘I have the greatest respect for our judiciary and the rule of law in this country,’ wrote Rishi Sunak, before proceeding to threaten a new measure ‘which he would activate in the event of judicial recidivism*’. You can threaten judges who find against you or you can claim respect for the rule of law, but you can’t do both.”
Then we have this: “Our senior judges are drawn from an incredibly narrow section of society. They are the overwhelming beneficiary of the status quo and, the statistics show, went to school and university with those in government whose acts they now judge. Taken as a class, their politics and social outlook are bound to align with those who hold political and cultural power.”
Put it all together and we may conclude that judicial reviews of PPE procurement processes were halted not just because judges were threatened with a loss of power, but because they didn’t want to find against their friends in government and business.
And that brings us to Michelle Mone, who recommended PPE Medpro to provide Personal Protective Equipment to the UK government during the Covid crisis?
It won a contract via the Tory government’s illegal “fast track” – and then failed to come up with the goods; the government said the equipment wasn’t up to scratch, although the firm reckoned it passed inspections.
Baroness Mone and her family allegedly made £65 million from Medpro’s profits. This Site heard about this scandal in November last year, and shortly afterwards, she took a leave of absence from the House of Lords.
Nothing was heard of her for months, and then she suddenly reappeared, being photographed at fashionable London locations:
Is this the reason? Was she tipped off that it was possible for her to return to the UK because Rishi Sunak had made sure she would be protected from any kind of punishment for her actions, and she would not have to return the millions she took from the public purse?
*Recidivism: “the tendency of convicted criminals to continue to offend”. So Sunak was comparing judges with criminals, despite the evidence that it was his government that had behaved illegally.
The High Court in London: once again, judges here have overruled the government, meaning Rishi Sunak and his followers were trying to break the law.
Well, it’s only money, isn’t it? And the behaviour of Rishi Sunak and the Cabinet Office shows that the UK clearly has oodles and boodles of long green to splash about.
Sunak’s government was warned before it launched its court bid to legalise its decision to withhold Boris Johnson’s WhatsApp messages, notebooks and diaries from the Covid Inquiry, that it was doomed to failure.
And now that failure has come to pass – at a huge cost to the public purse.
It turns out that one of the judges of this case, Lord Justice Dingemanns, is a rugby fanatic – so the media are full of comments that he has firmly kicked the government’s attempt at a Covid cover-up into touch.
He and co-judge Mr Justice Garnham have also applied common sense to the affair
and told the two sides to get together and work out what’s relevant to the COVID Inquiry and what’s not… The judges sensibly suggested that the Cabinet Office should appeal to Baroness Hallett about what’s relevant and let her decide.
Sunak and his civil servants have now backed down – a decision for which we should all be grateful as otherwise this could have gone all the way up to the Supreme Court.
But the whole affair has incensed campaigners including the Covid Bereaved Families for Justice
who not surprisingly have condemned the legal fight as “a desperate waste of time and money”.
Watch this develop into a swingeing attack on Sunak and his lackeys as the Covid Inquiry progresses – whenever any information that the Cabinet Office tried to censor comes to light.
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Rishi Sunak: this little howler pushed up Covid infections massively. If Rishi Sunak didn’t consult scientists before making it happen, he could be in serious trouble with the Covid inquiry. Is that why he’s trying to hide information from that investigation?
Allegations that the government ignored scientific advice during the Covid-19 pandemic have shifted the focus of the inquiry into its actions at that time onto Rishi Sunak and his ‘Eat Out to Help Out’ fiasco.
Here’s the gist:
“As far as I am concerned, it was a spectacularly stupid idea and an obscene way to spend public money.” https://t.co/gfWw70IMZW
The article says the inquiry will focus partly on Sunak – particularly over the way the Treasury failed to involve scientists in decisions and the formulation of policy.
Inquiry chair Baroness Hallett has sent questions to then-prime minister Boris Johnson, asking if scientific evidence and opinion was sought before ‘Eat Out to Help Out’ was launched…
which appears not to have been the case.
The Observer article states:
Prof John Edmunds of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, who was a member of the Sage committee of advisers to ministers and who has submitted written evidence to the inquiry, said the controversial Eat Out to Help Out scheme – which gave people discounts for eating in restaurants and pubs – was never discussed with scientists.
