Bedford MP slams Boris Johnson for 'pointing the finger at care homes he failed to protect'

Bedford MP Mohammad Yasin has slammed Boris Johnson over remarks he made, blaming care home workers for the huge death toll of their residents.

The MP today (July 8) also asked the Prime Minister to apologise after one unnamed care home owner in Bedford was told if they refused to accept a coronavirus-positive patient, that patient would be discharged to an unfamiliar home.

The Prime Minister asked Mr Yasin to write to him about the "troubling" incident but still refused to apologise for comments he made earlier in the week when he claimed “too many care homes didn’t follow procedures in the way they could have”.

It comes as new figures registered last week with the Office for National Statistics, revealed there were 18 deaths in Bedford care homes from coronavirus and 50 in Central Bedfordshire between March 6 and June 26.

Mr Yasin said: “Far from putting a ring of steel around care homes, as he likes to tell us, the Prime Minister was too late in identifying the obvious risk to the elderly, too late in locking down and presided over the disastrous policy of discharging patients back to care homes without testing.

"The guidance care homes did get was unclear - on one day the policy changed six times. PPE supplies were inadequate, testing took months to get going and is still not happening routinely.

"Thousands of families have lost loved ones and care workers themselves have died on the frontline. It is disgraceful that the Prime Minister who clapped for carers a matter of weeks ago

is now pointing the finger at the profession for his Government’s failure to protect the most vulnerable in society, resulting in one of the worst death tolls in the world.”

"The Prime Minister not only refused to take the opportunity to apologise for his comments today, but denied he’d attempted to blame the care sector in the first place. How can the Government learn the lessons for the future if they deny the mistakes of the past? The Prime Minister needs to take full responsibility and deliver on his long overdue promise to fix the crisis in social care.”