Matt Hancock has claimed that every death in care homes ‘ weighed heavily’ on him during the pandemic – but a thread from a prominent doctor has slammed claims that he did all he could.
Recently Dominic Cummings alleged that the Health Secretary’s claim that he put a “shield” around care homes was “complete nonsense.”
He said that Mr Hancock told the PM “categorically in March that people will be tested before they went back to care homes”.
But Matt Hancock told MPs today at two select committees: “We set out a policy that people would be tested when tests were available, then I set about building the testing capacity for us to be able to deliver on that.”
He argued the “challenge was not just that we didn’t have the testing capacity” but there were concerns that people could falsely be told they did not have the disease.
Mr Hancock also said he cannot recall Prime Minister Boris Johnson expressing surprise about the care home situation when he returned from hospital in April.
“Not that I can remember,” the Health Secretary said.
He also told the committee that “Each and every death in a care home weighs heavily on me”.
Hancock said greater testing capacity at the beginning of the pandemic “would have been better” but argues there are “whole series of things that have been improved” since then.
Another comment he made was that he had not yet visited the Covid memorial wall, which may raise eyebrows.
He also said he had not seen any evidence that a shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE) provision for healthcare staff led to anybody dying of Covid.
This morning, before Hancock gave evidence, Palliative care doctor Rachel Clarke published a thread in which she claims that Matt Hancock has lied through the epidemic and she uses a series of tweets to back up her serious claims.
She was there on the frontline dealing with PPE issues in real-time during the height of the pandemic.
1.
“Today @matthancock will attempt to persuade the Commons that he’s behaved impeccably throughout this pandemic – and that Cummings’ accusations of serial lying are, themselves, a lie. But the fact is, @matthancock *has* lied during the pandemic – and I can prove it.”
2.
“At the end of March 2020, the government rhetoric was all about “protecting” care homes, even as care home workers appeared on social media reporting their terror at being provided with no PPE whatsoever. (2/16)”
3.
“At the time, I was working as a hospice doctor. Although hospices are classified as ‘hospitals’ in terms of clinical governance, when it comes to PPE they are counted as ‘care homes.” I.e: in supply chain terms, we were the lowest priority, just like care homes. (3/16)”
4.
“During the first wave, my hospice was supplied with the same official PPE as care homes. Namely, a single box containing one roll of plastic aprons, one box of gloves and one box of paper masks. We had 300 masks in total – enough to last 2 or 3 days at most. (4/16)”
5.
“Like care homes, we were desperate. We begged local schools, vets & businesses for donations of PPE without which, we feared, we would be unable to stay open safely. Doctors & nurses were already dying. We knew that without proper PPE, our staff could be infected at work. (5/16)”
6.
“By early April, despite the generosity of our local community, we were down to our last box of masks. Headlines about lack of PPE had, by this stage, propelled @matthancock into announcing, with much fanfare, a 24/7 NHS PPE “hotline” you could call for urgent supplies. (6/16)”
7.
“We innocently called the much-publicised hotline. Again and again and again. We emailed. We called. We emailed again. No answer to the messages and calls. Eventually my boss got through. (7/16)”
8.
“But the voice on the end of the phone said: we can’t help you. “I don’t think you understand,” said my boss. “If you can’t supply us with any more masks we will have to close the hospice tomorrow and send our [terminally ill] inpatients to A&E.” (8/16)”
9.
“The reply, incredibly, was the same: “We can’t help you.” This from the official emergency supply chain hotline. “Why don’t you try this number at the Department of Health?” the man said. So my boss called DoH. Guess what – closed after 5pm and on answerphone. (9/16)”
10.
“At this point, I started cry. I looked at my boss, himself so appalled, and couldn’t comprehend that our terminally ill patients meant so little to the government that they were willing to allow something this callous – this barbaric – to occur. (10/16)”
11.
““I will fix this,” I told my boss. I didn’t know how, but I was determined somehow to make it right. That night, after much begging & calls to an amazing charity – the @theHWF – we were given 1000 masks. The donation felt like a miracle. It meant our patients were saved. (11/16)”
12.
“But this was no thanks whatsoever to @matthancock or @DHSCgovuk. The fact is, no-one in government gave one single damn about my terminally ill hospice inpatients who faced eviction – in the last days of their life – because of government PPE failings. (12/16)”
13.
“It is the single most disgusting example of dereliction of duty I have ever encountered in my 12 years as a doctor. A truly hideous gulf between political rhetoric (“we’ll protect you!”) and actual reality (we’ll throw you to the wolves). (13/16)”
14.
“So when, today, @matthancock tells you that he’s never lied, that care homes were always protected, and that he threw a protective ring round them, please remember my hospice. Exactly like the country’s care homes, we were an afterthought, an irrelevance, hung out to dry. (14/16)”
15.
The fact is, no-one in power gave a thought to protecting our inpatients. They came within hours of being turfed out of their hospice to die in a Covid-ridden A&E. Because @matthancock – for all his fine words – had abandoned them. (15/16)
16.
He *did* lie. He *didn’t* protect care homes. And he’s lying again now in claiming otherwise. And – as someone who dedicates their entire professional life to caring for some of society’s most vulnerable members, our terminally ill – I think this absolutely stinks. (16/16)
Related: Hancock: No evidence to suggest medics died due to lack of PPE as #WeKnowYouAreLying trends
