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Kent MP Helen Whately faced another grilling by Piers Morgan on Good Morning Britain today following last week's 'car crash' interview in which he accused her of laughing during questioning about deaths in care homes.
Today Mrs Whately, 43, MP for Faversham and Mid-Kent, was lambasted by the presenter for the government's lower-than-promised testing rates and still not having accurate figures for the latest death toll in care settings.
He rubbished the government's promise that it would be testing 100,000 people a day by the end of April.
"We're actually testing less people than we were 12 days ago which I would argue is a spectacular failure," he said.
Mrs Whately responded that the government had been "working hard to ramp up testing" which she claimed had trebled - to which Mr Morgan interrupted and said the process was "going backwards".
Mrs Whately replied: "I'm giving you the context and both sides of the equation. It's about access and capacity and we're extending the number of people eligible for testing."
Mr Morgan then referred the minister to a detailed analysis in the Financial Times today which claims the total number of deaths is more than 41,000, including 11,000 in care homes.
"As care minister, you should have been aware of this," he said. "It's your job to know this stuff.
"I find it incredibly insulting that the care minister has no idea how many people are dying in care homes.
"People who die in hospital are being treated with more respect than vulnerable people in care homes."
Mrs Whately said accusation was "incredibly unreasonable". She insisted she took every single death seriously and the government was looking at what extra support it could give to care homes.
The minister replied that 11,000 was not a figure she recognised and suggested it was "one of the problems of using data that wasn't necessarily accurate and validated."
"The situation we have at the moment for deaths in care homes is that some people have died in hospital, so it's inaccurate because of double counting," she said.
"So we are changing the way we are collecting the data and we hope to be able to publish a specific figure next week."
But Mr Morgan said: "The problem is minister is that you don't have the answers and are just waffling.
"If their figures are right, the UK has the worst death toll after America in the world which would be a scandal of epic proportions.
"You as a government are massively understating what is going on."
Mrs Whatley replied: "All the way through we have been following the scientific advice and learning about the virus and managing the outbreak."
Hundreds of complaints were lodged with Ofcom following last week's interview between Mr Morgan and Mrs Whately.
