Newspaper Cutting 024 - Care Minister ‘laughs’ when asked about care home deaths by Piers Morgan

Vocabulary : 
(1) Care Minister = 護理部長 
(2) care home = 養老院 
(3) was accused of = 被指控 
(4) quiz about = 被詢問 
(5) amid = 在…之中 
(6) interject = 插 
(7) spark = 火花 
(8) bullying = 欺凌 
(9) uncomfortable to watch = 觀看後感到不舒服 
(10) furiously = 瘋狂地 
(11) slightest = 絲毫 
(12) point scoring = 每分必得 
(13) verify = 確認 
(14) tense conversation = 緊張的對話 
(15) perspective = 透視 
(16) under-protected = 保護不足的 
(17) frontline heroes = 前線英雄 
(18) death toll = 死亡數字 
(19) airbrush = 噴槍 
(20) abandon = 放棄 
(21) lamb = 羊肉 
(22) slaughter = 屠宰

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Care Minister ‘laughs’ when asked about care home deaths by Piers Morgan - 15 Apr, 2020

The Minister for Care was accused of laughing today as she was quizzed about the number of care home deaths amid the coronavirus pandemic. 

Appearing on Good Morning Britain, Helen Whately was asked whether it was true that 4,000 people had died due to outbreaks of the virus in care homes across the UK. Piers Morgan then accused her of laughing as he held up the front page of the Daily Mail. 

The interview, which saw Piers repeatedly interject and talk over the minister, sparked more than 600 complaints to Ofcom, with some viewers accusing him of ‘bullying’ and adding that it was ‘uncomfortable to watch’. 

Whately had first explained her ‘laughing’ reaction was because she couldn’t see the newspaper he was showing her due to her camera set up. This caused Piers to furiously ask: ‘Why are you laughing? I am telling you what it is. It’s actually very serious.’ 

She was then accused of laughing again as Piers repeatedly prevented her from answering his questions. Seeing her response, he continued: ‘What are you finding funny about this?’, to which she replied: ‘I don’t think it’s funny in the slightest.’ 

Whately added: ‘I am not laughing at all. Please don’t suggest for a minute I am laughing. I have not been. It feels like you are shouting at me and not giving me a chance to answer.’ 

The Care Minister then accused Piers of ‘point scoring’ and said: ‘I don’t get my data from newspapers, I have to get it from the NHS and scientists.’ 

She stated that according to the latest government figures, revealed by the Health Secretary last weekend, 19 NHS workers are confirmed to have died after testing positive for coronavirus. She admitted that there is not yet data available for care homes.

Whately continued: ‘It’s not that I’ve not checked the number [of care home deaths], it’s just that every death has to be verified. The deaths have to be appropriately recorded, there is a process that needs to be followed. We need to make sure we are sharing accurate information with the public.’ 

She added that focusing too much on the figures ‘moves away from the fact we are talking about individual people and lives here.’ She continued: ‘We need to recognise that every single death is somebody’s family.’ 

A spokeswoman for Ofcom has said they are now assessing the complaints made about the interview ‘but are yet to decide whether or not to investigate.’ Piers has since taken to Twitter to defend the tense conversation and called for Whately to be replaced as Care Minister. 

He said: ‘Apparently some people found my interview with Care Minister Helen Whately today “uncomfortable”. For perspective, it probably wasn’t quite as “uncomfortable” as what our under-protected NHS and carer frontline heroes are going through.’ 

The government’s death toll has previously been accused of ‘airbrushing out’ hundreds of elderly people who have died from coronavirus in the care system. 

Care England estimated that there had been nearly 1,000 deaths from coronavirus in homes, while Tory peer Baroness Altmann said residents who had been refused hospital treatment were being ‘abandoned like lambs to the slaughter’. 

Speaking during the daily press conference on Tuesday, medical director Professor Yvonne Doyle said collecting data about deaths in care homes is more ‘complicated’ than from hospitals. 

Chancellor Rishi Sunak also noted that there are ‘a couple of hundred NHS trusts providing data’ about the coronavirus crisis, compared to ‘tens of thousands of care homes’, who do not have systems already in place to send statistics on a regular basis. 

Source : https://metro.co.uk/2020/04/15/care-minister-laughs-asked-care-home-deaths-piers-morgan-12557976/

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