12. Ms Joanna Goodman

MS JOANNA GOODMAN (affirmed).

Questions From Lead Counsel to the Inquiry

Lady Hallett: Ms Goodman, I appreciate this could be difficult for you, so please just say if it gets too much. All right?

Ms Joanna Goodman: Thank you very much.

Mr Keith: May I please ask you to start by giving us your full name.

Ms Joanna Goodman: Yes, it’s Joanna Sophie Goodman.

Lead Inquiry: Ms Goodman, whilst you give evidence, could you try to keep your voice up as much as you can, so that we may all hear you as clearly as possible.

Ms Joanna Goodman: Yes.

Lead Inquiry: Also because your voice needs to be clearly received by the microphone so it can be recorded.

If I ask you a question that isn’t clear, which may be quite possible, please ask me to repeat it.

Ms Joanna Goodman: Yes.

Lead Inquiry: Ms Goodman, you have been good enough to provide this Inquiry with a statement signed in fact on 27 September of this year. We don’t need to bring it up, but it’s INQ000281297. Is that your statement? And it is of course true.

And my Lady, perhaps that could be published in due course.

We heard in Module 1 from Matt Fowler. Was he, is he, the co-founder, with you, of Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice?

Ms Joanna Goodman: He is.

Lead Inquiry: I’m going to ask you some questions about your father Stuart in a moment or two, but did the group Covid Bereaved Families for Justice come into being at the end of April 2020 soon after you had lost your own father on 2 April?

Ms Joanna Goodman: Yes.

Lead Inquiry: Could you just say something about why you instituted the group, why you commenced it, and what was it about the circumstances of your father’s death which caused you to have to set up, as you saw it, that group?

Ms Joanna Goodman: Yes. So my father Stuart, he was someone who, from very early on, we knew was likely to be vulnerable to Covid-19. He was 72, he had a number of health issues, and at the time he was undergoing diagnosis for cancer.

When the risk factors for Covid-19 were published, they looked pretty much like a shopping list of his health conditions, and I still have a message that I sent to him on 3 March telling him that I wished I was able to wrap him up in a giant ball of cotton wool.

At the time I was actually in India, and in India it was already very clear that the virus was something to be feared, that – for instance, in my statement I gave the example of the festival of Holi on 10 March, festivities were very, very much scaled down. And people were actually approaching me and saying, “Oh, you know, it’s really worrying to see how quickly cases are rising in the UK”, and I was very, very anxious about my own father. So I was on the phone to my parents most days in March 2020 to say, you know, “Oh it’s really worrying, you know, there are more cases”, and my family – effectively we made the decision to shield my father from long before the first lockdown.

Lead Inquiry: Can I just pause you there.

Ms Joanna Goodman: Yes.

Lead Inquiry: There’s quite a lot to take in there from that.

Your father had had, I think, a number of health issues in the years before the pandemic, including two heart attacks, and therefore was it the position that a considerable amount of care had to be taken to ensuring that he remained healthy thereafter, and obviously that he was protected to whatever degree was required?

Ms Joanna Goodman: Yes. I think it was very clear to myself and my family very early on that should my dad contract Covid-19 the chances of him surviving were very low, and so that was why, I guess, it was a no-brainer for us that we needed to do everything we could to keep him safe, and that included – for instance, my mum works as a music therapist in schools, she stopped into going schools, they scaled back their social contact and then eventually stopped their social contact before the first lockdown. My brother stopped going to visit my parents because he also worked in a school and was coming into contact with a lot of people.

So –

Lead Inquiry: Was the problem, the immediate problem at that time, that your father had had a scan the previous autumn, around about November 2019, which had required him to go into hospital to get the results of that scan?

Ms Joanna Goodman: Yes. So my dad was no longer going out in public in general. On 18 March 2020 he had an appointment at the Norfolk & Norwich Hospital to receive his cancer diagnosis. I was very anxious about that appointment, and I actually called him on the morning of the appointment begging him not to go, because I felt that no testing was taking place, there was no treatment taking place. As far as I was concerned that appointment could have happened over the phone.

Lead Inquiry: Just pausing there, which part of the country was the hospital that your father was required to attend?

