The End of Term at Dorland House 31.7.2025

witness chair & lawyer's desk

I walk up the shallow steps into the oddly anonymous building for the last time. For the last time the doorman opens the big glass door, smiles and greets me and I smile back, embarrassed and grateful for one last time. He’s the staff. He works here along with the friendly lady who hands me my badge and the cheerful people who see me through security and volunteer to look after my extra bag until the session’s over. They are all Black whereas most of us, arriving now, are white. It makes me feel awkward as if we’re playing out some unchosen stereotype. I’m grateful to them though, for their kindliness and reassurance. They make a difference. They make me feel welcome. They'll still be here when we are gone. 

Several people are arriving with suitcases today. This is the last day of hearings for Module 6 (social care) of the UK-COVID Inquiry and lawyers from across the UK are ready to hurry away and catch their trains or planes home. Today is a lawyers day, 18 of them offering 12 minute closing submissions -- a little like end of term reports? These are summaries, responses, reports, passionate pleas, objections, recommendations for the future. Some are speaking on behalf of the national governments and public health bodies who need to defend – or at least explain – their actions, while possibly showing some slight contrition or paying lip service to the need to ‘learn lessons’ for the future. It’s not compulsory – the DHSC in England doesn’t bother with an oral submission, though the Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish health departments do. Others (like us) are on the attack, demanding recognition for those who died unnecessarily or in distress and for the survivors who were not able to support the people they loved at time of greatest need. Wanting change.

It's all conducted in a mannered, formal style. The lawyers wear black. We are silent and stand up when Lady Hallett, the Chair of the Inquiry comes in. She has great authority. I wish you’d been here when she forced former Secretary of State for Health, Matt Hancock, into silence and acknowledgement, simply by holding his gaze and staring him down. 'I'm in charge here,' she said. Even when she was chairing remotely with only her image on the screen, I felt inclined to get to my feet. 

Our confrontations are muted. There's no direct attack from one party on another here, all our submissions (key word) are directed at the Chair. Only she has the power to consider all that has been said and decide what she will recommend to apportion blame and make improvements in the future. Everyone sticks to their allotted time, they garnish their speeches with ‘My Lady’ and terms of respect and gratitude.

Behind the scenes, over the many months it has taken to reach this moment, it hasn’t been quite like that. We, that is the Core Participants (the people who allege mishandling of the Covid-19 pandemic in social care and those who deny it) and the lawyers who represent us, have been engaged in a process of negotiation with the other set of lawyers who represent the Inquiry. They set the rules – what are the topics that need to be discussed, what evidence will be collected, who will come and sit in the Inquiry chair and answer public questions. We do our best to provide what they require, while agitating for particular witnesses to be called, certain topics given extra time and grumbling when we believe there are gaps, people who should have been called but are not there, additional time that should have been given but has been denied.

This module – investigating what happened to the more than 300,000 people who died in UK care homes between March 2020 and the end of January 2022 and also the many others who died at home (a rise of over a third on normal figures) – has been called the Ground Zero of the Inquiry, the heart of its investigation – though those of us who also participated in the two months of NHS hearings (Module 3) last autumn continue to assert that hospitals were given more intense and detailed scrutiny, greater weight, as they were in the pandemic itself.

It's been an exhausting as well as (we hope) an exhaustive process. Some of the 160 witness statements we (or our lawyers) have been asked to read are 200-300 pages long. And they are usually the one with most to self-justify and the least of interest to say. In addition there are the 200,000 pages of back up documents, proving the truth (we hope) of what the witness staements say.

In stark contrast are the impact films, which have used just a tiny fraction of the testimonies supplied by members of the public to the Every Story Matters listening exercise (46,000 contributions for this module), which have opened each module of the Inquiry so far. They are intended to ensure that our lawyerly proceedings remain grounded in lived experience. 

This was the film used to introduce Module 6 https://covid19.public-inquiry.uk/commemoration/impact-films/#section_9_module-6 The most powerful evidence we have heard here has come from those ordinary people who had been directly affected, who sat in the Inquiry chair and allowed themselves to be questioned by the CTI (counsel to the Inquiry). The previous day (July 30^th) had been especially harrowing. An expert professor of palliative care had been examined on the numbers of excess deaths outside hospitals and the circumstances of those deaths: the lack of available oxygen, the non-supply of end-of-life medications, the absence of trained specialists, the refusals to admit dying people from their homes or care homes into professional care. And, after him, there had been a bereaved relative from each of the four nations describing exactly what it had been like for them. ‘A very long and difficult day,’ said Lady Hallett as she adjourned proceedings.

This final day felt different. There was nothing more to be done now except listen to the lawyers deliver their speeches, then go home. There would be lengthy (30 page) written submissions to complete before the autumn but that felt a while away. As we waited for the morning session to begin we chatted about our summer holidays, agreed to take a photo of ourselves, planned to meet for a meal in the autumn.

