Covid-19: Day of Reflection

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

Thursday 20th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

I congratulate the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London on securing this important topical debate and on her excellent introduction to the very wide range of issues contained in it. I shall divide my time into two areas: first, bereavement support to people since Covid but not only because of Covid; and, secondly, the effect of Covid deaths on their loved ones and on wider society.

On deaths at the beginning of Covid during lockdown, through our social conventions for grieving and marking the life of a special person who has died, saying goodbye to a loved one on a phone or a tablet via a nurse holding it up in hospital was extremely hard. Then there were the limited numbers of people being permitted to be at a funeral. However, I have to say that the one benefit has been Zoom funerals. If you cannot be there in person, it is now normal to be able to join online or even see it afterwards, which is an important part of the grieving process.

On new styles of funerals and their cost, to which the right reverend Prelate referred, I am concerned about the advertisements for extremely cheap funerals that are constantly on TV at the moment. I notice that they are just beginning slightly to qualify what is on offer. People do not understand what is on offer. I wonder whether we need to address the issue about advertising regulation for these funerals, because people often buy in advance and then discover that there is literally no service or gathering whatever and there is no way they can mark the cremation of the person either—there is nothing. For some people, it may be the right thing, but I know that many funeral directors are frustrated, because they can offer cheaper funerals than most people imagine. The average price was cited earlier, but they are certainly trying to make sure that they can provide it.

The other big issue is the British style of mourning, if I may put it that way; to call it restrained would be an understatement. There are cultural differences in our own communities, but also in Europe. The first open-coffin funeral that I went to was for a Latvian relative, and everybody at the funeral went up to kiss the person in the coffin. I was 20, and I think it would be fair to say that I was horrified, because it is just not within our culture. One problem with Covid was that all those different cultural ways of saying farewell were probably even more inappropriate. Covid removed our ability to mourn, and I therefore welcome the growth of “grief cafés”, where people can come together to talk about preparing for grief, recognising that somebody is going to die, but also, after they have died, having a safe space where people can come together in an entirely safe and relaxed environment to chat about death and how it is affecting them.

I also want to mark the role of leaders of religions and belief in supporting families and friends and the individual on that journey to death and afterwards. That was one of the hardest things that we lost during Covid. Being on the end of a phone was extremely difficult—unless the weather was fine and you could have a meeting outside—and it transformed the experience, and not in a good way.

I also want to talk about how grief affects children. That journey of grief and saying farewell is very different for anybody under about 16. We fostered two children of a friend of ours, and the vicar and the chaplain of the hospice guided them, aged 10 and 12, and ourselves in what was going to happen. They encouraged us to take the children to see their mother after she had died, when our natural reaction would have been not to do that. But it was the right thing to do, because they were happy to do it, and it helped them to recognise that she was gone for ever. The support that we got from our faith leaders and our wider church community made an enormous difference.

I turn now to the consequences of Covid. I was health spokesperson for what we might describe as the whole of the first big period of Covid, up until December 2022. The most shocking thing that happened was that certain doctors abused the DNACPR decision-making. Never again must these be taken without something on a patient’s file showing that they have explicitly been part of the decision-making, even if it was not their decision, or, if they do not have capacity, that their attorney or next of kin has also been part of it. It was particularly unfortunate that many very elderly people with dementia and those with learning disabilities were given DNACPRs without their and their families’ knowledge.

For those families who lost people who were on the front line during Covid without proper PPE, can the Minister say whether the Government will follow the recommendations for pandemic preparedness in the first report of the Covid-19 inquiry, to ensure that we can protect front-line staff when—not if—the next pandemic arrives? I add to that the front-line staff who survived severe Covid but have been medically retired and are now fighting the NHS, which says that, because these well-loved staff—who served for many years and are important to our NHS—cannot confirm when they caught Covid, they are therefore not entitled to compensation. This is unjust. I know two people whom that has affected very badly. They were in PPE made of black plastic bags right at the start, and both caught Covid within the first three weeks.

Those who died very early on, pre-vaccination, were overrepresented by, as I am sure you will remember, those described as “clinically vulnerable”—I am one of that number and I survived Covid. They are still overrepresented in deaths today, even though the number of Covid deaths is much lower. This winter, we have seen a large number of deaths from flu and pneumonia. Part of the problem is that Ministers, past and present, tell us that Covid is over, but it is not. The consequence of that is sometimes long Covid, but it also affects decisions about whether Covid is airborne or not.

UKHSA and NHS England tell us that Covid is not airborne transmitted and that the main transmission is usually through contact with droplets. The WHO disagrees with this and changed its definition two years ago. Why? Because the WHO realised that the size of the virus was small enough to mean that it is airborne. That is important because that requires masks and ventilation for those who may be at risk. The WHO says that we should consider using masks if at risk. I would love us to get to the stage of Japan and China, where if you have a bad cold and you are going on the underground, you put a mask on. That has not been in our culture, but it would help those who remain at home because they are so clinically vulnerable that they do not feel safe going out.

That would also reduce transmission of various viruses in schools. My regular hospital is Addenbrooke’s in Cambridge, which during lockdown devised a very cheap but effective ventilator that is now available on every ward. The staff also mask up very early on. However, in schools there is a large amount of transmission, not of Covid but of other viruses, because there is no ventilation in classrooms except that ordained by the head teacher.

That frustration is born out of the death of a very dear friend of mine who survived a major lung transplant at Papworth. When he went home, his care worker did not wear a mask and she gave him Covid. He died, after the long period he had spent in hospital and after all the NHS work to try to take care of him. The equation does not seem right there.

Can the Minister say, therefore, whether the Government will make sure that all the recommendations that come out of the Covid inquiry—not only those in the first report, which we have seen—mean that we keep our people safer, not only from Covid, and encourage our front-line staff, including those in the NHS, that where they work they will be able to work safely? Above all, given the tone and nature of this debate, will we be able to support people as they face death and the loss of loved ones in the future?