The grief was because it was a reminder that many of us had lost people unnecessarily. The anger increased because the decision is proof that our government was so extremely reckless. After all, it only took the common sense of your average person to realize that you are not sending untested patients to care homes. One of the first things we learned about Covid-19 was that the most vulnerable people in our society were at greatest risk. And yet in a way the government considered it appropriate to put them at the absolute highest risk by sending such patients to care homes with them. To this day, I’m still speechless when I think about it. To me, this is not abstract. It’s real. In early 2020, my father lived happily in his home without any problems. In fact, when the pandemic struck, I assumed that she would be safer than anyone else and that she would let me worry about my mother, who is not in a nursing home. Then I got a phone call saying that my father’s health had suddenly deteriorated, that he had a chest infection and suspected Covid-19. I did not believe them at first. did not make sense. I was told that there were no known cases of Covid-19 in the care home. Fast forward, and from then on we learned that Covid-19 was indeed in his care home. In fact, the official number of deaths with suspected or confirmed Covid-19 between April 2020 and March 2021 at home is 22. This was confirmed when the CQC finally released the data. My father, Vernute Williams, popularly known as Rex, died on April 20, 2020 at the age of 85. Matt Hancock, the then Minister of Health, said that he had tried to throw a “protective ring” around our nursing homes. Protective ring. This phrase has always made me sick since the day he said it. Even yesterday, after this crisis, Hancock still says he did nothing wrong. She does not feel indebted to families like mine. He is still in complete denial. I have spoken of anger and sadness. But one thing is missing: joy. Where does this come from? I feel happy because we are finally getting somewhere. My view is that this government is guilty of gross negligence and murder of my father. I have been saying it since day one and I still say it today. The crisis gives me little hope for the progress we are making in holding this government accountable. It is a legal decision by the Supreme Court. It means something. We campaigned tirelessly for a judge-led inquiry into the pandemic handling from the UK that we should have had years ago. Now it will start next year. This will allow us to shed even more light on what happened. For now, this crisis, for all those who have had family members in nursing homes, is a big step forward. Thus, yesterday is one of the most important days of our campaign for justice so far. But I always believed that the day would come – no matter how much acrobatic PR this prime minister takes out of his hat – when this government will finally be forced to face what it did.
