Today was the first day of the Covid Inquiry. So far Baroness Hallet has failed to put our loved ones front and centre of the process, but thanks to your support, we took matters into our own hands.

Thanks to your donations around a hundred bereaved families travelled from all corners of the country to be at the hearing today. We stood all in red outside the building, with pictures of our loved ones. Alongside us, a mobile billboard played testimony from our members that couldn’t be there.

It was an incredibly powerful statement that impacted every single person inside the courtroom. It was there for everyone to see. Hugo Keith, Counsel to the Inquiry, went as far as acknowledging “Even at this stage, before hearing the evidence, it is apparent that we might not have been very well prepared (for the pandemic) at all,”. 

Today we made clear that there will be no silencing of the bereaved when it comes to this inquiry and we will do whatever it takes to make sure the voices of our loved ones are at the heart of this process. 

If the inquiry won’t call our members as witnesses to share their testimony in the courtroom, we’ll be there standing outside with a megaphone. 

We began campaigning for this Inquiry over three years ago. In that time thousands of bereaved families have made enormous sacrifices in the hope that lessons could be learned from our losses, so that others wouldn’t have to go through the same awful experiences when another pandemic strikes.

We will not stand for our loved ones being silenced and in turn crucial learnings being missed. Every single one of our loved ones deaths was a tragedy, and each exposes key systemic issues that need to be understood if we want to save lives in a future pandemic. The failure to hear our stories and learn from them could cost lives in the future.

We have the insights about what happened on the frontlines, that no one else in the courtroom has. 

If you can please donate to ensure that just like today, bereaved families are able to bring our voices to every stage of the inquiry. Any donation, no matter how small, goes a huge way: https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/covid-bereaved-must-be-heard-at-the-covid-inquiry