5. Ms Caroline Abrahams
MS CAROLINE ABRAHAMS (sworn).
Questions From Counsel to the Inquiry
Mr O’Connor: Can you give us your full name, please.
Ms Caroline Abrahams: Yes, Caroline Susan Abrahams.
Counsel Inquiry: You are the charity director of Age UK; is that right?
Ms Caroline Abrahams: Correct.
Counsel Inquiry: I think that’s a post you’ve held for some time?
Ms Caroline Abrahams: Yeah, I’ve been there for about 11 years.
Counsel Inquiry: So during the pandemic?
Ms Caroline Abrahams: Indeed.
Counsel Inquiry: You have helpfully provided the Inquiry with a witness statement which we can see on the screen. It’s dated 27 September 2023.
Ms Caroline Abrahams: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: It’s concealed on the screen, but I can tell you, because I’m looking at it, that you signed that statement.
Ms Caroline Abrahams: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: Do you recall signing it?
Ms Caroline Abrahams: I do.
Counsel Inquiry: I’m sure you’re familiar with the contents of the statement.
Ms Caroline Abrahams: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: Are they true to the best of your knowledge and belief?
Ms Caroline Abrahams: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: It’s a very lengthy statement, Ms Abrahams, and we won’t be able to go into anything like the detail that it contains today, but of course the Inquiry have the statement and we will be adducing it in writing in full. What we will try to do today is simply, in the time we have available, cover some of the key themes that you have identified.
First of all, may I ask you just a few questions about Age UK itself.
Ms Caroline Abrahams: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: You describe the organisation in your statement as being a federated network of organisations across the UK?
Ms Caroline Abrahams: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: Can you perhaps explain that in a little detail, please.
Ms Caroline Abrahams: Certainly. So there’s Age UK, the national organisation which I work for, and then we also have about 125 local Age UKs scattered across England, and there’s Age Cymru, Age Scotland and Age Northern Ireland, there’s also Age International, and we have a commercial arm as well.
Counsel Inquiry: Another measure of the size of the organisation is how many people it reaches.
Ms Caroline Abrahams: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: And in your statement you say that you believe that, taken together, the organisation reaches about 1 million older people across the UK; is that right?
Ms Caroline Abrahams: Correct.
Counsel Inquiry: In what way?
Ms Caroline Abrahams: I suppose the bulk of those numbers come to use our information and advice, particularly through our website, but we also operate a free helpline that is rung by hundreds of thousands of people every year.
In addition to that we also have our local Age UKs that provide face-to-face services, and then nationally and locally we provide friendship services for older people as well.
Counsel Inquiry: Perhaps we can turn to the second page on the screen of your statement, and at paragraph 3, if we can zoom in, first of all you give a succinct summary of the aims of Age UK?
Ms Caroline Abrahams: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: We see that reference to 1 million people a year and you say that you seek to ensure that older people have enough money, are socially connected, receive high quality health and care, that they’re considerable, safe and secure at home, and that they feel valued and able to participate in society.
Then you explain how you seek to achieve those ends, referring to research, advocacy, campaigning, providing information, advice, public information, and so on.
Ms Caroline Abrahams: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: Can you maybe just expand a little on those various means by which you seek to achieve your aims?
Ms Caroline Abrahams: Certainly. Yeah, so particularly nationally we research, campaign and advocate, and that’s my job, really, with my colleagues, to work with decision-makers, to work with government, the NHS. Very often we’re asking the question: what about older people? That’s, I guess, our primary role. But also talking in detail with policymakers about emerging policy and practice issues.
We also – obviously through our information and advice it covers just about anything any older person ever wants to know about, or indeed their family or carers. We provide friendship services for people who are alone who would like more companionship in their lives, which – join up a volunteer with somebody who can ring them once a week, that sort of thing.
And locally we provide a wide range of direct services in local communities. Some of it is low-level support in people’s homes, there is some personal care delivered, but also things like choirs and pottery classes and keep fit and rambling and all kinds of things you could – you know, men in sheds and walking football, all sorts of things like that, which give older people the opportunity to come together to sustain their wellbeing, to keep physically fit and mentally fit as well.
