Inside Politics – Coronavirus special: Blame game breaks out over testing

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Wednesday 20 May 2020 07:55 BST

Suspension of testing on March 12 was because due to lack of capacity rather than best science

Project Restart has become very messy indeed. Six positive tests for coronavirus at Premier League clubs have complicated plans to reboot top flight football next month – as Watford’s captain refuses to return to training over fears for his family’s health. The government’s attempts to resume life as we knew it are getting messier by the day. Plans to re-open schools on 1 June have been thrown into doubt, while a blame game has erupted among politicians and officials over testing failures. I’m Adam Forrest, and welcome to The Independent’s daily Inside Politics briefing during the coronavirus crisis.

Inside the bubble

Our political commentator Andrew Grice on what to look out for today:

Boris Johnson will hope to send Tory MPs off on recess in better heart by putting in a stronger performance against Keir Starmer at PMQs. Commons leader Jacob Rees-Mogg will come under pressure to allow MPs’ contributions via Zoom to continue when the House resumes. Michael Gove will make a statement on the Northern Ireland protocol amid EU fears the UK is wobbling over its commitments. The biggest draw among select committee witnesses today is Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey.

Daily briefing

ALL BLAME, NO GAIN: Work and pensions secretary Therese Coffey managed to kick off 24 hours of acrimony when she suggested the government’s advisers were at fault over the decision to halt community testing in March. “If the science was wrong, advice at the time was wrong, I’m not surprised if people will then think we then made a wrong decision,” she said. Infighting broke out when Public Health England said it was “not responsible” for the testing strategy, claiming it had been led by the Department of Health and Social Care. The government’s deputy chief scientific adviser Angela McLean suggested capacity and not the advice was to blame. It comes as at least 18 councils are ready to refuse to reopen schools at the start of June, according to The Guardian. The government’s own senior scientific adviser John Edmunds has suggested the track and trace system should first be in place before children return to primaries.

LOSING HIS BOUNCE: Rishi Sunak’s Tiggerish optimism about the ability of the British economy to respond to the coronavirus shock has all but gone. A glum chancellor said it was “not obvious there will be an immediate bounce back” once lockdown rules are eased – warning that the country now faces “a severe recession the likes of which we have not seen”. Sunak said there would have to be restrictions on how people shop even retail reopens in England on 1 June. The latest DWP figures show that a total of 4.2 million people were in receipt of universal credit (as of 9 April) – a rise of 1.2 million people in a single month. While the chancellor was reluctant to predict how high unemployement could go, Jagjit Chadha, director of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, said: “We can reasonably expect unemployment to rise very quickly to something over 10 per cent – something we haven’t seen since the early 1990s.”

REAP WHAT WE SOW: British consumers face big price hikes for European goods like wine, cheese and cars unless a trade deal can be signed with the EU. Plans unveiled by the government show a 10 per cent tariff on automobiles made on the continent would be imposed at the end of the year. Cabinet Office Michael Gove said it remained “difficult” to reach an agreement with Brussels, accusing the EU holding up progress in talks with its “ideological approach”. Meanwhile, the environment secretary George Eustice said only one third of the fruit and vegetable pickers who usually come to the UK from Europe have arrived this year. He said Britons who had been furloughed and wanted to “lend a hand” could now register their interest on the new ‘Pick for Britain’ website. The site appeared to crash moments after Eustice delivered his call for a new Land Army.

MAN OF HONOUR: Donald Trump has claimed it is a “badge of honour” for the US to have the highest number of coronavirus cases in the world. “I don’t look at that as a bad thing – I look at that in a certain respect as being a good thing because it means our testing is much better ... So I view it as a badge of honour, really.” The US president also defended his new hydroxychloroquine habit by saying he uses the malaria drug as a “line of defence” because he interacts with so many people. Responding to Nancy Pelosi’s description of him as “morbidly obese” (she pointed out someone of his “weight group” shouldn’t take chances with the drug), Trump said: “Pelosi is a sick woman. She’s got a lot of problems, a lot of mental problems.”

MOTHER’S LITTLE HELPER: Brazil’s daily death toll from the new coronavirus jumped to a record 1,179 on Tuesday. Brazil now has the third highest number of infections worldwide behind Russia and the US. President Jair Bolsonaro doubled down on the anti-malarial drug chloroquine as a possible remedy for the disease – claiming he keeps a box of it on hand for his 93-year-old mother should she need it. Trump doesn’t seem too interested in any similarities with Bolsonaro. The US president said he was considering imposing a travel ban from Brazil: “I don’t want people coming over here and infecting our people.”

BREATH OF FRESH AIR: Daily global emissions of CO2 decreased by 17 per cent during the peak of the lockdown measures, a huge new study has found. China was responsible for the biggest fall in emissions, followed by the United States, Europe and India. However, the “extreme” reduction in emissions is “likely to be temporary”, said the University of East Anglia climate change professor Corinne Le Quere. The scientists fear carbon emissions could shoot up again as people return to work in their cars. Greenpeace’s Paul Morozzo said: “The only way this reduction will mean anything is if governments lock it in as we recover and rebuild.”

On the record

“Frankly, the opposition like having a hybrid Parliament because what is the opposition there to do? It’s there to stop the government getting things done.”

Jacob Rees-Mogg accuses opposition parties of enjoying homeworking too much.

From the Twitterati

“Quite spectacular circular blame game erupting … Science Committee blames PHE, but PHE says Matt Hancock took the decisions, while Cabinet colleague Therese Coffey points the finger at the “wrong” science. A taster of things to come.”

The Sun’s Tom Newton-Dunn thinks we’ve had a ‘taster’ of the inevitable public inquiry...

“Here we go again. Can someone please point me to a single word of Therese Coffey’s that is wrong. Do we want Ministers following scientific advice or do we not.”

…but The Mail on Sunday’s Dan Hodges thinks it’s all so unfair.