As your Council’s Leadership, we express our most heart-felt sympathies to those in our community who have lost loved ones due to the Covid 19 pandemic. 

While the pandemic has touched the lives of everyone of our residents, we are acutely aware that its impact has not fallen equally.

The release of Public Health England’s report, Disparities in the risk and outcomes of Covid 19, confirms what many of us have been witnessing on a daily basis, that people from our poorest communities and people from our black and minority ethnic communities are being hit by this pandemic harder than anyone.

Before this pandemic, we already knew that those living in the West of the borough experience up to 17 more years of healthy life than those in the East. 

This inequality has been exacerbated by a decade of cuts to our public services handed down by successive Tory Government. 

This pandemic has shown that flagrant disregard for public safety has led successive Tory Governments to run down the countries’ medical infrastructure and supplies and has left us brutally exposed. 

This negligence means the UK has suffered more excess deaths during the pandemic than any other country in Europe.

The Government has failed to protect the nation.  They have sent out mixed messages, they have misled the nation on testing capabilities. In failing to sack his Chief Advisor for ignoring the lockdown, Boris Johnson has shown he believes it is one rule for the elite and another for everyone else.

We are in urgent need of a national strategy to protect to all citizens of the UK, especially those for whom their economic circumstance or ethnic background places them at greater risk. 

We call on the Government to listen to the scientific advice they are being given and act now to prevent the UK from sliding into a disastrous second Covid 19 wave. 

Leader of Haringey Council, Cllr Joe Ejiofor

Cabinet Member for Communities and Equalities, Cllr Mark Blake

Cabinet Member for Adults and Health, Cllr Sarah James