Counsel Inquiry: Thank you, Ms Abrahams. You will see we have a stenographer who is trying to take a note of what we both say.
Ms Caroline Abrahams: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: I’m trying to speak slowly and perhaps I can just ask you –
Ms Caroline Abrahams: I’ll slow down, sorry.
Counsel Inquiry: – on her behalf to try to speak a little more slowly as you answer our questions. It’s very difficult to remember.
You mentioned that your particular role amongst that whole range of activity that you just described is in the campaigning and the advocacy –
Ms Caroline Abrahams: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: – and you mentioned engaging with the NHS and also policymakers –
Ms Caroline Abrahams: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: – more generally. Are there in fact particular sort of liaison points in – and I’m really, perhaps, asking you about central government now, that you normally engage with?
Ms Caroline Abrahams: Yes. Very often central government, different government departments, will set up groups, they will bring together officials from a government department and also outsiders, people who work for organisations like mine, who know about issues they’re interested in. Of course during the pandemic those largely stopped and for a while that sort of contact became more difficult. But it’s also the job for people like me to build strong trusting relationships with ministers, with their advisers, and with senior officials. And the same is true with the NHS.
Counsel Inquiry: I want to come on to ask you about the pandemic and your campaigning, advocacy role on behalf of Age UK during that time.
Starting chronologically at the beginning, you say – this is in fact in paragraph 9 of your report, so it’s the fourth page, I’ll read out just a sentence from that paragraph, you say:
“There were clear indications that the virus itself and public health measures taken in response would have a disproportionate impact on older people.”
Ms Caroline Abrahams: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: How quickly in the course of the spread of the virus did it become clear to you in Age UK that it would have this type of disproportionate effect on older people?
Ms Caroline Abrahams: Very early on. And I think that was because we knew what your previous witness knew about the evidence, and we could see what was playing out on in the media, particularly from Italy and America, where congregate settings were proving to be places where, once the virus got in, lots of older people were dying or becoming very ill. So that was a very clear warning to us, and I think should have been to everybody else. But of course we also – it’s our job to understand older people in the round, what their lives are like. So we knew that if there were lockdowns or people’s movement were restricted or they restricted their own movements because they were frightened to go out, that that would have a huge impact on older people, particularly older people living alone or who didn’t have good family or neighbour support, who really were suddenly in really big trouble.
Counsel Inquiry: So in those early, I think you’re saying, weeks –
Ms Caroline Abrahams: Yes, definitely.
Counsel Inquiry: – in 2020, what steps did you take as an organisation –
Ms Caroline Abrahams: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: – to try to react to what you understood?
Ms Caroline Abrahams: Well, local Age UKs situated in communities across England, lots of them dropped what they were doing normally and became emergency outreach organisations, particularly delivering food to older people who were stuck at home, collecting prescriptions, transporting older people around, those sorts of tasks. Sometimes off their own bat and sometimes as part of broader community activity. Some of it formally led by councils or by the emergency forums that were set up in local areas.
Nationally, I think the first thing we did was we were on the media a lot nationally, and locally, trying to reassure older people, because we were conscious how incredibly scary all this news would be for them, and then trying to engage with government in a constructive way so that they understood what the issues would be for older people, and we could also act as advocates for government actually back to older people. We felt that was part of our responsibility too, because we know we’re a trusted voice by older people and we have really good channels to lots and lots of them.
Counsel Inquiry: Did your engagement with government, national government in that period extend to lobbying for particular steps to be taken, for example most obviously perhaps a lockdown, or particular provision being made for older people?
Ms Caroline Abrahams: Well, at that stage, and I would say probably for the first two or three months, most of our lobbying happened through the media, because we weren’t – no one was reaching out to us from government on the whole, and we were finding it really difficult to reach in. It was as though the wagons had circled and everyone was very internally focused within government. Our usual routes in were no longer there, so that was a problem for us because those groups that we would normally be part of weren’t meeting, and of course there were no face-to-face interactions. So people doing my kind of job depend a lot on bumping into people and having that conversation in the corridor and, we couldn’t do that. So we were quite cut off, and it meant that on the whole our advice initially was conveyed through the national media.
