21 Oct The Director of the Centre for Evidence-based Medicine has reacted to the backlash he received at the Government’s lockdown Covid inquiry last week.
The Director of the Centre for Evidence-based Medicine has reacted to the backlash he received at the Government’s lockdown Covid inquiry last week.
Carl Heneghan claimed the criticism was “almost an attempt to dismiss me and undermine his credibility”.
Appearing on GB News, Hegehan told Esther McVey and Philip Davies: “Sometimes in life, you get ambushed and that’s what happened. Minutes before we went in, they produced a document that said this is where we’re going to go, we’re going to ask you about these issues. I had prepared a full statement in which we were going to talk about things like the care homes, and I am one of the only people I think who has experience of going into care homes and can look at the evidence. All of that was not talked about and what happened is that it seemed to be a discussion about my credibility, trying to undermine me.
“ I’m getting a huge amount of messages from people saying, ‘Actually, I was treated very differently to other people’. And in doing so, I’ve come out of the meeting and I don’t think we got to a point where we tried to learn the lessons. What happened here was almost an attempt to dismiss me and undermine my credibility in a way that actually doesn’t help us learn the lessons of the Coronavirus pandemic.”
He continued: “I have no problem with being asked difficult questions and being in a situation where it’s adversarial. I’ve given evidence in legal cases and I’m well aware of what happens when you take a specific line. What’s happening now is everybody’s now looking and coming to me and saying, this inquiry has an agenda and it seems to have already made its mind up.
“There are many more other witnesses who could come forward and speak and give all evidence but they’ve all been sidelined. And in doing so, what it looks like is that they’ve come to conclusions. And then they have an agenda. And in that agenda, it sidelines certain people or ideas.
“I say this is crucial because it’s supposed to be an independent inquiry, that there’s to learn lessons. I think we need to get the diaries and the WhatsApp messages, get them all published and get those issues out of the way because it’s about “ got-you moments” . Let’s get back to the important issues. What can we do in care homes? What can we learn in care homes? When people are insulting and denigrating people, they’re just unprofessional and in usingthat sort of language it is unacceptable.”