Ms Joanna Goodman: It was in Norwich, in the East of England.

Lady Hallett: I think the clue was in the name.

Mr Keith: Did she say Norfolk?

Lady Hallett: Norfolk & Norwich.

Mr Keith: Yes, I should know that.

Did your mother and father go to hospital together?

Ms Joanna Goodman: They did go to hospital together. My dad was of the view that he wouldn’t be invited to attend an appointment if it wasn’t safe, and he had a huge amount of faith in the NHS. He never liked to be a burden, particularly to public services, and he felt that it was – he want didn’t want to kick up a fuss and ask for an appointment to happen over the phone. So they went –

Lead Inquiry: They were together?

Ms Joanna Goodman: They were together. And they spent the day in crowded waiting rooms with no mitigations in place, no face masks, no social distancing, no ventilation.

Lead Inquiry: Just pause there. They recounted this to you, presumably?

Ms Joanna Goodman: Yes.

Lead Inquiry: Did your father receive his diagnosis that day?

Ms Joanna Goodman: He did, yes.

Lead Inquiry: He did, and that was of, I think, non-Hodgkin lymphoma?

Ms Joanna Goodman: Yeah.

Lead Inquiry: He came back home. Were you still abroad at that stage or were you by then travelling back?

Ms Joanna Goodman: I was still abroad when I was notified of the diagnosis. So previously we’d been led to believe that the cancer was likely to be slow moving and non-aggressive. It then became clear it was aggressive and required immediate treatment, so I made the decision to travel home as soon as I was able.

Lead Inquiry: And because of your father’s condition, and because of Covid, did you and your brother decide to self-isolate for the whole period that you believed was appropriate, in order that you could then see your father and of course your mother thereafter?

Ms Joanna Goodman: Yes, so this was prior to the first lockdown, and the plan myself and my brother had come up with was that we would isolate at his home and then – with the intention to move home with our parents while my dad was undergoing chemotherapy.

So I came home from India having not seen my parents for four months and knowing that my dad had just been diagnosed with cancer, and I had to wheel my suitcase at a distance to my mum as we both sobbed in the street, I think, at about 8 am on a Sunday, probably much to the bemusement of the neighbours. But yeah, the intention was that myself and my brother would isolate in order to keep him safe.

And it’s worth saying, actually, that I landed at Heathrow on the morning of, I believe, 22 March, if that was the Sunday, and –

Lead Inquiry: You might have landed on the 21st.

Ms Joanna Goodman: I might have landed on the 21st, yeah.

Lead Inquiry: I don’t think there’s any disagreement on the date.

Ms Joanna Goodman: Yes. And I was very anxious about what I needed to do to keep my father safe, having been on a busy flight. The only sign of any guidance there was to me at Heathrow was a single person with a leaflet who I asked, you know, “I’m planning to isolate for two weeks, is that the best course of action?” And they just said, “You don’t need to isolate unless you’ve got symptoms, here’s a leaflet”, and it just very basically said if you have symptoms to isolate then. But, yeah, I was quite shocked, actually that there was no testing, no – yeah, no –

Lead Inquiry: No measures in place.

Ms Joanna Goodman: – proper guidance, no distancing. I was actually told by a flight attendant on my flight, because I was wearing a face mask at the time, I was told, “Oh, you haven’t been taken in by all this, have you?” And that was very much the – the mood, it felt, at the time.

Lead Inquiry: Your father started the chemotherapy on the first day of lockdown. Did he go back to the same hospital for the chemotherapy where he had received his diagnosis?

Ms Joanna Goodman: He did. None of us were able to attend with him, so my mum took him there and then needed to leave him. He wasn’t tested prior to starting the course of chemotherapy, and I think what’s worth saying is that we believe that he contracted Covid when he attended that appointment on 18 March –

Lead Inquiry: When he received his diagnosis –

Ms Joanna Goodman: When he received his –

Lead Inquiry: – rather than when he went in for his first dose of chemotherapy?

Ms Joanna Goodman: Yes. And so we believe that he would probably already have tested positive for Covid-19 on the day he began his chemotherapy treatment, but no test was offered. And, as you will know, chemotherapy, it compromises your immune system, so any hope that he would have had of surviving Covid, I think the chemotherapy –

Lead Inquiry: Would have disposed of that?

