Michael Gove today said reports the Prime Minister had not led from the front in the run-up to the coronavirus outbreak are “grotesque”.
It comes after a report in The Sunday Times revealed Boris Johnson skipped five Cobra meetings between January and February to discuss the outbreak.
Speaking on BBC One’s The Andrew Marr Show, Mr Gove, Minister for the Cabinet Office, said it was “grotesque” to portray the Prime Minister as not caring about the outbreak, stating his “his focus, his energy and his passion” has been on fighting the virus.
However, Mr Gove confirmed the Prime Minister did not attend the Cobra meetings in question, stating: “He didn’t. But then he wouldn’t.
“Because most Cobra meetings don’t have the Prime Minister attending them.
“Cobra meetings are led by the relevant secretary of state…It would be the case that the Health Secretary would chair them.”
#Marr: Will we be testing and contact tracing in local communities within three weeks?
Cabinet Minister Michael Gove: "We will, over the course of the next few weeks, be in a position to increase the number of our tests"#coronavirus https://t.co/JyKkmfe9u2 pic.twitter.com/dqMUVbEs1F
— BBC Politics (@BBCPolitics) April 19, 2020
Opposition parties have called for enhanced scrutiny of the Prime Minister in the wake of the reports, with SNP Westminster leader Ian Blackford branding the reports “jaw-dropping”.
The Sunday Times also reports that Britain was in a poor state of readiness for a pandemic, arguing that emergency stockpiles of PPE had “severely dwindled” and gone out of date after becoming a “low priority” in the year of austerity cuts.
It further claims that “little progress” was made in obtaining PPE from manufacturers, mainly in China, adding that instead the government shipped 279,000 items of its depleted stockpile of protective equipment to China, following a request for help.
Responding to this, Mr Gove said the PPE sent was to help with the most extreme outbreak in Wuhan and was not from the country’s pandemic stock.
He added: “We have received far more from China in personal protection equipment than we have given.
“If you take that single fact and say ‘oh we’ve been running down our stocks’ then you create a particular narrative, you create a particular sense and it doesn’t do justice to the fact the Chinese government have responded very generously to our support by giving us far more personal protection than we gave them.”
Scottish Health Secretary Jeane Freeman said the Scottish Government has taken all the steps they necessary to keep up to speed with the outbreak, including attending all Cobra meetings and holding its own Scottish Government resilience meetings, chaired by the First Minister.
She added that as to whether or not the Prime Minister’s attendance at Cobra meetings in the early days made a difference or not, these issues would be looked at in the “fullness of time”.
She said: “Right now my primary source of focus is on making sure we do everything we need to do to continue to supppress the virus and to plan and prepare for the steps that we might want to take based on the evidence, based on the clinical and scientific evidence we receive, in order to get to a situation where find additional ways of controlling the impact of the virus on the population of Scotland.”
Asked about the Prime Minister meeting Cobra meetings, education secretary Gavin Williamson, said: “The Prime Minister from the moment that it became clear that there were challenges in terms of coronavirus developing in China has absolutely been leading our nation’s effort to combat the coronavirus, making sure that resources or money is not a concern for any department, especially the health service.”
He added that “many Cobra meetings” are led by the departmental minister.
He said: “The focus the Prime Minister was putting on this and has continued to put on this has meant that this is the whole government effort.”
However, shadow health secretary Jonathan Ashworth has demanded “clear answers” from the government about why Boris Johnson is reported to have skipped Cobra meetings about the coronavirus crisis, in a video he shared online.
The public deserve clear answers as to why the Prime Minister skipped 5 vital vital cobra meetings. We knew in February how serious this virus was.
Yet today our NHS & care staff still lacking adequate PPE, testing is not at levels needed & hospitals delivered wrong ventilators. pic.twitter.com/ytFVOxvBzu
— Jonathan Ashworth (@JonAshworth) April 19, 2020
Mr Ashworth said in a tweet: “The public deserve clear answers as to why the Prime Minister skipped five vital Cobra meetings.
“We knew in February how serious this virus was. Yet today our NHS and care staff (are) still lacking adequate PPE, testing is not at levels needed and hospitals (were) delivered wrong ventilators.”
Meanwhile, SNP Westminster leader Ian Blackford said the reports of “complacency and negligence” around the UK Government’s immediate response are “jaw-dropping”.
He added: “We have been working constructively during this health emergency and we will continue to do so, however no government is above scrutiny.
“There are a number of legitimate questions that need to be put to the UK government around its handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
“When parliament returns next week, the SNP will stand ready to hold this government to account and prioritise the protection of the public, frontline services and businesses.”