Eat Out to Help Out was launched in August 2020. It allowed diners to claim 50% off more than 160m meals at a cost to the Treasury of about £850m. In the process, it also drove new Covid-19 infections up by between 8 and 17%, according to a study carried out by Thiemo Fetzer, an economist at the University of Warwick, a few weeks later.
“If we had [been consulted], I would have been clear what I thought about it,” said Edmunds. “As far as I am concerned, it was a spectacularly stupid idea and an obscene way to spend public money.”
That’s interesting, because Sunak himself is on video record as having insisted that he spoke to scientists about ‘Eat Out to Help Out’:
Sunak Lies. Tories lie.
Eat Out To Help Out caused an increase of up to 18% in Covid infections.
Another critical decision set to be investigated by Hallett was made in September 2020, when the government was urged by Sage to impose a mini-lockdown to dampen rising case numbers, with both Johnson and Sunak opposing the move.
“I said then that the question was either do it now and get on top of the epidemic and keep it under control, or be forced into doing it in a few weeks’ time, by which time the epidemic will be much worse,” Edmunds said.
“There will be many more hospitalisations and deaths, and you will have to take more stringent action. Unfortunately that is exactly what happened.”
Considering the accusations against him, it may be no surprise that Rishi Sunak’s government – through the Cabinet Office, is trying to deny the Covid inquiry access to WhatsApp messages between government ministers.
The claim is that it would be an invasion of privacy to let the inquiry have (for example) all of the WhatsApp messages Boris Johnson sent via his personal phone because they would include “unambiguously irrelevant” material.
But Sunak and the government want to be the arbiters of which material is relevant and which isn’t –
#Ridge – The govt has launched a legal challenge so it doesn't have to hand over unredacted WhatsApp messages to the covid enquiry… what's it got to hide?
Robert Jenrick – We want to hand over absolutely anything that has anything to do with C19 & that's the right thing to do pic.twitter.com/Aw6eYQ6G1O
-and that creates a serious credibility problem: why should the organisation under investigation dictate what evidence is permissible or not?
The Cabinet Office – on behalf of Sunak’s government – has launched a judicial review to keep some of the WhatsApps (and other material) away from the inquiry. Apparently this is going to cost you, me and the rest of the UK public a fortune:
Rishi Sunak's WhatsApp legal battle with Covid inquiry could cost 'well into six figures'
"The cost is likely to be several hundred thousands of pounds of taxpayers' money," says lawyer who worked on Hillsborough tragedy and now representing bereavedhttps://t.co/rYC5yorJyE
(Again: it won’t cost taxpayers’ money – it will cost public money. We then pay tax according to what the Treasury reckons is needed to keep inflation from going through the roof. You can probably tell that the current mob aren’t very good at making that prediction.)
(Oh – and we’re also funding the Covid inquiry, meaning we’re footing the bill for both sides in the dispute.)
But here’s a twist:
NEW: Sunak is simultaneously using the Covid Inquiry as a reason not to hand over information to the public under FOIA and also refusing to hand over information to the Covid Inquiry.
It seems to me that it is actually reasonable to withhold the information on ‘Eat Out to Help Out’ from the Good Law Project – for the time being. The Cabinet Office has said it is handing “all relevant material to the Covid Inquiry – and ‘Eat Out to Help Out’ is definitely relevant to the Covid inquiry.
The claim – by the Cabinet Office – is that it has given all relevant information to the inquiry, so we would be justified in expecting the ‘Eat Out to Help Out’ stuff to have gone there already.
Refusing to hand other information to the inquiry on grounds that it is not relevant does not contradict this claim.
But it makes the result of the judicial inquiry all the more important.
Because if the government wins in court, but doesn’t hand over information about ‘Eat Out to Help Out’ over to the inquiry, it will have no excuse not to hand it over to the Good Law Project.
Right?
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Boris Johnson is pictured toasting departing Downing Street comms chief Lee Cain at a leaving party on November 13, 2020, that the prime minister told Parliament he never attended: the Metropolitan Police never fined him for attending this event. Why?
This is highly interesting!
The High Court will hear the first stage of a challenge against the Metropolitan Police over the force’s investigation into former prime minister Boris Johnson’s attendance at Number 10 parties during lockdown.
Mr Johnson received a fixed penalty notice (FPN) over a birthday party in the Cabinet Room in June 2020, but faced no further action over other gatherings covered by the Met’s Operation Hillman inquiry into events in No 10 and Whitehall.
