NHS campaigners will today hand a coronavirus dossier to police on Nicola Sturgeon, calling for her to be investigated for corporate homicide.
The group, Action for a Safe People’s NHS, blame the Scottish Government for about 10,000 deaths since the Covid pandemic struck.
Founding member and former Crown prosecutor Roger Livermore claims blunders over the handling of Covid were a “government-sponsored crime”.
They have collated evidence centring around deaths in care homes, hospitals and among healthcare staff.
Included in the dossier is evidence on the use of unsafe, unlawful and out-of-date masks and PPE equipment; a lack of risk assessments on wards and the destruction of paperwork around Covid patients being placed in care homes.
The group also claim the misuse of Do Not Resuscitate orders, also known as DNA-CPRs, led to more deaths.
Lesley Roberts, a nurse and union health and safety rep during the pandemic, will today join Rab Wilson, a former nurse, and Livermore in handing the dossier over to Police Scotland, demanding a probe.
Livermore described the Scottish Government’s failure to ensure patient safety as “one of the biggest crimes in Scottish and UK legal history”.
The campaigner claimed: “On February 29, 2020, we reminded the Scottish Government about the laws which applied and they completely ignored us and engaged in corporate policy which was homicidal.
“Rather than control the virus, they engaged in policies which spread the virus. We are looking at corporate homicide.”
Roberts was an eyewitness to what went on in Scotland’s hospitals at the height of the pandemic and was calling for action on masks and DNA-CPRs from the very beginning.
Her own mum was marked as DNA-CPR and Roberts only found out by accident when she discovered the paperwork in her mum’s washing.
In a recent conversation with the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman, she was told DNA-CPR was “something that was happening across the board”.
Livermore continued: “That blanket DNA-CPR box- ticking exercise clearly wasn’t an individual health board’s policy.”
Roberts said: “I am absolutely disgusted that someone who fell into a category of a vulnerable person was put at risk in such an appalling way and I expect a lot of families will be feeling the same way. It breaks my heart.
“It is reprehensible the numbers who died – a lot of them not through Covid.
“There was a huge spike in excess deaths which could have been down to any number of things introduced by this government.”
The Scottish Government said: “As it did for governments across the globe, the Covid-19 pandemic presented the Scottish Government with a huge and unprecedented challenge – Ministers and officials acted at all times, based on the best information available at the time, to keep people safe.
“The Scottish Government has been committed to an independent public inquiry into the handling of the pandemic in Scotland, to ensure that lessons are learned for the future.
“It is vital that both the Scottish COVID-19 Inquiry and the UK Inquiry to now work at speed to address the range of questions people have so that we can learn and benefit from lessons as early as possible.”
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