The chief coroner’s choice is clear: the government’s reputation matters more than justice for bereaved families of NHS staff

For many families, including mine, the inquest system is our only route to the truth. Banning scrutiny of policy failings sends a message that they don't deserve it

Inquests into the deaths of NHS workers have been discouraged from examining the role of government policy and the PPE shortage. The guidance was issued by the chief coroner of England and Wales, despite mounting evidence that the government ignored warnings to stockpile PPE even as Covid-19 spread nationwide. If this sets a precedent for all coronavirus inquests, it could obscure the role of government failures in the deaths, not only of hundreds of NHS workers, but tens of thousands of patients. As a bereaved relative going through an inquest myself, I know what this means for the families in mourning.

Grief changes us all. It can shatter families, destroy lives, scar communities. Finding peace is a privilege more accessible to some than others. Grieving a premature death, a preventable death, is another thing altogether. How do you move on when you still don’t know what really happened? When the responsible party goes on as normal, unaccountable and unapologetic? How do you live with the knowledge that there’s nothing to stop the same thing happening again, shattering another family, taking another life?

In November 2017, my cousin Gaia, who I loved like a sister, went missing for 11 days and was found dead. She was a survivor of sexual violence who was badly let down by police and mental health services, which I believe led to her death at 19-years-old. I lead the Justice for Gaia campaign for the same reason so many families are fighting: because flawed as it is, the inquest system is our only route to truth and justice, and these are the only lights we have in the darkness of our grief.

The repeated delays to Gaia’s inquest have been profoundly painful. Waiting is one thing but I can’t imagine what it would be like to be told that when her inquest came, it would not look at matters most: why she was taken from us and what can be done to save others. By preventing coronavirus inquests from looking at the role of government policy and PPE provision, chief coroner Mark Lucraft is robbing families of that chance and by extension, endangering public health.

He justified his statements on the grounds that “an inquest is not the right forum for addressing concerns about high-level government or public policy.” Apart from being a kick in the teeth to families like mine, working despite our grief and trauma to fight for positive change, this is deeply misleading.

Article 2 (the right to life) under the European Convention on Human Rights imposes a duty on the state to protect life and Article 2 inquests like Gaia’s exist precisely to ensure that systemic failures which endanger it can be exposed and addressed. There is ample precedent showing the vital role this plays in our legal system. Stephen Lawrence is an obvious example. It was the inquest into his murder that paved the way for the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry, exposing systemic racism and corruption in the Metropolitan Police and transforming the national debate.

For many families, the inquest system is our only route to the truth. What Lucraft seems to be saying is that if we intend to speak that truth to power, we have no right to it.

The death of each NHS worker who lost their lives caring for others in this pandemic deserves full and fearless investigation, wherever that might lead. This is vital not except where they might implicate government policy but especially when they do, because policy change can save lives. This isn’t just about the rights of affected families, it’s about our right as a country to make informed choices to beat this virus.

These comments are especially concerning at this time when we are being confronted with some very uncomfortable questions, like why it is that black people are four times more likely to die from Covid-19 than white people and mortality rates in the poorest areas are twice what they are in the richest.

Make no mistake, this is a Black Lives Matter issue. Ninety-seven per cent of medical staff and two-thirds of the nurses who have died from Covid-19 are from BAME backgrounds. By prohibiting the inquests into their deaths from questioning government policy, the message is loud and clear that black lives don’t matter.

It would be easy to put the racial disparity in Covid-19 deaths down to poverty alone. A decade of austerity cuts have made being poor much more deadly and Britain remains scarred by a highly racialised wealth gap. The Tories have cut public services by over £80bn and slashed the Public Health England budget by 40 per cent since 2010. This is a huge factor – but it’s not the only one. Frontline health workers are telling us that systemic discrimination is killing them. Coroners must be empowered, not discouraged, from finding the truth.

My thoughts are often with Thomas Harvey, a black man and hospital nurse of 20 years who died alone on his bathroom floor having had to nurse coronavirus patients without even a facemask. In his final days, he was repeatedly refused admission to hospital despite his family saying that he couldn’t breathe. His son had to punch a hole in the door in a frantic attempt to reach him.

His family believe that if he’d been given adequate PPE, he would still be alive. They deserve not to see his death covered over and their concerns ignored after he paid the ultimate price for us. They deserve to know the truth, we all do, because this affects all of us. The questions and inequalities unearthed by this pandemic are too great to be swept over. They will haunt us until they are answered and justice is done.

Marienna Pope-Weidemann is a social justice writer and campaigner, currently attending Birkbeck University on a Creative Writing MA scholarship. She also leads the Justice for Gaia campaign, which campaigns for survivors' rights