FAMILIES who have lost loved ones to Covid have called for an immediate inquiry into the UK government’s response to the pandemic.
The Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice group has been lobbying for an investigation into how ministers handled the pandemic but has now intensified its appeal after Dominic Cummings, a former advisor to prime minister Boris Johnson, gave testimony to MPs earlier this week.
Speaking before a group of MPs on Wednesday (26), Cummings claimed that tens of thousands of people had died needlessly last year, including in care homes for the elderly. However, Johnson denied that was the case, telling reporters on Thursday (27): "No, I don't think so.”
Matt Fowler, co-founder of Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice, a group that represents thousands of grieving people in the UK, was quoted as saying in The Guardian, “This political pantomime continues to show a level of disrespect to our lost loved ones and brings us no closer to the answers we need for lives to be saved.”
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Coronavirus has claimed nearly 128,000 lives in the UK - the fifth-highest official death toll in the world, and the highest in Europe.
There have been several calls for a public inquiry into the handling of the pandemic; while the prime minister previously resisted this, saying it was not the right time, earlier this month he announced an investigation that will take place in 2022. It will focus on why the UK suffered Europe's worst death toll and one of the world's deepest economic slumps.
It is not clear when that report will be completed.
A former head of the civil service, Lord Kerslake, told the newspaper, “We are either going to carry on with this tit-for-tat briefing or we get to grips with the job. We owe it to the families of the bereaved. It’s down to the prime minister. He has to see the sense of doing it early.”
In his testimony, Cummings told MPs, "Tens of thousands of people died who didn't need to die," and blamed senior ministers and officials including himself for getting it wrong at the outset.
Cummings added that the prime minister was recklessly insouciant in the early days of the crisis in February 2020, even volunteering to get infected with Covid-19 live on television to show there was nothing to fear.
Johnson told parliament he took "full responsibility" but insisted decision-making during the pandemic had been "appallingly difficult" and the government "acted throughout with the intention to save life... in accordance with the best scientific advice."
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