Transcript of Module 2A Public Hearing on 17 January 2024

(10.00 am)

Lady Hallett: I don’t seem to have any papers, or my notebook. I think they’re in my room. If we carry on, by the time someone’s been upstairs … can we get a message? Okay, thanks.

Mr Dawson: Thank you, my Lady.

I was simply going to introduce to you this morning that, as I said yesterday, we have a number of witnesses this morning who are giving evidence from a number of impact organisations. The first witness this morning is

Mrs Jane Morrison.

Lady Hallett: Thank you.

1. Mrs Jane Morrison

MRS JANE MORRISON (affirmed).

Questions From Lead Counsel to the Inquiry for Module 2A

Mr Dawson: Good morning, Mrs Morrison. If you could try to speak, as best you can, into the microphone so we can hear you nice and clearly, that would be much appreciated, thank you.

You are Mrs Jane Morrison?

Mrs Jane Morrison: Correct.

Lead 2A: And you have already given evidence, I think, to the Inquiry in its Module 1?

Mrs Jane Morrison: Correct.

Lead 2A: And you give evidence this morning on behalf of an organisation to which you’re affiliated called Scottish Covid Bereaved; is that correct?

Mrs Jane Morrison: Correct.

Lead 2A: And you provided a witness statement to the Inquiry dated 20 March 2023 under reference INQ000144794. That was your witness statement in the first module, to which you speak to an extent already, and Scottish Covid Bereaved has also provided a response to the Inquiry’s impact questionnaire which can be found at reference INQ000099718. Is that a document with which you’re familiar?

Mrs Jane Morrison: Yes.

Lead 2A: I think you must at the very least have had a significant part in its creation, if not you’re actually its creator?

Mrs Jane Morrison: Well, a wee bit.

Lead 2A: Yes, there are some references in it, I think, to your personal situation?

Mrs Jane Morrison: Yes.

Lead 2A: If I could just ask you some questions about that, Mrs Morrison. I understand that in October 2020 your wife, Jacky Morrison-Hart, died from Covid?

Mrs Jane Morrison: Correct, yes.

Lead 2A: And she caught Covid in hospital, as I understand it?

Mrs Jane Morrison: Correct.

Lead 2A: As I understand it from the testimony that you’ve provided to the Inquiry, she was an inpatient in hospital, having developed jaundice, and she was undergoing some tests.

Mrs Jane Morrison: Correct.

Lead 2A: She had been in hospital for two weeks when she caught Covid, catching it on the 15th day of her stay in hospital?

Mrs Jane Morrison: Correct.

Lead 2A: I understand that the tests for her underlying health condition had taken much longer than would have been the case before the pandemic?

Mrs Jane Morrison: That’s correct, yes.

Lead 2A: Why was that?

Mrs Jane Morrison: There are things like scans – every time someone went in the scan it had to be thoroughly disinfected afterwards, and then they had to wait at least 20 minutes before they could let another patient come in and use the scanners, so it was tending to be three days between tests rather than just following one after the other.

Lead 2A: I see, so this prolonged her stay in hospital?

Mrs Jane Morrison: Very much so.

Lead 2A: As I understand it, she had been in hospital for 14 days and she caught Covid within the hospital, and that’s – a term which is often applied to that, which I see in some of your testimony, is a nosocomial infection?

Mrs Jane Morrison: That’s correct, yes.

Lead 2A: Meaning one which is caught within a hospital environment?

Mrs Jane Morrison: Mm-hm.

Lead 2A: I understand that her condition deteriorated quickly and sadly she died only five days after the onset of her infection?

Mrs Jane Morrison: Yes, it was very quick, because in the five days the Covid, which – many people still think of it as a respiratory condition, but it has a very big vascular element and it destroys the lining of the blood vessels, and in those five days it had clogged up her lungs, her kidneys had failed, her pancreas had failed and her liver had failed, all because of the Covid, and they tried to do dialysis and they couldn’t do it because her blood was so sticky because of the Covid it actually broke the machine.

Lead 2A: May I pass on the Inquiry’s condolences for your loss.

Mrs Jane Morrison: Thank you.