Counsel Inquiry: I want to skip ahead just a little bit and if we could go to paragraph 39 of your statement, please, on page 16 of the document. About four lines down, we see your assertion in that statement that the government’s response to the first wave was deeply inadequate.
Can you expand on that, please, and tell us, first of all, whether you’re referring to the general response or, for example, its particular actions relating to the care sector –
Ms Caroline Abrahams: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: – and, secondly, what you mean by those strong words?
Ms Caroline Abrahams: Yes. They are strong words, but I think we do believe they are valid. I think we were thinking in particular of what happened in the care sector, where there was just a complete misunderstanding really of what happens in care homes. You’ve already heard about how vulnerable older people in care homes are, but I would want to emphasise that many of the people in care homes – I mean, you’re only in a care home generally these days because you have very significant health issues. At least 80% of people in care homes have dementia, and very often physical health problems as well. So these were very, very vulnerable people. And many care homes didn’t have enough staff, even at the beginning of the pandemic. Even before anyone got sick, they were covering with agency staff who were in and out.
So we could see what was likely to happen, and yet it seemed to take a long time for policymakers to respond to that reality.
Counsel Inquiry: I’m going to come back in a moment because, in the subparagraphs underneath paragraph 39, you refer to a few, what you regard as being the sort of crucial –
Ms Caroline Abrahams: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: – factors that fed into that –
Ms Caroline Abrahams: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: – government response.
Ms Caroline Abrahams: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: But before I do, it’s fair to say that you also say in that earlier part of paragraph 39 that things got better, as far as you were concerned, in the way that the government responded.
Ms Caroline Abrahams: Definitely.
Counsel Inquiry: The first wave –
Ms Caroline Abrahams: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: – was the worst, but –
Ms Caroline Abrahams: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: – subsequently matters improved.
Ms Caroline Abrahams: Very much so.
Counsel Inquiry: Can you briefly give us an outline of those points?
Ms Caroline Abrahams: Yes. I think the single biggest reason things got better was because the government appointed Sir David Pearson, as he now is, to come in as their adviser and to essentially sort out their response to social care, and he was a highly – he is a highly respected leader in local government and also, crucially for us, a friend; we knew him. And he then became the bridge that had been so obviously lacking, I think, between government on the one hand and the outside world on the other, and David was able to mediate that, and I talked to him a lot. If we saw things we were worried about, we could just ring him up and tell him and he would listen and he would act on them, where appropriate, and he was also able to ask us for help too, and he helped to stimulate the creation of more structured engagement with providers of care and organisations like Mind and Carers UK, who you’ve also mentioned today.
Counsel Inquiry: Thank you.
So that was as things were to develop –
Ms Caroline Abrahams: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: – but, as I said, just coming back to those first –
Ms Caroline Abrahams: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: – few months, and what you describe as the deeply inadequate government –
Ms Caroline Abrahams: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: – response to the first wave. As I said, you identify, just below paragraph 39, three points –
Ms Caroline Abrahams: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: – which you describe as the critical factors –
Ms Caroline Abrahams: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: – and I just want to ask you briefly about –
Ms Caroline Abrahams: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: – each of those.
The first point you make is what you describe as a sense of fatalism –
Ms Caroline Abrahams: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: – an underlying assumption that older people with care needs would be unlikely to survive –
Ms Caroline Abrahams: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: – there wasn’t much that could be done for them?
Ms Caroline Abrahams: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: Is that a sense of fatalism that you got from – that you understood to be present in central government?
Ms Caroline Abrahams: My colleagues – this is my colleagues rather than me – but including, for example, our head of research, who is an academic epidemiologist. So they – people like that talked – eventually were able to talk to some of the scientists and some of the senior public health figures who were trying to manage this disaster, and I think from them they felt a definite sense that there wasn’t much that could be done. If the virus did ever get into a care home, there wouldn’t be a lot that you could do.
So I think too much – I mean, of course we saw what happened, to a degree they were right, but actually it was incredibly patchy and some people – not all older people are the same, I suppose that is the most enormous finding that comes out so far from this evidence – and some older people were fit and well, they didn’t have comorbidities and they were able to withstand it. And even in care homes we saw some older people who caught the virus and were okay, and other care homes that worked incredibly hard and managed to keep the virus out altogether.
