Piers Morgan brands UK Gov Pension minister's testing claim a 'scandal'

Piers Morgan was left incensed on Tuesday's Good Morning Britain after Thérèse Coffey said she was "proud" of the UK Government's testing during the Covid-19 crisis.

The Work and Pensions Secretary had refused to appear on GMB, as part of what Mr Morgan called “the Government's 21-day boycott”.

Instead, Coffey appeared on rival show BBC Breakfast this morning, where she defended the Government's coronavirus testing record as having improved from a "standing start".

Morgan, who was following Coffey's BBC Breakfast appearance via a tablet, interrupted Dr Hilary to lay into the Conservative MP.

Piers Morgan and Susanna Reid host Good Morning Britain.

He said: "Sorry about this - I've just seen something. Thérèse Coffey on BBC Breakfast... wow.

"She's just said we can look back on our testing, how we increased capacity, with pride. With pride!

"The British government is proud of the fact that we had no tests available for anyone in care homes! Or anyone in hospitals being sent to care homes!

"They're proud of our record on testing. Even though we stopped testing in the middle of March to catastrophic effect.

"Thérèse Coffey from the British government, she can look back on this with pride. It's a matter of pride for the government that our testing was such a spectacular failure!"

Reading out her comments, Morgan continued: "Over time we were able to do testing in care homes. Now testing is much more widely available, capacity is there.

"We can't force people to go and get testing."

Pushing his tablet aside, Morgan added: "No Thérèse Coffey, you can't force people to get tested.

"What you can do is take the damn tests down to the care homes and give it to the people that need them!

"Because at the moment you're boasting about having 100,000 tests a day, but yesterday you tested 9,000 fewer people than you tested the day before!

"You're not ramping up, Thérèse Coffey, you're ramping down! And that is not something to be proud of, that is a scandal!"

A message from the Editor:

Thank you for reading this story on our website. While I have your attention, I also have an important request to make of you.

With the coronavirus lockdown having a major impact on many of our advertisers - and consequently the revenue we receive - we are more reliant than ever on you taking out a digital subscription.

Subscribe to scotsman.com and enjoy unlimited access to Scottish news and information online and on our app. With a digital subscription, you can read more than 5 articles, see fewer ads, enjoy faster load times, and get access to exclusive newsletters and content. Visit https://www.scotsman.com/subscriptions now to sign up.

Our journalism costs money and we rely on advertising, print and digital revenues to help to support them. By supporting us, we are able to support you in providing trusted, fact-checked content for this website.

Joy Yates

Editorial Director