By Sammie Jones-
Downing Street resumed the appearance of its representatives on Good Morning Britain , following the departure of its head of communications-Lee Cain . Good Morning Britain remarkably fell out with the government over Piers Morgan’s extreme grilling of Mps on his programme.
Mr.Hancock denied that the former head of communications had anything to do with the government’s long 201 days boycott of the programme, but the timing of the sudden return to the programme suggests otherwise. It raises questions as to whether the head of communications should single handedly be able to terminate co-operation with the media from governmental organisations.
Some observers did conclude that the GMB host had been unnecessarily insulting to ministers during some of his television grilling.
After Mr Cain left along with PM’s aide Dominic Cummings last week, Mr. Hancock reappearance on the programme to face questions from Mr.Morgan can be seen as a slap in the face of Lee Cain.Morgan questioned the Health Secretary in relation to too little PPE, which led to hundreds of deaths.
Mr.Morgan asked Mr Hancock whether he supported the six month boycott which had seen no cabinet minister on the programme.
The Health Secretary said: ‘We haven’t been away I’ve been on, working incredibly hard for instance building the sort of testing capacity… making progress on the vaccine which is really good.’
Piers Morgan went on to ask why Mr Hancock had not resigned.
Mr Hancock said: ‘Well because we’ve been building the response to all of these enormous challenges of this unprecedented pandemic.
‘The first thing is, on testing, we’ve hit each of the targets that I’ve set – half a million tests a day capacity now, and I’m here to tell you that we’re going to double that over the next few months, and that means that we can use testing in order to find where the virus is.
‘And crucially, we got those turnaround times down so that people can get the result back faster and then can isolate if needed.’
Piers Morgan asked whether Mr Hancock was prepared to admit to any mistakes – to which the Health Secretary responded: ‘Sure, of course, we’ve made mistakes, absolutely.
‘When we first put out the guidance for funerals in the first peak it was interpreted as being so tight that even your spouse couldn’t go to the funeral of somebody who’d died of coronavirus.
‘Now, that was wrong, and we changed it. Absolutely, we’ve been learning.’
The GMB host also asked why the Government does not publish the number of people who are tested each day, compared to the number of individual tests carried out.
The television presenter criticised the government for the fact care homes received thousands of elderly patients from hospitals with Covid, UK borders weren’t closed.
The GMB host said: “I put it to you, given that we now have over 50,000 deaths in this country, which is the worst death toll in the whole of Europe, why are you still Health Secretary and why haven’t you offered your resignation?”
Mr Hancock responded: “Well, because we’ve been building the response to all of these enormous challenges of this unprecedented pandemic.”
“On testing, we’ve hit each of the targets that I set – half a million tests a day capacity now. And I’m here to tell you we’re going to double that over the next few months.
“That means we can use testing in order to find where the virus is and crucially we’ve got those turnaround times down and people can isolate if needed.”