An NHS doctor has said footage of Conservative Party staff partying during lockdown while her colleagues were “seeing deaths over and over again” on Covid wards shows ‘it was one rule for them and one rule for everyone else’.
Dr Rachel Clarke, a palliative care doctor who worked primarily on Covid-19 wards during the pandemic, said she was “absolutely appalled and disgusted” by the video of a party held in the basement of Conservative Campaign Headquarters (CCHQ).
Filmed on 14 December 2020, and first published by The Sunday Mirror, it shows attendees drinking, dancing and joking around, with one person heard saying it is okay to record “as long as we don’t stream that we’re, like, bending the rules”.
The Metropolitan Police has launched a new investigation into alleged lockdown-breaking parties after previously deciding to take no action against the attendees of the gathering – including former London mayoral candidate Shaun Bailey and Tory aide Ben Mallet, who were both recognised on Boris Johnson’s resignation honours list.
The force insisted it was not handed the video footage when it previously investigated the event last year.
Dr Clarke has told i that the footage depicts a “horrific contrast” between the “restraint, decency and obedience” shown by the majority of the public and the “absolute complacency and disregard for the rules” shown by the party-goers. “They were literally laughing in the faces of the public,” she said.
She recalled that Covid rates were rising during that time period and strict lockdown rules meant members of the public had to say goodbye to their family members over video calls.
She said: “At that exact time, the Covid rates were rising exponentially in my hospital. The wards and intensive care were filling up exponentially.
“We were frantically having to open one new Covid ward, two new Covid wards, three new Covid wards. In all those wards we were seeing the deaths over and over again.
“While the British public was behaving with such restraint and integrity, we had the misfortune of being led by a government that did not give a damn about how many people were dying of Covid.”
She added: “It’s perfectly evident from that video that none of the partygoers had any conception of how horrific it is to suffocate from Covid or to say goodbye to your mum or dad on a video screen because you cannot go in in person.”
Dr Clarke called for Rishi Sunak to revoke the honours given to Shaun Bailey and Ben Mallet who attended the rule-bending gathering, claiming they behaved with the “utmost dishonour”.
Taiwo Owatemi, Labour MP for Coventry North West, described the footage as “shocking” and “difficult to watch” as someone who helped care for NHS patients during the pandemic.
“I can only imagine how bereaved families who lost loved ones must feel watching those at the heart of government mock the rules that they followed,” she told i. “It is clear they believed there was one rule for them and one rule for everyone else.”
Before getting elected in 2019, she worked as a senior cancer pharmacist and from spring 2021 she volunteered in the NHS administering the Covid vaccine.
“It is unforgivable that while NHS staff were working tirelessly during the pandemic, Downing Street partied,” Ms Owatemi said.
Levelling Up Secretary Michael Gove apologised for the footage but said the former prime minister had a right to confer resignation appointments which should not be blocked.
But Dr Clarke said the apology amounted to “empty words” since two of the party attendees have been awarded honours.
She said the drip-feeding of Partygate content is “hurtful” to thousands of bereaved families who lost loved ones during the pandemic.
“It makes it incredibly difficult to move on and rebuild your life after a bereavement if you’re seething with anger,” she added.
“There is nowhere for the anger to go if people are not being held accountable for what they’ve done.”
Labour MP Ms Owatemi also called for Mr Bailey and Mr Mallet to be removed from the honours list, calling the decision them “totally wrong”.
She said: “The Prime Minister could have blocked the awarding of these honours, or at the very least waited for the outcome of the Privileges Committee investigation, but instead he chose to wave them through.”
A former community pharmacist who worked on the frontline during the pandemic said he was “completely enraged” by the footage of Conservative Party members partying.
Ben Cronin, 30, from North Suffolk, said a close friend of his died from the virus aged 29 and he even started planning his own funeral as patients would come into the pharmacy with Covid-19 symptoms.
“People were terrified,” he said continuing: “Me and some of my colleagues had actually written our plans for our funerals.”
He said the video was a “slap in the face and a kick in the teeth” to NHS staff and members of the public following the rules.
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