LABOUR leader Sir Keir Starmer accused the Prime Minister today of “pretending there isn’t a problem” with the scandal-hit coronavirus testing regime.

During Prime Minister’s Questions, Sir Keir asked Boris Johnson why he had said on Tuesday that the test-and-trace scheme has “very little or nothing” to do with the spread of Covid-19, after previously hailing it as a game-changer and a “world-beating” system.

He added: “Both positions cannot be right — which one is it, Prime Minister?”

Mr Johnson said that “one of the great advantages” of the testing system is that it gives “granular detail where the epidemic is breaking out” and “exactly which groups are being infected.”

Sir Keir replied: “Pretending there isn’t a problem is part of the problem.”

He added that Mr Johnson was adopting a defence used by Dido Harding, head of the failing outsourced test-and-trace system, who had said that lack of testing capacity was due to an unexpected rise in demand.

Sir Keir continued: “That’s the Dido Harding defence — or is it ‘we’ve got all the capacity we need, it is just that people are being unreasonable in asking for tests’? That’s the (Matt) Hancock defence. So which is it?”

The PM replied: “I must say that the continual attacks by the Opposition on Dido Harding in particular are unseemly and unjustified.”

He vowed that the system would test “more people than any other European country … we’re going to go up to 500,000 tests by the end of October.”

Testing capacity is reported as being 350,000 a day. This includes 250,000 PCR swab tests and 100,000 antibody tests.

On the lack of testing in schools, Sir Keir pointed out that one in eight children had been off school this week, adding: “How on Earth did we get into this mess?”

Mr Johnson replied that the government was doing its “level best to get every child a test who has symptoms.”

The Labour leader accused him of being “out of touch” with the experiences of parents with school-age children for not acknowledging the stress of whole households having to self-isolate and children not being able to go to school due to a lack of tests.

He added: “The reality is losing control of testing is a major reason why the Prime Minister is losing control of this virus.”

The exchange came as the daily number of new coronavirus cases leapt to 6,178, more than a thousand more than Tuesday and only 23 short of the highest-ever number recorded, 6,201, on May 1.