13. Dr Alan Wightman

DR ALAN WIGHTMAN (affirmed).

(Evidence via videolink)

Questions From Lead Counsel to the Inquiry

Mr Keith: Could you give the court, please, your full name.

Dr Alan Wightman: My name is Dr Alan Wightman.

Lead Inquiry: Dr Wightman, whilst you give evidence, could you please remember to keep your voice up and speak as clearly as you can.

Dr Alan Wightman: Okay.

Lead Inquiry: Because of the Zoom it’s a bit hard to hear sometimes and it’s very important that we can all hear what you have to say. If I ask a question the meaning of which is not clear then please ask me to put it again.

You have very kindly assisted the Inquiry by providing a statement. We needn’t put it up on the screen but it’s INQ000279972. Is that a statement that you recall signing on 27 September of this year?

Dr Alan Wightman: Yes, it is.

Lead Inquiry: Thank you very much.

Now, Dr Wightman, I want to start, if I may, by asking you about your mother, Helen Wightman, and the bereavement that you suffered towards the beginning of the pandemic in May 2020.

At that time, in early 2020, was your mother living in a care home?

Dr Alan Wightman: She was, yes.

Lead Inquiry: In Fife?

Dr Alan Wightman: That’s right.

Lead Inquiry: When the virus began to spread in early March, did the care home where your mother was resident put into place any sort of restrictions on visiting, as far as you were aware?

Dr Alan Wightman: Yes, they proactively contacted us, I think the first time was 11 March, to say they were not quite going into a lockdown but they were asking everyone to please only visit if really essential. And five days later, they sent a second communication saying they were effectively now in lockdown. So that was on the 16th, which was a whole week before the Prime Minister saw fit to call a national lockdown.

Lead Inquiry: What impact did that have on your ability to visit your mother? When you say they imposed practically a full lockdown, does that mean that they denied access to all relatives and loved ones and prevented them from visiting the residents?

Dr Alan Wightman: No, it was not a blanket ban, it was really a request for voluntary compliance with such a ban, for the obvious reasons of protecting all of the residents in the home from becoming infected.

Lead Inquiry: Did you become aware of any other arrangements which the home took to try to restrict the spread of the virus in terms of staff and PPE and so on?

Dr Alan Wightman: Yes, although some of this I only found out subsequently by communicating with the chief executive after – after mum had passed. But I was reassured that they had sourced their own PPE. They were part of a group that was actually based in Cheltenham, so the group was buying PPE for its care home group throughout the UK. And they hadn’t sat and waited, they had seen what was coming and been proactive. And they also avoided taking in untested residents, although some homes were put under some pressure to do so, but they didn’t do it, and they did not use agency staff. So they did what they could, in my opinion –

Lead Inquiry: In spite of –

Dr Alan Wightman: – reasonable.

Lead Inquiry: I’m so sorry. In spite of their best endeavours, did Covid manage to gain entrance to your mother’s care home?

Dr Alan Wightman: It did. And – and we don’t understand the route by which it got in – how can anyone be certain? – but it did. It was circulating in the local community. I presume someone asymptomatically took it in, completely unaware of the risk they were putting everyone under, but it got in.

Lead Inquiry: And she fell ill?

Dr Alan Wightman: She fell ill and she was the fourth of the residents to die. There were 35 residents, and she was number four. They lost – they lost four people. So they lost 10% of the residents to Covid.

Lead Inquiry: Did she receive medical care prior to her death from outside the care home or was she treated wholly within the care home?

Dr Alan Wightman: She was treated wholly within the care home, but, in contrast to many other homes, the GP responsible for that care home did actually go in on a daily basis to tend the needs of the residents. Though – both for Covid reasons and other reasons, which I think is quite a noble act on his part, because he was not a young man himself and he was probably in the risky category too, but he carried on, he did his duty.

And when it got to a point where mum needed care, I was asked: did I want her to go to hospital? And I said no, because that’s – it’s circulating even more in hospitals than in care homes, so no. And what they did, they – they had sent a unit called Hospital at Home from Victoria General Hospital in Kirkcaldy to the care home on a daily basis to administer what mum needed, which was something that is beyond the capabilities of the ordinary care staff. It was a care home and not a nursing home.

So she was given – she was given support. A lot of people weren’t that fortunate. But in spite of all the best efforts it was too much for her and we lost her.

Lead Inquiry: Did she pass away on 6 May?

Dr Alan Wightman: Yes, 6 May.

Lead Inquiry: Following her passing, Dr Wightman, did you join a group then known as the Facebook group Covid Bereaved Families for Justice?

Dr Alan Wightman: Yes. And as near as I can work it back, because I don’t have a note of the actual date, but I believe it was sometime in July, because – the reason I know that is they had a press officer at the time, a lady called Fiona Kirton, who put out a call for people – members in Scotland to speak to the BBC in Scotland, and I answered that, and I had a – my first meeting with the press on 27 July, with a reporter called Marc Ellison, who turned out to be a very, very good contact for me because he was following the care home story from the beginning, and ultimately he and his colleague produced quite a lot of data on deaths by care home and through time, which is something that I know my – my – other members of the Covid Bereaved Families for Justice group had to fight tooth and nail to get that kind of information south of the border from the Care Quality Commission, but this BBC team was already on the case in Scotland and – and were of great help to me.

