A workers’ and trade union-led inquiry into the Covid catastrophe is essential

Socialist Party Scotland statement

There is mounting rage at the sheer arrogance of the ruling elite. After all we have suffered and sacrificed during ten weeks of lockdown and this horrific pandemic, the case of Dominic Cummings is the last straw. The right wing “Special Advisor” to Tory Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who repeatedly violated lockdown rules by driving hundreds of miles from his townhouse in gentrified Islington to stay at his wealthy family’s Durham farmstead, has proved once again it is ”one rule for us and one for them“.

It wasn’t so long ago, of course, that we had a few cases of “do as I say but not as I do” in Scotland. Prince Charles, infected with coronavirus, travelled to his Balmoral Palace. Scotland’s chief medical officer Catherine Calderwood repeatedly visited her “second home” in Earlsferry, Fife, breaking the lockdown “stay at home” rules she had drawn up. It should be remembered that first minister Nicola Sturgeon fought to try and keep Calderwood in position, until mass public pressure forced them both to accept Calderwood could not continue.  

While Sturgeon’s approval rating is currently very high, at 74%, there is also a growing mood for accountability. 70% of Scots believe the lockdown came too late, according to a recent BBC poll. There is widespread horror at the huge death toll in care homes – which make up 50% of all deaths from the virus in Scotland. 

The UK and Scottish governments and the scientists, clinical and medical advisors must answer serious questions. All appear to have made crucial mistaken decisions, driven by what a profit-driven, market-based economy starved of resources could afford, not what was needed to protect the population from the virus.

Sadly, Scotland has among the highest rate of deaths per million of the population in the world. Measured by calculating the mortality rate compared to the normal five year average shows that, according to National Records of Scotland, there have been 4,695 excess deaths since the pandemic appeared in Scotland. This is people who have died directly or indirectly as a result of the virus. For Scotland, it means 861 deaths per million compared to 891 per million for the UK as a whole.

Based on a study of excess deaths by the Financial Times newspaper, the UK has the highest deaths per million in the world. Scotland’s excess mortality, while slightly less than the UK as a whole, is higher than any other nation in Europe.

As the FT commented: “Excess deaths is internationally recognised as the best way to compare countries’ performance in handling infectious diseases. Chris Whitty, the UK’s chief medical officer, has called excess deaths “the key metric”.

Iain Macwhirter points out in the Herald newspaper of Nicola Sturgeon that: “She has followed essentially the same strategy as the UK Government, made all the same mistakes and then some, but has somehow managed to devolve responsibility for those mistakes to Westminster“. He goes on that Sturgeon has “unveiled her four-step programme for returning to normality which is, in all major respects, the same as the UK one”, albeit delayed by a fortnight.

Or as the pro independence columnist Neil Mackay summarised: Lockdown came too late here – just as it did in England. Testing and tracing have been inadequate. It’s been a catalogue of one failure after another.

The delay in moving out of lockdown in Scotland was not driven primarily by the reproduction rate – the R number – which is still largely where it was two weeks previously. But was rather dictated by the need to drive up the capacity of a previously abandoned test and trace regime essential for monitoring the spread of the virus and starting to lift the lockdown.

Terrible record on testing 

Answers must be forthcoming as to why, along with Boris Johnson, the Scottish government abandoned testing and contact tracing on Match 12. The answer is almost certainly that there were neither the resources nor the capacity to implement it on any significant scale.  

Testing has been a colossal failure of the SNP government. There is even a case for concluding the picture is worse than England. A decade of austerity meant there has not been the capacity to “trace and protect” as the essential way of containing the virus. 

An average of 5,194 tests a day were being carried out in Scotland over the past two weeks. While the much talked of “capacity” is for 15,000 tests a day, that is clearly not the same as actual tests carried out. In fact the claimed figures for the UK – almost certainly exaggerated and artificially inflated by Johnson and Hancock, are over 100,000 tests a day.

Either way, Scotland is currently only utilising one-third of its testing capacity. A decisive factor is very likely to be shortages of staff to do the tests and then process the results quickly enough. There has been no community testing in Scotland at any point during the pandemic. Many have had to drive long distances to access the handful of drive-in testing facilities in Scotland.

Scandalously, care home workers had to wait until May 18 for the government to agree that they could be tested – at least in theory. This was after the virus was already in 58% of Scottish care homes. The former Scottish CMO Catherine Calderwood said on April 2 that testing was a “distraction” and its use on a mass scale to contain the spread of the virus was a “fallacy”.

Only from today will you be able to book a test if you display symptoms. The government claim that 2,000 contact tracers have been identified and will be available from June 1. It is far from clear that they will be enough if a second wave of the infection takes hold.

Tragically, test and trace is being put in place only after the deaths of around 4,000 people in Scotland. To all intents and purposes the first wave of the pandemic was allowed to spread unchecked until it was too late to prevent to the horrific death toll that followed.

Late on lockdown  

Sturgeon and the Scottish government went along in “lockstep”, in the words of Scottish National Clinical Director Jason Leitch, with Johnson’s delayed approach to lockdown.

While the Scottish government restricted mass gatherings a few days earlier than Westminster on March 16, leading to the cancellation of the Old Firm football game, many are now questioning why a Rangers European tie went ahead earlier. And why Jason Leitch publicly said on March 16 that going to Stereophonics concerts was fine and a herd immunity strategy was being adopted? 

