The Care Quality Commission, the regulator of social services and care homes, is keeping secret from the public how many residents died of Covid in which homes because mortality figures would “likely prejudice the commercial interests of care providers.”

Years ago most residents were looked after in the public sector, but today this is big business. Four Seasons, which runs 179 care homes, is owned by an American private equity firm. The largest provider, HC-One, is based in the Cayman Islands tax haven. Just 10 profit-making companies now control a quarter of all places. These are the people the regulators are protecting, rather than the residents and their families.

Death rates were highest in the biggest homes, with higher occupancy rates and the lowest staff ratios – necessary to maximise profit rates. The virus was spread furthest because these money-grabbing firms didn’t employ enough workers, and when some fell ill they had to be replaced by workers from job agencies who worked hours in several homes because they were paid so little.

Just contrast the attitude of these capitalists with the compassion and self-sacrifice of the staff, some of whom actually moved out of their family homes and into their workplaces, risking their lives to protect the old folk. Now that’s what I call CARE!

The regulators fear that if families are able to compare the death rates and records of different providers they will move their loved ones into safety! Wasn’t privatisation sold to us by the Tories and New Labour precisely because it offered “choice” and because competition led to a “better service”?

Occupancy is now falling anyway, through excess deaths and family fears. Many firms will either go bankrupt or just walk away, leaving the care sector to collapse and inevitably be picked up again by the state (ie, the taxes of working people). That will seriously impact on the NHS.

This just confirms what the Cumbria Socialist Party campaign material has explained: the whole care system should be nationalised and integrated with the NHS, with at least 122,000 more care workers and 100,000 more NHS staff, all given permanent jobs on at least £12 an hour and more training, PPE and testing.

Covid has only accelerated this crisis, which would have happened any way. We explained this four years ago to the Labour Cumbria county councillors who scrapped most of their public care home places rather than fight Tory cuts, and have now sold a former site to a private care home company!

Brent Kennedy

Cumbria Socialist Party