It’s worth reading the article, and better articles are available in the UK press too.

The coverup came from ignorance, no one actually knew this was happening but the NHS staff had reason to reassure patients and just assumed everything was ok without looking hard.

NHS management also didn’t look.

When ministers tried to ask about it they got told everything was fine by their civil servants. And so they go out and tell the press everything is fine.

No one can start an investigation for the suspicions because it looks like admitting it’s happening, and they genuinely didn’t know it was. Because there had been no investigation.

“Standing back and viewing the response of the NHS and of government, the answer to the question ‘was there a cover-up?’ is that there has been. Not in the sense of a handful of people plotting in an orchestrated conspiracy to mislead, but in a way that was more subtle, more pervasive and more chilling in its implications. To save face and to save expense, there has been a hiding of much of the truth,” Langstaff wrote.

“Over decades successive governments repeated lines to take that were inaccurate, defensive and misleading. Its persistent refusal to hold a public inquiry, coupled with a defensive mindset that refused to countenance that wrong had been done, left people without answers, and without justice. This has also meant that many people who are chronically ill have felt obliged to devote their time and their energies to investigating and campaigning, often at great personal cost.”