Legal campaign group the Good Law Project (GLP) has launched a legal challenge, alongside former deputy assistant commissioner of the Met Lord Paddick, against the force over its investigation.
The GLP says the Met failed to send questionnaires to Mr Johnson, and has since failed to explain why, or how the force concluded his attendance at other events was lawful.
The group will ask Mr Justice Swift to grant permission for a judicial review of the Met’s handling of the investigation at a hearing in London at 10.30am on Wednesday.
It seems the issue is why Boris Johnson (and others?) seem to have avoided being penalised for attending other parties, besides those for which they have been fined:
Jo Maugham, GLP director, said: “We can’t understand – and the Met won’t disclose – how Boris Johnson dodged fines for going to parties that junior civil servants were fined for attending.
“But what it looks like is special treatment for the powerful.”
I’m hoping a judicial review is granted, and can happen before the Partygate inquiry takes place. I wonder how any decision here would impact on what happens there?
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After concerns were raised about the apparent ‘open door’ policy of the Conservative Party that seems to mean foreign powers could influence who becomes our prime minister if the choice goes to party members, an application for a judicial review has been launched.
As it happens, the current leadership contest may not go to an election by members, so for now the question may be academic.
But that doesn’t mean Tory rules don’t need to be tightened – and the best time is always now.
Here are the details:
As the Conservative party begins the process of electing another leader – and therefore, a de facto election of the Prime Minister – here’s a summation of our application for judicial review on the way it elects its leader. 🧵⬇️
We argued the public has a right to know for the following reasons:
1️⃣It is unrepresentative.
The membership accounts for around 0.2% of the population and includes non-UK citizens and under-age voters. There seems to be minimal checks on new members.
2️⃣It is unsafe. We asked the Conservative Party to provide information about the demographics of the electorate, the efforts taken to validate party members and the process of securing the election from interference. They refused.
In August, they replied to us arguing that the election is "a private matter for its members under our Constitution" and that "it does not carry out any public functions".
So, on 10 October 2022, Tortoise formally submitted an application for judicial review of the Conservative Party’s refusal to disclose information about the way it elects its leaders.
This morning on @BBCr4today Tortoise co-founder and editor James Harding asked: "By 6pm on Monday evening we could find ourselves where we go to another membership contest. How do we know that's secure?"
.@CatNeilan this evening reporting that Conservative party members are 'already seeking to influence the outcome' of the leadership vote. More here: https://t.co/npGnAGXq2V
“We registered Archie, our pet tortoise, as a member; a couple of foreign nationals; then Margaret Roberts, the maiden name of the late Lady Thatcher. The Conservative Party took the £25 membership fee. We got membership numbers and were invited to hustings.”
Damning.
Let’s hope the courts allow the judicial review.
We should look forward to learning the result.
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Lorraine Cox: she has motor neurone disease, but was denied PIP because she could say she would die within six months. It seems 3,000 others who also couldn’t predict their own deaths have died without receiving PIP in the last year.
It is one year since the Tories pledged to review their rules on which terminally-ill people could claim Personal Independence Payment – and it seems more than 3,000 would-be PIP claimants had to die before they were forced to do it by a court ruling.
They died without receiving PIP, because they could not predict when they were likely to die.
This Site celebrated like many others when Lorraine Cox won her case demanding a judicial review of the rules that said only people with particular terminal illness could claim PIP – and only if they knew they would die within six months.
Now we discover that – if recent trends have continued – then 3,000 people died between the Tories pledging a review that seems not to have happened and the Tory defeat in the Cox case.
I asked what happened to those people while Ms Cox was fighting her case in court.
Well, now we know.
According to The Mirror:
DWP figures show 17,070 people died waiting for a Personal Independence Payment (PIP) decision in five previous years.
If that pattern repeated, more than 3,000 will have died in similar cases since the review launched last summer.
Charities have demanded change.
The Tories are saying the Covid-19 crisis delayed their review.
Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.
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Facepalm: Boris Johnson realising the enormity of the many mistakes his government has made?
I’ve been compiling a little file. It’s marked “Tory Covid-19 stupidity”. When I say it’s little, I mean it is huge – and getting bigger all the time.
Would you like to read some of the examples I’ve found over the last week or so?
