Latest updates: health secretary to be questioned by MPs from Commons health and science committees about handling of pandemic
- Matt Hancock ‘was warned of Covid care home risk in March 2020’
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EU leaders attend G7 summits and this morning Ursula von der Leyen, the European commission president, held a press conference ahead of her participation at the summit in Cornwall.
Asked about the dispute with the UK over the Northern Ireland protocol, she insisted that the EU had “shown flexibility”. But the protocol had to be implemented in full, she said. She told journalists:
We have been debating that for years and we have found the one and only solution.
We have a treaty on that – the withdrawal agreement. It has been signed by both sides. It is important that we now implement the protocol.
Good morning. Matt Hancock, the health secretary, will be questioned by MPs from the Commons health and science committees this morning about the government’s handling of the Covid pandemic. He is expected to take questions for up to four hours, and it should be the most in-depth interrogation of a cabinet minister on this topic we have had so far.
Hancock will be asked to respond to the multiple allegations against him last week. But he also faces fresh questions about what was done to protect care homes. As my colleague Robert Booth reports, some of the UK’s biggest care home operators have told the Guardian they repeatedly warned Hancock’s department about the risk of not testing people discharged from hospitals into care homes in March 2020.
Related: Matt Hancock ‘was warned of Covid care home risk in March 2020’
Today @matthancock will attempt to persuade the Commons that he’s behaved impeccably throughout this pandemic – and that Cummings’ accusations of serial lying are, themselves, a lie.
But the fact is, @matthancock *has* lied during the pandemic – and I can prove it. (1/16)
During the first wave, my hospice was supplied with the same official PPE as care homes. Namely, a single box containing one roll of plastic aprons, one box of gloves and one box of paper masks. We had 300 masks in total – enough to last 2 or 3 days at most. (4/16)
But this was no thanks whatsoever to @matthancock or @DHSCgovuk. The fact is, no-one in government gave one single damn about my terminally ill hospice inpatients who faced eviction – in the last days of their life – because of government PPE failings. (12/16)
It is the single most disgusting example of dereliction of duty I have ever encountered in my 12 years as a doctor. A truly hideous gulf between political rhetoric (“we’ll protect you!”) and actual reality (we’ll throw you to the wolves). (13/16)
So when, today, @matthancock tells you that he’s never lied, that care homes were always protected, and that he threw a protective ring round them, please remember my hospice. Exactly like the country’s care homes, we were an afterthought, an irrelevance, hung out to dry. (14/16)
