2. Mrs Jane Morrison

MRS JANE MORRISON (affirmed).

(Evidence via videolink)

Questions From Lead Counsel to the Inquiry

Mr Keith: Good morning. Could you give the Inquiry your full name, please.

Mrs Jane Morrison: Jane Morrison.

Lady Hallett: Sorry, could I just interrupt. As I said to Mr Fowler, and as you may have seen, I do understand how difficult this must be for you, so if at any stage you need a break, please just say.

The Witness: Thank you, my Lady.

Lady Hallett: Thank you.

Mr Keith: Mrs Morrison, I understand from having spoken to you earlier that you wish to commence your evidence by saying a short statement about the condolences that you’ve received. Would you like to do that now?

Mrs Jane Morrison: Yes, please.

It’s for those who have offered their condolences with genuine sincerity, I’d like to thank you, and more importantly to all those individuals from the ranks of all key workers out there who took that extra, often small, compassionate step, you may not even be aware of the difference it made and the impact it had, and it’s a moment of kindness in a dark world. So thank you to all of you.

Lead Inquiry: Mrs Morrison, in October of 2020, your wife, Jacky Morrison-Hart, died from Covid, having caught it in hospital through what is called nosocomial infection. Is that right?

Mrs Jane Morrison: That’s correct.

Lead Inquiry: Had she, in the weeks preceding her death, developed an illness, jaundice in fact, which had required her to go into hospital for tests?

Mrs Jane Morrison: That’s correct, yes.

Lead Inquiry: Was she an in-patient thereafter?

Mrs Jane Morrison: Yes, she was, yes. She was in for two weeks and she caught Covid on the 15th day.

Lead Inquiry: Throughout that time, the 14 days that she was in prior to catching Covid, was she in hospital because the tests which she was required to undertake took rather longer than usual?

Mrs Jane Morrison: That’s correct, because the scans, for example, after somebody had been in the scanner the whole thing had to be disinfected completely and then left for a further 20 minutes before anybody else could go in, so the whole process took much, much longer.

Lead Inquiry: Was the early sign of her having caught something in hospital the fact that her temperature went up but it wasn’t at all clear at the beginning what it was that she might have caught?

Mrs Jane Morrison: That’s correct. They were monitoring her very closely, and they detected the temperature rise in the small hours of that morning, and they thought it might have been from biopsies she’d had, so they started giving her antibiotics straightaway, and then when that made no difference, they did a whole raft of tests and they included a Covid test in it, and sadly that came back positive.

Lead Inquiry: It is obvious from the fact that she had been in hospital for the prior 14 days that she couldn’t have caught Covid outside. It’s therefore clear to you, isn’t it, that that was a nosocomial infection?

Mrs Jane Morrison: Correct, yes.

Lead Inquiry: She went downhill very fast thereafter, did she not?

Mrs Jane Morrison: She did indeed. It was actually five days from the onset of Covid until she died.

Lead Inquiry: So that there can be no illusion about the way in which Covid can strike, her major organs and her health deteriorated very, very sharply indeed under the onset of the Covid virus?

Mrs Jane Morrison: That’s correct. From the onset, in that time the Covid destroyed her lungs, her kidneys, her liver and her pancreas. They tried to give her dialysis, but the Covid had made her blood so thick and sticky that it actually blocked the dialysis machine.

Lead Inquiry: Due to the organ damage that she suffered, was she a candidate for intensive care or for intubation?

Mrs Jane Morrison: No, she wasn’t, because once especially the liver had failed there was nothing they could do and they told her and myself that she wasn’t a candidate for ICU and intubation and told us both that she was dying, and there was nothing, sadly, that they could do to help her.

Lead Inquiry: So the hospital told you that the end was near, did it?

Mrs Jane Morrison: Yes, it did, yes.

Lead Inquiry: Were you given an opportunity to get to hospital to say goodbye?

Mrs Jane Morrison: Yes, I thought initially I wasn’t going to be able to, and they thought I wasn’t going to be able to, and they had initially arranged a phone call with her, but of course she was on CPAP so I couldn’t hear anything that she said, but they very kindly managed to arrange for me to be there, so I went up.

Lead Inquiry: Following her passing away, were you forced to be in isolation thereafter and, if so, for how long?

Mrs Jane Morrison: Yes, I was told that I had to go into immediate isolation for 14 days.

Lead Inquiry: Which you no doubt did?

Mrs Jane Morrison: I did, yes.

