Keir Starmer accuses Boris Johnson of wasting public money at PMQs

The Labour leader, Keir Starmer, has questioned Boris Johnson over the government's spending on public relations contracts, said to total about £130m in 2020. Johnson said the money was spent to raise awareness of the vaccine and enlist people to take part in trials for a potential vaccine. Starmer further questioned government spending, saying that millions had been spent on PPE that never reached frontline workers. Johnson said it had been necessary to work with providers, some of which 'were more effective than others'

The Guardian YouTube network:

[mollers]

Cannot believe this man is prime minister... it's embarrassing

[ellistarceansa]

Boris never seems to get off the back foot with Kier. Furthermore, as each PMQ passes, Boris seems to be increasingly rattled and frustrated. *Fascinating.*

[jackfortyfour]

Waste of money? He's a complete waste of space!

[roweproductions]

Boris should be a drift racer for the number of swerves he made there 😂

[peterleeson]

Starmer took him to the cleaners again, he is in a different class to Boris.

[jamma]

That's funny, Johnson accuses Starmer of hating the private sector in retaliation to pointing out that we shouldn't pay a company £130m which ends up delivering 0 useable face masks.

Also, it isn't just the private sector involved, like Johnson suggests. A lot of this effort is placed on the front-line NHS workers. There are publically funded researchers involved in the hunt for a vaccine, like Oxford's COVID-19 research. Most of the major breakthroughs in science in recent times (including the development of computers, modern advances in biology and chemistry, quantum mechanics, relativity which makes GPS possible, ...) have been made by publically funded scientists and researchers. It's just that most of our economy is run by the private sector, so obviously those will be the ones making the final products, which they profit from (indeed, after some trivial refinement following the more difficult blue-sky research). That doesn't mean that the public sector couldn't do more if it didn't have the funding.

[GravityBoy]

Why doesn't Starmer do real opposition and ask Boris for the false positive numbers?

[alessandrovilla]

The real question is what happened to that tracking and tracing app 😂😂😂

[utubebroadcaster]

Well done Boris on employing the entirety of your leader's Dominic Cummings' family in government roles. A big win for Nepotism!

[askwhytheyarenottellingyou]

Is that Johnson the former prime minister by any chance?

[remya]

130 million on PR. The terrible PR that made a public gaffe out of telling everyone their future was in 'cyber'. Did that really convince anyone in the entire world that they should change career path? 150 million for 0 face masks. The Tories are shockingly bad at choosing contractors, nepotism or not. Remember the ferry company with no ferries?

[inkanfung]

How can Boris just dodge the whole entire question???

[DeHyntonGaming]

What about the lovely looking livery on the jet that Boris got

[kayleacary]

Tax payers money is wasted everyday on the bonus the mp's get for sitting in a hall to argue and sling insults at each other.
Reduce their pay check to the same as what they offer for those on furlough, maybe they might have money left in the budget to actually get the country back on its feet again after covid!

[MsCharlie]

Boris you belong on the stage... Comedy.. Another trump

[ViolinStimme]

Boris and Donald are both great actors!

[MrLawSayer]

And its the Private sector that is gaining from this chaos

[mattpjsmith]

How much tax payers money has been spent on the new COVID industry so far?

[davidsweeney]

£150m for none, did they get away with it?

[surprisealabi]

What is annoying about this parliament is the “ yeh” everyone just say 🤦🏾‍♂️