Counsel Inquiry: Then, perhaps just briefly, if we can go on to the next page, the other two –
Ms Caroline Abrahams: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: – critical factors that you refer to.
First of all, and this is perhaps a consideration of which we heard in the questionnaire responses –
Ms Caroline Abrahams: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: – a feeling that, at least at the outset, the government didn’t have any knowledge about the realities of the care sector?
Ms Caroline Abrahams: Yeah, exactly.
Counsel Inquiry: And perhaps that’s the point you’ve already made that, once –
Ms Caroline Abrahams: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: – Sir David Pearson was appointed, that was remedied.
Ms Caroline Abrahams: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: Well, let’s move to the final of the factors then where you say:
“Especially in the early months of the pandemic” –
Ms Caroline Abrahams: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: – “but to an extent throughout, there was a hesitation on the part of government to intervene or to provide support to services which were predominantly provided by the private or voluntary sector.”
Ms Caroline Abrahams: Correct.
Counsel Inquiry: Again with the questionnaire responses there was the contrast noted –
Ms Caroline Abrahams: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: – between the consideration that the government –
Ms Caroline Abrahams: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: – appeared to be taking to protecting the NHS –
Ms Caroline Abrahams: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: – on the one hand, and the social care –
Ms Caroline Abrahams: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: – sector on the other. Is that the point, perhaps, that’s coming here?
Ms Caroline Abrahams: Definitely and, you know, you could see it play out all the time at that time. A real sense sometimes, I think more from ministers than – certainly rather than officials, that these were private organisations so, you know, it was up to them to look after themselves, this was not part of the state.
So I think the fact that social care is so fragmented – and in practice, as you know now, it provides an absolutely crucial public service for very vulnerable people – but with its fragmented governance it meant there was a reluctance, and actually to begin with an inability really to know how government could help. They didn’t have the information, they didn’t know who they were, they didn’t have a list even of – they couldn’t even write to them, to begin with.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes. Thank you.
I’m going to move on now, away from the Age UK’s liaison with the government and steps taken during the pandemic, and shift focus to more what we talk of as impact evidence.
Ms Caroline Abrahams: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: First of all, a few questions about the impact that the disease itself had on older people.
Ms Caroline Abrahams: Sure.
Counsel Inquiry: And then some questions about the impact of NPIs –
Ms Caroline Abrahams: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: – on older people.
First of all, you describe in your statement issues relating to infection control –
Ms Caroline Abrahams: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: – in care homes.
Ms Caroline Abrahams: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: We’ve already heard some evidence about that, and we’ll be hearing plenty more, so I don’t want to take time –
Ms Caroline Abrahams: Sure.
Counsel Inquiry: – with you today on that.
There was one point, a related point in your statement which is perhaps worth touching on, which is that you draw attention to the fact that really similar issues arose very widely in relation to care being provided not in –
Ms Caroline Abrahams: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: – residential care homes –
Ms Caroline Abrahams: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: – but in fact in people’s domestic homes.
Ms Caroline Abrahams: Indeed, and that’s absolutely the case, and I know that from Age UK and I know it because I was caring, with a care package, for my mum at home at the time. So I saw it from my personal experience as well as from Age UK’s. And you may remember that at times it became very difficult to actually even get hold of gloves and masks and things like that, aprons, or they were very, very expensive, and it was difficult, particularly for all those people who fund their own care who aren’t part of the state system at all, of whom there are hundreds of thousands, to even be able to get hold of those sorts of things, and because of that reality it faced carers and older people with a difficult decision about whether it might be safer to stop care coming in to the home and to try and manage on their own rather than have someone come in who wasn’t properly protected, wasn’t able to protect themselves. And over time that improved and those things became more widely available.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes.
Ms Caroline Abrahams: But it was a continuing fear, I think, for many carers.
Counsel Inquiry: Moving to another albeit related subject, I’m now looking at page 21 of your report, paragraph 48, end-of-life care.