Lead Inquiry: May I ask, and forgive me for asking, did that period of isolation merely extend and aggravate your agony?

Mrs Jane Morrison: It did indeed, and there was other traumas going on at the same time, if you don’t mind me digressing slightly, because I also had to deal with Jacky’s guide dog going back to Guide Dogs for the Blind, and our border terrier had to be put to sleep, and our remaining wee dog, who was Jacky’s shadow, had effectively a doggy breakdown, because 75% of her pack had disappeared. So all this was going on at the same time. I mean, this was just in the space of a week, so it was very difficult to be isolated during that time.

Lead Inquiry: A few months after Jacky died, did you come across on Facebook a group of like-minded people with whom you began to discuss what could be done to bring support to those who needed it as well as to start raising the concerns which you all shared about the way in which your loved ones had died, in particular of course, in your case, from a nosocomial infection?

Mrs Jane Morrison: That’s correct, yes.

Lead Inquiry: Was that the group that became, or maybe it was already in existence, Covid Bereaved Families for Justice?

Mrs Jane Morrison: That’s correct.

Lead Inquiry: What were the aims of that group – we’ll come to Scottish Covid Bereaved in a moment, but what were the aims of that group, as you saw it, when you joined them later in that year 2020?

Mrs Jane Morrison: Their main aim was to get a UK public inquiry.

Lead Inquiry: They also had, we’ve heard, the aims of making things better, of holding people to account, of making sure that lessons are learned and so on. That was all part of the group as well of course?

Mrs Jane Morrison: Yes.

Lead Inquiry: There came a time when an autonomous group, Scottish Covid Bereaved, was formed from Covid Bereaved Families for Justice. Can you just tell the Inquiry when that happened? When did you set up Scottish Covid Bereaved?

Mrs Jane Morrison: We started off initially it would be about March 2021 as a branch, a Scottish branch of Covid Bereaved Families for Justice, and as time went on we decided it was better to have a completely autonomous group, and – it came about quite gradually, really, but by October last year we were completely separate and an autonomous group then.

Lead Inquiry: October 2022?

Mrs Jane Morrison: Yes.

Lead Inquiry: Whilst you were concerned with the management and the running of the Scottish branch of Covid Bereaved Families for Justice, were its aims broadly similar to the aims of the overarching group? And when you formed Scottish Covid Bereaved, again, did the aims generally reflect the aims of the prior group of which you had been part?

Mrs Jane Morrison: Yes, they did, but of course we were focusing at that stage on the Scottish public inquiry as well as the UK one.

Lead Inquiry: Has Scottish Covid Bereaved, and the Scottish branch of Covid Bereaved Families for Justice before it, had a significant number of meetings with the Scottish Government, including the then First Minister, and consistently raised the issue of a public inquiry in Scotland as well as pursuing the broad aims of which you’ve already spoken?

Mrs Jane Morrison: That is correct, yes. We managed to have a meeting with Nicola Sturgeon, who was then First Minister, in March 2021, and we got her commitment then to the Scottish public inquiry, and thereafter we had several meetings with John Swinney, who was the deputy First Minister, and Humza Yousaf, who by that time was Health Secretary, and of course he is now the First Minister, and we were accompanied to those meetings with Aamer Anwar, who was our lawyer for the Scottish public inquiry.

Lead Inquiry: Does Scottish Covid Bereaved represent persons from all walks of life?

Mrs Jane Morrison: Very much so, yes.

Lead Inquiry: Is it just concerned with those persons who have suffered bereavement, or does it also have members from the healthcare and the care home sectors, teachers, key workers, and other people who have suffered in different ways from the pandemic?

Mrs Jane Morrison: Yes, that’s correct. We’ve got quite a range of people who have had other consequences apart from bereavement, just as you’ve said: traumatised healthcare workers; teachers, who also had to buy their own disinfectant to keep classrooms safe; those struggling with long Covid; those dealing with the financial consequences of the pandemic; and quite a lot of people with post-traumatic stress.

Lead Inquiry: Do you all share the concern, the fear that in multiple areas in the response to the pandemic things went wrong, both in Scotland and in the United Kingdom more generally?

Mrs Jane Morrison: That is correct, yes.

Lead Inquiry: What is the aim, now, of Scottish Covid Bereaved in relation to dealing with or seeking answers as to what you believe went wrong?

Mrs Jane Morrison: Yes, there’s two aspects to it, because, oh, we definitely want to find the answers as to what went wrong, but also we want to help as much as we can, because, in addition to things going wrong, we also have examples of things that went well, and it’s important to recognise those.

