Keir Starmer quoted government advice during PMQs and Boris Johnson said it 'wasn't true'

Another week and another episode of Keir Starmer embarrassing Boris Johnson during prime minister's questions.

This week the Labour Party leader addressed the statement given by Johnson during his speech to the nation on Sunday, where he claimed that government was beginning to deal with the coronavirus crisis in the UK's care homes.

In response to this Starmer asked the prime minister, by using the government's own guidelines, if they were too slow to protect those in care homes?

Mr Speaker, in a speech on Sunday, the prime minister said that we need to rapidly reverse the awful epidemic in our care homes. But earlier this year and until the 12 March the government's own official advice was, and I'm quoting from it, 'it remains very unlikely that people receiving care in a care home will become infected.'

Yesterday's ONS figures show that at least 40 per cent of all deaths from Covid-19 were in care homes. Does the prime minister accept that the government was too slow to protect people in care homes?

In response Johnson said:

No, Mr Speaker and it wasn't true that the advice said that and actually, we brought the lockdown in care homes ahead of the general lockdown and what we've seen is a concerted action plan to tackle what is unquestionably an appalling epidemic.

Unfortunately for the prime minister, this is exactly what the guidance said. Here is the webpage to prove it.

Johnson's claim that it wasn't true didn't go unnoticed and many were happy to show the evidence that the government did say that it was unlikely that someone in a care home would become infected with coronavirus.

Starmer has since written to the PM, asking him to correct the record on his statement about care homes.

This comes just a day after it was reported that care home deaths in England and Wales had risen by 40 per cent in just one week and that study found that Covid-19 deaths in care homes could be double the official figure.