A team of epidemiological scientists at the University of Edinburgh produced findings, featured in a BBC Disclosure investigation, showing the Scottish death rate could have been reduced by 2,000 with an earlier lockdown.

Nicola Sturgeon has become enraged at legitimate allegations of a cover up of an outbreak of the virus in Edinburgh, at a conference of the multinational Nike on 26/27 February (the first Covid-19 cases in Scotland were publicised on March 1). In parliament, Sturgeon said this was not made public due to patient confidentiality, but a number of delegates and those in contact with the attendees have come forward to say they were not contact-traced and subsequently became ill. 

Care home horror

The biggest scandal of all is erupting over the transfer of vulnerable hospital patients, untested for the virus, into care homes. It’s accepted that this was a key factor that led to the spread of the virus like a deadly wildfire.

The SNP’s health secretary Jeanne Freeman belatedly admitted that in March 1,000 patients were transferred from hospitals to care homes without testing.

The original figure given by Freeman was 300. Sturgeon has predictably tried to defend Freeman in the press, saying she was “tired” when giving the incorrect figures. 

What is clear is the lack of NHS bed capacity played a decisive role in these decisions. The policy was to clear hospitals of as many patients as possible in order to increase ICU capacity – on the basis that a flood of Covid patients would need to be admitted.

The lack of ICU beds is also a consequence of an NHS run down by cuts. The lack of health and social care resources led to many elderly people staying in hospital longer than required, so-called “bed blocking”. In effect, elderly people and their families have been denied access to care packages in the community or homes for years because of massive underfunding of these services.  

With large numbers of untested residents entering care homes in March, scandalous shortages of PPE, care workers who could not get tested – with many terrified of going off sick and losing their incomes – were a recipe for mass infection.

The Louisa Jordan hospital in Glasgow was never used, while thousands of elderly people have died in care homes. 

After initially trying to pretend that the care home death rate was just a normal feature of the virus seen internationally, Sturgeon, sensing the coming storm, is on the retreat. She has now admitted that in “hindsight” these transfers were the wrong approach and will “haunt” her. 

Similar transfers also took place between hospitals in Glasgow, also spreading the virus. Elderly patients from the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Glasgow were moved to Gartnavel, which resulted in 81 Covid cases and 25 deaths.

But are the SNP really learning the lessons? They voted with the Tories last week in the Scottish parliament to deny care workers in the private sector the right to collective bargaining for on pay and terms and conditions?

Only reluctantly have they conceded a fund to help care workers who are so low paid they cannot afford to go off sick so are reluctant to take tests. 

They have no plans, despite Freeman saying a review will take place,  to renationalise the care sector, despite the criminal murderous profiteering management of care homes exposed by this pandemic.

The New York Times this week exposed the horrific events at the Skye Home Farm care home run by HC-One – the biggest care company in the UK. One in four of the residents have died of Covid-19.

A large number of staff were also infected, a consequence of PPE use being actively discouraged by a management who pretended residents had a flu not the virus, ignored family complaints about a lack of PPE for staff, and a profit-driven company who transferred patients and staff into the home in Skye without testing. 

Questions must also be raised about the role of Health Protection Scotland, a body created by the Scottish government, responsible for drawing up safety guidelines and protocols that trade unions have exposed as resource-based. Protocols that have been changed numerous times during the pandemic over PPE, testing etc.

Workers’ inquiry

Pre-empting the inevitability of a “public inquiry”, Nicola Sturgeon says she supports one but that the government “did all they could have done” for older people. Any inquiry must be completely independent of the UK and Scottish governments, the judiciary, HPS and the various advisors and bodies who have drawn up the strategy for dealing with the coronavirus pandemic.

Understandably, working class people can be wary and jaded of “public inquiries” given how the British capitalist establishment seeks to control them through parliament, the judiciary and its various institutions. They are designed not to find the truth but cover it up.

This has been the experience of the Hillsborough disaster inquiry, Chilcott over Iraq and Leveson with the gutter press. The Scottish government are not immune to denying justice either, including refusing to facilitate full justice for the Mesh survivors, mining communities criminalised during the 84/85 strike and over the Lockerbie prosecution.

Socialist Party Scotland has zero confidence in the capitalist establishment to hold a real inquiry. We therefore call for the trade union movement in Scotland to convene a workers’ inquiry into the pandemic and all actions and decisions taken. 

Such an inquiry could hear first hand from workers on the frontline, allow the voices of family members and those impacted by the virus to be heard, as well drawing on medical and scientific expertise from those who have already spoken out against the mistaken approach of the Westminster and Holyrood governments, such as the Independent SAGE panel. 

Such an investigation is essential if all the lessons are to be learned and those who made the key decisions be accountable for them. There is no doubt such an inquiry would further expose the chaotic failures of capitalism to protect the population from this deadly virus.

That at every stage profit took preference over the lives of working-class people would be the conclusion drawn by millions.

As well as a genuine workers’ and trade union-led inquiry, mass collective involvement into the trade unions, combative community and youth organisations are essential. As is the creation of a new mass party based on the organised working class and youth to fight for a socialist society to meet the needs of all.