Lead 2A: Were you given an opportunity to say goodbye to her?

Mrs Jane Morrison: I was. I was very lucky, because I didn’t think I was going to be given the opportunity, because Jacky had been told because of the liver failure in particular, she was not a candidate for ITU, because it would only be prolonging the inevitable, so she was told that on – I think it was Saturday afternoon, the afternoon of the 24th, and we knew then it was just a matter of time, she was on maximum CPAP and they couldn’t get her oxygen levels above 60% because of the Covid. And I thought – I had a phone call with her and I thought that was the final phone call, but the consultant very kindly managed to find a side room, this – in that particular hospital they made a hospital within the hospital, so they had Covid ward, a high dependency unit and intensive care, so they managed to find a side room in the Covid ward so I didn’t – because I wouldn’t have been to go into the high dependency unit. And it’s an hour’s drive from home to the hospital, so I managed to get there just in time, I had about 15, 20 minutes with her. Yeah.

Lead 2A: I think after your experiences, you met up with or you came into contact with some other people via Facebook, I think, who had had if not similar, but broadly similar, experiences of the Covid pandemic in Scotland; is that right?

Mrs Jane Morrison: Yes. What happened, it was – the Facebook group at that stage covered the whole of the UK, which was the Covid Bereaved Families for Justice, and I joined that. And within that Alan Wightman was identifying all the Scots, so we became initially the Scottish branch of that unit, but subsequently we became an autonomous – a completely separate group, of Scottish Covid Bereaved.

Lead 2A: I think that was in about March 2021, was that right?

Mrs Jane Morrison: March 2021 was when we met Nicola Sturgeon.

Lead 2A: Right.

Mrs Jane Morrison: And spoke to her. And it was – it was over quite – well, once we knew the public inquiry was happening in Scotland, we were aware we would need a Scottish legal team to deal with that, and they were introduced to us by the English lawyers for the UK group, they actually approached Aamer Anwar & Co and got them on board, and then the more we thought about it, the more our own personal knowledge grew, it seemed to us eminently sensible to have the same lawyers for both inquiries and then nothing falls through the gaps and we don’t miss – and it also avoids a lot of duplication as well. So we decided that we’d do that.

And it was a process over several months, really, and by the latter half of 2022 we had a completely separate group, and prior to that we still had been part of the UK group.

Lead 2A: We certainly hope that nothing will fall through the gaps, Mrs Morrison.

Could I just ask you a few questions then about the group. Obviously it’s evolved over time, as you’ve just explained, but I understand that the group represents people from many different backgrounds who have had varied experiences of the Covid pandemic.

Mrs Jane Morrison: Yes.

Lead 2A: And in particular, given its name, they represent a number of people who have had different experiences of bereavement.

Mrs Jane Morrison: Yes.

Lead 2A: But there are a number of different people who are not necessarily directly bereaved who are involved with the group too; is that right? Some who perhaps work at frontline workers?

Mrs Jane Morrison: No, everybody in the group has been bereaved, but within that group of bereaved people, we have a variety of people such as frontline workers, healthcare professionals, teachers and so on. So we have a very wide variety of people with a lot of experiences in addition to their bereavement experiences.

Lead 2A: I see. And I understand the group may also represent some people with Long Covid?

Mrs Jane Morrison: We have some people in the group with Long Covid, but we do not represent a Long Covid group, if you follow my logic on that.

Lead 2A: I see. But the group has a wide variety of people and experiences upon whom it can draw –

Mrs Jane Morrison: Yes.

Lead 2A: – in order to form views and raise concerns about the Covid-19 pandemic in Scotland?

Mrs Jane Morrison: Yes.

Lead 2A: And it has people from different parts of Scotland?

Mrs Jane Morrison: Yes, yes, all over Scotland.

Lead 2A: And it has people, whose relatives have died, of different ages?

Mrs Jane Morrison: Yes.

Lead 2A: And it has people in it who have suffered bereavement at different stages of the pandemic, as it ran over our scope of more than two years?

Mrs Jane Morrison: Yes.