Ms Joanna Goodman: Yeah.

Lead Inquiry: Did he start to show symptoms on the Thursday, the 26th, and the Friday, 27 March when you were speaking to him? You were obviously still self-isolating, so we presume that was on a phone or video?

Ms Joanna Goodman: Yeah. So we did a Zoom call with him on the Thursday, and – my dad always had a bit of a cough, but he had a real kind of coughing fit on this video call, and I was quite worried and asked him if he was okay but he insisted he was. He then went on to deteriorate, become very lethargic over the next few days, and overnight on the Saturday into the Sunday, he lost his lucidity, yeah, forgot who my mum was, was vomiting, was very, very unwell, and she called an ambulance and he was taken into hospital.

Lead Inquiry: So he was taken to hospital on the Sunday, 29 March. On the Monday were you told that he had been tested or at least told that he had Covid?

Ms Joanna Goodman: Yeah. So I think that was the hardest moment of all of it, and – I’m sorry, I will get emotional, but to quote –

Lady Hallett: Just take your time.

Ms Joanna Goodman: No, but I was just going say, to quote Brenda Doherty from the first Module, I think emotion is good and it’s important that we don’t hide it, because this is, you know, real life trauma.

Yeah, so I received a phone call from my mum to tell me – at the time we’d been very worried because he had a fever, which we thought was perhaps an infection following on from the chemotherapy, but we knew that he was in a Covid assessment bay, which we were very worried about, because at the time we didn’t think he had Covid.

And, yeah, my mum phoned on the Monday evening and she said, “Are you sitting down? It’s Covid”. And I think I just howled. Like, I don’t know what my brother’s neighbours thought, but that was the worst moment, because it felt as though we had done everything in our power to protect him, and yet, as I’ll go on to discuss, it felt that the fact that the government had failed to keep their end of the bargain in that regard meant that he had still been exposed to it. And the person that I least wanted to – you know, the person that I most wanted to protect in the world had Covid, and we knew at that point that there was no hope of him surviving.

Mr Keith: Were you allowed on the Tuesday to go into hospital to see him?

Ms Joanna Goodman: Yeah. So this is where I have to say that myself and my family were immensely privileged, because this wasn’t afforded to all families. But because there were a lower number of cases in Norfolk at the time, and my dad was on the early side of those cases, they allowed us to visit him, we were able to spend time with him one by one. But it was just the hardest time.

So we were able to go in, I think, on the Tuesday morning and he passed away on the Thursday morning in the early hours. And just to watch, across that 48-hour period, one of the people that you loved most in the world just being absolutely taken apart by this virus, you know, and – yeah, I feel very, very lucky that I was able to be with him, but I will also always have those images of my dad in his dying days.

And I think, you know, we talk a lot about what is a good death, and I think, you know, this wasn’t that, but my dad was lucky that he had I think as good – as good a death as was afforded to anyone during Covid, in that he was able to have his family around him.

Lead Inquiry: Did the hospital allow you back in a second time, on the Wednesday, the day in fact before he died, after they told you that he was – that it was time?

Ms Joanna Goodman: Yes. So on the Wednesday evening the hospital called us and said that we should come, because he – they didn’t think he was going to make the night.

Lead Inquiry: Right.

After your father passed away, do we presume that the funeral was not – that it was a funeral that was subject to the restrictions which were then in place and therefore you were denied the ability to have any more than ten people there, there was no proper wake and it was one of those appalling, dreadful events –

Ms Joanna Goodman: Yes, that’s correct, only ten of us at the graveside.

Lead Inquiry: – as a result of the Covid restrictions?

What aspect of the infection of your father with Covid or the hospital treatment or the way in which you were denied the ability to attend a proper funeral afterwards led you to set up the Covid Bereaved Families for Justice group?

Ms Joanna Goodman: I think I immediately found it very difficult to grieve. Not in the kind of traditional sense, in terms of the funeral, obviously that was not available to us, but I found it very hard emotionally to feel the – to go through the natural emotional process of grieving, because I think what was blocking me was that I felt very strongly that his death was not an inevitability. I felt that as a family we had taken decisions, with very limited access to information, to protect him. It was clear to us that we needed to protect him, and it felt as though the government had done absolutely nothing.