But when Claire Mitchell KC, advocate for the Scottish Covid Bereaved families got up to start this final day’s proceedings, sunny thoughts were banished and we all remembered, once again, why we were here. She demanded accountability. Not just improvements to be made and lessons learned but for those who had been in power to take responsibility for their acts and omissions.

In their opening submissions for this hearing, the bereaved noted that, for many of their number, this module was of particular importance. Their loved ones who died cannot raise their voices, so the bereaved seek truth and accountability on their behalf.

The bereaved are grateful to the Chair and all at Dorland House for all that they have done to help the bereaved discover the truth.

Accountability, however, requires an acceptance and an assumption of responsibility for decisions made and actions taken by the decision makers themselves. The bereaved consider that it is the professional, moral and ethical duty of those who were in positions of power during the pandemic to take responsibility for their acts and omissions.

The bereaved have listened as witnesses sought to evade accountability for their decisions. While some may consider it acceptable to say they cannot recall key decisions and processes because of the passage of time, the bereaved do not have the luxury of saying it was a long time ago. The passage of time does not dim their memories or diminish the accountability of others.

 

Claire Mitchell has recently co-authored (with Zoe Venditozzi) How to Kill a Witch, an investigation into the historic and appalling miscarriages of justice in Scotland’s c17th witch trials. Their joint campaign achieved an apology from the Scottish government. Is this the outcome we want from the COVID Inquiry?  A formal government apology? In some ways yes, a definite acceptance of errors and contrition – particularly for the flagrant disregard for the human rights and, indeed, the equal human worth of disabled people and older people – would be welcome. As a first step. 

But then there needs to be change. Actual structural change. In a similar way that the injustice and cruelty of the witch hunts reveal deep seated misogyny as well as systemic injustice in c17th society, so the absolute inadequacy of the adult social care system, as revealed through these hearings, can be understood to epitomise the unequal status of old, chronically ill or disabled people.

Must this be so? By the law of the economic jungle, the old and disabled are the first to be discarded by the herd. The then PM, Boris Johnson,  was reliably reported (by the chief scientific officer, Sir Patrick Vallance) to be ‘obsessed’ with older people ‘accepting their fate’ and letting the younger people get on with life. He's said to have seen Covid as 'Nature's way' of getting rid of the old and vulnerable.  (His mother died in a care home in the later pandemic period. I've never understood whether this modified his view or not.) 

What actually happened, on his watch, was that people living in residential or nursing homes -- or older and disabled people being cared for at home -- were first left completely unprotected (no testing or personal protective equipment or even helpful advice for them or their carers), then those in care homes were potentially exposed to infection when other older people were discharged untested from hospitals into these care homes. Many professionals such as GPs, district nurses and care home inspectors stayed away. Care home staff were overladen with responsibilities (such as care for the dying) for which they had not been trained. And crucially these older and disabled people and their families were debarred from making any individual choices about what risks they might choose to take, and the way they might decide to conduct their lives – or face their deaths. Not just in the first critical weeks but generally over the next two years. As Lady Hallett said, the impact of the pandemic on them was ‘devastating’ -- but did it have to be like that?

What these five weeks of Inquiry have shown above all is the absolute – known and accepted –  inadequacy of the UK adult social care system. A system which is a chaotic maze of private, local authority and charity providers, where domestic carers are paid by the minute, where the profits of some of the biggest providers go to offshore funds, where workers are often on zero hours contracts with no statutory sick pay and which very often depend on the labour of the most exploited workers (including undocumented migrants). Official after official, testifying to the Inquiry exonerated themselves by saying the system was broken and it was all too difficult. If the Inquiry has shown anything, it has shown that we must have change, for all our sakes, as we all, inevitably become older and less able.

I went home, thoughtfully, wondering whether all that we had learned during our five weeks at Dorland House might truly represent Ground Zero for Adult Social Care in the UK? One of the more outspoken witnesses, a whistleblower from the DHSC, described what had happened (the 27,000 excess deaths in the first pandemic wave) as a ‘generational slaughter’. Had the incompetencies, the ignorance, the unreflective callousnesses and the chaos, which we had collectively exposed, been enough to clear this ground and assert an imperative for change in adult social care? Or will we just muddle on leaving future generations to look back with incredulity that we took so little notice. Perhaps someone like Claire Mitchell, will write a book about it, in a few centuries time.

This was the submission from Johns Campaign, Care Rights UK and the Patients Association on 31.7.2025 https://johnscampaign.org.uk/post/closing-statement-by-adam-straw-kc-on-behalf-of-jc-the-patients-association-and-care-rights-uk

This has been an extraordinary, period in my life and I'd like to include a photos of those who were there on the last day. If we're grinning inanely it's only with the relief of tension, not that we haven't taken this seriously. 

Barrister Adam Straw, (me), Solicitors Carolin Ott and Emma Jones

 

Paralegal, Heidi Pathak, leaving Dorland House