Coronavirus: Government made ‘mistakes’ handling crisis, admits Matt Hancock during awkward GMB interview

Matt Hancock has admitted to “mistakes” over the government’s handling of the coronavirus crisis — but rebuffed questions about whether he would resign during an awkward interview on Good Morning Britain.

The health secretary’s appearance brought an end to the 201-day Downing Street boycott of ministers appearing on the ITV programme. Host Piers Morgan began by asking: “Where the hell have you all been for the last 201 days?”  

Mr Hancock grinned and told him: “Here I am, happy to answer any questions” — but refused to say whether he agreed with the boycott previously enforced by the No 10 press team.

He admitted he and his colleagues had made mistakes during the pandemic after Mr Morgan accused the government of “a constant series of failures and U-turns” during 2020.  

“Sure, of course we’ve made mistakes, absolutely,” said Mr Hancock. “I’ll give you one that really, really matters. When we first put out the guidance for funerals, it was interpreted as being so tight that even your spouse couldn’t go to the funeral … that was wrong and we changed it.”

However, Mr Hancock refused to concede to any failures on testing. He rejected the idea that capacity figures were “meaningless”, stating: “The capacity really matters because that’s how many tests you can get through the system if you really need”.

In the thorniest moment of the interview, Mr Morgan asked: “Why are you still health secretary? Why haven’t you offered your resignation?” Mr Hancock replied: “We’ve been building the response to all these enormous challenges of this unprecedented pandemic.”  

The health secretary said he hoped to roll-out regular testing for every care home by Christmas, after host Susanna Reid challenged him over the “inhumane” situation in which people cannot visit loves ones in care homes without severe restrictions. 

It follows the government’s announcement that a pilot scheme will allow relatives of residents at 20 care homes regular testing to make “meaningful” visits possible. “Keeping people safe from coronavirus in care homes is so important, and at the same time making sure that people in care homes can see others, can have visitors — I want to see that as well. Balancing the two is the challenge.”

The Downing Street press team had previously banned ministers from speaking to GMB after Mr Morgan called former communications chief Lee Cain a “snivelling little worm”.

Yet the exit of Mr Cain and Dominic Cummings has led to a speedy reset with the programme. Mr Morgan shared his own theory on the end of the boycott earlier on Monday morning. “Could it be those two little sewers rats — Cummings and Cain — being thrown out of Downing Street? What a co-incidence.”

Hancock was also probed this morning about a report from The Sunday Times, which said that the government has awarded £1.5bn to companies linked to the Conservative party during the coronavirus pandemic.

He told Times Radio: “We’ve brought in an extraordinary broad range of companies and many of them who haven’t been working with government before because we haven’t had a pandemic of this scale before.

“And if you note down all the [companies] where there were previous contacts and don’t note down all the ones where there weren’t then of course you can give that sort of impression but it’s not a fair or accurate reflection of what went on.”