Sunday shows round-up: Work times may be staggered, says Transport Secretary

Grant Shapps – Raw mortality figures don’t tell the whole story

Sophy Ridge’s first guest this morning was the Transport Secretary Grant Shapps. There have been over 28,000 deaths attributed to Covid-19, now that the government is including figures from care homes and the wider community. Ridge confronted Shapps with comparisons of known mortality figures in other countries, pointing out that the UK was poised to become second only to the United States in the total number of deaths. Shapps argued that there is not enough data available at this stage to say whether the UK is faring objectively worse than other countries:

SR: The objective of this government is to save lives… Haven’t you failed?

GS: I don’t agree with that… We need to be very, very careful at the way we assess this information… Simply looking at the raw data doesn’t tell you the whole story… You have to look at the whole picture, and that information simply isn’t available as yet.