BORIS Johnson has been accused putting care home residents at risk and acting "too slowly" to protect them from coronavirus.

Sir Keir Starmer, Leader of the Opposition, grilled the Prime Minister in the House of commons over his own government's advice which previously stated the risk to care home residents was low.

During Prime Minister's questions, Sir Keir said: "On Sunday, the Prime Minister said that we need to rapidly reverse the awful epidemic in our care homes. But earlier this year, and until the 12th of March, the government's own official advice was, and I'm quoting from it, 'It remains very unlikely that people receiving care in a care home will become infected.

"Yesterday's figures show that at least 40% of all deaths from Covid-19 were in care homes. Does the Prime Minister accept that the government was too slow to protect people in care homes?"

Mr Johnson disputed the advice, saying that lockdown measures were introduced in care homes earlier than elsewhere and added: "It wasn't true that the advice said that actually, we brought the lockdown in care homes ahead of a general lockdown. And what we've seen is a concerted action plan to tackle what has unquestionably been an appalling epidemic in care homes and a huge exercise in testing is going on. "

He said that he announced an extra £600m for infection control in care homes today, and acknowledged that the "number of casualties has been too high".

The Prime Minister added: "There is much more to do, but we are making progress."

Mr Starmer then challenged Mr Johnson to explain why there had been an excess of 10,000 deaths for this time of year of care home residents which had not been attributed to coronavirus, and what the cause of these additional deaths was if it was to due to the virus.

Mr Johnson was unable to explain the excess deaths, but replied there had been "an appreciable and substantial reduction, not just in the number of outbreaks, but also in the number of deaths" in care homes.

SNP Westminster leader Ian Blackford accused the Prime Minister of "a total disregard" for workers' safety by telling English residents to return to work if they cannot work from home, and blasted his announcement of the lockdown easing measures on Sunday.

He said: "The Prime Minister has made confusion costly, devolved administrations shut out, widespread confusion amongst the public, and a total disregard from this government for worker's safety."

He challenged him to agree that the public message in Scotland was still to 'Stay at Home' as opposed to his own 'Stay Alert' message, to which Mr Johnson replied: "The message throughout the country is of course, that you should stay at home if you can, unless the specific circumstances that we've outlined apply. But I don't accept the characterisation of the cooperation that we've had across all four nations that the leader of the SNP makes."

SNP MP David Linden also urged the PM to "trigger a full, urgent review" into the support being given to asylum seekers by the Home Office, citing cases in Glasgow where asylum seekers have been moved into hotels where "social distancing is harder to enforce".

Mr Johnson did not agree to such a review but did promise to contact Mr Linden directly.