'It's a Scandal'
Piers Morgan furiously rips into MP Therese Coffey for saying she’s ‘proud’ of Britain’s coronavirus testing record
PIERS Morgan blasted MP Therese Coffey today after she admitted she was "proud" of the government's coronavirus testing record.
The Work and Pensions Secretary appeared on GMB's rival BBC Breakfast just days after Health Secretary Matt Hancock promised to test all elderly care home residents and staff by the beginning of June.
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Ms Coffey's comments riled Piers, who also accused ministers of 'lacking the balls' to face him as they continue to boycott the show.
Interrupting Dr Hilary Jones to analyse Ms Coffey's words, he said: "She's just said we can look back on our testing, how we increased capacity, with pride. With pride.
"The British government is proud of the fact that we had no tests available for anyone in care homes. Or anyone in hospitals being sent to care homes.
"They're proud of our record on testing. Even though we stopped testing in the middle of March to catastrophic effect.
"It's a matter of pride for the government that our testing was such a spectacular failure."
He became increasingly agitated as he looked through her comments on his tablet.
Reading the MP's words aloud, he went on: "Over time we were able to do testing in care homes. Now testing is much more widely available, capacity is there.
"We can't force people to go and get testing."
Addressing her directly, he then said: "No Therese Coffey, you can't force people to get tested.
"What you can do is take the damn tests down to the care homes and give it to the people that need them.
"Because at the moment you're boasting about having 100,000 tests a day, but yesterday you tested 9,000 fewer people than you tested the day before.
"You're not ramping up, Therese Coffey, you're ramping down. And that is not something to be proud of, that is a scandal."
Mr Hancock has promised to ramp up testing to 200,000 a day in a bid to keep track of the virus's spread.
But a care provider chief has claimed it isn't enough, and the provision should solely be used on the care industry's 1.4million staff.
In her interview with the BBC, Ms Coffey accepted that initial testing was inadequate, calling Public Health England's 2,000 tests a day a "standing start".
She said: "We had little capacity early on, I recognise that, we have got a lot of capacity now.
"I think from pretty much a standing start, roughly in about mid-February I think it was, to get to a capacity and actual tests being done of 100,000 within about six weeks, I think is pretty full-on and actually I think something we can look on with pride.
"I think it is good within six weeks that we’ve got up from a capacity of about 2,000 a day to over 100,000 a day. I think that’s pretty good actually - sorry, two and a half months, to the end of April.
"I’m not saying with hindsight could we have had more capacity at the start, could we have done some of the things differently. It’s just there is an element of how we get going in that standing start.”
Last month Piers ripped into Coffey on GMB over the failure to get personal protective equipment to care homes.
He tore apart the Government's claim that there was a plan to keep staff in care homes and NHS centres safe.
Ms Coffey tried to defend herself and the Government, telling Piers: "We had a pandemic plan for a virus like the flu.
"We did have a lot of stocks (of PPE) but they were not being distributed across the country as quickly as we would like."
"We recognise that we need more PPE in the future."
Piers demanded she admit the Government had made critical errors when it came to preparedness for coronavirus.
He said: ";The plan can be any plan you like, but the plan has left NHS frontline workers chronically short, for much of the crisis, of the right PPE."
"We know it has left care workers chronically short of the right PPE.
"We do not have enough ventilators, we were begging other countries for ventilators.
"When you say we had a plan and you (aren't) prepared to admit any mistakes, I say that is quite self evidently ridiculous."
Ms Coffey was forced to admit she did not know how many NHS or care workers had died from the virus.
Piers slammed her for her ignorance: "How can a member of the British government sent out to talk to the media have literally no idea how many NHS workers or care workers have died.
"We have never seen this kind of carnage wreaking havoc on our health workers and care workers, it shouldn't be too much to ask that the government know how many people are dying."
And he refused to accept enough had been done to get protective kit to staff.
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Ms Coffey tried to defend herself against Piers' tirade saying they had enlisted the army to pick up the slack and deliver PPE where there had been holes in the system.
Piers then took aim at the Government's failure to remove VAT from deliveries of PPE to care homes, which has been removed for NHS hospitals.
Ms Coffey told him care homes would be able to claim VAT back, but Piers still wouldn't accept that.
He said: "Why bother charging it? Remove the process. Remove it right now, stop them doing unnecessary paper work - let them do what they're supposed to do. Save lives."
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