The Pandemic Response and Recovery All-Party Parliamentary Group met this week to hear about visiting restrictions still being imposed by many care homes and NHS Trusts. Co-chaired by Rt Hon Esther McVey MP and Graham Stringer MP, the Group listened to evidence about the devastating effects visiting restrictions in hospitals have on patients and their loved ones. MPs also heard how visiting restrictions in care homes, along with the continued use of rolling lockdowns and over interpretation of testing guidelines, is leading to isolation, neglect and abuse of the residents.
Leandra Ashton, who co-founded The People’s Care Watchdog, Dr. Ammar Waraich, a medical registrar in the West Midlands, Carol Munt, experienced Patient Partner and Advocate and Dr. Ali Haggett, community mental health and wellbeing specialist, told MPs of the obstacles still in place when trying to visit a loved one and the shocking impact on vulnerable hospital patients, care home residents and their families.
All the speakers voiced serious concerns that obstacles are still in place in some healthcare settings. Politicians heard harrowing accounts of the harmful effects of isolation and loss of social contact on physical and mental health, safeguarding problems with medication, dehydration, hygiene and lack of basic care and the failures to uphold existing legislation to protect those who lack capacity.
Leandra Ashton’s mother was arrested in November 2020 for taking her grandmother out of her care home a day before the second lockdown. Two years on, many residents are still being isolated from their loved ones. She told MPs:
When I took the video of my mum being arrested taking my nan out of her care home, I did not think it would go viral. So many families got in touch and it led to us setting up the People’s Care Watchdog. We were struck by how much legislation is in place, such as Article 8 of the Human Rights Act, Deprivation of Liberty and the Mental Capacity Act, to protect those in care homes. These laws are simply not being upheld and instead guidelines are being over-interpreted and the legislation even used to keep people in care homes and hospitals as if they were prisons. The public bodies that are supposed to uphold the protective legislation are not doing so.
There are still obstacles in place when trying to visit a loved one in a care home and the impact has been and continues to be devastating. The safeguarding issues I am seeing and hearing about are atrocious. Residents left for hours in dirty, wet incontinence pads leading to dangerous pressure ulcers. Malnutrition. Dehydration. End of life medication given to patients without their or their family’s consent. Psychological trauma, post-traumatic stress and suicides have resulted because of this. Multiple systems are failing, including Local Authorities and the CQC. It is a complex situation that needs a bold approach by both empowering families and galvanising Government action to hold public bodies to account and stop private equity firms placing profit over people.
Listening to the evidence, Esther McVey said:
I am troubled by the evidence presented by our speakers, particularly the safeguarding issues and neglect that care home residents are suffering as a result. In hospitals, we have heard about patients losing hope and refusing treatment without the encouragement of family. We know patients have much better treatment outcomes when they have support from relatives and friends around them.
Most of the infection control measures that restricted visiting in healthcare settings have been removed, most recently NHS Trusts were told healthcare workers, patients and visitors no longer need to distance in hospitals, so I fail to see why and how these visiting restrictions are still in place in any healthcare setting. I shall be writing to the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care to ask that he makes it absolutely clear that all patients and residents must be able to see visitors.
Highlighting how visitation is an important and necessary part of healthcare, Carol Munt said:
In the same way that we would not stop prescribed medication and treatments, we should not have stopped visits. Why were decisions taken without any consideration for the need of patients and their families to connect? Why do we still have such variation in compassionate care across the country? There is no uniformity among care homes apart from the need to be profitable for their owners. Some care homes made a superhuman effort to arrange visiting, as did the Bristol Nightingale Hospital. There was good practice in some places so there should be good practice everywhere. We should expect more of these endemic situations and we must be prepared for them.
I could not comprehend how any Minister for Health and Social Care could allow this to happen and not make the effort to get his department to look at ways that visiting could be facilitated. I heard and continue to hear the most callous reports of relatives dying alone with no visitors. The same goes for hospital patients. Ultimately, I think we need legislation to ensure that visiting rights are enshrined and protected.
