A CAMPAIGN group, who lost loved ones to Covid-19, have met with the chair of the UK-wide inquiry in the handling of the pandemic.

Machynlleth resident Catherine Griffiths was part of a group of nine campaigners who met, in Cardiff, with Baroness Hallett, the UK-wide inquiry chair.

Catherine said: “We were the first people to meet her, she is doing a tour of 11 places. She set out her intentions for the inquiry, she gave us an overview of her role, and the purpose of the meeting.

“She made us seven promises, first being that bereaved families would be at the heart of the inquiry. I believe she was involved with the bereaved families in the 7/11 bombings, so she has experience of taking traumatic information from people who are traumatised. She was incredibly measured, we all felt comfortable talking to her and not judged.

“All ten of us used our stories to reflect what we thought were missing form the terms of reference. Most notable is that there were multiple breaches of human rights in everybody’s experience, for example the right to life, age discrimination, the right to privacy, and dignity in death – which was one of my issues. Obviously do not resuscitate was applied, which was brought up multiple times.

“Pretty much everybody mentioned preparedness for the pandemic, including the lack of planning and PPE. The lockdowns were mentioned, how effective were they? Bearing in mind we had the firebreak in November 2020. At the beginning which we had x amount and then at the end we had more, so we opened up with more cases.

“It’s a big inquiry, goodness how long it will take. She was leaving us to go to Exeter so she’s clearly not wasting time, which was another one of her promises. And the other was that it would be open, transparent, and that there would be regular updates so you don’t have to wait until the end.”

For Catherine, her priority is ensuring care homes have “parity with hospital” in the inquiry, after her father, Harry Griffiths, sadly died from Covid-19 in November 2020, after over half of the residents in his care home, MHA Hafan y Waun in Aberystwyth, were infected.

“I was told at 10.30pm that my dad has Covid-19, I live alone and I was concerned. Communication was really questionable, between the management, the carers, and the families. I understand they had no idea what they were doing, I can imagine they were freaking out, but that came down to preparedness – we knew this would happen at some point and that it will happen again.”

While Catherine said she is disappointed with First Minister Mark Drakeford’s response, an independent, Wales-only inquiry is “not totally off the cards”: “He is receptive but my impression of him has changed. The last time we met him, we spoke about something else other than the inquiry and he said it’s inevitable when discussing anything with England that Wales will have to shout louder. I responded to say ‘you have just given us the reason for needing the Wales inquiry’.”