Two thirds of UK Covid deaths happened since September. #Dispatches charts the rise of the second wave & examines the extent to which the Prime Minister decisions could be blamed for those tragic deaths.
@Channel4 Boris Johnson was advised in September by government scientific advisors to enforce a two week lockdown.
But the PM went on to seek advice from three outside scientists known to be lockdown sceptics. The most controversial of them has agreed to speak to us.
@Channel4 “That was disastrous. There’s no doubt that caused thousands of extra deaths.”
Despite being warned the new Kent variant of Covid was 70% more transmissible, Boris Johnson was insistent on not cancelling Christmas 2020. Did his delay in imposing a full lockdown cost lives?
@Channel4 The Kent Variant of Covid was discovered just days after the UK prime minister decided against a national lockdown in September. It was 2 more months before we discovered how deadly it was.
If the PM had acted in September would the Kent variant have spread & been so lethal?
@Channel4 “The general feeling was that the procedures were a complete joke.”
With holidays abroad allowed again, a senior border force officer for Heathrow airport explains how last summer the “robust” policy put in place by the government to address imported Covid cases did not work.
@Channel4 The government told #Dispatches its immediate focus is on ending the pandemic.
Boris Johnson has announced that a public inquiry will start next year into his government’s handling of the pandemic.
The Queen’s cousin, Prince Michael, appears willing to use his royal status to seek favours from Russian president Putin, & use a royal palace & his links to the Queen for personal profit - #Dispatches & The Sunday Times reveal. 1/
@Channel4 We set up a fake South Korean gold company, the House of Haedong, and asked Prince Michael to make a speech that trades off his royal status and gives the company royal support in order to impress its investors.
He said “the idea makes me very happy.” 2/
@Channel4 He said he was willing to accept $200,000 from our fake company in return for making the speech. #RoyalForHire 3/
Private equity firms are taking home billions of pounds as high streets die and thousands are unemployed.
#Dispatches studied the accounts of 10 well known brands including HMV, Cath Kidston, Debenhams, and Toys ‘R’ Us, that entered administration in the past three years. 1/
Nearly 29,000 jobs were lost, but we can reveal that across their broader investment portfolios, the private equity owners disclosed nearly a billion pounds of profit during the period of ownership. The 10 brands owed almost £50million in unpaid taxes when they collapsed. 2/
“Things stopped being replaced. They would break down. There was water coming through the ceiling.”
Former employees of Debenhams, bought in 2003 by a private equity consortium, told #Dispatches that after the takeover the business underinvested in the upkeep of its stores. 3/
Now we’ve left the EU, the government is trying to do a trade deal with the US. @Dispatches can exclusively reveal dangerous levels of contamination in American meat that could soon be stocked in UK supermarkets. 1/
Between 12 & 14% of the pork & poultry samples tested have Salmonella, that’s about 6 times higher than levels in UK pork. According to preliminary results from Professor Lance Price who is in the middle of a 5year study looking at bacterial contamination in US retail meat. 2/
More than 60% of the pork products tested had E. coli on them, as did around 70% of beef products, 80% of chicken products, and more than 90% of turkey products. E. coli indicates faecal contamination. 3/
Boris Johnson told Italy’s Prime Minister he ‘wanted herd immunity’, #Dispatches has learnt. The government denies herd immunity was ever a strategy. THREAD 1/
We’ve learned that on the 13th of March Boris Johnson called the Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte. Conte recounted the call to one of his health ministers, Pierpaolo Sileri. He told us: 2/
The government has denied herd immunity was ever a strategy. No one from the government agreed to be interviewed but they told us: 3/
If Britain had locked down a week earlier, around 8,000 hospital deaths up to the end of April could have been avoided, #Dispatches has found. THREAD 1/
Britain's official Covid-19 death toll stands at nearly 40,000. But how many lives could have been saved if lockdown came earlier? We asked a Leading Health Analyst, George Batchelor, to work out the figures. He said: 2/
Batchelor’s figures show that if Britain had locked down on March the 16th. A week before the decision was actually taken, more than a third of hospital deaths by the end of April could have been avoided. That's around 8,000 lives. 3/