Boris Johnson was accused by Labour’s Keir Starmer of being too slow in getting on top of the coronavirus crisis in care homes.
The Prime Minister was asked to return to the Commons to correct the record after he claimed the Labour leader had it wrong on the government’s own advice.
Confronted at Prime Minister’s Questions, Johnson denied that his own government’s official guidance said it was “unlikely” that anyone in a care home “would become infected” as late as March 12.
It came as Starmer slammed the Government for the 10,000 “unexplained” excess deaths in English care homes in April not recorded as Covid-19 deaths.
The Labour leader also asked why Downing Street has dropped international mortality comparison graphs from its daily briefings since the UK overtook other EU countries as the nation with the highest number of deaths.
During the weekly clash Starmer quoted the Government’s own official advice from March 12.
Starmer stated the document said: “It remains very unlikely that people receiving care in a care home will become infected.”
He added: “Does the Prime Minister accept that the Government was too slow to protect people in care homes?”
A shaky Johnson said “it wasn’t true the advice said that”. The PM added lockdown in care homes had been brought in ahead of the general lockdown.
Afterwards Starmer wrote to the PM asking him to come back to the Commons to correct the record.
But the Prime Minister’s political spokesman responded that Starmer had “inaccurately and selectively quoted from the Public Health England guidance”.
There was less certainty from Downing Street and the Prime Minister when Starmer asked why graphs showing international comparisons of death figures had suddenly been dropped from daily briefings.
Johnson told the Commons that comparisons with other countries were “premature” until all the excess death for all the countries has been totalled.
Starmer responded: “The problem with the Prime Minister’s answer is it’s pretty obvious that for seven weeks when we weren’t the highest number in Europe they were used for comparison purposes, as soon as we hit that unenviable place they’ve been dropped.”
