You’re reading The Waugh Zone, our daily politics briefing. Sign up now to get it by email in the evening.
Testing Times
There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.
It’s a saying most politicos will have heard – and one, it seems, Matt Hancock is familiar with, too.
With the solemnity dial turned up to 11, the health secretary tonight declared the government had met its “audacious goal” of carrying out 100,000 tests a day by April 30.
Celebrating his “incredible achievement”, he told the British public 122,347 tests were carried out on Thursday.
This sounds impressive and given just a month ago, the figure was closer to 10,000, perhaps it is.
But with around 39,000 accounting for home testing kits mailed out – rather than them being actually used – it’s fair to say the health secretary is bending the truth.
Labour’s Jon Ashworth was quick to point out “ministers promised transparency” from the outset of the Covid-19 crisis, and Hancock’s brass-necked bid to put a positive spin on events could come back to bite him.
Given it was the health secretary, rather than scientists or health experts who insisted on the target, however, it is doubtful the debacle will trouble Boris Johnson’s government for long.
Other statistics made public today could worry the PM much more.
Not least those published by the ONS, which found that people who live in Britain’s poorest areas are twice as likely to die from the disease as those in the most affluent.
Pressed on the issue, Hancock said it was “something we are worried about and looking at” as the pandemic develops.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), meanwhile, has found that per capita deaths among the black Caribbean population in English hospitals are three times those of white British people.
Both findings follow warnings from the Sutton Trust that two-thirds of children have not taken part in online lessons during the lockdown, and that pupils at private schools were more than twice as likely to get daily online tuition.
Amid headlines of job losses, data underlines day by day that it is a damned lie that coronavirus is some great leveller. It’s a disaster which is exacerbating inequality.
And this is a huge problem for a leader who stormed to election victory in December pledging to “level up and unite the country”.
Quote Of The Day
“And when things went wrong, which they did every single day, believe me, we didn’t ask who we could blame, we asked how we could fix it.”
– Matt Hancock on his team working “tirelessly” to reach the testing target.
Cheat Sheet
Matt Hancock has announced the restoration of NHS fertility services now the UK is “past the peak” of the coronavirus outbreak. The health secretary announced the move at the daily Downing Street press conference as he said the country was “restoring the NHS and restoring the chance for so many people couples to start a family”.
The number of people who have died in the UK after contracting Covid-19 has risen by 739 in 24 hours. It brings the total death count to 27,510 and includes people in hospitals as well as in care homes and the community who had tested positive for coronavirus.
The UK’s testing guru professor John Newton has said it is “encouraging” that new evidence emerging out of South Korea suggests those who have fought off coronavirus might develop an immunity afterwards.
What I’m Reading
Putin, Russia’s Man of Action, Is Passive, Even Bored, in the Coronavirus Era - The New York Times
Got A Tip?
Send tips, stories, quotes, pics, plugs or gossip to waugh.zone@huffpost.com.
Subscribe To Commons People
Each week, the HuffPost UK Politics team unpack the biggest stories from Westminster and beyond. Search for Commons People wherever you listen to podcasts and subscribe.