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He would later issue a statement that, “This court case comprehensively clears ministers of any wrongdoing and finds Mr Hancock acted reasonably on all counts.” He too wished he had known that at the time. He responded by recalling how difficult the decisions were at the time, especially as “… we did not know in particular was that covid could be transmitted asymptomatically in the way that it was.” In a television interview Matt Hancock made the same point. 8 The day after the judgement was handed down the prime minister Boris Johnson was asked about it by Daisy Cooper MP, the Liberal Democrat health spokesperson.

7 Yet, as the legal commentator David Allen Green has chronicled, not everyone saw it that way. This will not have been a surprise to those working in social care, who had long complained about being neglected. The policy set out in the documents was “irrational in failing to advise that where an asymptomatic patient (other than one who had tested negative) was admitted to a care home, he or she should, so far as practicable, be kept apart from other residents for 14 days.” The Court rejected their arguments on human rights grounds, but ruled that the Secretary of State (then Matt Hancock) and Public Health England 6 had acted unlawfully in respect of two documents in March and April 2020-a discharge policy and admissions guidance respectively. 5 They sought a ruling from the High Court that some decisions at the time had either breached their fathers’ human rights or were unlawful. So, were ministerial decisions reasonable in the circumstances? In at least one area, the discharge of patients from hospitals into care homes, contributing to thousands of avoidable deaths, we can now say with certainty that they were not.Ĭathy Gardner and Fay Harris, whose fathers had died from covid-19 in care homes during the first wave of the pandemic, challenged the repeated claim by the then health secretary Matt Hancock that the government had thrown a “protective ring” around care homes. Their opportunities to respond were constrained, for example, by limited testing capacity and an already overstretched health system. There were still many uncertainties about the nature of the new infection and how it was transmitted. 2 3 4 Their defence is that the situation was extremely challenging. Ministers justified decisions by claiming they were “following the science.” But were they? Numerous accounts suggest not. Margaret Thatcher famously said “Advisers advise, ministers decide.” 1 Yet, throughout the covid-19 pandemic this distinction has often seemed blurred. London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.Martin McKee, professor of European Public Health.