Lead 2A: I would like to ask you a few questions about a number of the issues that you have very helpfully raised with us, and I understand you may have raised with government in Scotland, arising out of the experiences of the group, in order to understand them a little bit better. As you’ll understand, this module concerns government decision-making and you have raised a number of significant matters, important matters, for us, and I’d like to understand the group’s perspective on those a little more, if I might.

Mrs Jane Morrison: Yes.

Lead 2A: I understand, as you’ve already said, that you’ve been able to have a number of meetings with Scottish Government, one of which took place with the First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, in March 2021?

Mrs Jane Morrison: 2022.

Lead 2A: 2022?

Mrs Jane Morrison: Sorry, no, you’re right, it’s 22 March 2021.

Lead 2A: Yes, 2021.

Mrs Jane Morrison: Yeah, sorry.

Lead 2A: So obviously at that time, in 2021, as our summary of the chronology yesterday showed, the pandemic was very much still going.

Mrs Jane Morrison: Yes.

Lead 2A: We were roughly at the stage, I think, to contextualise it, of coming out of the second lockdown.

Mrs Jane Morrison: Yes.

Lead 2A: Roughly.

Mrs Jane Morrison: Mm-hm.

Lead 2A: And I understand that you, at that meeting with the First Minister, raised a number of the group’s concerns, and that the principal purpose, if you like, of raising these concerns was to address those individually but also to try to make progress about having an inquiry into the Covid-19 pandemic in Scotland?

Mrs Jane Morrison: Yes, the main purpose of our meeting with the First Minister was to share our experiences with her, and to get her agreement to a Scottish public inquiry. And whilst – naturally, we’re sharing our own experiences, and we told her about some other issues as well, we were doing – so she did hear a wide variety of issues.

Lead 2A: I’d like to address some of those issues with you. Helpfully you’ve produced a number of these issues in a list in the impact questionnaire response.

So if we could have that up, please, it’s INQ000099718, and I’m looking at page 5, which is appendix 1. Thank you very much.

You’ve helpfully in this section of this document raised for us a number of matters that you raised verbally with the First Minister at the meeting, and I’d like to address some of these with you.

Issue 1, you raise a question relating to care homes. Is it the case that there are a number of people who are within your organisation who have experienced bereavement of relatives who were in care homes in Scotland?

Mrs Jane Morrison: Yes, 9% of our members have experienced a bereavement in care homes, yes.

Lead 2A: So this is a significant cohort?

Mrs Jane Morrison: Yes.

Lady Hallett: Sorry, was that 9 or 90?

Mrs Jane Morrison: 9.

Mr Dawson: And you raise at issue 1, as we can see there, it says:

“How, at a time when there was said to be a ‘protective ring’ around care homes and WHO was repeatedly stating ‘Test Test Test’ does the Government justify sending untested hospital patients into care homes full of vulnerable people?”

Is there a particular time period that this particular concern relates to in our pandemic chronology?

Mrs Jane Morrison: This was predominantly in March and April 2020 of the – at the start of the pandemic, where we had all these issues with care homes. As time has gone by, and I’ve learnt more, I do wonder how much of it is linked with the guidance that initially came out that was – SAGE 6, on 11 February, said we had to proceed with the assumptions of a flu pandemic, and with a flu pandemic it’s decided that the elderly were the least at risk because of years of vaccine and years of exposure, and in 25 February Public Health England, who were the lead public health people for the joint approach, they issued guidance saying it was very unlikely that care homes would get any infection in them. And they said that a couple of times. And I think that existed until 13 March.

So we had that, and of course as we now know there was a lack of testing capacity.

But that also raises its own issues, because when we get to 25 March, the British Geriatrics Society issued guidance saying that geriatric patients do not exhibit the same symptoms, and I believe it’s only 20% to 30% that will actually present with a fever, their other symptoms are completely different. So there’s all those – there’s an awful lot of stuff, and I’m glad you’re having a separate module on it, my Lady, to do that. So …

Lead 2A: And you were raising these matters with the Scottish Government in 2021?

Mrs Jane Morrison: Yes.

Lead 2A: And you were looking, I suppose, for answers from them as to how these things had been allowed to happen?

Mrs Jane Morrison: Yes.