So I think when we look at 18 March, the date where we believe he contracted Covid, up until that date I don’t think there’s a meaningful tangible action that I could point to that the government had done to protect my father. So, you know, there hadn’t been the border control or testing that had happened in other countries, community testing wasn’t happening, infection control in hospitals wasn’t being looked at. Clearly, from his experience. There were just so many things that I could point to, you know –

Lead Inquiry: You felt that –

Ms Joanna Goodman: – I could go on.

Lead Inquiry: – that were contributory features?

Ms Joanna Goodman: That were contributory features to the prevalence of Covid-19 in the community at that time.

And we received my dad’s shielding letter nine days after he passed away, and I think that was a real trigger for me. I just felt like that was – you know, how did we know that we needed to shield him from early to mid-March when the government didn’t, you know, didn’t take any action to reduce transmission in the community until much later? And didn’t take action to protect him individually until nine days after he died.

Lead Inquiry: All right.

Did you see this, of course, befalling hundreds, thousands of other people? So one presumes, of course, that you looked around and you saw that, as you describe in your statement, the same mistakes, the same errors, the same flaws were occurring again and again and again and in the cases of everybody else?

Ms Joanna Goodman: I think that came a bit later. So initially for me it was very much a personal sense that my dad’s life had been treated as expendable and I really questioned whether decisions had been made by government on the basis that people like him needed to be protected, and I at the time I didn’t really know what to do with all of these feelings.

I ended up actually speaking to a journalist from The Independent newspaper the day after his funeral, so you can imagine the kind of emotional state that I was in, and I shared with them that I felt strongly that the government was responsible for my father’s death. And that was how I initially made contact with Matt Fowler, and he – I found him in the Facebook comments section, and he said that he’d lost his dad and, you know, felt exactly the same as me. So I think that was the first sense I got that anyone else shared those sentiments.

Lead Inquiry: Shared your views?

Ms Joanna Goodman: But I think we very quickly agreed that what we needed to do was see if there were other people that felt similarly, and it very quickly became evident that we had people from all across England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, a range of backgrounds, all sharing different concerns about the specific circumstances of their loved ones’ deaths, but –

Lead Inquiry: May I just pause you there, because I want to ask you about what those themes were.

Ms Joanna Goodman: Yeah.

Lead Inquiry: As you talked to more and more bereaved people, certain themes undoubtedly emerged?

Ms Joanna Goodman: Yes.

Lead Inquiry: And I just want to ask you, please, to identify the broad themes. Presumably they are the themes, in part, that your group then commenced campaigning about?

Ms Joanna Goodman: Yes.

Lead Inquiry: Looking for accountability, looking for explanations, and where appropriate, because some events had already passed, of course, looking for change?

Ms Joanna Goodman: Yeah. So –

Lead Inquiry: So let’s identify some of the broad themes.

From your statement, and you describe it as possibly the most stark theme that first emerged when you spoke to other bereaved people, was that the 111 system?

Ms Joanna Goodman: Yes. So that was something that started to – because I think instinctively when people found this community of other bereaved people who shared their concerns, people shared their stories, and I think that was probably the quickest pattern to emerge, that there were a lot of people who were sharing stories of their loved ones who had become very unwell at home, had done what they had been asked to do and made contact with the 111 service and had been asked about their symptoms, and despite the fact that they themselves and their families were hugely concerned about them and felt that they were very, very seriously unwell, the triage questions were indicating that they should stay at home.

Lead Inquiry: So just pausing there, it became apparent that there were a number of questions being raised about the way in which the triage system, so the way in which people were assessed to see whether they would be allowed to have hospital treatment, was being undertaken?

Ms Joanna Goodman: Yes.

Lead Inquiry: So issues about whether or not the correct symptoms were being identified?

Ms Joanna Goodman: Yes.

Lead Inquiry: Whether or not there was some pre-existing policy in place which denied some people medical care but not others, for wrongful reasons; is that the gist of it?

Ms Joanna Goodman: Yes. So, for example, I think there were people who were asked if their loved one could make a cup of tea, and it was considered if they could make a cup of tea then they couldn’t be gravely ill, despite their families describing very, very significant other symptoms.

