Yvonne Doyle, medical director of Public Health England, looked mildly blank when the thorny issue of care homes was raised at yesterday’s Downing Street press briefing.
Someone had made the not unreasonable point that NHS Nightingale hospital was largely empty, so why couldn’t it be used to provide support for elderly patients from care homes? Dr Doyle, her brow slightly bedewed, briefly hesitated for a moment. Her answer was that she wasn’t entirely sure. There was no reason they could not be admitted.
Oh dear, it was a day to forget for the boffins. Joining Doyle at the lectern was NHS England’s national medical director Stephen Powis. He’s the one that looks like former work and pensions secretary Damian Green but with specs. He kept repeating Dominic Raab’s mantra not to ‘take the foot off the pedal’ in social distancing. He always comes to these things armed with a cliché or two does Powis. He’s very fond of talking about seeing ‘green shoots’ of recovery.
Questions rained in on him and Doyle like a hoard of tomahawk missiles. Yet answers there came but none. Daily care death stats were raised. ‘It’s a bit more complicated for care homes…’ Doyle complained.
Yvonne Doyle speaking during a media briefing in Downing Street, London, on coronavirus
Later, when someone asked Powis how many coronavirus infections had been passed on in hospital he simply muttered something about the UK having a good record in dealing with hospital acquired infections. It was a frustrating afternoon all round.
But then it had been a day for obfuscations. Chancellor Rishi Sunak was the minister in charge of the briefing. He insisted care home workers had not been forgotten in the crisis: ‘I would say to all those people working in care homes up and down the country, whether it’s the people in them or the people looking after them – you absolutely haven’t been forgotten.’ But he was far from his usual self-assured self.
The Chancellor had just hours earlier learned of the Office of Budget Responsibility’s dire warnings on the economy. Two million job losses. An economy shrunk by 35 per cent. As chilling forecasts go, it was up there with the one issued by the US National Weather Service ahead of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. ‘Godspeed to all those in the path of this storm.’
Rishi Sunak chairs the daily news conference at 10 Downing Street on the coronavirus outbreak with NHS Medical Director Professor Stephen Powis and Public Health England (PHE) Medical Director, Professor Yvonne Doyle, in London, April 14
Arriving at the lectern, Mr Sunak at least looked a little less frazzled than he had on the lunchtime bulletins. Like the government’s chief scientific advisor Sir Patrick Vallance, he seemed to have arranged for a haircut despite our deserted high streets. Has Downing Street made a crimper available for its key spokespeople to keep their tresses in trim? Not a bad idea, if so.
The OBR numbers, Rishi was keen to stress first up, were not a forecast or a prediction. They were not carved in stone. It was just one scenario. Even so, the Chancellor knew there was no sugaring the pill. The UK economy, he acknowledged, was in for one heck of a battering. ‘These are tough times and there will be more to come,’ he said gravely.
The Chancellor dug deep for the positives. ‘We came into this crisis with a fundamentally sound economy,’ he said. This was powered by the resilience of British business. Yes, yes. Most of it now out of action though, of course.
Those Bambi eyes struggled to show a bit of steel. ‘We’re NOT just going to stand by and let this happen,’ he announced, desperate to show a bit of defiance. ‘Our plan is the RIGHT plan.’
Joining Doyle at the lectern was NHS England’s national medical director Stephen Powis. He’s the one that looks like former work and pensions secretary Damian Green but with specs
But when questions arrived as to how anything was going to be paid for, we heard scant detail. Rishi ducked, he weaved, he swivelled. It was like watching a hard-up lodger trying to hoodwink his landlord over the next month’s rent. The BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg suggested the costs of paying for the crisis would be felt for a generation. Sunak said he thought it would be possible to have ‘a reasonably fast bounce back’.
The economics man from Sky News didn’t share his confidence. Tensions bubbled. When pressed, he said he didn’t want to get drawn into writing a future budget. Later, someone asked where Sunak was going to find the money to address the deficit. ‘I can’t write tax policy now,’ he snapped.
Ten minutes shy of 6pm, the Chancellor wrapped things up, disappearing without bothering to wait for the two scientists. Rushing back to the Treasury, no doubt, for further discussions with his officials. If they know of a spare trunk of cash stashed there somewhere, now would be a good time to let their new boss know it.