Government preparation for pandemic ‘wanting and inadequate’, Nadine Dorries admits

Comments in attack on Jeremy Hunt amount to ‘indictment’ of government, says Labour

Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, Nadine Dorries (James Manning/PA) (PA Wire)

Cabinet minister Nadine Dorries has come under fire after effectively admitting that the Conservative government failed to prepare the UK for a health emergency like Covid.

In a scathing Twitter attack on Jeremy Hunt after his announcement he would vote against Boris Johnson in this evening’s confidence vote, Ms Dorries said that the former health secretary had overseen pandemic preparations which were “wanting and inadequate” during his time in office from 2012 to 2018.

Shadow home secretary Wes Streeting said that the comment was “a damning indictment” of the government’s preparedness which showed that the Conservatives were “not fit to govern”.

Ms Dorries claimed that in the early stages of the Covid outbreak in 2020, when she was a health minister, Mr Hunt contacted her to call for people testing positive to be placed in isolation hotels.

And she said that the former health secretary had been “wrong about almost everything (and) wrong again now”.

She wrote: “On the afternoon of 23rd July 2020 when I was health minister you telephoned me to tell me that we had to handle the pandemic following the example set by the East/China. That people testing positive should be removed from their homes and placed into isolation hotels for two weeks.

“You said your wife’s family had experience of this during SARS. I said that British people would never tolerate being removed from their homes and loved ones at which point you demanded I show you the evidence for that. Your handling of the pandemic would have been a disaster.

“Your pandemic preparation during six years as health secretary was found wanting and inadequate.Your duplicity right now in destabilising the party and country to serve your own personal ambition, more so.”

Mr Streeting responded: “Conservative Cabinet minister admits that their pandemic preparation was ‘found wanting and inadequate’.

“This is a revealing admission and damning indictment of the Conservatives’ pandemic preparedness. They’re not fit to govern.”

Broadcaster Susanna Reid picked up on the comment, tweeting: “Current senior Conservative government minister confirms that it was a failure by a Conservative minister that meant the government was poorly prepared for Covid.”

Another Labour frontbencher Ruth Cadbury said: “Not only are the Conservatives now at war with each other, but former health minister and now cabinet minister Nadine Dorries has admitted that the Conservative government’s preparation for the pandemic was ‘wanting and inadequate’. Britain deserves better than this.”