Sunday shows: PM was “missing in action”, says Ashworth

Ridge on Sunday

Shadow Health Secretary Jonathan Ashworth discussed the government’s response to the Covid-19 crisis in the wake of the Sunday Times investigation, which highlighted that the Prime Minister failed to attend five coronavirus COBRA meetings.

• On the government’s response to accusations of mistakes made: “Michael Gove’s line that one or two aspects of this story are ‘off-beam’ is possibly the weakest rebuttal of a detailed exposé in British political history.”
• He added: “None of us expect the impossible. We understand that mistakes will be made in a crisis of this nature. But there are serious questions as to why the Prime Minister skipped five, five COBRA meetings throughout February.”
• On the details of the report: “It suggests that early on, he was missing in action… People deserve an explanation and it was disappointing, I’m afraid, that Michael Gove wasn’t able to give a full explanation.”
• On the crisis strategy: “We need to understand why testing has not been ramped up to the levels which are sufficient. Why contact tracing has not been ramped up yet.”
• On the level of testing: “The problem is that government ministers told us we would be doing 100,000 tests a day by now and we’re not… We need to understand why the government are failing on their promise for mid-April.”
• Asked about lockdown measures: “A lockdown is a blunt tool, in and of itself. We need a testing and tracing strategy alongside it… So far the government hasn’t met the promises it made before on testing.”
• Asked what Labour want to see in an exit strategy: “Well, we want to see what the government plans are… We shouldn’t be treating people like children – people are grownups and people need to understand what happens next.”
• He added: “The lockdown itself is not a strategy – it is a tool as part of a strategy… We need to know whether the government have a serious plan to extend testing in the community and contact tracing.”
• On next steps in the strategy: “Where are we on the apps that are being talked about? There’s an NHS England app being developed – there’s another app being developed by Google. And we’re hearing that the two apps might not be able to interact with each other.”
• On the shortage of PPE: “My inbox is awash with small firms across the country saying that they have tried to help the government with PPE, they’ve tried to tell the government they can manufacture PPE and they’ve hit a brick wall.”
• Making reference to the government’s use of wartime analogies: “Why aren’t we using all the small firms like we used the small boats in Dunkirk?”
• On Labour’s demands: “We’re just asking for the government to give us some clarity – just asking for the government to tell us what’s going on… We just want the government to level with us so we can understand what their plans are.”

Michael Gove appeared on the show and said “the idea that the Prime Minister skipped meetings that were vital to our response to the coronavirus is grotesque”, but stopped short of commenting on whether he had missed the meetings. (The fact that he did not attend them has been confirmed by No 10.)

As referenced by Ashworth, he responded to the revelations today by saying: “There are one or two aspects of the Sunday Times report that are slightly off-beam.”

The Cabinet Office Minister and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster said: “The Prime Minister took all the major decisions… His leadership has been inspirational at times.”

He refused, several times, to say whether the UK had sent 266,000 pieces of PPE to China by late February, as reported by The Sunday Times. He said instead that a response would be issued later today.

The Andrew Marr Show

Labour’s new Shadow Chancellor Anneliese Dodds talked about the economic response to the coronavirus crisis in the short-term and long-term.

• On whether she’s going to pursue similar policies to John McDonnell: “Some of the calls that were being made about funding public services were very prescient, so of course it will be necessary to still have those calls for properly funded public services. But I think ultimately we are going to be in a new context after this crisis.”
• Asked whether she would say ‘money no object’: “I don’t think that’s a sensible way to look at things… It’s got to be targeted in the right directions.”
• Asked whether the government should continue with coronavirus schemes ‘month after month’: “Our main concern right now is that a number of [government] programmes are not fulfilling the promise that has been placed on them.” She said only 2% of eligible businesses have benefitted from the coronavirus business loan scheme.
• “We’re going to have to pay for this as a country,” Andrew Marr said. Dodds replied: “We’ve got to learn from what went wrong in the very slow recovery after the last financial crisis in the UK. We had the longest squeeze on our living standards since the Napoleonic times… We need to have an approach recognising that some people will be better placed to bear the burden than others.”
• On the Sunday Times investigation: “I have read the piece and obviously it’s very concerning indeed. But I have to say that aside from some of the elements around COBRA meetings and who was present… certainly the long-term issues around the provision of protective equipment and testing were areas that I was very much aware of and deeply concerned about.”
• Asked whether there should be a public inquiry: “I don’t want to be talking right now about what the wash up might be in the future.”