“The fact that we are in the middle of the Covid-19 emergency doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be calling for the resignation of UK Health Minister Matt Hancock.
Hancock’s statement this morning that there is no real shortage of PPE tells us that he and the rest of the Tories are as careless with the truth as they are with the lives of NHS workers.
Experience in Derry is in line with what’s happening in the rest of the North and across the UK. It can be seen at a glance that paper-light masks being handed to care-workers provide little protection. Thin plastic visors which don’t fit the face are just as ineffective. Care-workers are frightened, and not a bit wonder.
Now Hancock is accusing care-workers and other staff of misusing and wasting PPE. He has a confounded cheek, given his own role and his party’s role in the delay and mismanagement which has already cost lives. Hancock and his ilk seem to care as little now as they did when they were draining the NHS of funds and pushing privatisation.
They were insulting NHS workers then and are compounding the insult now. Hancock is doing nobody any good. He should be told to go.”