A national holiday and day of remembrance for those lost in the COVID pandemic

I would like the Government to create a national holiday & day of remembrance for all the lives lost in the COVID pandemic. I propose this to be on the 23rd March as this is the date a national lockdown began in the UK.

I lost my father, Christopher Cooper on the 6th December 2020 to Covid Pneumonia. He was a fit and healthy 63 year old, with no underlying medical conditions. This has truly devastated us as a family.

As of 8/01/21 there are 78,508 recorded Covid-related deaths in the UK and 1.9 Million deaths across the world.

The pandemic is still here and taking more lives each day. I feel it is important that as a country we are able to remember all those who have been cruelly taken from us.

We are very sorry to hear of the death of your father. We offer our deepest condolences to you and your family, and to all those who have lost loved ones to Covid-19.

While the Government's immediate focus is on protecting the lives and livelihoods of the nation, there is also the need to mourn those who have died during the pandemic, and to mark and remember this period as one of immense struggle.

The Prime Minister announced on 12 May that the Government will establish a UK Commission on Covid Commemoration to consider the appropriate way to remember those who have lost their lives and to recognise those involved in the unprecedented response. The Government will set out the Commission’s membership and terms of reference in due course.

The Government regularly receives requests for additional bank and public holidays to mark a variety of occasions. A bank holiday is usually a day of celebration. While we sympathise with the sentiments behind this petition, we are therefore not considering a bank holiday for those who have lost their lives during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Full-time workers in the UK are entitled to 28 days statutory paid holiday each year. NHS staff and other key workers – who have played an essential role during the unprecedented response to the Covid-19 pandemic - are likely to have to work on bank holidays due to their contractual arrangements. Legislation does not give employees a right to time off or extra pay on bank holidays.

Additional bank holidays can also have implications across the public sector which need to be taken into consideration. Health and social care services would be disrupted and any scheduled treatments and operations – of which there is a backlog due to Covid-19 – would need to be rescheduled. Courts and tribunals would have to postpone any planned hearings. Due to the way in which listings are managed, these may have to be pushed back by more than a single day, leading to longer delays.

Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy

This is a revised response. The Petitions Committee requested a response which acknowledged the petition creator and responded in an appropriately sympathetic way. You can find the original response towards the bottom of the petition page: https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/568631