Matt Hancock refuses to apologise AGAIN after over PPE failures after son of dead NHS worker’s demand

MATT Hancock has twice refused to apologise over huge PPE failures today – after he was confronted by the son of an NHS worker who died.

This morning the Health Secretary was challenged by Intisar Chowdhury, the son of NHS doctor Abdul Mabud Chowdhury who died earlier this month.

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He urged Mr Hanock to admit his mistakes, and made a desperate plea for more PPE.

And this afternoon reporters challenged him to “apologise to families of loves ones who have died as the Government didn’t protect them”.

Intisar told Nick Ferrari on LBC this morning: “He wrote a request for more PPE to the Prime Minister… that was ignored, two weeks later he passed away, do you regret not taking my dad’s concerns, my 11-year-old sister’s dad’s concerns… seriously?”

At least 82 NHS staff and 16 social care workers have already died from coronavirus.

Mr Hancock expressed his condolences to Intisar, but would not admit mistakes had been made.

He said: “I’m really sorry about your dad’s death and I’ve seen the comments you’ve made and I think it’s very brave of you to be speaking out in public.

“We took very, very seriously what your father said and we’ve been working around the clock to ensure there’s enough protective equipment.”

Mr Hancock said they looked into each and every case of NHS and social care workers who had died to understand why it had happened and what needed to be improved.

And this afternoon he told the No10 press conference: “I think that is unreasonable as a question.

“From the start we knew there was a very significant challenge with care homes.

“Enormous work gone on in Government to monitor this from the start.

“We are constantly learning from what happens and how we support people across the care sector.”

The health and social care services have been grappling with problems obtaining enough PPE since the start of the crisis.

Despite the Government saying over one billion pieces of PPE have been delivered, there have been continual problems ensuring it gets to the hospitals that need it most.

According to the Royal College of Physicians, one in four doctors are still having to reuse single-use PPE.

When pressed on whether mistakes were made, Mr Hancock said policies had been “changed” as the Government learnt more about the virus.

He said: “There are things that we’ve changed as we’ve gone through… because we’ve learned more things about the virus and because things didn’t work out as expected.”

But Intisar was unimpressed with Mr Hancock’s answered and pushed him for an apology.

He told Mr Hancock: “The public is not expecting the Government to handle this perfectly, we’re not expecting perfection, we’re expecting progression, we’re expecting you to admit that mistakes were made, especially to me and people who have really lost loved ones to the virus.

“Openly acknowledging your mistake is not an admission of guilt, it makes you seem more human. So can you please just do that for me today?”

Mr Hancock ignored Intisar’s pleas for an apology, telling him: “I think that it is very important that we are constantly learning how to do these things better, listening to the voices on the frontline is a very very important part of how we improve.”