UK COVID-19 inquiry|7 Jul 2025

Mary Cridge. Care Quality Commission.

Introduction

Mary Cridge is director of adult social care for the Care Quality Commission. CQC is the independent regulator of health and adult social care in England. CQC make sure health and social care services provide people with safe, effective, compassionate, high-quality care and we encourage care services to improve.

‘‘One of the reasons we had heard for no home visits was `GPs refusing to come out to patients homes' and ’’using Covid as an excuse.’’

-Paragraph 813 of statement

‘‘Earlier in the pandemic there were widely reported instances regarding potential discrimination in access to acute care, through triage/care pathways/decision making tools that some trusts were using to avoid admitting people from care homes or disabled and older people more generally.’’

-Paragraph 824 of statement

‘‘People in need of urgent care were placed at an increased risk of harm due to long delays in ambulance response times. We reported that we had also received consistent concerns about ambulance response times from care home providers. In one case, a person with a fractured hip was not classed as `urgent' as they were deemed to be in a place of safety. Care home staff were told not to move the person and were only able to offer them paracetamol for pain relief. Despite a number of calls to the ambulance service, they lay on the floor for over 8 hours before the ambulance attended and transported them to hospital.’’

-Paragraph 828 of statement

Testimony highlights

• Oversight and regulation of care homes during lockdown lacking.

‘‘Those needing care were abandoned in the name of infection control.’’

Witness statement. Julia Jones on behalf of John's Campaign, Helen Wildbore on behalf of Care Rights UK, and Rachel Power on behalf of the Patients Association. Link

‘‘The ‘emergency support framework'. This effectively resulting in the withdrawal of CQC oversight from adult social care services for the duration of the pandemic.’’

Witness statement. Vic Rayner on behalf of the National Care Forum. Link

Inspections undertaken in the adult social care sector

Mary Cridge did not agree the CQC abdicated responsibilty and withdrew from the adult social care sector yet data shows almost no oversight during lockdown-1 when thousands of excess deaths were occuring in care homes and from Mar-May 2020 whilst simultaneously already very frail residents (many rapidly discharged from hospital without assessment) were being denied healthcare and isolated under extreme fear conditions. No testing for the presence of of novel pathogen in care homes was even carried out in homes during this time.

-Page 86 of statement

Blanket DNACPR

• No national instructions but rather local.

‘‘Some providers felt under pressure to ensure DNACPR decisions were in place.’’

-Kate Beatie, Disabled People’s Organisations.

‘‘We were hearing reports of so many..blanket (DNACPRs) they did break out all over the place.’’

‘‘We were concerned about the application to groups of people…people with a learning disability were particularly susceptible..for groups of young people it would be astonishing.’’

See shocking unreported testimony by Jacquie O’Sullivan, Director, Royal Mencap at the UK COVID inquiry.

‘‘It is a breach of human rights…for groups of people to be subject to a do not resuscitate order is unacceptable.’’

-Mary Cridge

Statement highlights

Death recording

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Links;

Mary Cridge Supplementary statement and full 280 page statement