Covid care home policy was 'least worst decision'
Mr Hancock was responsible for care services in England where more than 43,000 people died with Covid between March 2020 and January 2022, many of them in the early weeks of the pandemic.On Monday, the lawyer representing a bereaved families group quoted a civil servant who said the high number of deaths in care homes amounted to "generational slaughter".Responding to questions from the barrister to the inquiry Jacqueline Carey KC, Mr Hancock said: "You know there may be campaign groups and politically-motivated bodies that say other things."What I care about though is the substance, and frankly that's what this inquiry should care about after all the millions of pounds that have been spent on it."Inquiry chair Lady Hallett, responded: "And I can assure you, Mr Hancock, it is what I care about."The current section of the Covid inquiry is likely to be "emotive and distressing", Ms Carey has warned.
'Easy to say in hindsight'
Questioned by Ms Carey, Mr Hancock acknowledged the discharge policy was an "incredibly contentious issue".But he added: "Nobody has yet provided me with an alternative that was available at the time that would have saved more lives."And he told the inquiry: "It's the least-worst decision that could have been taken at the time."When the pandemic hit early in 2020, hospital patients were rapidly discharged into care homes in a bid to free up beds and prevent the NHS from becoming overwhelmed.However, there was no policy in place requiring patients to be tested before admission, or for asymptomatic patients to isolate, until mid-April.This was despite growing awareness of the risks of people without Covid-19 symptoms being able to spread the virus.As his seventh and likely final appearance at the inquiry drew to a close, Mr Hancock admitted his overstretched department was "unbelievably busy, responding to the biggest civil emergency in 100 years".In sometimes tense exchanges, he fielded questions from Kate Beattie representing disabled people's organisations and Pete Weatherby, barrister for Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice UK.Mr Weatherby asked whether Mr Hancock had used the lack of "levers" available to him to act on Covid at the start of the pandemic as "an excuse for things when they went wrong"."This is a very easy thing to say with hindsight," Mr Hancock responded."The reality of the situation is that I had to act with the tools that I had and that's what I did, and drove the life-saving effort to make sure things weren't even worse than they were."Elsewhere, in response to wide-ranging questioning, Mr Hancock described the concept of blanket 'do not attempt resuscitation' orders as "abhorrent".He said he only saw this happen once "and we jumped on it".If that policy was more widespread, he said: "It did not come to my attention and, if it did happen, it's totally unacceptable."Mr Hancock said the social care sector "was badly in need of and remains badly in need of reform", adding that in the event of another pandemic, he feared the situation had become "worse not better".Lawyer Nicola Brook said Mr Hancock knew at the time that many care homes did not have the ability to isolate people who would be discharged from hospital, and that Covid was airborne."It's frankly ridiculous and insulting that he says they tried to throw a protective ring around care homes when his department's policies caused Covid to spread like wildfire amongst society's most vulnerable loved ones," she said.
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The Guardian
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Douglas Chamberlain obituary
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Not content with training health professionals, he taught cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) to more than 100,000 volunteers from his community in East Sussex, and deployed them to carry out tests of the automatic defibrillators that became available from the 1980s. He was the principal consultant to the Department of Health when it rolled out its first experimental programme of defibrillators in public places between 2000 and 2002. It showed that members of the public could respond as fast as healthcare professionals, and that they saved many lives. In 1971, soon after taking up his first consultant post as the sole cardiologist at the Royal Sussex County hospital, Brighton, Chamberlain had the experience of losing a patient even though the ambulance had arrived in good time. In the face of scepticism from his medical colleagues, he decided to take responsibility for resuscitation away from doctors and give it to the people who would reach a patient first – the ambulance crews. 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Chamberlain went on to develop the further training of paramedics as practitioners in emergency care, who would carry out tasks such as taking histories and prescribing that were previously in the hands of doctors only. He combined a powerful drive to get things done with an ability to build coalitions to take his ideas forward. In the 1970s he found that training in resuscitation in the community was a piecemeal affair, with organisations such as the Red Cross, St John's Ambulance and the British Heart Foundation setting their own standards. Over a drink, he brought together colleagues from other specialties, including anaesthetics and emergency medicine, to found the Community Resuscitation Council, later Resuscitation Council UK. The council ran conferences and published guidelines that achieved consensus across the specialities on how to approach patients who had collapsed. 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Yet he always had time to offer wise advice to anyone who asked him for help. He is survived by Jennifer, his four children, Mary, Frances, Peter and David, nine grandchildren and his sisters. Douglas Anthony Chamberlain, cardiologist, born 4 April 1931; died 22 May 2025
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