Let’s have a look:
Possibly the stupidest idea the Tories had was to remove England’s chief nurse, Ruth May, from Downing Street press conferences after she refused to support government advisor Dominic Cummings. The incident happened on June 1, two days after England’s deputy chief medical officer Jonathan Van Tam sparked headlines by saying that lockdown rules “apply to all” when asked about Mr Cummings.
Van Tam has not appeared at press conferences since May 30, and on June 1 Ms May was removed from the line-up and Health Secretary Matt Hancock had to present the slides on the progress of Covid-19 himself, to the best of his limited ability.
It has since been revealed that everybody appearing on the briefings is now required to support the government’s position: “First it was Dominic Cummings, then easing lockdown and now the R-rate and the two-metre rule.”
“Asked to comment, No 10 said it strongly denied the claims that Ms May had been dropped over her views on Mr Cummings and added that health and scientific advisers would continue to take questions in the briefings.” That was on June 13.
The decision to remove Ms May raised questions that the Tory government is not “following the science”, as ministers have been claiming for months, unless “the science” agrees with their own narrative.
As Liberal Democrat health spokesperson Munira Wilson wrote to Hancock on Sunday, “By silencing [the experts], the government is not only denying the public the opportunity to hear from them, but also threatening the confidence the public has in the government’s approach to lifting lockdown, and more broadly in how and when government is using and sharing expert advice.”
To increase the embarrassment, Chancellor Rishi Sunak admitted that the government could overrule experts like Sir Patrick Vallance and Chris Whitty on relaxing social distancing rules – disproving its own claim to be “following the science”.
But Downing Street strongly denied claims that Ms May had been dropped over her views on Cummings, and added that health and scientific advisers would continue to take questions in the briefings.
The trouble is, by that time the damage had been done and the credibility of Boris Johnson’s government had been dealt another crippling blow – by its own hand.
Next:
“The Government quietly relaxed strict controls to stop the spread of coronavirus in hospitals at the height of the crisis,” according to the Daily Telegraph.
“Hospitals were instructed to avoid using temporary staff to lower risk of spreading the virus.” The article goes on to state that this decree was soon reversed – indicating that it was a mistake that produced bad results.
The Torygraph seems highly critical of the Johnson government’s attitude altogether, in fact. This op-ed piece takes no prisoners: “Having been widely, and rightly, condemned for a slow and inadequate response to the pandemic, ministers are doubly shy of lifting the restrictions for fear of acting prematurely, getting it wrong again, and incubating a second wave.
“They have some reason to worry. The rate of new infections still seems relatively high compared to much of the rest of Europe, while the shambles of the UK’s “test, trace and isolate” initiative gives little confidence that social distancing measures can be safely abandoned without more deaths.
“We seem to have ended up with the worst of all worlds – the highest per capita death rate of any major economy, the most extreme form of continuing lockdown, and according to the latest OECD assessment, the biggest economic hit.”
Next:
It seems that, in addition to all the organisations tasked with handling a pandemic that were scrapped by previous Tory prime ministers, Boris Johnson closed the last one himself six months before Covid-19 arrived.
The Mailreports this one: “Boris Johnson scrapped a team of Cabinet ministers tasked with protecting the UK from a pandemic six months before coronavirus arrived, a Mail investigation has found.
“The group, officially known as the Threats, Hazards, Resilience and Contingency Committee (THRCC), was supposed to ensure the UK was ready to cope with a pandemic.
“It was mothballed by former prime minister Theresa May on the advice of Cabinet Secretary Sir Mark Sedwill so ministers and officials could focus on Brexit [and] abolished by Mr Johnson days after he entered No10 last July as part of a vow to streamline Whitehall.”
Shades of David Cameron’s “war on red tape”!
Only a few years before, medical experts had believed a strain of SARS to be the next pandemic – but it had fizzled out. It might have been possible to justify scrapping pandemic response precautions on grounds that modern medical methods made them unnecessary in the light of this – but that wasn’t the reason and this represents a major blunder.
Next:
Oh, dear, Johnson and his cronies just can’t seem to stop being racist!
“The British Medical Association has demanded an explanation from the government following reports that pages containing recommendations to protect black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) communities were removed from last week’s Covid-19 disparity report,” reported The Guardian.
“Dr Chaand Nagpaul CBE, the BMA council chair, noted his concern over reports that 69 pages covering seven recommendations were removed from last week’s Public Health England’s report.