Ms Caroline Abrahams: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: You refer to the fact that, particularly perhaps in residential settings but maybe in homes as well –
Ms Caroline Abrahams: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: – the palliative care, the symptomatic relief –
Ms Caroline Abrahams: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: – that would in normal times have been available dried up –
Ms Caroline Abrahams: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: – partly, perhaps principally, because GPs weren’t visiting and the care staff weren’t able to prescribe this medication.
Ms Caroline Abrahams: Yes. I mean, that was particularly a problem in care homes where very sadly for a time, again quite early on in the pandemic, it wasn’t – there were lots of people very, very sick and dying in some care homes, but the people working there couldn’t access the drugs that make that – someone feel more comfortable in that situation. And this has to be seen against a context in which palliative care, before the pandemic, during the pandemic and now, is very patchy, and you can be lucky and be in a part of the country where that is available, often through a palliative care team or district nurses or a hospice at home service, or where there are none of those resources.
So – but after a time they resolved those issues and got over the problem of things like: was there someone with the right qualifications in a care home to be able to dispense what is controlled medicine? These are powerful drugs that people need at this point.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes.
Ms Caroline Abrahams: But yes, tragically for some people, they died without that help, and I hate to think what some care workers witnessed, and I’m sure they’re experiences they will never forget.
Counsel Inquiry: Moving on, Ms Abrahams, now I’m looking at page 23 of your report, this is in the section where you deal with, again, a related consequence of the pandemic, which is simply older people not having access to normal, whether it’s primary or –
Ms Caroline Abrahams: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: – ongoing care.
Ms Caroline Abrahams: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: And you give perhaps a particularly striking example – I’m looking at, as I think I said, paragraph 54 – of an elderly lady who, on the face of it, was very seriously injured with spinal injuries, but the type of injury that one would normally expect to have –
Ms Caroline Abrahams: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: – hospital treatment.
Ms Caroline Abrahams: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: But in fact – well, perhaps you can tell us, in a few sentences explain, but on the face of it appears to have had very little care indeed.
Ms Caroline Abrahams: Yes, and I don’t think this was – I mean, this is a particularly grave example of what happened to somebody in that situation, but the situation was not unusual, at that time, that people were unable to see a doctor face-to-face. Sometimes medical services used – were starting to use video calls and things like that, but of course – I know you may ask me about the fact that many, many older people do not use digital technology, so they were unable to take advantage of that. So they might have a phone call, as here.
But possibly, had a doctor seen this lady straightaway, he would have identified how seriously unwell she was. And this is one of the things we live with now, which is people who became unwell in different ways during the pandemic but were unable to get the treatment they needed, either for a new condition or for one of those long-term conditions they were managing, and it helps to explain why so many people are unwell today.
Counsel Inquiry: I mentioned that I would deal first of all with the impact of the disease itself and regulations and so on –
Ms Caroline Abrahams: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: – and then on the impact of NPIs.
I know that you’ve seen the impact video –
Ms Caroline Abrahams: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: – that was shown at the start of our hearings on Tuesday of this week, and I know that you recall this because we’ve discussed it, but many of us who saw the impact video will remember one elderly lady who described her condition. I think probably of all of the people who appeared in that video she was the only one who doesn’t seem to have had Covid herself –
Ms Caroline Abrahams: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: – or in fact she doesn’t mention anyone else she knows –
Ms Caroline Abrahams: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: – or her family having had Covid. But she spoke about the profound impact that simply isolating –
Ms Caroline Abrahams: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: – had had on her. She said, from memory, that she’d been worried about catching Covid, she had some pre-existing health problems.
Ms Caroline Abrahams: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: She was frightened of having to go to hospital, and she said that she’d been indoors for three years now –
Ms Caroline Abrahams: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: – more or less, she didn’t feel she could go out any more.
Ms Caroline Abrahams: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: She wasn’t the person she had been before, she’d been a sociable person but now –
Ms Caroline Abrahams: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: – she couldn’t really get her head round meeting other people.
Ms Caroline Abrahams: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: Is that a typical story that you hear in the course of your work?
Ms Caroline Abrahams: I’m not sure it’s typical, but we hear from many older people in that position, and so do our local Age UKs. So one of the new services some of them have created is actually helping older people to get out of their own homes and begin to walk around again, and including using transport, which is a particular fear for some older people. But of course for many it’s too late. It was a different – it was a different lifestyle for sufficiently long time that they’re not able now to be able to go back to how they were.