Lead Inquiry: Then, perhaps as a result of the different needs of your members in Scotland from the then UK-wide group, did the Scottish members become an autonomous group, a subgroup, if you like, within the overall group, and then subsequently did you split away and become Scottish Covid Bereaved?

Dr Alan Wightman: Yes, we did, and I was largely responsible for trying to make contact with fellow Scots in the group, and at one point the administrators in the UK group, if they got a Scottish member joining they would give me their contact details and I would go and find out their story, and built what I initially – you’re quite correct, I called it a Scottish subgroup, but then subsequently became the first branch, the Scotland branch, of that organisation.

But as time went on – and we had the meeting with the First Minister, who had promised us either a UK Inquiry or, failing that, if she couldn’t persuade the Prime Minister, a Scottish Inquiry. We’d secured that by kind of May time 2021. And she’d furthermore asked us if we would be involved in defining the scope of said Scottish Inquiry, and at that point we decided, well, we really need some legal support here, and we asked her for a Scottish solicitor and they very kindly brought Aamer Anwar to the table, which we’re quite happy about, and Aamer became our representative first in Scotland. And then, as things progressed, it became obvious that it didn’t make sense to have two legal teams, one for the UK Inquiry and one for the Scottish Inquiry, what about the overlaps and the cracks between, and we decided that we really would like Aamer to be our legal representative for both inquiries.

Lead Inquiry: And now you’re still happily seated at that table with your legal team?

Dr Alan Wightman: Yeah.

Lead Inquiry: And is Dr Jane Morrison, from whom her Ladyship heard in Module 1, also a core member of Scottish Covid Bereaved?

Dr Alan Wightman: Yes, she is, yes.

Lead Inquiry: Right.

I want to now ask you, please, about some of the areas on which your group has campaigned.

Dr Alan Wightman: Right.

Lead Inquiry: It’s self-evident that its members have suffered, of course, terrible bereavement, but in the course of speaking to your members, have certain themes arisen? Have general areas of concern been brought to your attention which has led you to campaign on change, where change is possible, or accountability where it’s not, through your dealings with the Scottish Government in particular and also your approach to this Inquiry? Are there a number of broad areas that you’ve become concerned with?

Dr Alan Wightman: There are. And the first one, because it happened first, of course, in the sequence of things, was what went on in the care homes, particularly in wave 1.

Lead Inquiry: So by that, Dr Wightman, are you referring to the ability of Covid to spread within the care homes?

Dr Alan Wightman: Yes.

Lead Inquiry: Of course the restrictions which were placed on care homes generally, in terms of trying to keep them safe, but of course with the terrible consequences on the loved ones and relatives of residents, are those the two broad themes relating to care homes?

Dr Alan Wightman: They are, but also the fact that care homes seemed to have been regarded almost as isolation hospitals. Which they’re not. They’re not designed to hold people in isolation. They are designed to encourage older, predominantly older residents to mix and to not be isolated, not stay in their rooms. And yet at a certain point in time they were treated as if they were isolation hospitals, and that went against what the care staff had been trying to achieve in normal business.

Lead Inquiry: What about the receipt of medical care within the care sector? Have some, perhaps a large number of your members raised the issue of whether or not their loved ones received proper or adequate medical care whilst being resident in a care home?

Dr Alan Wightman: Yes. As I said earlier, we were fortunate that the GP kept going into the care home. That was not the case in many, many instances throughout Scotland, that these – the GPs basically stopped going in. And so even normal care was not provided, but also, of course, the – you know, the question of: were care home residents to be permitted to go to hospital? Would hospitals accept them?

Lead Inquiry: Outside the care sector, like Ms Goodman before you, have a lot of your members, a significant proportion of your members, raised the issue of the 111 medical service, the phone system –

Dr Alan Wightman: Yes.

Lead Inquiry: – for receiving medical help, and in a related way the triage process or the identification of symptoms that went alongside the immediate provision of care to persons who phoned the 111 line?

Dr Alan Wightman: Indeed, that was a main theme, and I can illustrate it with perhaps something that’s not heard too often elsewhere. It wasn’t just about old people being denied care. We have two young men who were lost, one aged 28 and one aged 31, because when they phoned up for help, having isolated at home and suffering with Covid and they phoned up on day seven, I think day eight in one case, were told they had to stay at home, because of their age, tough it out until you get to day ten, and in both cases they didn’t make it as far as day ten. So the triaging was abysmal in those two instances.

Lead Inquiry: Turning to hospitals and the general provision of medical care, is, firstly, the nature of the hospital or the medical care that your members received in hospital, secondly, the issue of Do Not Resuscitate orders, and, thirdly, the issue of restrictions in visiting and the ability to be able to see loved ones in hospital, are those the three main issues which arise in relation to hospitals?

