SIR KEIR STARMER accused Boris Johnson today of repeatedly failing to apologise for his comments on care homes and for denying that botched government policies led to coronavirus-linked deaths of some residents.

During Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQs), the Labour leader took the PM to task over comments in which he appeared to blame care homes for the number of deaths linked to Covid-19.

More than 19,000 care home residents have died from the coronavirus – a number that Sir Keir said was “chilling.”

He also said that “huge mistakes” had been made by government, including the decision to discharge 25,000 people from hospitals to care homes without testing them for the coronavirus.

Asked on Monday why care-home deaths had been so high, Mr Johnson had said “too many care homes didn’t really follow the procedures in the way that they could have.”

Sir Keir said: “That has caused huge offence to frontline care workers. It has now been 48 hours. Will the Prime Minister apologise to care workers?”

Mr Johnson replied: “The last thing I wanted to do is to blame care workers for what has happened or for any of them to think that I was blaming them because they’ve worked hard, incredibly hard, throughout this crisis, looking after some of the most vulnerable people in our country and doing an outstanding job.

“And as he knows, tragically, 257 of them have lost their lives.

“And when it comes to taking blame, I take full responsibility for what has happened.”

Sir Keir said his answer was “not an apology and it just won’t wash.”

He added that the PM “must understand just how raw this is for many people on the front line and for those who have lost loved ones,” and again urged Mr Johnson to apologise.

Mr Johnson responded that the understanding of the disease had “changed dramatically.”

The PM said: “He keeps saying that I blamed or try to blame care workers and that is simply not the case. The reality is that we now know things about the way coronavirus is passed from person to person without symptoms that we just didn’t know.”

He added: “Perhaps Captain Hindsight would like to tell us whether he knew that it was being transmitted asymptomatically.”

Sir Keir said that the PM’s refusal to apologise “rubs salt into the wounds of the very people that he stood at his front door and clapped [for].”