There were people who were asked if their loved ones’ lips had turned blue, which is a presentation that might be present in someone with a caucasian skin tone that might not be present in someone with a darker skin tone.

There were people who were asked about symptoms which weren’t present but the symptoms which were present were kind of disregarded.

There didn’t seem to be any element to the assessment process which took into account people’s pre-existing health conditions, so a lot of people had existing vulnerabilities which made their symptoms significantly more concerning.

Lead Inquiry: Ms Goodman, may I just pause you there, I do apologise.

Ms Joanna Goodman: Yeah.

Lead Inquiry: I want to try to elicit some of the other areas in which your group –

Ms Joanna Goodman: Yeah, could I just add two brief points there?

Lead Inquiry: Yes, please do.

Ms Joanna Goodman: The other things was about the accessibility of the 111 service. So I know that one of our members in Wales was told by the GP that they couldn’t deal with a Covid case and that they needed to go through 111. When they were trying to get through to 111 repeatedly for, I think, days and eventually it turned out that 111 didn’t cover that part of Wales, and the GP didn’t even know.

There were people who – English was their second language, and they weren’t able to communicate effectively their symptoms and their families were concerned. And in these instances the results were either people going into hospital very significantly too late, by which point there was nothing that could be done, or in some circumstances actually people dying at home before they were able to access any real medical attention.

Lead Inquiry: Thank you.

Two other areas from your statement appear to be of particular importance and particularly prevalent. One is the amount of persons who acquired Covid in hospital, so nosocomial infection. Did a very large number and do a very large number of the members of your group say that their loved ones acquired Covid in hospital? So that’s the first issue. To what extent has that been an issue that has been raised by your members?

Ms Joanna Goodman: Yes, I think at the time there was – there was a lot of coverage of issues around care homes in the press, although it didn’t cover all of the detail –

Lead Inquiry: I’ll come on to care homes in a moment. Could –

Ms Joanna Goodman: That was one of the starkest things that it felt like it was coming up with in our group, but –

Lead Inquiry: Can I come on to care homes in a moment, because I want to ask you some questions about that, but in terms of hospital-acquired Covid, hospital-acquired infection –

Ms Joanna Goodman: Yes.

Lead Inquiry: – to what degree has that been a very major issue raised by your –

Ms Joanna Goodman: A very significant issue. A lot of people who were in hospital for the entire period, so it was very clear that they contracted Covid. A number of people who also believed that their loved ones had contracted Covid, like we believed my dad did –

Lead Inquiry: Yes?

Ms Joanna Goodman: – at an outpatient appointment. Also people not being tested on discharge from hospital, and often then going home, becoming ill, being re-admitted. Or actually going home to someone else who was vulnerable in the household. So particularly you can imagine elderly couples whereby one of them would have been in hospital, wasn’t tested, and on arriving home became ill.

Lead Inquiry: Right.

Ms Joanna Goodman: And then their partner then went on to become ill. And, yeah, I think it’s one of the saddest things that – there are a number of people in our group who lost both parents to Covid-19.

Lead Inquiry: In relation to care homes, which you’ve mentioned, are there two main areas about which the members of your group have expressed the greatest concern? One is, of course, the acquisition of infection in the care home sector, but the other is the related but slightly different area of the restrictions, the way in which, their last days in the particular care home, they were subject to isolation, to absence of contact from their family and loved ones, and the way in which they were treated. Is that a second major area of concern?

Ms Joanna Goodman: Yes. I think it’s also a bit broader than that. So I think the – obviously the discharge of untested hospital patients into care homes was a big concern and – but also issues around, for example, agency workers and sickness absence and –

Lead Inquiry: Yes, that all goes to the issue of why there was Covid in the care sector.

Ms Joanna Goodman: But also actually concerns around access to healthcare for care home residents. So a lot of members reporting that their loved ones contracted Covid-19 and having concerns about how it had come into the care home, but also feeling as though, because their loved one was a care home resident and had a number of health conditions, it was almost assumed that what they would need was palliative care and that that should be provided in the care home rather than it being possible for them to be admitted to hospital for treatment.

