As the scale of the disaster inflicted on our care homes and social care by the Coronavirus has become clear, and the scale of government incompetence, negligence and contempt for the care sector has been exposed, both Matt Hancock and Boris Johnson have made untruthful claims in an effort to cover up.
On May 13 Johnson told MPs “We brought in the lockdown in care homes ahead of the general lockdown.” But extensive research by Reuters has produced no evidence of any such pre-emptive action.
Two days later Hancock made the now infamous claim that “right from the start we’ve tried to throw a protective ring around our care homes,” claiming to have first set out advice in “February”. But in fact as Keir Starmer had pointed out in exchanges with Johnson, the government claimed right up to March 12 that it was very unlikely care home residents would be infected.
Full story in The Lowdown, 27 May 2020