Lead 2A: Some of which you’ve managed to find some answers to –

Mrs Jane Morrison: Yes.

Lead 2A: What role did you understand that Scottish Government had played in the period, the early period that you’ve referred to, as regards care home –

Mrs Jane Morrison: Yes, my understanding is that – I don’t know who made the actual UK decision that so-called “bed blockers” should be discharged into care homes, I don’t know who was the author of that decision, but the Scottish Government followed that approach, and it started on the latter half of March 2021, as I understand it.

I also believe that, apart from the not having enough tests at that stage, that it had come from SAGE and Chris Whitty, as the UK CMO, that they thought the tests would not recognise asymptomatic transmission or presymptomatic cases, so they only thought it would recognise those who actually had the Covid symptoms.

Lead 2A: I think you referred there, inadvertently I think, to March 2021. I think we were talking about March 2020 –

Mrs Jane Morrison: Sorry, yes.

Lead 2A: – Scottish Government. It is extremely difficult to remember which year we’re talking about. I think I fell foul of that myself yesterday in the opening.

Mrs Jane Morrison: Thank you for clarifying that.

Lead 2A: Thank you.

Did your members who had suffered bereavement around that time – you mentioned a moment ago pressures on hospitals as being a factor in this story – did the members of SCB have experience of pressure being applied to them or the individuals who subsequently died to be transferred from hospitals to care homes around the period we were discussing?

Mrs Jane Morrison: Yes. Yes. We actually had instances of some members actually pleading with the hospital not to discharge their relative.

There seemed to be a lot of things that hadn’t been considered. For example, the difference between a care home, which is more a residential place where people will help you with your daily living, and nursing homes, which of course will have a nurse on staff. So for those who were in care homes as well, they very often didn’t have the experience or the facilities to cope properly with patients who had been discharged, if they had to isolate or if subsequently it turned out they did have Covid.

Lead 2A: So let me get this right, there are stories of pressure being applied to move people out of hospitals to care homes –

Mrs Jane Morrison: Yes.

Lead 2A: – but there were issues about infection control measures and other aspects of the way that care homes function that meant that that might well not have been suitable at the time?

Mrs Jane Morrison: Yes.

Lead 2A: Thank you very much.

I’d just like to ask you a few questions also about issue 2, which is still on the screen. It says there that:

“We all saw the scenes on the news from Italy and Spain depicting the COVID devastation in care homes. Why was the ‘lead’ time we had in Scotland not capitalised on to provide infection control and PPE training and support in care homes?”

I think – would it be fair to say that the theme of Scotland having a degree of advance warning about things is something that comes up on a number of occasions in the statement that you’ve given?

Mrs Jane Morrison: Yes.

Lead 2A: And that this is one example of it where you’re drawing attention – in the context of care homes, but one might perhaps say more widely – to scenes of devastation, problems arising in other countries –

Mrs Jane Morrison: Yes.

Lead 2A: – and there being an issue on the mind of Scottish Covid Bereaved so to whether that warning had been properly heeded?

Mrs Jane Morrison: Correct.

Lead 2A: Does that apply specifically to care homes or is there a more general concern about that?

Mrs Jane Morrison: In the early days of the pandemic, it was generally, and – because it related as well to issues such as PPE. You know, I think in February the UK Government sent PPE to China, for example, you know. So there was not this – well, there was a sort of “It won’t happen to us, you know, we’re on a little island, we’ll be all right”. That was the impression we got. I mean, whether or not that was their actual thought or not, I don’t actually know.

Lead 2A: Because in this regard you also raise – if you could just go over the page, I wanted to jump to issue 8, which seemed to me to be connected to this. At issue 8 you say:

“Did trying to go for a uniform UK-wide approach at the beginning of the pandemic delay an earlier response if Scotland had just gone for it alone?”

Mrs Jane Morrison: Yes.

Lead 2A: So, again, you’re focusing there on this very early period, and one of the questions that you wanted an answer to was whether Scotland could and should have taken an autonomous approach?

Mrs Jane Morrison: Yes.

Lead 2A: I mean, the issues that we’ve touched upon, health and social care, are devolved matters to the Scottish Government?

