Grant Shapps’s 89 year-old father is in a Covid ward in hospital, he revealed on Good Morning Britain this morning. While Coronavirus wasn’t the reason he went into hospital, his father did pick it up once there. The Transport Secretary has not been able to visit his dad for two months. Shapps went on to say that his family had been communicating via WhatsApp, though this had not been possible within the last couple of days.

Describing the situation as “very difficult”, but “nothing special… sadly” as many families are in the same circumstances, he explained the weight on his mind as pandemic decisions are being made. The good news is that yesterday Shapps’s father was transferred from a larger Covid ward to a slightly smaller one, thanks to hospitalisation numbers starting to fall. Our best wishes go to the Shapps family…