Medical Registrar Dr. Ammar Waraich reported that many hospitals are still preventing visits due to the potential risk of Covid spread:
The policy is cruel, inhumane and unnecessary. Seeing loved ones can be immensely therapeutic and give struggling patients the will to survive. It is deeply traumatic for families to lose loved ones suddenly or see them go through difficult treatment without being there in person. Video calls are not a good enough replacement and we do not have the staff, the time or resources to facilitate calls for all our patients.
Most infection control measures have been lifted as the level of risk is no longer there. Hospitals can no longer function as detention centres and an inpatient stay should not become a sentence. The policy was one of the major mistakes of lockdown. Visiting sick relatives in hospital is, and must remain, a fundamental right, not to be given up.
Co-chair Graham Stringer said:
I find it extraordinary that no visiting is allowed in some healthcare settings, even to this day. It is cruel that family members are being denied access to sick and vulnerable loved ones, often not getting regular updates, living in anxiety about what their relatives may be going through, but knowing they are going through frightening and difficult treatment, often at the end of their lives, without being able to be with them in person.
“At the height of the pandemic it was understandable that there were precautions but there is no longer a basis to that argument. All the restrictions have been lifted and NHS Trusts across England have now been told to ‘return to pre-pandemic physical distancing in all areas’. The government must take action to resolve this situation.
Speaking about her experience working in the community throughout the pandemic, Dr. Ali Haggett said:
I have spent the last eighteen months with the support group Unlock Care Homes, uncovering the plight of many thousands of families who are still denied regular, meaningful contact with care home residents and hospital patients. Even before Covid, we knew that isolating people, particularly older people, has a serious impact on physical and psychological health. We have continued to isolate adults in care and in some hospitals almost continuously for two years. The effects have been felt particularly badly by those with dementia. Many residents no longer recognise their families and have been denied the most basic of human needs.
My concern is that this situation is concealing neglect and abuse on a significant scale. One of my community members sadly died and the hospital has admitted liability partly because he was completely blind and couldn’t reach his food or drink. Had his wife been allowed to visit, this wouldn’t have happened. Families I work with report numerous issues still affecting them, not just visiting restrictions. Rolling lockdowns, over-interpretation of testing, PPE requirements resulting in poor communication and fear, lack of ancillary services such as podiatry or physiotherapy leading to huge health problems, residents asked to isolate when one person tests positive, sometimes for 10 days or more and the one significant visitor recommendation being ignored or rejected. Families must be able to visit openly and check the wellbeing of residents.
Stop Press: MPs and Peers including Esther McVey, Lord Frost, Sir Iain Duncan Smith, Sir Graham Brady, Emma Lewell-Buck, Graham Stringer and Sammy Wilson have written to the Telegraph to say they are “deeply concerned” that visiting is still forbidden in many institutions where “over-interpretation of testing guidelines is leading to isolation, neglect and abuse of vulnerable residents”. They point out that Article 8 of the Human Rights Act and the Mental Capacity Act “could and should have protected against this situation arising” but this legislation is being “wilfully misinterpreted as an excuse” to keep people isolated in care homes and hospitals “as if they were prisons”.
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The autogynephiles and perverts had their day in the sun. You had people who had commited sexual offences against women being allowed to do their time in a women’s prison and then they went on to rape several women in the prison. That this was allowed to happen surely speaks of a morbid symptom of a society in decline.
Mumsnet. Where mums would rather risk infant myocarditis than COVID.
Not a lot of sympathy from me as I was banned donkey’s years ago for posting about a possible link between autism and vaccines, then when I mentioned Dr Andrew Wakefield it was ‘game over’, so they are anything but pro free speech.
Does anyone remember this classic clip of the great Prof Winston on Question Time? Imagine stating biological fact and it is received by many as hate speech. If the only prerequisite to being a ‘transwoman’ is that you must be a bloke then you can hardly be classified as ‘transwoman’, can you? You could be a transvestite, transsexual, transgender, autogynephile etc, but you cannot steal and misuse our protected sex category in an attempt to erase us as women, expecting us to act as nothing more than co-stars in your fantasy and indulge your mental illness whilst submissively enabling you to violate our boundaries by affirming your delusion. F**k that misogynistic bollocks!
But enough of my jibber jabber, it’s over to the Prof;
https://x.com/benonwine/status/1912786695067488566
Well done Mogwai for being on the right side of history and for calling out Mumsnet as bigoted. Only their views are allowed. All other views are cancelled by them.