Mrs Jane Morrison: They are, yes.

Lead 2A: So what you wondered was whether going along with a uniform UK approach was something that the Scottish Government might have done otherwise?

Mrs Jane Morrison: Yes, I mean, for example we asked about border controls: why didn’t we just shut the borders and keep everybody out? And the – it was explained to us that, yes, we could shut the border, but the Border Force, the monitoring of it is controlled by Westminster, not by Scotland, so they couldn’t have the monitoring done at the border. And also the financial aspects of everything, Scotland does not have its own authority to raise funds such as a UK Government has. So they were very limited what they could do within the financial constraints as well.

Lead 2A: So it sounds like from your obviously extensive analysis of matters, Mrs Morrison, that in the early stages issues arose from the devolution settlement which, given the all encompassing nature of Covid, created difficulties about whether the Scottish Government should go one way or the other, but you wanted to know, I think, issue 8 suggests, why did they not go their own way?

Mrs Jane Morrison: Yes.

Lead 2A: Did you, other than what you’ve said, give – did they give you what you consider to be a satisfactory answer to this, either at your meeting with the First Minister or subsequently? Does this remain an issue for you?

Mrs Jane Morrison: It does remain an issue, and hopefully we can identify some of that in this module.

Lead 2A: I very much hope so.

There’s another issue which I wanted to ask you about, in particular because it relates to your own situation. Again if we could go over the page, please, to issue 13. You say there:

“There is real concern around hospital acquired Covid-19 and hospital transmission and yet my wife [which was the reference earlier I think why you must have written this] was allowed to walk through the corridors of Hairmyers Hospital having tested positive for covid 19 at her leisure without so much as a facemask on.”

Mrs Jane Morrison: Sorry to stop you there, that’s not –

Lead 2A: Oh, that’s not your story? I’m sorry.

Mrs Jane Morrison: No, it’s – these bits are from the five of us who were there, just a little bit of stories. This was another member’s wife.

Lead 2A: I understand.

Mrs Jane Morrison: But I can –

Lead 2A: I’ll just finish the quote and then ask you to explain:

“At this time the hospitals were not particularly busy why were you sending covid patients home[?]”

So I had understood this was your story, but it bears a number of familiar hallmarks from your story.

Mrs Jane Morrison: Yes.

Lead 2A: Could you explain, therefore, what this story emanates from and, to the extent that you’re able within the group, explain the significance of nosocomial infection and the efforts made to prevent it within the group’s concerns?

Mrs Jane Morrison: Yeah, just as it says later down in the statement, as a group, 25% of our members have lost someone to nosocomial infection, and that has stayed a fairly consistent figure as we’ve grown as a group. And this particular issue had a number of points into it. This gentleman’s wife was shielding, and then the shielding stopped and she was told to go back to work. She got Covid, went into the hospital, but they thought she was well enough to send home. But they said to her to just go, and she was able to walk through the whole hospital without wearing a mask, whilst having tested positive for Covid on that – and this is what the situation was. And she subsequently passed away with Covid.

Lead 2A: And is the issue of the extent to which infection was controlled within hospitals a wider issue for the members, the 25% of the SCB?

Mrs Jane Morrison: Yes, there’s a number of elements to it. I mean, I’ve read quite a few infection control plans – one of my ways of coping with everything was to do a lot of research – and they focused solely on the nursing medical staff and what they have to do. The only reference I’ve seen in relation to patients or visitors is they’re invited to use an alcohol hand gel, and I have not seen any procedures for visiting tradesmen or repair people, porters – sorry, porters are covered – on that. So there’s some gaps.

But to us, one of the biggest gaps is when Covid started, certainly in the hospital that Jacky was in, they set up a system you could only have one named visitor for the duration of that patient’s stay, this was before she got Covid, and they had to make an appointment so they didn’t have too many people on the ward at once, and wear hospital face masks, gloves and a pinny – sorry, apron. Which we were doing, every time I went to visit Jacky. Outside of the hospital you had patients who had come outside and they were meeting friends and families in the car parks, with no masks, no social distancing and in groups of up to half a dozen, and then, and I saw it with my own eyes, when they finished they walked back into the hospital and they wouldn’t even use the hand gel. So, you know, it makes a mockery of much of the infection control, because it’s like putting down a portcullis to stop a swarm of bees.

