Tom Swarbick calls Dominic Raab's figures mistake "outrageous"
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This Morning presenters Rochelle Humes and Vernon Kay were joined by Julia Hartley-Brewer and Tom Swarbrick to discuss the day’s headlines. Their first topic was the mistake in which Dominic Raab made, giving three different figures on how many people were in the hospital with the Omicron variant during appearances on Tuesday’s breakfast TV. Appalled by his inaccuracy, Tom and Rochelle branded his mistake “outrageous” and thought he should be held accountable for his mistake.
During the discussion, Vernon asked Tom: “We talked about this earlier on, is this a case for Boris of what if, what if we didn’t have the booster roll out.
“What if we didn’t really push the NHS to its limits and get it rolled out if Omicron is as bad as we say it is, not the doctor that we spoke to earlier?”
Tom explained: “Completely, I feel I have some sympathy with that, I think we should cut the NHS some slack.
“They have had 24 hours notice to get this thing ramped up to the speed that the Government want it to be ramped up to.
“They have queues snaking around hospitals, so I think let’s cut them some slack, and I feel a little sympathetic in that if the Government was told there is a crisis coming over the hill, on what basis would the Government say, ‘Nah, we’ll just ignore that and carry on as normal’.
“I understand the need for caution, but where the Government need to improve and very quickly is in the presentation of information about Omicron.
“Particularly, the Deputy Prime Minister was on the television this morning suggesting that 250 people were in hospital with Omicron in this country.
“The real number is nine, how the Deputy Prime Minister does not have that information…” Tom continued but Vernon interrupted and said: “Sorry, Tom, Tom, Tom.
“That’s a massive difference, huge,” Vernon added to which Tom agreed and continued: “It’s the difference between being able to spend Christmas with your family or the NHS collapsing.
“The fact there is a senior member of Government who doesn’t have that figure on the tip of their tongue this morning is outrageous.”
Rochelle agreed it was “outrageous” as Julia also said: “I asked Dominic Raab about that this morning, he was on my radio show, and I said, you know 250, nine or 10.
“Again, was the 10th person the one who had died yesterday, but we don’t know, and I totally agree with Tom on the data.
“We hear one person has died from Omicron yesterday, is that someone who was 97 who was in hospital for weeks on end?
“Or was it a healthy 25-year old who died five days after getting it? We don’t know, and it’s really important if we are going to make massive decisions about our freedom in this country.
“It’s important we have the correct date, and we don’t have scaremongering,” Julia concluded.
This morning, Dominic Raab joined Kay Burley on Sky News and told her that the infection rate and the number of people who were in the hospital with Omicron was 250.
He then joined BBC Breakfast presenters Dan Walker and Sally Nugent and told them the figure was nine, a significant drop in numbers.
Later in the episode, Sally was forced to correct Mr Raab’s mistake and told the viewers the correct figure, leaving the viewers furious with the error.
As he then joined Good Morning Britain hosts Adil Ray and Ranvir Singh, Ray slammed his mistakes and asked him to clarify one last time.
Raab admitted the number was, in fact, 10, to which Ray said: “Right, so you have given three different numbers!”
This Morning airs weekdays from 9am on ITV.
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