“The review was widely criticised for failing to investigate possible reasons for the disparities or make recommendations on how to address them.”
Perhaps government flunkies found it hard to include the words “persistent government racism” in their report?
The recommendations appear to have been published now. In a letter to the Equalities Minister, Public Health England chief executive Duncan Selbie wrote: “The clear message from stakeholders was the requirement for tangible actions, provided at scale and pace, with a commitment to address the underlying factors of inequality.”
And the seven recommendations were (translated from PHE technobabble):
1. Collect and record ethnicity data during NHS treatment, and ensure that it is available to help health teams reduce the impact of Covid-19 on BAME communities.
2. Research the social, cultural, structural, economic, religious, and commercial factors that affect the appearance of Covid-19 in BAME communities, and develop easy-to-implement programmes to reduce risk and improve health.
3. Improve access, experiences and outcomes of NHS, local government and Integrated Care Systems commissioned services by BAME communities. This to be achieved via regular equity audits; use of Health Impact Assessments; integration of equality into quality systems; good representation of black and minority ethnic communities among staff at all levels; sustained workforce development and employment practices; ad trust-building dialogue with service users.
4. Develop risk assessment tools to reduce the risk of exposure to and infection with Covid-19, especially for key workers working with a large cross section of the general public or in contact with those infected with Covid-19.
5. Fund, develop and implement Covid-19 education and prevention campaigns, in partnership with BAME and faith communities; rebuild trust with and uptake of routine clinical services; reinforce messages on early identification, testing and diagnosis; and prepare communities to take full advantage of contact tracing, antibody testing and vaccine availability.
6. Accelerate efforts to target health promotion and disease prevention programmes for non-communicable diseases promoting healthy weight, physical activity, smoking cessation, mental well-being and effective management of chronic conditions including diabetes, hypertension and asthma.
7. Ensure that Covid-19 recovery plans actively reduce inequalities caused by the wider factors that affect health, to create long term, sustainable change. Fully funded, sustained and meaningful approaches to tackling ethnic inequalities must be prioritised.
There they are. Now we must all monitor what happens – or else the government is likely to simply shelve the letter and do nothing (as we have seen so many times before).
Given the enormity of these blunders, is it any surprise that the government is facing litigation over its failures so far?
Matt Hancock is likely to be dragged into court over the government’s insistence on slapping vulnerable patients with “Do Not Attempt Resuscitation” orders.
This has been going on at least since lockdown was ordered and This Site has reported on it often. The government and various health organisations have announced that the demand for these orders to be imposed on patients en masse, rather than discussed with them individually as required by law, has been withdrawn – but we have found that this is not the case.
Kate Masters, writing in The Independent, stated: “There appears to have been a national directive for doctors to put emergency plans in place for people at risk of becoming very unwell if they catch Covid-19, even without them being able to engage in the process. Just a few simple pieces of information would help patients and medics. These include the facts about DNACPR, including that they can be made without your involvement if you don’t want to discuss the matter, and that full information must be provided as to why this decision has been made on your behalf.
“Matt Hancock, the health secretary, has refused my request to provide this information on the NHS website… Instead, he has said the information currently available is sufficient. In fact, the information … is confusing about DNACPR and gives a misleading impression. It says “you can change your mind and your DNACPR status at any time”. This is just not right. Except in the special circumstances where a patient makes an advance decision to refuse treatment, DNACPR status is not something a patient always chooses, but is often a decision made by the treating team after consultation with the patient and, where appropriate, relevant family members.
“The legal requirement to consult gives the patient or family the opportunity to seek a second opinion if they are concerned about the decision or think it is premature or inappropriate.
“I am prepared to go as far as I need to ensure people are given access to this information about their rights. That’s why I’m now planning to take Hancock to court over the matter. I am raising funds to pursue the case using crowdfunding, and encourage you to add your support.”
Meanwhile, families whose loved ones have died of Covid-19 are demanding an independent public inquiry into the government’s handling of the crisis, with 500 relatives of people who have died during the pandemic launching the Covid-19 Bereaved Families’ campaign.
And healthcare staff are also demanding a public inquiry – into the deaths of hundreds of their colleagues and failings of PPE (personal protective equipment).
The Doctors’ Association (DAUK), supported by the Good Law Project and charity Hourglass, is calling for a judicial review into the decision by the government not to hold a public inquiry into the planning, procurement, and provision of personal protective equipment (PPE) for health and social care staff.