As far as Wakefield is concerned if you want to know the truth of the witch-hunt you will not get a better example than this written by one of his legal team from the Austin Texas defamation proceedings against the BMJ:
“How the Case Against Andrew Wakefield Was Fixed – In Eight Steps – A 21st Century Medical ControversyA Video Series – With Audio Only Option [to listen on the move]”
The BMJ was warned more than once long in advance of of the publication of this series and given the opportunity to respond but failed to address any of the facts and evidence. Nor have they taken legal proceedings for defamation – which was the point of warning them. Now published for over 12 months there is nothing they can do.
“The series tells an extraordinary story with striking revelations which have never before been told openly and publicly about one of the leading medical controversies of the 21st Century. With an audio option to listen on the move. Each episode is short – on average 15 minutes ranging from 6m to 30m.
The series documents the deliberate elaborate intentional and systematic fabrications perpetrated by three editors of the British Medical Journal in 2011. These editors publicly accused a doctor, Andrew Wakefield, of committing fraud in a scientific paper published in the Lancet medical journal which implicated the MMR vaccine in causing autism in children.
The fraud allegations against Andrew Wakefield were and remain baseless fabrications – pure invention with no facts or evidence to back them up.
The deviousness of the tortuous rats’ nest of fabricated claims was revealed by careful and logical analysis of the BMJ’s author’s paper with a single-minded focus on one question – where is the evidence upon which the fabricated claims of the BMJ’s editors were based?
See with your own eyes laid out before you piece by piece, how the BMJ’s author’s fabricated claims were manufactured.
Instead of threatening legal proceedings for defamation when warned of impending publication and challenged to answer the BMJ issued a one line weak damning and damaging statement: “We stand by the publications concerned and the processes by which they were produced”.
The BMJ had commercial agreements with MMR vaccine manufacturers which the three editors failed to disclose when they made their false fraud allegations against Andrew Wakefield.
The three editors’ allegations were claimed to be justified by a BMJ commissioned article “How the case against the MMR vaccine was fixed”. The article claimed falsely Andrew Wakefield fabricated the results of Royal Free Hospital investigations into 12 children in order to implicate the MMR vaccine in causing autism. The BMJ article claimed every element and aspect of the Lancet paper was fabricated by Wakefield.
The truth however is that the Lancet paper faithfully reported the results of investigations carried out by 12 specialist expert medical professionals at The Royal Free Hospital, London, England into 12 children. The children developed bowel disease and suffered developmental regression with nine diagnosed as autistic, two more as having autistic symptoms and one who suffered catastrophic regression within a short time of vaccination but had no autistic symptoms.
Family doctors, hospital doctors and parents had linked these problems to the administration of the MMR vaccine in eight of the twelve cases.
Andrew Wakefield was the co-ordinating author, who wrote the paper on behalf of his 12 colleagues based on the findings they had made when treating the children concerned. So there were 12 authors in addition to Andrew Wakefield.
The BMJ article was designed to claim falsely that an association between MMR vaccine and developmental regression and bowel disease in children was a fraud when it is not.”
If you cannot afford a paid subscription you can read free of charge a journal paper pre-print by Dr Jacob Puliyel who explains with remarkable clarity and brevity why the BMJ editors’ false fraud allegations are and remain false:
The Scientific Record: Examining some of the claims and counterclaims in the MMR saga Dr Jacob Puliyel
Do spread the word. Eventually the truth will be more widely known.
The Covid lies are steadily being revealed even though the perpetrators try to prevent that and repeat them.
So in the course of time the truth about the association between vaccines and autism will be widely known.
Ironically we have politicians and educators and others banging on about the SEND crisis [Special Educational Needs and Disabilities] and the annual £10 billion cost but they refuse to recognise this is a problem with a cause – confirm the cause and reverse it and we can start to make a dent in the problem.
This is a crisis caused by the pandemic of autism and other neurodevelopmental disorders linked to vaccines and other environmental toxins.
And it is a crisis involving real children, real parents, real families and a huge burden on the NHS.
No one will speak out about it because organisations like Mumsnet engaged in widespread cancel culture, 10 to 15 years ago, before the phrase was ever invented.
