Live Breaking News & Updates on Impact Covid|Page 4
Stay updated with breaking news from Impact covid. Get real-time updates on events, politics, business, and more. Visit us for reliable news and exclusive interviews.
The pandemic has taken far too many people away far too soon, and that s happened in her family and it s happened in mine. and she s absolutely right that we need to ensure that we learn as a country how to prepare as well as we possibly can for pandemics in the future, as it is likely that pandemics will become more frequent, not less. matt hancock. covid continues to dominate politics throughout the uk. in wales, the labourfirst minister has been challenged over his government s plans to ease restrictions. unlike in england, there s no equivalent date tojune the 21st, when restrictions are due to end. mark drakeford was answering questions for the first time since the senedd elections. ....
Also in this programme, the long wait for dental appointments and should we all have lessons in pavement courtesy? but first, covid has killed almost 128,000 people in the uk. tens of thousands of them needlessly. many in care homes. that s according to the prime minister s closest adviser during the early months of the pandemic. in explosive evidence to mps, dominic cummings painted a picture of a chaotic government that failed to take the virus seriously, a government led by someone who was unfit to be prime minister with a health secretary who should have been sacked for repeatedly lying. he spent seven hours facing questions from the health and the science and technology committees. and he began with an apology. the truth is that senior ministers, senior officials, senior advisers like me fell disastrously short of the standards that the public has a right to expect of its government in a crisis like this. when the public needed us most, the government failed. ....
And i d like to say to all the families of those who died unnecessarily, how sorry i am for the mistakes that were made, and for my own mistakes, at that. he gave the impression that early last year boris johnson wasn t taking the threat of covid as seriously as he should have done. the basic thought was that in february, the prime minister regarded this as just a scare story. he described it as the new swine flu. did you tell him it wasn t? certainly. but the view of various officials inside number ten was, if we have the prime minister chairing cobra meetings and he just tells everyone, it s swine flu, don t worry about it, i ll get chris whitty on live tv to inject me with coronavirus so everyone realised it s nothing to be frightened of that would not help actually serious planning. ....
The conversation moved on to care homes but the health secretary was still in the firing line. hancock told us in the cabinet room that people were going to be tested before they went back to care homes. what the hell happened? so he actually said in cabinet. not in cabinet, in the cabinet room. sorry. but directly to the prime minister? yes. we were told categorically in march that people would be tested before they went back to care homes. we only subsequently found out that had not happened. now, all the government rhetoric was putting a shield around the care homes, it was complete nonsense. quite the opposite of putting a shield around them. we sent people with covid back to the care homes. dominic cummings was no less critical about the prime minister, suggesting that he had come to regret the first lockdown. last month, the bbc was told that borisjohnson had said he would rather see bodies pile high than take the country into a third lockdown. ....
As ever, on the rear view mirror, mr speaker, whilst we on this side of the house are getting on with ourjob of rolling out the vaccines, making sure that we protect the people of this country and that, i think, has been the decisive development on which i think people are rightly focusing. in the light of the drip of very serious allegations and the failure of the prime minister to provide even basic answers, and continuing mistakes affecting millions of people, does the prime minister now recognise he must bring forward the timing of the public inquiry into covid, and that it should start this summer, and as soon as possible? prime minister. no, mr speaker, as i ve said before, i won t concentrate valuable official time on that now whilst we re still battling a pandemic. and i thought actually that was what the house had agreed on. and mr speaker, he continues to play these pointless political games whilst we get on with delivering ....