Ministers dodge Covid inquiry questions on care home deaths until after election

Ministers will avoid questions about the deaths of thousands of care home residents during the pandemic until after the general election, the official Covid inquiry has announced.

Baroness Hallett, chairman of the inquiry, set out the timetable for public hearings on Tuesday, with the final ones not taking place until the summer of 2026.

She revealed that hearings to investigate how the care sector coped during the pandemic will not start until spring 2025.

Hearings on government procurement, expected to include the large amount of wasteful spending on unusable PPE, will begin in early 2025.

The issue of how children’s education and mental health was impacted by lockdown will not be investigated until mid 2025 at the earliest.

Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister, has to call the next election by the end of 2024.

Lady Hallett also revealed that the public hearings on vaccines, where the Government is widely judged to have performed well, would take place from summer 2024.

It means the sessions on vaccines, which will not be as embarrassing for the Government, could well happen just before the election.

She said: “Last year, I promised I would work hard to ensure the whole of the UK can learn useful lessons from the pandemic as quickly as possible.

“Today I am providing greater clarity on our investigations and the likely end point for the inquiry’s hearings.”

Daisy Cooper, the Liberal Democrats’ health spokesman, said: “The public and bereaved families have already been left waiting far too long for answers over why the Government got it so wrong and failed to protect care home residents during the pandemic.

“It’s deeply disappointing that because the Conservative ministers took so long in setting up the Covid inquiry, they now won’t be held to account over these failures until after the election.”

Caroline Abrahams, charity director at Age UK, said: “Many families and friends of the 40,000-plus older people who died in care homes during the first wave of the pandemic are likely to be deeply disappointed by this delay.

“Care home residents were among those most grievously harmed by official decisions that were or were not made during the health emergency and it’s really important that the right lessons are learned so we can protect older people more effectively in the future.

“The worry is that as the weeks and months go by, recollections dim and it becomes harder to establish exactly what happened, and why.”

The Covid inquiry is split into six different investigations, the first three of which are pandemic preparedness, decision-making and the impact of the pandemic on health systems.

On Tuesday, Lady Hallett announced three more investigations - vaccines, therapeutics and anti-viral treatment; government procurement across the UK; and the care sector across the UK.

Details of further investigations will not be unveiled until early 2024, the inquiry said, but they would not start until mid 2025.

Future investigations will cover issues such as NHS test and trace, the effect of lockdowns on education, and the effect on children and young people.

The inquiry will also consider financial support for business, additional funding of public services, and benefits and support for vulnerable people.

The inquiry’s final modules will specifically investigate the impact of pandemic policies on inequalities in the context of public services, including key workers.

The inquiry is aiming to complete public hearings by summer 2026.