What we all also need to know and understand is how the networks of self-appointed anonymous bigoted political activists have managed to create and maintain cancel culture over decades.
To be able to counter this phenomenon we need to understand how it works.
The same thing is done for racist bigoted anti-semitic thugs calling for the murder of Jews in the name of ‘Palestine’.
And lest we not forget, these modern problems arise from the creation of a new religion out of nothing in 620AD and its spread by the sword – convert or die – gaining its founder instant power and wealth within barely a decade of its creation.
Add into that the severe punishments the creator invented for any criticism of his invented religion, of himself and his manual for this religion.
Plus of course the victors wrote the history – or in fact failed to document the horrors of what they did.
Translate the story of the sudden appearance of a new religion from nothing tied to gaining political power and control by war in which their “enemy” the “unbelievers” had the choice of their heads cut off or conversion to the new religion.
Imagine someone in the USA today started just such a similar kind of religious movement. Who would honestly believe it was anything other than a vehicle to gain wealth and political power, to wipe out the competition, to stem the wealth and political power associated with the spread of Christianity.
Just to show that many if not most or even possibly all of these ‘trans-activists’ are not trans or bona fide activists consider this question – how is it possible to have an ’emergency’ demonstration:
Trans activists launch ’emergency demonstration’ as thousands gather in London to protest Supreme Court ‘woman’ ruling
This is perfectly exemplifies what is going on.
It is impossible to hold an ’emergency’ demonstration unless there is a network of individuals which has been built up over years. And that network is ready willing and able to demonstrate in public at a moment’s notice. And there is funding for the banners, placards, vehicles and for the equipment used to make speeches and the like.
In short, only an highly orchestrated well funded extreme Left rent-a-mob can pop-up at the drop of a hat to demonstrate about the Extreme Left’s flavour of the moment ‘political’ issue.
These are not IMHO genuine demonstrators who are demonstrating because of some personal conviction like the women who camped out at Greenham Common against nuclear weapons.
This indicates these are IMHO political activists who are highly orchestrated and will come out at the drop of a hat when summoned by well-funded political groups.
They will demonstrate about any left political agenda topic they are told to.
And of course these political issues are well-chosen to be ones which create the maximum social divisiveness, division and harm to long established social norms in British society.
In short, these people are serving foreign interests to undermine Western democracy.
Be in no doubt about that.
These demonstrations IMHO are not genuinely held personal convictions. These are automatic knee-jerk reflexes that the Extreme Left jump on to undermine established social structures and unity.
Good info. Cheers
Thanks for this.
Once you allow the idea of self-ideniticaton just consider how many things that are shut down by such a principle. Essentially all the faculties that might determine survival. The very notion of self-identification is a contradiction in terms. If other people call me master, rabbi, spirit guide then that at least means something. If I call myself master when I am a fool then I just look like an even bigger prat. The lesson is to venture out into the world more.
At a primal level consider the state of male toilets versus female toilets. I love public toilets I think they represent a new future but I am not impressed by the standards of fellow men who foul thei toilets. We need to reach out to the dirty bastards and get this situation inder control.
Having worked in a pub for many years and having to clean both male and female toilets at 2am, I have to disagree with you haha. The female bog was often a bloody (literally) disgrace!
It is just sad with British women it is liike looking at women from sub-Saharan Africa or some south Asian sweat shop. Broken broken and long broken.
Correction needed to the third from last paragraph. They were never legally women.
I think the various sports governing bodies will be allowed to permit men to continue to participate in women’s sport. It’s just that they can’t be required by law to do so. By their choices we will know them. I can also see that any sport body which chooses to allow men to continue in women’s sport will suffer schism.
I wonder which way the government’s new football regulator will jump?
If schools or clubs allow boys/men who claim to be girls to participate in female sport what can realistically be done about it? They may well be breaking the law as it’s now been defined but how many police forces will want to get involved if this is reported to them and how many parents or women have the time and money to launch a legal challenge?
Defund Barclays. Close yout accounts.
This is the end of my using Ocado. Clearly another joke of an organisation. I don’t use Barclays, so I need not terminate that one. I’ll be advising my teenage children to avoid Barclays like the plague.
I agree. I use Ocado regularly but no more.