Piers Morgan has accused Tory minister Therese Coffey of “lying through her back teeth” over the number of daily coronavirus tests being carried out in the UK.
The Good Morning Britain presenter played a clip of work and pensions secretary Ms Coffey speaking to the BBC earlier on Tuesday morning, during which she claimed the government had hit its daily target of testing 100,000 people on “a handful of days”.
In fact the UK is yet to reach this target, government figures show, although on some days more than 100,000 tests have been administered, though many to the same individuals in order to check results.
Speaking to the BBC, Ms Coffey said: “I recognise that there have only been a handful of days when more than 100,000 people have gone for that test”.
In the original interview, the BBC’s Dan Walker said to Ms Coffey: “We’ve looked at last week’s figures, and at no point in those seven days did you get anywhere near 100,000 people tested. 60,000 on the Monday … only three times did it get to over 70,000, so those targets aren’t being met for numbers of people being actually tested.”
During the interview Ms Coffey said the government could be “proud” of the testing figures it had reached.
Over on ITV, Morgan interrupted his own programme following the BBC broadcast and accused Ms Coffey of not having “the guts” to speak to him.
After using his mobile phone to play the clip of what Ms Coffey said, Morgan said: “Theresa Coffey, if you’d been on our programme, if you’d had the guts to come on, I would have said to you: ‘There’s been no days, zero, nada, nil. What you just said was a lie.’
“You just told BBC viewers that there had been a handful of days when over 100,000 people had been tested. No, there have been a handful of days when you have conducted, apparently, over 100,000 tests. There hasn’t been a day when you have tested 100,000 people.”
He added: “That’s another government minister avoiding us, lying through her back teeth to the country about what they’re doing with testing. It’s easy to be proud, if you’re basing it on a pack of lies.”
Earlier this month, Boris Johnson said the government’s “ambition” was to hit 200,000 daily tests by the end of May and go beyond that at a later date. The higher target was announced despite the UK failing to hit health secretary Matt Hancock’s earlier commitment of 100,000 tests a day. The revised figure also fell short of the PM’s own promise from as long ago as 25 March that test numbers would “very soon” reach 250,000 daily tests.
