Matt Hancock back at Covid inquiry for probe into pandemic impact on care homes
He will return on Wednesday to face questions specifically about the adult social care sector.
In a previous appearance before the inquiry he admitted the so-called protective ring he said had been put around care homes early in the pandemic was not an unbroken one and insisted he understands the strength of feeling people have on the issue.
At a Downing Street press conference on May 15 2020, Mr Hancock said: 'Right from the start, we've tried to throw a protective ring around our care homes.'
Bereaved families have previously branded this phrase a 'sickening lie' and a 'joke'.
When the pandemic hit in early 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.
A lawyer for the families from the Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice (CBFFJ) campaign group described Mr Hancock's appearance as a 'seminal moment of the Covid inquiry that many of our clients have been waiting for'.
Nicola Brook, from Broudie Jackson Canter which represents more than 7,000 families from CBFFJ, said: 'While Mr Hancock has given evidence to the inquiry before, this is the first time that he has been called early in a module, meaning he won't be able to simply respond to others' evidence.
'I only hope that he tells the truth about what he knew about the decision to discharge Covid-infected patients into care homes, which was the biggest scandal of the whole pandemic. Only then will our clients be able to get some form of closure.'
From Monday, module six of the inquiry will look at the effect the pandemic had on both the publicly and privately funded adult social care sector across the UK.
Among the issues to be examined will be decisions made by the UK Government and devolved administrations on moving people from hospitals into adult care and residential homes in the early stages of the pandemic.
The module will also consider how the pandemic was managed in care and residential homes, including infection prevention and control measures, testing for the virus, the availability and adequacy of personal protective equipment (PPE), and the restrictions on access to such locations by healthcare professionals and loved ones.
Caroline Abrahams, charity director at Age UK, said many older people in care homes 'had a truly terrible time during the pandemic'.
She added: 'Those older people who survived and are still with us, and their families, have waited a long time for the pandemic inquiry to focus on their experiences but now their turn has finally come, so it's a big moment for them and for the inquiry too.'
The CBFFJ group has written to inquiry chairwoman, Baroness Heather Hallett, to express their concern at some 'key decision-makers' not expected to be called in this module, including former prime minister Boris Johnson.
They said: 'Without those who were responsible for critical policies like discharging untested hospital patients into care homes, the inquiry cannot deliver a full or credible account of what happened.'
They insisted the module must be 'a turning point' rather than 'an afterthought'.
'What happened in the care sector during the pandemic is a national scar. To fail to learn the right lessons now would compound the injustice and place future lives at risk,' they added.
Public hearings for the care sector module are expected to run until the end of July.
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