The government has long defended itself in addressing the risks to homeowners during the pandemic, but there is no doubt that the Supreme Court ruling has tested this defense force.
Despite allegations by then-Health Minister Matt Hancock that ministers had placed a “protective steel ring” around nursing homes, the court found that the government had broken the law by failing to protect thousands of elderly and disabled people in March. and April 2020
The answer from both Boris Johnson and Matt Hancock was to shift the blame very clearly on the now disbanded public health in England.
During PMQs, Mr Johnson said: “The thing we didn’t know in particular was that COVID could be transmitted asymptomatically the way it was. That’s something I’d like to know more about at the time. “
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0:49 The Prime Minister was called to apologize in PMQ
In a statement, a spokesman for Mr Hancock said: “This lawsuit comprehensively acquits ministers of any wrongdoing and finds that Mr Hancock has acted prudently on all counts.
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“The court also found that public health in England had failed to tell ministers what they knew about the asymptomatic transmission.
But this is not the explanation that Mr Hancock gave me last week, when we had a long and rather difficult conversation on the subject during an interview.
I asked him if he regretted the way it had developed and if it was a mistake.
His answer was clear – the policy was not wrong, he said, and it was not a mistake to discharge people from hospitals into nursing homes.
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19:49 Beth Rigby sits with Hancock to discuss the pandemic
His argument was that the testing regime simply did not exist and therefore people could not be kept in hospital indefinitely.
He claims that the media report on the issue of the care home is wrong.
But that is not what the Supreme Court found today.
He said the policies in the spring of 2020 were illegal because they did not take into account the risk of vulnerable people from asymptomatic transmission.
As we have heard so often during the pandemic, ministers are ultimately responsible, no matter how technical or complex the policy area.
Read more: The daughter of the victim of the care home says that the claims about the “protective ring” are a “lie” Hancock says that “we worked as hard as we could to protect the care homes”
Councilors advise, as they say, but ministers decide.
Matt Hancock’s argument today is that his advisers did not advise.
But this is different from saying that it is not a mistake to release people from hospital without tests, as you told me last week.
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