Lead Inquiry: Just pause there. So a very real concern about whether or not they were afforded access to proper medical care when they became infected with Covid?

Ms Joanna Goodman: Yeah.

Lead Inquiry: Inside the care home sector?

Ms Joanna Goodman: Yeah.

Lead Inquiry: We are aware, and her Ladyship is aware, that you’ve sent to the Inquiry a list, around about 23 in fact, a list of 23 people who are members of your group who have set out in terrible and stark terms the details surrounding the way in which they lost their loved ones.

I just want to identify for you, if I may, the sorts of themes and issues which emerge from that list, not to give you – I’m sorry to say – an opportunity to describe the ways in which their loved ones died, but to identify that some of the broad themes that you’ve identified already re-occur in that list of other persons.

So they deal with areas such as: pre-existing health vulnerabilities, the absence of masks, 111 service (which you’ve addressed already), nosocomial infection (which you’ve addressed already), the lack of PPE for key workers, the lack of isolation at work from other people who may have become infected, the lack of financial provision for those who were unable to go to work, and also the general way in which you and they believe that the way in which the government sought to impose non-pharmaceutical interventions was an improper and an inadequate way of getting on top of the control of the virus.

Ms Joanna Goodman: Absolutely.

Lead Inquiry: Are those the broad themes?

Ms Joanna Goodman: Yes. And I think – I would like to speak a little bit to the experience of running the group in that period, if I may.

Lead Inquiry: Would you forgive me if I invited you to decline that self-imposed invitation? The running of the group is not central to the underlying problems –

Ms Joanna Goodman: No, sorry, I’m saying – so I suppose the way that we tried to influence those decisions is what I would like to speak to, because I think –

Lead Inquiry: Can I ask you this, an alternative way: was the group formed pre-pandemic or during the pandemic?

Ms Joanna Goodman: It was formed during the pandemic.

Lead Inquiry: Therefore, as the pandemic rolled on, did the group have an opportunity of giving evidence, for example, to the All Parliamentary Group, of communicating its concerns to ministers and officials in government, or did you take up the baton of campaigning on these issues after the pandemic was over?

Ms Joanna Goodman: No, we very much began campaigning almost immediately. So you mentioned that the group was formed the same month that both myself and Matt had lost our fathers. We and the other people – I mean, we always say we’re the co-founders, but there are so many people who have given so much of their time and energy at the hardest time of their lives to run this campaign, and our goal has always been to ensure that lessons could be learnt and lives could be saved. And I think we never felt that more keenly than in those early days of the formation of the group, because we all felt very strongly that we couldn’t do anything to bring our loved ones back, but we could do what we could do to try to prevent further deaths, and what we wanted to do more than anything was to influence the trajectory of the Covid pandemic, because obviously we were still very, very much in the thick of it at that point.

And I think none of us felt able to grieve because we felt this sense of – it was like, you know, we were bereaved but we knew that there were families who were still to be bereaved, and they didn’t know that this was the most important thing that they needed to do, to prevent – I can’t really articulate it properly, but it felt like there were families who would one day be us, and we didn’t want them to be, and we wanted to do whatever we could do to – we always said, you know, even if we could save one life, it will have been worth all of it, so …

But in those early days we were kind of desperately trying to get the government to engage with us. So we sought a meeting with the Prime Minister and then Health Secretary, we wrote to various ministers, we got a lot of responses basically saying they were very busy handling the pandemic and couldn’t speak to us. And at the same time I think very often Boris Johnson would be doing a press trip in a hard hat, which didn’t feel to us as pressing as engaging with bereaved families on what needed to happen in relation to the pandemic.

Lead Inquiry: All right.

Ms Joanna Goodman: So we began pushing for the Inquiry very, very early on and we sought other opportunities to try to create change. So I provided evidence that we gave to –

Lead Inquiry: Ms Goodman, I’m very sorry, I’m going to have to pause you there, because there’s a limit on the time that we have.

Ms Joanna Goodman: Yes, I’ll be very succinct.

Lead Inquiry: No, no, it’s of the greatest importance to her Ladyship –

Ms Joanna Goodman: Yeah.

