Boris Johnson has refused to apologise for his “cowardly” comments that “too many” care homes did not follow guidelines during the coronavirus pandemic.
The Prime Minister has been slammed in the last 24 hours for trying to shift the blame for over 20,000 care home deaths during the pandemic to the care sector.
The prime minister said on Monday that “too many care homes didn't really follow the procedures”.
His words sparked fury in the care home sector, with one charity boss calling them “clumsy and cowardly”.
Afterwards Downing Street sought to clarify the comments as meaning that no one knew about all the symptoms of the virus but his spokesman has refused to apologise.
Asked repeatedly if the PM wanted to acknowledge his clumsy wording, his official spokesman declined.
Asked about Johnson’s comment at the daily lobby briefing for journalists the prime minister’s spokesman said: “Throughout the pandemic care homes have done a brilliant job under very difficult circumstances. The prime minister was pointing out that nobody knew what the correct procedures were because the extent of asymptomatic transmission was not known at the time.”
Asked is Johnson would like to apologise or retract the comments, the spokesman said: “As I’ve just set out, the PM thinks that throughout the pandemic care homes have done a brilliant job under very difficult circumstances.”
It came after Mark Adams, chief executive of the charity Community Integrated Care, said on Tuesday that he was “unbelievably disappointed” to hear the Prime Minister blaming care workers.
He told the BBC: “I think this, at best, was clumsy and cowardly. But if this is genuinely his view, I think we’re almost entering a Kafkaesque alternative reality where the Government set the rules, we follow them, they don’t like the results and they then deny setting the rules and blame the people that were trying to do their best.”
Opponents think Johnson’s seemingly throwaway comment is an attempt to lay the ground to shift blame away from the government over the discharge of patients from hospitals to care homes.
In the Commons Jonathan Ashworth, Labour’s Shadow Health Secretary, called on Matt Hancock to apologise on the PM’s behalf but none was forthcoming.
Ashworth said: “Can he appreciate the hurt that has led to care home providers today, for example, describing the comments as ‘clumsy and cowardly’, and can he tell us therefore which care homes didn’t follow procedures and what these procedures were that apparently were not followed and will he take this opportunity now to apologise for the PM’s crass remarks?”
Hancock said: "Throughout this crisis, care homes have done amazing work and the PM was explaining that because asymptomatic transmission was not known about, the correct procedures were therefore not known and we've been constantly learning about this virus from the start and improving procedures all the way through and I pay tribute to the care homes in this country who have done so much to care for the most vulnerable throughout the crisis."
There have been over 20,000 care home deaths in England and Wales and over 2,000 in Scotland accounting for 40 per cent of covid deaths in the UK last four months.