Nursing Notes tells us: “With healthcare being left “wearing visors made by teenagers on 3D printers” and “care workers being told to share the same mask”, the group has raised concerns that the inadequacy of PPE may have contributed wholly or in part to the tragic deaths of health and social care workers.
“Despite a petition receiving over 120,000 signatures supporting a public inquiry, there has been no formal response from the government.”
Let us hope that all these groups and individuals get to have their day in court – before Johnson succeeds in his plan to stifle judges’ ability to force his government to abide by the law.
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The late Mr Gibson and his daughter Doctor Gardner: she’s taking Matt Hancock to court and he may have met his match.
This is what happens when government policy on Covid-19 cases causes the death of someone related to a doctor.
Cathy Gardner launched a high court claim on Friday (June 12) after her father, Michael Gibson, a retired superintendent of births, marriages and deaths, died in an Oxfordshire care home in early April.
He became infected after a patient who tested positive for the virus was discharged from hospital into the home.
It was Tory policy to send infected care home residents back to their homes, where they would be able to infect other residents in a closed system that meant the virus could spread like wildfire.
They also took no precautions to prevent staff who travelled between homes from spreading the disease from one facility to another.
The request for a judicial review alleges failings “have led to large numbers of unnecessary deaths and serious illnesses” and have been “aggravated by the making of wholly disingenuous, misleading and – in some cases – plainly false statements suggesting that everything necessary has been done to protect care homes during the pandemic”.
Several [families of care home residents] have raised complaints with hospitals and care homes about infection control, including the discharging of Covid-negative residents into homes with outbreaks.
Thirty-five councils have also blamed virus spread on discharges with hospital patients sent to homes that did not have sufficient protective equipment and/or facilities to isolate infected residents.
Other cases include a decision to discharge John Heywood, 83, from Addenbrooke’s hospital in Cambridge into a Peterborough care facility with an outbreak. He contracted the virus and survived, but his family have lodged a formal complaint with Addenbrooke’s.
Wasn’t Addenbrooke’s the site of a PR stunt by Boris Johnson in the run-up to the general election last year? Yes – he was booed out of it. No doubt hospital chiefs will be delighted to have yet another reason to resent Johnson’s presence in Downing Street.
Neither the Department of Health and Social Care nor NHS England are commenting on the case while it is ongoing.
But we’re going to have to keep a close eye on it.
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Ventilator: if you’re disabled, and you catch Covid-19, a doctor might deny you access to one of these and let you die. If he does so without asking you, he’s abusing your human rights. Matt Hancock is being told to step in and stop this – or be slapped down by the courts.
Remember when This Site reported that doctors were being ordered to deny coronavirus care to people with disabilities?
Eventually it seemed the people at the top of the NHS put a stop to the practice, telling hospitals, GPs and NHS managers not to issue such letters.
So why are we being told that medical professionals are still being told not to revive people with disabilities who are suffering from Covid-19?
The issue is that doctors are being told to issue these letters about disabled people, without consulting those people on whether they agree with the decision. That’s an abuse of human rights.
And now it seems Matt Hancock and the Department of Health and Social Care may face a court order to halt the practice.
The problem is that the government is not directly responsible for the issuing of these letters – doctors are.
But law firm Leigh Day, acting for Kate Masters, whose family has already fought a successful legal action against a DNR order, says the government is failing to provide proper guidance on this issue.
So Hancock is facing an ultimatum. Either he honours the following series of requests:
Masters wants the government to use its emergency coronavirus laws to put several safeguards in place. These state that doctors must not issue DNR notices unless the patient and/or their family/carers are:
Told “that it is not appropriate to consider CPR and why”.
Provided with “an opportunity to discuss their views and wishes regarding receiving CPR with the healthcare professional making the decision”.
Given “clear information as to how the healthcare professional will take into account their views/wishes, the relevance of clinical judgement regarding efficacy of CPR (including being clear consent is not required) and how resource constraints are taken into account”.
“Informed of the DNR decision and the reasons why (which must be individual to the patient)”.
Advised “they can request a second opinion if they disagree with the decision”.
Or, if he fails to respond by May 7 (tomorrow, at the time of writing), then he’ll be dragged into court to face a judicial review that could force him to treat people with disabilities with the same respect as people with money.
I think he’ll take the court option, even though the request is perfectly reasonable.
Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.
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