Hancock: No evidence to suggest medics died due to lack of PPE as #WeKnowYouAreLying trends

Matt Hancock said he has seen no evidence to suggest any medics died due to a failure to provide them with personal protective equipment (PPE) during the coronavirus pandemic. As he spoke to the select committee #WeKnowYouAreLying began to trend on twitter.

Labour’s shadow mental health minister Dr Rosena Allin-Khan, who is a frontline medic, accused Mr Hancock of “trying to rewrite history”.

MP Dawn Butler, who is part of the committee tweeted: “I’m sitting in this evidence session opened mouthed. He’s just not telling the truth. It’s shocking!”

She said: “It’s insulting to all the frontline staff who didn’t have the right masks or who were given inferior gowns. They were put at unnecessary risk.”

The Health Secretary drew criticism on Thursday for telling MPs that there was never a national shortage of PPE, despite doctors and nurses having been forced to improvise.

Hancock said: “Each and every death in a care home weighs heavily on me”. Health Secretary Matt Hancock says greater testing capacity at the beginning of the pandemic “would have been better” but argues there are “whole series of things that have been improved” since then.

However he also said that he is yet to visit the Covid memorial wall, but he hopes to in the future.

Supply

He acknowledged to a select committee investigating the Covid-19 response that there were “individual challenges”, but he suggested they were issues with distribution and not supply.

Questioned about the higher death rate among frontline medics, Mr Hancock said: “We’ve looked into this and there is no evidence that I have seen that a shortage of PPE provision led to anyone dying of Covid. That’s from the evidence I have seen.”

He accepted “distribution was a challenge to all areas” and that a supply shortage was “pretty close sometimes”.

Pressed about nurses having to use bin bags instead of PPE, he said: “I have acknowledged throughout there were individual challenges at getting hold of PPE but at a national level there was never a point where we ran out.”

Lying

Matt Hancock is lying to MP’s when he claims there was no Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) shortage during the pandemic, say GMB Union.

The Health Secretary told a committee of MP’s ‘there was never a point at which NHS providers couldn’t get access to PPE’.

GMB members across the NHS reported shortages of PPE on numerous occasions and GMB contacted the Department of Health and Social Care on several occasions to raise this.

At one stage GMB NHS members were even issued with emergency guidance advising people to reuse disposable PPE.

Rachel Harrison, GMB National Officer, said: “Matt Hancock either has no idea what happened under his watch during the pandemic, or he is lying through his teeth.

“Our NHS members have been let down by the Government throughout the crisis – and lack of proper PPE is probably their number one complaint.

“Many were left terrified for their lives treating covid positive patients with either inadequate or non-existent PPE.

“It appears Mr Hancock is either too incompetent or too untrustworthy to remain Health Secretary.”