Lead Inquiry: Could you identify for us, please, Mrs Morrison, those areas where your members believe things did go wrong insofar as there may have been a lack of protection? So just in a very general sense, that they perceived that they were let down by the system or the way in which they were treated.

Starting with hospitals, is a very major concern, perhaps the greatest concern in relation to hospitals, perceived breakdowns in proper infection control?

Mrs Jane Morrison: That is correct, and obviously it’s particularly close to my heart.

Within our group, if I could just say, when we last did a survey within the group, and in relation to – everybody focuses on care home deaths, and we’ve got about 9% of people lost a relative in care home deaths. 26% of people have lost someone through nosocomial infection in hospital, on that.

But since I have been widowed I’ve looked at quite a lot of infection control plans, which are very extensive to what the hospital staff have to do, but the only reference I’ve ever seen in relation to patients and visitors is that they’re invited to use alcohol hand gel upon entering the ward. Admittedly the procedures were beefed up for Covid.

But to myself and others in the group who have commented on this, there is one glaring flaw, and I witnessed with my own eyes on several occasions: patients who had left the wards and were meeting up with friends and family groups in the hospital grounds with no social distancing and no masks, and then they returned to the ward without even using the hand gel, and in many cases not even wearing masks once back in the ward, because some wards were more relaxed about patients wearing masks. Everybody else had to but not always the patients.

Lead Inquiry: So that’s a good example of an incidence in which there may have been a breakdown in proper infection control by virtue of patients in the hospital leaving the ward and going outside and coming back in.

Have your members also expressed concerns about the movement of patients between wards, and also the movement of persons visiting hospitals, visitors and workmen and the like, who may also have contributed to a breakdown in infection control?

Mrs Jane Morrison: That is correct. I mean, there’s vast differences between different health boards on infection control and sometimes different hospitals within health boards had different procedures. But what is really surprising is different wards within a hospital had different procedures, and if they’re moving patients around because of lack of beds and so on, some patients were being taken to wards where infection control levels were less, for example visitors weren’t made to wear PPE when they entered the ward, and so on. And often they were wheeled through the hospital and, because they were a patient, they didn’t have to wear a mask.

Lead Inquiry: Your statement refers, Mrs Morrison, to another area of hospital treatment, and this is the communication between medical staff and the relatives of patients.

Is this an area which your members have raised significant concern about, and in particular the perception, rightly or wrongly, that the communication between themselves and the various hospitals was deficient: they simply didn’t know what was going on, and if they were told they were not told about it in the most appropriate way? Is that a fair summary?

Mrs Jane Morrison: That is correct, yes. There were – it is probably one of the major areas of concern with that. I mean, I was very fortunate, the communication I had between Jacky’s consultant and myself was excellent. So we know it can be done well. But there are far too many people who were left very upset and confused as to why, for example, their loved one was not eligible for intubation or CPR, because those conversations either weren’t held or if they were held they were very brief, over the phone, and patient – sorry, the relatives did not feel able to ask questions because it was all just happening at once and all seemed to be very, very hurried, and we have even an example where the next of kin was told immediately on admission that her husband was not a candidate for ICU or (inaudible) and she doesn’t know why.

Lead Inquiry: Turning to care homes, you mentioned a few moments ago that the procedures in place for dealing with infection control were, of course, different in care homes. Have many of your members expressed concern about the degree to which there were proper procedures in place for dealing generally with infection control in care and nursing homes, but also the degree to which they were regulated and tested and checked to make sure there were appropriate procedures in place?

Mrs Jane Morrison: Yes, a lot of our members actually think there weren’t any procedures in place in care homes. This is fully understanding the difference between a nursing home and a care home. And without any nursing input, many care homes probably would not have understood the level of infection control required for dealing with Covid, because these are not skills they are required to have and they didn’t have the skills for basic monitoring and that.

So it really felt that people were just, “Ah, what do I do now?” sort of thing. There was no clear evidence that there were set procedures in place. And of course Covid symptoms are quite different in the elderly. But there was no inspectorate visits during that time or visits from GPs, and of course the relatives themselves weren’t visiting, so there was no checks and balances on the care homes.

Lead Inquiry: Have many of your members expressed concern that, as a result, there were difficulties in their loved ones who were in care homes in particular getting proper medical treatment and attention when it was required? So you give the example in your statement of the practical restrictions on having GPs visiting care homes. Was there a perception that the necessary degree of medical care was just not available?