Lead 2A: As we did with the care homes, can you give me some idea of the timeframe over which these concerns about I think the guidance but also the enforcement of any guidance caused concerns to the members of the SCB?

Mrs Jane Morrison: It’s throughout the duration of the whole pandemic.

Lead 2A: Thank you.

There’s another issue I’d like to touch on, two other issues I’d like to touch on with you, if I possibly could. It’s issue 11.

So if we could go back a page, please, Lawrence.

Issue 11 relates to shielding, which is something that I think we will touch upon in this module, and a particular issue relating to Scotland which I wanted to raise with you on behalf of the members:

“Why did the shielding end at the start of August when people were being allowed to go on holiday and no doubt bring variants back into the country, the eat out to help out scheme was started, the schools were returning mid August and the universities shortly after? Surely if there was modelling being carried out it would show this was probably the most dangerous time to stop shielding.”

Again, could you explain this? There’s a lot in that about factual information, some of which I’d summarised yesterday, but I think this relates to a decision in August to stop the shielding scheme; is that right?

Mrs Jane Morrison: That’s correct, yes.

Lead 2A: Was it on 1 August, I think?

Mrs Jane Morrison: I’m not sure of the exact date, sorry.

Lead 2A: Yes (inaudible).

Mrs Jane Morrison: But it seemed that – I’ll come back to the shielding, if I may, but it would seem that when you’ve got your numbers down that you should gradually release the controls, and what was happening was everything was being released at once, plus additional things like the Eat Out to Help Out scheme was introduced. So people going from social distancing, minimal contact, suddenly they were let out and everybody went a bit wild, and that coincided with stopping shielding. So where you would have been in a position where the person who had stopped shielding would have gradually readjusted, it meant that if they were told they had to go back to work by their employer, for example, they were just exposed to every possible source of contamination with the virus.

Lead 2A: So at that point, and at that point these decisions were being made by the Scottish Government, what you wanted to point out was that there seemed to be an incongruity between the fact that there were releases happening on the restrictions but also the most vulnerable re-exposed to that?

Mrs Jane Morrison: Yes.

Lead 2A: Is that a common issue, that particular issue, amongst the membership?

Mrs Jane Morrison: Yes, there’s quite a few – quite a few members who are affected like that. I understand, and again it’s one we need to understand what was the UK decision that started off, because of course it happened in the whole of the UK and how much autonomy did the Scottish Government have.

Lead 2A: That would be one of the questions that you would like an answer to?

Mrs Jane Morrison: Yes. Yes.

Lead 2A: Another issue that I wanted to touch on briefly with you is issue 15.

So if we go back over the page again, please, Lawrence. Issue 15, which is something that comes up on a number of occasions in the SCB materials, is that you say there:

“Symptoms are poorly understood and are not well publicised outside of the usual three: fever, persistent cough and loss of taste and/or smell. More symptoms need to be listed and a good education campaign launched.”

And you wanted to ask Nicola Sturgeon and others would they commit to that.

To what extent is this a concern? What are the sorts of symptoms, for example, you would like to see added either at the time you were having this meeting in March 2021 or indeed now?

Mrs Jane Morrison: To go back to this just before, I know that Mr Yousaf wrote to UKHSA, because they are the owners of the symptoms, so to speak, to ask if it could be extended and they declined to do that. The issue is, for us, we’ve got an awful lot of people who have been bereaved by Covid and those symptoms were not the primary symptoms, particularly in the early days when it only went with fever and persistent cough, before they added loss of taste or smell, and, as I mentioned earlier, particularly with older patients who didn’t present with those symptoms as well. So it was a big concern.

I suspect that a lot of it, again, was down to lack of testing capacity, but we should have had – even if we couldn’t test for it, we should have had more education given to the public saying “These are the main symptoms, but you might also experience gastric symptoms, you might experience lethargy, confusion and things like that”.

