It is a wonder Hancock still gets sent on TV shows
It feels like every time Matt Hancock gets wheeled out in front of television cameras, he says something ridiculous, usually leading to him being accused of telling untruths or simply incompetent. Or both.
He appeared on Good Morning Britain this morning to discuss the court ruling which stated that the Health Secretary had acted unlawfully in failing to publicly disclose details of Covid-19 PPE contracts.
Three opposition MPs and the Good Law project brought the legal challenge to the courts after the health secretary handed out PPE contracts worth hundreds of millions of pounds without competition.
Subsequently, a High Court judge found that Hancock did not comply with government transparency principles that require the details of such contracts to be published within 30 days.
‘I think we should be on this programme thanking my team.’
After Matt Hancock says his team should be thanked, @piersmorgan asks if his team should be thanked for 130,000 people dying in the pandemic.
Piers says it’s not his first thought to thank the Health Sec for that. pic.twitter.com/ayiaCn0ejk
— Good Morning Britain (@GMB) February 23, 2021
Appearing on the show, Hancock seemed unwilling to confront the fact that the law had been broken, and instead claimed that he and his team should be thanked for overseeing a pandemic in which 130,000 people have died in the UK.
Asked by host Piers Morgan whether he would apologise, a clearly agitated Hancock said: “If I were given my time again and given the choice between doing work that saved lives or filing paperwork on the right date, I’d have done the same.”
Interrupting, Morgan replied: “Hang on, you could do both can’t you? Surely you can try to get PPE which we were short of, and also ensure your department doesn’t break the law.”
Hancock then replied, claiming that while credit for the good work done during the pandemic should go to his team, any blame for PPE shortages was simply the fault of someone else: “My job is to save lives Piers, and that is what we did… just let me answer the question. The demand for PPE went up 10 times so of course my team was massively stretched.
“There were shortages locally, there was no national shortage because of the work my team did. I back them 100%.”