Lead Inquiry: – that we understand what befell your members and where the greatest areas of concern are, because that is where, of course, she’ll make her recommendations.

Your engagement with the government in all its shape and forms is of, I’m sorry to say, slightly less importance. So I’m going to have to leave it there. You’ve described the group’s campaign and its aims extremely adequately indeed.

Ms Joanna Goodman: If I could, I just – so what I wanted to say I was just coming to, I think over that summer we sought to influence the trajectory of the pandemic as much as we could, and we were very concerned and our members were very concerned and this – so I’ve talked really about the concerns from the first wave. I think what then proceeded to happen was those of us who were bereaved in the first wave were very concerned about decisions like Eat Out to Help Out, decisions which seemed to be antithetical to efforts to protect life, and so it felt very strongly to us that the government were repeating the same mistakes, and I think what was very traumatic, particularly over the kind of second and third waves for those of us who were bereaved early on, was that it felt like –

Lead Inquiry: Seeing it happen again?

Ms Joanna Goodman: – those missed opportunities had happened. And we had people joining the group, you know, the day after or even the same day that they’d lost a loved one, and they’d recount their story and they’d recount the same experience of 111 that had happened before, and it was very demoralising and very depressing. I think all of us were very, very low at this point.

Mr Keith: I think you used the word that you were re-traumatised by seeing it all happen again and again.

Ms Goodman, we must leave it there, but thank you very much indeed, you’ve been very clear in what you’ve said.

Lady Hallett: Thank you very much indeed, Ms Goodman. You couldn’t have done more to protect your father and also to support others who had lost a loved one. Maybe between us – you’ve raised so many issues of legitimate concern, between us maybe we can fulfil that aim of saving lives in the future.

Ms Joanna Goodman: Thank you. Could I make just a small plea and could I say a few words about –

Lady Hallett: I’m sorry, Ms Goodman, I’m going to have to stop you, because you have a very experienced and very able advocate, and I think you have been told that this is a time for you to give evidence rather than advocacy. But if there’s any submission you want Mr Weatherby to make on your behalf, then please do so. I’m sorry to cut you short, but if I don’t do it with you and I do it with other people –

Ms Joanna Goodman: Can I say something for 30 seconds, it’s just really a plea to say obviously I’m one member of one family, and you’ve alluded to it, Hugo, that you weren’t able to hear from other families, and I really just would say over the coming weeks, as you’re going to hear a lot of evidence, it’s just to really keep families at the forefront of your minds and think about the kinds of decisions that families up and down the country were taking to try to keep loved ones safe, and really to look at – you know, I think we’ll hear a lot of arguments that it’s the benefit of hindsight, and I think – hopefully I’ve made clear that my family and many other families up and down the country were making decisions at that time and throughout the pandemic and I just would really encourage you to consider: were those decisions being made on the right basis to protect life and to protect people like my father and so many tens of thousands like him.

Lady Hallett: I absolutely take on board everything you’ve just said then. Ever since I went around the United Kingdom meeting bereaved families, the suffering has been at the heart of everything I’ve considered, so please rest assured that every time I hear a witness I am thinking about the impact on people of decisions that were made and also will be considering whether the impact on people was taken into account. So don’t worry, you’ll always be at the heart of everything we do.

Ms Joanna Goodman: Thank you very much.

Lady Hallett: Thank you.

(The witness withdrew)

Mr Keith: My Lady, would you consider please rising just for a couple of minutes, five minutes, whilst we make arrangements for the next witness?

Lady Hallett: Right.

(2.37 pm)

(A short break)

(2.43 pm)

Mr Keith: May I please call Dr Wightman.

Lady Hallett: Dr Wightman, can you hear us?

Mr Keith: It would seem not.

Lady Hallett: I know a member of the team was talking to Dr Wightman just a few moments ago.

Mr Keith: Yes, somehow we seem to be able to – we’ve got ourselves in a position we have to speak to Dr Wightman from two rooms simultaneously but differently.

Lady Hallett: Dr Wightman, can you hear us?

The Witness: I can hear you and see you.

Lady Hallett: Sorry, we had problems. We were talking to you and you couldn’t hear us, but you’re there now. If you would like to listen to our lovely usher, she will take you through the oath.