I understand anger of Covid bereaved, says former health secretary

Former Scottish health secretary Jeane Freeman has said she “absolutely” understands the anger directed at government from those who lost someone to Covid-19.

Speaking on the fifth anniversary of the first lockdown being announced on Sunday, Freeman reflected on the virus which claimed more than 16,000 lives in Scotland alone and the impact of government decisions.

At the onset of the pandemic in early 2020, the former health secretary said she made the best decisions possible with the information available at the time, but admitted that some of the decisions could be “worth reconsidering” in hindsight.

Asked if she understands the anger felt by families, she told the BBC’s Sunday Show: “Oh, I absolutely can.

“I absolutely can understand their anger, of course I can.

“That doesn’t diminish their anger, nor I’d say, does it diminish what I’m saying to you.

“I made what I believed were the best decisions with the information I had at the time and as I could improve the circumstances, I absolutely did.”

She added: “But there is no getting away from the fact that people died, people were harmed and there is a long-term impact.”

People were affected by long Covid, bereavement and a lack of contact with loved ones, while young people missed out on celebrating key milestones, she said.

But Freeman acknowledged that the decision to close schools – which sent most pupils home for the majority of the early pandemic – could have been the wrong one and many of the choices made by ministers could be worth looking at again.

“I think it’s something worth reconsidering,” she said.

“I don’t know, because I’m not sitting now with all the information that I had then – in five years, I don’t remember it all.

“So I can’t say for sure that was the wrong decision.”

She added: “Many of them are probably worth a reconsideration and there’s certainly things to be done to prepare us to be in a better starting place than we were for the next pandemic that will come along.”

Speaking of her personal experience of the pandemic, Freeman – who left Holyrood in 2021 – said: “I described it as two years of running anxiety… you’re always anxious.

“There’s anxiety about everything from whether you’re making the right decisions to whether what you’ve said needs to be done is getting done.

“Is it getting done properly? What’s going wrong that you don’t yet know about?

“To just anxiety that everybody had about your own relatives, loved ones, how they’re all doing, hoping they don’t get ill, hoping everything will be okay for them.”

Asked if she felt a sense of “pride”, she said instead she was “pleased with my own resilience”.

Scottish Tory health spokesman Dr Sandesh Gulhane accused Freeman of a “shameful” attempt to defend the government’s record, adding: “The SNP were completely unprepared for Covid and were too busy playing politics against Westminster when they should have been focused on saving lives.”

Looking at the health service currently, Freeman went on to say that a “national booking system” for elective care could go some way to relieving the pressure on Scotland’s NHS.

But Scottish Labour’s deputy leader Jackie Baillie said: “Under the dysfunctional SNP, operating theatres can remain underused while A&E patients wait in corridors and nearly one in six Scots are on an NHS waiting list.

“Scottish Labour will bring a patient-first approach to our NHS where the money follows the patient rather than propping up bureaucracy and all available operating capacity is used.”