Mrs Jane Morrison: Very much so, and in many care homes the GPs were just refusing to visit at all. The only response people – care home managers then had was to try phoning 111, and they were told – if they did that, the response from 111 was, “We don’t take Covid-positive patients to hospital, order the end of life pack.”

And, I mean, if you’re a manager of a care home, and you keep getting that response, what are you going to do?

Lead Inquiry: Turning to a different area, do you raise in your statement, as many others have done, the general concerns that your members have expressed about the lack of available testing, diagnostic testing, in the public sphere, the lack of mass contact tracing, and also the well known difficulties concerning the availability of PPE? I don’t think we need to go into it in greater detail, but are those all areas which are also identified in your statement?

Mrs Jane Morrison: That’s correct, yes.

Lead Inquiry: Shielding –

Mrs Jane Morrison: May I just –

Lead Inquiry: Yes.

Mrs Jane Morrison: – emphasise one thing? This thing about the three cardinal symptoms for – you’d only get a test if you had the high fever with continuous cough or loss of sense and taste and smell. Yet as early as March 2020 it was recognised in the elderly they will not necessarily present with those symptoms. I mean, only 20% of elderly people would present with a fever, and all the symptoms were very, very different from them. So they wouldn’t get a test normally because they would not meet the criteria for testing.

Lead Inquiry: Thank you for that.

Shielding. Is that another area in which your members have expressed concern, in particular over the generic overarching decision-making as to when people would be expected to be shielded and what general arrangements were put in place to shield them whilst the rest of the population were either in lockdown or coming out of it?

Mrs Jane Morrison: Yes, that’s correct. I think particularly so when people were starting to come out of lockdown, because to take restrictions off people who were shielding at the same time everything was opening up, I would suggest was not the most sensible option to follow.

Lead Inquiry: Then finally, and certainly not least, many of your members have expressed to you how they faced terrible difficulties when holding funerals and saying goodbye to their loved ones. Is that an area which it seems to the Scottish Covid Bereaved is a very significant and wide-ranging problem insofar as, across the board, everybody had to deal with that terrible time in the most appalling of circumstances?

Mrs Jane Morrison: Yes, that is a very, very big area of concern, because I think it affected everybody in the group, and it was the terrible decisions you had to make about who could go and who couldn’t, and of course if someone had been with their loved one at the end, they were often told by some hospitals, “You have a choice: you can either come in and be with them at the end or you can go to the funeral, but you can’t do both, because you have to be in isolation.”

And one thing I think people found particularly traumatic was, because the bodies were deemed to be contaminated, there were then specific rules: it was sealed body bags, many funeral homes would not undo the body bags, wouldn’t open them up, so people couldn’t put on – you know, give their loved one the smart suit to wear or whatever. And people found that very distressing as well as the restrictions on the numbers of funerals.

Lead Inquiry: Mrs Morrison, thank you for your assistance in identifying those areas of concern. They provide a helpful foundation, of course, for the Inquiry’s further work.

Finally, it’s right to note that Scottish Covid Bereaved has participated fully in this module, and you’re already fully engaged and continue to engage in Module 2A in Edinburgh, and you’ve also, of course, called for and you are now participating in the Scottish Inquiry under the chair of Lord Brailsford?

Mrs Jane Morrison: That’s correct, yes, and can I thank this Inquiry for also the depth it’s going into on dealing with Scotland as well as the rest of the UK. It’s appreciated, thank you.

Mr Keith: Thank you, Mrs Morrison.

Lady Hallett: Thank you very much indeed, Mrs Morrison , and thank you for your thanks.

I can’t imagine how distressing it must have been for you to lose Jacky. To lose a loved one in any circumstances is bad enough, but to lose a loved one in the circumstances you describe is truly awful. But you’ve shown great courage and I do thank you for doing your best that ensure that others don’t suffer as you have suffered in the future. So thank you very much indeed.

The Witness: Thank you, my Lady.

(The witness withdrew)

Lady Hallett: Right, I’ve been asked to break for ten minutes.

Mr Keith: Thank you, my Lady.

Lady Hallett: So I will now adjourn – oh, Mrs Morrison has gone, right – and I shall return at 20 past.

(11.08 am)

(A short break)

(11.20 am)

Mr Keith: My Lady, the next witness is Anna-Louise Marsh-Rees of Covid Bereaved Families for Justice Cymru.