COVID APOLOGY? NOT A CHANCE!

Minister refuses 19 times to say sorry for failures over pandemic

A CABINET minister yesterday refused at least 19 times to apologise to the families of Covid victims over the Government’s failures in handling the pandemic.

Stephen Barclay rejected calls to say sorry, insisting the Government ‘did take decisions to move quickly’.

A cross-party inquiry by MPs found that the Government’s inaction in the early stages of the crisis was ‘one of the most important public health failures the UK has ever experienced’ and had exacerbated the death toll. The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster Mr Barclay admitted he had ‘not had chance to read’ the report.

‘The decisions were taken on the evidence and the scientific advice at the time, they were taken to protect the NHS,’ Mr Barclay told Sky News.

‘Of course we’ve learnt a huge amount, but we did take decisions to move quickly, that is why the vaccine was deployed at pace, that was a success that the report recognises.’ He added: ‘We’re going to have an inquiry to look at the lessons to take forward to the future.’

Pushed again on LBC Radio, he refused to apologise a further eight times. He said: ‘Well, I recognise it’s devastating and my heart goes out to any family, any of your listeners where they lost a loved one.’

Shadow health minister Justin Madders condemned his stance, branding it an ‘insult’ to the families who had lost loved ones.

Wales’s health minister Eluned Morgan said: ‘I never really understood why politicians have such a problem in apologising. And so yes, of course I’m prepared to apologise to all of those who have suffered during the pandemic. I think we have a duty and responsibility to say sorry to people where we’ve made mistakes.’

The Prime Minister’s former top aide, Dominic Cummings, branded Boris Johnson a ‘joke’. He told Sky News: ‘The government system for dealing with crises is a disaster, as I wrote in 2019.’ He added: ‘The system was bad for many years before Covid. Me and others put into place work to try and improve the system in 2020 after the first wave, unfortunately the Prime Minister – being the joke that he is – has not pushed that work through.

‘Now we have a joke Prime Minister and a joke leader of the Labour Party and we obviously need a new political system.’

Almost 138,000 people in the UK have died with Covid since the beginning of the pandemic. Yesterday the Government recorded another 38,520 cases and 181 deaths within 28 days of a positive test.