For immediate release: Boris Johnson to finally meet bereaved families 398 days after first promising to do so
Prime Minister Boris Johnson will finally meet families who lost loved ones to Covid-19 over a year since he first promised to do so.
The meeting, due to take place on Tuesday 28 September, will see members of the Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice group meet the Prime Minister in Downing Street.
The families will tell the stories of how their loved ones caught the virus and lost their lives, and reiterate their calls for the promised statutory inquiry to start, in person to the Prime Minister.
It is expected that he will be joined by senior civil servants from the cabinet office and Government’s legal department.
The families have asked Downing Street to ensure the meeting takes place outside and that social distancing is maintained to ensure the meeting is conducted in a covid secure manner.
Jo Goodman, co-founder of Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice and one of those who will meet the Prime Minister said:
“It has been over a year since the Prime Minister first said he would meet us and in that time over 100,000 people across the country have lost their lives with Covid-19.
One of the hardest parts of the pandemic for us has been seeing new families join each week with the same pain and grief that we’ve experienced and distressingly similar stories to our own.
We first called for a rapid review last summer so that lessons could be learnt from the deaths of our loved ones to protect others, and we can’t help but feel that if we’d been listened to then, other lives might have been spared.
We hope that the Prime Minister will listen to us tomorrow, and start the process to begin the inquiry immediately, whilst ensuring that the perspective of bereaved families is at its heart. Most of all, we hope that by sharing our stories, we can help to protect other families from the suffering and tragedy that we’ve been through.”