Lead 2A: So would the result of such an approach have been more precautionary in the way that it would have perhaps prompted more people to take a test or more people to regulate their conduct such to minimise the risk that they might spread of the virus if they had it?

Mrs Jane Morrison: Yes, yes.

Lead 2A: Rather than being restrictive, a wider definition may have had that effect?

Mrs Jane Morrison: Yeah. And it also had the effect that we do have some – a few people who lost someone where they thought they had Covid but because they didn’t have those three symptoms – well, this is particularly in the beginning when it was just the two, they were told “You don’t have Covid”, they were denied a test because they didn’t meet the criteria, and it was very difficult for them to get help, because they were told through 111 or the testing system “Well, you haven’t got these symptoms so it’s not Covid”.

Lead 2A: Thank you.

I understand from the materials that you’ve provided, your own statements and those on behalf of the group, that there were a number of meetings, not just the one we’ve mentioned with Ms Sturgeon, but a number of meetings with others, including Mr Swinney and Mr Yourself, subsequently and you’ve referred to an extent to a reply that Mr Yousaf was able to get you on that particular issue about symptoms.

Broadly speaking, having looked at the materials for this, it seems to be our impression that the focus of these meetings, as far as the Scottish Government was concerned, was really about securing a Scottish Inquiry?

Mrs Jane Morrison: Yes.

Lead 2A: But that other than that particular issue about symptoms, you didn’t seem to get very many answers to the many legitimate issues that you’ve listed. Would that be a fair summary?

Mrs Jane Morrison: Yes, I think that would be, yes.

Lead 2A: So what that means, in effect, is that these questions still remain questions for the group?

Mrs Jane Morrison: Yes.

Lead 2A: And you are turning to this Inquiry and the Scottish Inquiry to try to find them out?

Mrs Jane Morrison: Yes.

Lead 2A: Although you had been trying to get these answers for a long time, at least – certainly at least since March 2021?

Mrs Jane Morrison: Yes.

Lead 2A: There are a number of other areas that are covered in the statements, all of which have been taken into account, I can assure you, Mrs Morrison, in the way that we’ve prepared this module and indeed others. I have no further questions for you, but I would like to offer you the opportunity to say what you would like, and if there’s anything else you’d like to add, please do so.

Mrs Jane Morrison: Thank you.

Yes, it’s – we all want the same thing, which is we all want answers, to make sure that this does not happen again, and it will only work if everyone speaking to the Inquiry, particularly the politicians and the decision-makers, are completely candid and they don’t have selective amnesia, which seems to have been apparent in some of the previous issues.

That’s – we need the truth and we need people to be honest, and if they made a mistake, be big enough to admit you made a mistake.

Mr Dawson: Thank you very much, Mrs Morrison. I have no further questions for you.

My Lady.

Lady Hallett: Are there any core participant questions?

Mr Dawson: There are no core participant questions, as I understand.

Lady Hallett: No, I have no other questions, Mrs Morrison. Thank you so much for all your help. You mentioned earlier that you carried out the research to cope with your grief. Have you found it any comfort?

The Witness: I have, my Lady, thank you, yes.

Lady Hallett: Well, it’s really helpful to the rest of us, obviously, because you raise some really important points, and between us I hope the Scottish Inquiry and this Inquiry can answer as many of them as possible so with the help of people – what I find really interesting about the way you’ve described your experience and the loss of your wife Jacky is that you have been constructive, you haven’t just been critical, you have been trying to ask questions to which there might be an answer, so I’m really grateful to you.

The Witness: Thank you, my Lady.

Lady Hallett: And this cough is not Covid, I promise. I have tested so many times I’ve run out of tests. But as those who have been following me in this Inquiry will know, I do get coughs every so often.

So thank you very much for your help.

The Witness: Thank you, my Lady.

(The witness withdrew)

Mr Dawson: My Lady, the next witness will be Roz Foyer from the Scottish TUC, which my colleague Mr Tariq will be conducting. So we require a little changing around, but it will only take a few seconds.

Lady Hallett: That’s fine, thank you.

(Pause)

Mr Tariq: May I please call Rozanne Foyer.