Dr Alan Wightman: I would say they indeed are, and the concern with the Do Not Resuscitate or DNACPR notices runs through the care homes, also through the hospitals, and of course the major concern with hospitals is you go in for one reason, which isn’t Covid, and you get a free issue of Covid whilst you’re in there, and then you don’t come out again. You know, it’s – it’s the spread in the healthcare settings that is the number one, by far. 25% of our members have been affected by losing somebody who went into hospital for one reason and didn’t come out again.

Lead Inquiry: So like your mother who received Covid whilst in a care home –

Dr Alan Wightman: Yes.

Lead Inquiry: – these members, their loved ones received Covid as part of – well, a nosocomial infection in hospital?

Dr Alan Wightman: It is, yes, yeah.

Lead Inquiry: What about palliative care and end of life care, is that an issue which is raised by your members?

Dr Alan Wightman: Quite frequently it is raised about – it’s not getting the care they perhaps deserved whilst in hospital, and maybe not surviving it. But we’ve also got instances of where people appear to have been discharged because they were in their early 80s, they were sent home, knowingly having Covid. I mean, we’ve got an example of a gentleman, 84, sent home to his 82-year old wife, and known to be infected with Covid, but there was nothing more the hospital felt they could do for him, sent him home, she got Covid as well, and they both died because of it.

And that’s happened to – there are a couple of families where that same story applies, they lost both elderly parents because they didn’t get the treatment in hospital and they were sent home.

Lead Inquiry: Restrictions on funerals and memorial services, is that an issue which is raised in a large number of the cases?

Dr Alan Wightman: It does come up quite frequently, about the disruption to normal funeral rituals, and the impact it has on the family long term, and in many cases they just feel – it’s a feeling of guilt, I think, that a lot of them speak about, that they weren’t able to do and honour the person who had died in the way that would have been fitting. It’s kind of letting them down right at the end of their life. And of course it’s not – it’s not their fault, you know.

Lead Inquiry: Dr Wightman, the Inquiry wrote to you and asked you to give, furthermore, your views on the extent to which your members had been telling you terrible stories about the impact of the pandemic and the government decision-making on those who were, in a general sense, less able to look after themselves, so those prone to unequal treatment. You give the example in your statement of those with pre-existing chronic diseases –

Dr Alan Wightman: Yes.

Lead Inquiry: – the elderly and those who are disabled. So I want to ask you: to what extent do your members say that their loved ones received, for whatever reason, a degree of unequal treatment and, perhaps as a result of that, paid the ultimate price, either because, as elderly people, they didn’t receive the care that they were, of course, expected to receive, and likewise if they were disabled, or suffering from some other form of chronic condition?

Dr Alan Wightman: There are a couple of stories which come to mind regarding those. And again, it’s not necessarily elderly people, but it’s disabled people who really should have been given – given better care, and in one instance should arguably have been vaccinated because he was by far the most vulnerable person in the hospital, being a stroke victim and having locked-in syndrome and having to have everything done basically for him, but was denied the vax because he wasn’t 60 yet.

Lead Inquiry: He wasn’t 16?

Dr Alan Wightman: He wasn’t 60 years of age, but he was –

Lead Inquiry: He was not 60. So this was a – I’m sorry, forgive me – clinical decision, it would seem, taken in that case to deny him the vaccine?

Dr Alan Wightman: If you think about this, this is a man who was totally dependent on others. He’d clearly survived the first year or so of the pandemic because they had – the vaccine had arrived. But he was denied it because the guidance said you have to be 60 and over to get the vax, and he was not yet 60, but he was completely dependent on others. And of course he did catch Covid and he did not survive it.

So that’s one example, but other examples of people – a lady had a sister who was non-verbal, learning difficulties, and there’s a harrowing story about her sister basically being kept in hospital, her being sent home, not able to assist, and an overwhelming feeling on her part that the medical profession simply gave up on her, on her sister.

Mr Keith: Dr Wightman, thank you very much indeed. That’s been enormously helpful.

Dr Alan Wightman: Thank you.

Lady Hallett: Dr Wightman, thank you very much.

Just for the avoidance of any doubt, what kind of doctor are you?

Dr Alan Wightman: Ah, I was going to say that at the beginning. Yes, for the avoidance of doubt, I am not a medical man, and I am not an epidemiologist, I’m a polymer chemist.

Lady Hallett: Right, I won’t ask you what that involves, because we could be here for some time.

Dr Alan Wightman: We could indeed.

Lady Hallett: I just wanted to thank you, just as I thanked Ms Goodman and others. What you’ve done to support other people is extraordinary, especially as you don’t seem to have too many criticisms of the care or the care home where your mother sadly died. So it’s very impressive that you’ve taken so much time and trouble to look after other people. So thank you very much indeed for your help.

The Witness: Thank you.

(The witness withdrew)

Lady Hallett: Right, I think you want me to break?

Mr Keith: Yes, please.

(3.07 pm)

(A short break)

(3.15 pm)

Mr Keith: My Lady, could we please welcome back Anna-Louise Marsh-Rees of Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice Cymru.