APPENDIX 3

Comments in the House of Commons

 

Prime Minister’s Questions lacked proper answers

On 22nd April, Sir Keir Starmer used his first PMQs session as Labour leader to accuse the government of being slow in its response to the threat of COVID -19.

The First Minister/Foreign Secretary, Dominic Raab, deputising for the Prime Minister, gave a clever and well-considered reply: “I don’t accept his premise that we’ve been slow.” The government, in fact, had been very slow in getting to grips with the disease but he (or perhaps Dominic Cummings) framed the answer in such a way that he couldn’t be accused of lying to the House of Commons.

He continued his reply: “We have been guided by the scientific advice, the chief scientific adviser, the chief medical officer, at every step along this way,” and added in a sarcastic tone, “If he thinks he knows better than they do with the benefit of hindsight, then that’s his decision, but that is not the way we have proceeded and it is not the way we will in the future.”

If that first sentence was true, then the quality of the scientific advice has to be questioned, particularly in light of the information published by the World Health Organisation (see diary entry for 13th February) and others. Certainly, no hindsight was required to challenge what the government had been, or rather had not been, doing.

Sir Keir then commented on the government's efforts to step-up testing, with the latest figures showing that the government was falling way below its aim of 100,000 tests per day, which it aimed to hit by the end of April. At a reported 18,000 test per day, this was nowhere near that target and way behind other European countries.

Mr Raab replied by trying to correct him for apparently reading the wrong figure out. He said: “I do have to correct him. Our capacity is now 40,000 tests a day which is an important milestone.”

Sir Keir responded that he didn’t need correcting as he had read out the figure that had been released for the actual tests a day.

By this date, more than 18,000 people in the UK had died as a result of contracting the virus.

In later PMQs, with Boris Johnson back at the helm, the PM twice accused Sir Keir of using incorrect figures and twice Sir Keir responded that the figures he had given were the government’s own, displayed at the daily press conferences. And both times, Boris quickly changed the subject, not acknowledging his error, and going on to try to denigrate Sir Keir.

On 13th May at PMQs (the second with both Mr Johnson and Sir Keir Starmer), Sir Keir asked: “For many weeks, the government has compared the UK number against other countries… A version of this slide has been shown at the Number 10 press conference every day since 30th March, that’s seven weeks. Yesterday the government stopped publishing the international comparison and the slide is gone. Why?” The Prime Minister responded that it was too early to make comparisons between countries in terms of COVID-19-related deaths. Mr Johnson said: “The UK has been going through an unprecedented once-in-a-century epidemic. And he seeks to make comparisons with other countries, which I’m advised are premature because the correct and final way of making these comparisons will be when we have all the excess death totals for all the relevant countries. We do not yet have that data. I’m not going to try to pretend to the House that the figures when they are finally confirmed are anything other than stark and deeply, deeply horrifying. This has been an appalling epidemic. What I can tell the House is that we are getting those numbers down, the number of deaths are coming down, the number of hospital admissions is down.” Sir Keir said he was “baffled” by the response, before drawing attention to Britain’s death toll as the highest in Europe and second worst in the world.

(Various newspapers, including The Times, continued to publish daily figures from around the world, with the UK eventually being second only to Belgium in the number of deaths per 100,000 people).

On 8th July, Sir Keir raised the matter of Boris Johnson’s comments to the press two days earlier in which Mr Johnson stated: “We discovered too many care homes didn’t really follow the procedures in the way that they could have but we’re learning lessons the whole time. Most important is to fund them properly ... but we will also be looking at ways to make sure the care sector long term is properly organised and supported.”

The Labour leader described the PM’s comments as “insulting” and “flippant” and twice asked him to apologise. Of course he did not, pretending that he had meant something completely different. (Subsequently, other government ministers were sent out to lie on his behalf, continuing this pretence).

Boris continued at the same PMQ’s: “The one thing that nobody knew early on during this pandemic was that the virus was being passed asymptomatically in the way that it is.” And moments later he challenged Sir Keir: “Perhaps Captain Hindsight would like to tell us whether he knew the virus was being transmitted asymptomatically.”

As the most junior virologist in the country would have considered it extremely likely that the virus would be transmitted this way, this was not a wise challenge and may come back to haunt the PM, who had clearly not been paying attention to any of the scientific assessments – or else those assessments had been remarkably lacking in credibility considering the calibre of the people making them on NERVTAG and SAGE. It eventually became clear that large numbers of infections were being passed on asymptomatically.

Writing in The Guardian newspaper on 5th August, Sir Keir said: “Trying to get answers and clarity from the Prime Minister is a frustrating experience. “His instincts – to make excuses and blame others – are reminiscent of the schoolboy claiming his dog has eaten his homework.”

 

Matt Hancock loses it…

On 5th May, the Health Secretary, Matt Hancock, answering questions in the House of Commons, told Labour's shadow mental health minister, Dr Rosena Allin-Khan, to “watch her tone” after she criticised the Government’s “non-existent” testing strategy.

Dr Allin-Khan, who is an A&E doctor in her Tooting constituency, said: “Frontline workers like me have had to watch families break into pieces as we deliver the very worst of news to them, that the ones they love most in this world have died.

“The testing strategy has been non-existent. Community testing was scrapped, mass testing was slow to roll out and testing figures are now being manipulated. Does the Secretary of State commit to a minimum of 100,000 tests each day going forward? And does the Secretary of State acknowledge that many frontline workers feel that the government’s lack of testing has cost lives and is responsible for many families being unnecessarily torn apart in grief?”

Mr Hancock replied: “I think she might do well to take a leaf out of the Shadow Secretary of State’s book in terms of tone. I’m afraid what she said is not true. There’s been a rapid acceleration in testing over the last few months, including getting to 100,000 tests a day. We’ve been entirely transparent on the way that has been measured throughout. I have confidence that the rate will continue to rise.”

It is easy to understand Mr Hancock’s irritation with the doctor: his department and the NHS had made a huge effort to gag staff and prevent them making public statements about the problems and now, with parliamentary privilege, a doctor had spoken up for all to hear.

Afterwards, Dr Allin-Khan tweeted: “I will respectfully challenge the government – I want our country to succeed. However, I will not ‘watch my tone’ when dozens of NHS and care staff are dying unnecessarily.”

The odd thing about the incident in the House of Commons was that Dr Allin-Khan had given a passionate account in an entirely reasonable tone and the Health Secretary’s response was entirely uncalled for.

The exchange came barely a week after Mr Hancock told the daily press briefing in Downing Street that care homes had been “a top priority from the start” after a reporter asked whether care homes would now be a priority, given the number of deaths.

Mr Hancock said the government issued its first guidance to care homes in February and had been working with them throughout.

Up until this point, Mr Hancock had seemed a decent enough sort of chap, but somewhat out of his depth in the job he had been entrusted with; a man struggling to get even a rudimentary grasp of the issues involved with COVID-19. But now he was stuck with defending the shambles of the government’s handling of the pandemic and began, in common with other government ministers, to tell whoppers while reacting angrily to justified criticisms.

His response to Dr Allin-Khan was appalling and coming on top of his claim on care homes should have resulted in his dismissal from the post to make way for someone rather more capable.

With care homes, it’s hard to escape the conclusion that the only real priority was to move as many elderly people as possible into them from hospitals – and without ensuring they were not infected with COVID-19. A number of care homes which refused to accept patients from hospitals subsequently reported that they had remained free of the disease.

 

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