NEW|Scottish COVID-19 inquiry|17 Jun 2025

Remarkable testimony. Adam Stachura, Direcor, Age Scotland.

Introduction

Appearing for a second time at the inquiry is Adam Stachura, Associate Director for Policy, Communications and External Affairs at Age Scotland. You can view Adam’s first revelatory session at the Scottish COVID inquiry here and what he said to Neil Oliver on GB News one year ago here.

In his latest evidence there is truly some profound insights. Namely that the Scottish Government in a response to the Chief Executive of Age Scotland did not deny that excess deaths in people living with dementia in 2020 (who died most ‘involving COVID-19’) may in fact have died due to policies!

A letter of concern was sent to the Scottish Government by the then Age Scotland Chief Executive Brian Sloan on the 17th September 2020 questioning COVID-19 as causing excess deaths.

‘‘The underlying sense that people living with dementia may have died as a result of having social care packages withdrawn or downgraded in that period, and not through contracting COVID-19, was never answered.’’

-Paragraph 125

‘‘The lack of visiting for care home residents was hugely damaging to their health and wellbeing and restricted their human rights for excruciatingly long periods of time.’’

-Paragraph 169

Testimony highlights

Lockdown impacts

• Severity of care home lockdowns denied residents their right to life and family under articles 2 and 8 of the ECHR and led to rapid health deterioration.

‘‘(The right to life) in care homes i don’t think it was regarded at all.’’

‘‘The deterioration of people living in care homes (due to the restrictions) was significant and it happened quite significantly fast.’’

DNACPR

• A review on the use of DNACPR notices should be made.

‘‘I believe that how do not attempt resuscitation discussions were approached in Scotland was TERRIBLE.’’

Lack of access to digital services/social care withdrawal impacts

• Older people unable to access digital services were put at risk and likely infringed on their human rights. Social care withdrawal resulted in the deaths of significant numbers of elderly people. Adverse impacts are ongoing.

‘‘When you look at early on in the pandemic when social care packages had been removed..overnight almost.’’

‘‘I think it was really hard for people to access the things they needed to stay well and quite frankly stay alive.’’

‘‘There would be a CONSIDERABLE NUMBER of people who had their social care packages turned off who DIED as a result of not getting the care they needed.’’

‘‘It has been quite a shameful moment.’’

‘Troubling’ unsolicited DNACPR conversations

• Violated the right to autonomy under human rights principles.

• This was happening across the UK not just in Scotland.

• No explanations why this was happening.

‘‘I think DNACPR was being used differently…almost to identify people who were more likely to need further treatment.’’

‘‘I did result in people’s loss of dignity.’’

‘‘We had lots of calls from people who were very angry about it.’’

‘‘More often than not..the cases that came to us the discussion never actually happened..sometimes a box was ticked to say a conversation was had with the patient and it didn’t happen.’’

‘‘I still get really quite angry about this five years later…people felt that they were being written off.’’

Demographics targeted with DNACPR

• The elderly and clinically vulnerable. Healthy people with minor impairments.

‘‘The thing that struck me is people would identify as being in good health..on one ocassion someone had hearing loss.’’

‘‘People were angry about it because they felt they were not close to death..they shouldn’t be written off they had many many years left in their life.’’

Isolation

• Profound adverse impacts for those in care homes with human rights abuses.

‘‘I think the human rights infringements for people living in care homes who essentially could have been locked away from others for MORE THAN A YEAR…beyond that time actually..is significant.’’

‘That isolation..that loneliness, the deterioration that people faced is profound.’’

Statement highlights

‘‘At its peak, the helpline was handling more than 10 times its normal volume of calls on a regular basis, from around 80 a day pre-pandemic to over 800 per day.’’

‘‘There were frequent calls from people in crisis situations and in need of help accessing food, care, medical treatment and those experiencing mental health issues, loneliness, and isolation.’’

-Paragraph 13

‘‘It was through these calls to our helpline that we identified important issues such as social care pack- ages being withdrawn at short notice and the proliferation of inappropriate DNACPR conversations.’’

-Paragraph 16

‘‘In the first year of the pandemic, we would receive many calls from people complaining that they could not get through to GP surgeries at all…the longer this was the case, people would report that they would be more unwell by the time they were able to access medical care.’’

-Paragraph 62

‘‘From our point of view too many older people are now more unwell than they might have otherwise been because of the COVID-19 pandemic; not because they got COVID-19, but because of how the services have changed.’’

-Paragraph 81

‘‘From the end of March 2020 and through April 2020 we were getting a significant number of calls from people saying they have been contacted out of the blue by their GP, or sometimes it was the practice reception staff, asking if they would agree to having a DNACPR decision on their medical records.’’

-Paragraph 84

‘‘Older people and their families routinely explained to us that they felt they had been written off…There are clear examples of blanket DNACPR decisions in care homes, and messages that medical treatment would not be routinely accessible.’’

-Paragraph 92

‘‘I feel that it was a scandal; a scandal that people were being written off. And it was not just our view, people were telling us about what was going on and their experience of it. Clinicians and doctors, I have spoken with since have expressed that there was something very wrong with the whole process.’’

-Paragraph 99

‘‘It still makes me angry that generally healthy individuals had been asked to agree to DNACPR and the only linking factor was their older age.’’

-Paragraph 103

‘‘There was certainly an element of people feeling pressured into agreeing to DNACPR, or family members asked to agree to it on behalf of an older person who was in hospital for non-COVID-19 reasons. ‘‘

‘‘Our grave concern is that DNACPR had become conflated with restricting access to medical treatment. To this day we have no idea why this was happening.’’

-Paragraph 113

‘‘When I think of all that happened, the isolation, the loss of quality of life, I wonder if people deteriorated and died quicker than perhaps anticipated. In many cases, I am sure they did.’’

-Paragraph 115

‘‘The approach to DNACPR conversations, their implications with regard to access to medical treatment, and decisions based on age was a particular scandal of the pandemic.’’

‘‘The lack of data about the scale of DNACPR decisions, and transparency on how decisions were made, demonstrates a failing in the system and their inappropriate use will have led to breaches of people's human rights.’’

-Paragraph 166

‘‘The impacts of early messaging to 'protect the NHS' had an unintended negative consequence on older people - perhaps everyone, but our insight is that from older people. Many went long periods oftime without seeking medical care or GP assessments. This had an acute effect on their long-term health and well-being.’’

-Paragraph 178

Thoughts

Should politicians and public ‘health’ be able to get away with inflicting this much damage on their population just because they say the word pandemic? Seems like it.

It’s hard to fathom why every freedom account, group and COVID critic around the world is not shouting about these testimonies from the preverbial rooftops! What more would they like to hear from officialdom to support their views? This is also yet more confirmation on the ‘pandemic’ analysis of

Denis Rancourt

and colleagues.

Thanks for taking an interest in discovering what really happened from March 2020. I could find no media reports of this remarkable session.

Like, share and comment if you care.

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