So, yes, I’m afraid there are many older people who lead much, much more constrained lives now than before the pandemic.
Counsel Inquiry: Some of the concepts you describe in your statement are physical and mental deconditioning –
Ms Caroline Abrahams: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: – as a result of lockdown.
Ms Caroline Abrahams: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: And also an effect on mental health and much higher rates of depression and self-harming and suicide amongst –
Ms Caroline Abrahams: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: – older people.
Ms Caroline Abrahams: Yes, we’ve had to provide new training for some of our helpline staff on how to cope with people who are ringing up in great distress, and that only happened during and after the pandemic. It’s undoubtedly exacted a toll on many older people, that anxiety, and also – as in the case of the lady on the film – a great loss of confidence, coupled with the fact that if you stay still and you don’t move around so much, as an older person, then you stiffen up and your muscles tend to waste and then it’s physically very, very difficult to be able to get around.
Counsel Inquiry: You mentioned earlier in your evidence the great number of people – I think you were actually referring to care homes, but no doubt generally – of older people who suffer from dementia.
Ms Caroline Abrahams: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: In your statement you do say a little about the particular impact on that group of people –
Ms Caroline Abrahams: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: – of lockdown. I’m now looking at paragraphs 80 and following of your report, so page 32.
Just two points to draw out. One is that you explain that because some of the clinics, memory clinics and so on, and activities that they might in normal times have been attending were no longer functioning –
Ms Caroline Abrahams: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: – they had to be – in order to control their conditions, they were then – either had the doses of their medication increased or were put on medication otherwise they wouldn’t have been on, with some quite serious side effects.
Ms Caroline Abrahams: Yeah. Absolutely, and, you know, one’s heart goes out to carers and families who found they were – there was no one to call for help, and they were with somebody who was profoundly unwell for long periods of time. And we have no doubt at Age UK that this will have led to neglect, to abuse, to enormous distress for carers and also for people being cared for. It’s difficult enough caring for someone with dementia at the best of times, not like this, and day centres are often a great outlet for people, they give some – a good safe place for someone – somewhere to go, and the carer has a few hours off. But, as you’ve heard, those opportunities often disappeared. Those services had to close during the pandemic, and actually many of them have not re-opened, so there’s an ongoing problem today.
Counsel Inquiry: At paragraph 82 of your report, so over on the next page, you give an example of a very particular concern of dementia patients who were at home and wandered off, left the house and their carers, their family being uncertain as to whether they could even go and try and find them because they might be breaking lockdown regulations.
Ms Caroline Abrahams: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: From the way you put it, it sounds as though that was not an isolated case but something that you heard of more than once?
Ms Caroline Abrahams: I think we certainly heard of lots of different ways in which … people trying very hard to stay the right side of the law got in the way of being able to do the things they wanted to for their loved ones, even if that was being afraid to go out for a walk because they read that the police had arrested someone who’d sat on a bench, those sorts of things. And so, you know, none of these things were probably intended, but it was a time when people were very – and lots of older people – most older people are very law-abiding and they don’t want to do the wrong thing. So these may well have been older carers who were worried about going out, and indeed particularly at a time when they were being told to take extra precautions.
Mr O’Connor: Yes. Ms Abrahams, thank you very much. As I said at the start, we have your witness statement. There’s far more detail in there than I have been able to cover today, but those are all the questions I wanted to ask you. Thank you very much.
The Witness: Thank you.
Lady Hallett: Extremely grateful, and I suspect we might be seeing you again during the course of this Inquiry, but there is a great deal of information in your statement, and I’ll consider it all very carefully.
The Witness: Thank you very much.
Lady Hallett: Thank you very much for your help.
The Witness: Thank you.
(The witness withdrew)
Mr O’Connor: My Lady, that concludes our business for today.
Lady Hallett: Thank you very much.
So we meet again at 10 o’clock tomorrow. Thank you.
(4.30 pm)
(The hearing adjourned until 10 am on Friday, 6 October 2023)