Priti Patel had a rough ride during this morning’s Home Affairs Committee appearance. Facing off against Labour’s Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary was repeatedly challenged over her potential involvement in the use of dormitories for asylum seekers throughout the migrant crisis – despite Public Health England (PHE) advising back in September 2020 that such dormitories weren’t Covid compliant, and “[not] good from a COVID or any type of infection prevention and control perspective.” Patel insisted to Cooper she didn’t see that email…

In the fiery altercation above, the pair repeatedly traded blows over Patel’s handling of the crisis, with Cooper saying:

“The answers that you have given to Diana Johnson implied that you did not know what the PHE advice was… You had an outbreak of 200 cases in dormitory accommodation and anybody across the country could tell you that putting people into dormitories in the middle of a pandemic was going to be a risk.”

Patel responded with:

“Obviously I did not see emails that went to officials, and I can only make decisions based on the advice that comes to me…and the advice that came to me was based on the guidelines or the approach that we should be taking in terms of stepping up our facilities…”

The Tories clearly aren’t happy. One source crunched the numbers and found out of 104 minutes of questioning, Labour and the SNP were given 65% of them. Guido’s Tory source accuses Cooper “and her merry band of left wing click bait merchants” of spending “an hour trying to get clips for social media.”