THE PRIME Minister has been urged to get his “skates on” over testing and care home PPE provision ahead of a “looming winter crisis”.

Angela Rayner, Labour deputy leader, accused Boris Johnson of not prioritising the current Covid crisis during a fiery Prime Minister’s Questions.

She told Mr Johnson:” This winter, we are staring down the barrel of a second wave with no plan for the looming crisis.

“People can’t say goodbye to their loved ones, grandparents can’t see their grandchildren and frontline staff can’t get the tests that they need – and what was the top priority for the Covid war cabinet this weekend? Restoring grouse shooting.”

She added: “So Prime Minister, is this really your top priority?”

Mr Johnson replied that “while the Labour opposition has been consistently carping from the sidelines throughout this crisis” the Conservative Government are “getting on with delivering for the British public”.

He added: “It’s with the common sense of the British people that we will succeed, build back better and stronger than ever before.”

Ms Rayner also pulled the Prime Minister up on the backlog of coronavirus testing, which has seen thousands of people waiting for days to get a test of having to drive for hundreds of miles to a testing site.

She said: “Time and time again he makes promises then breaks those promises. In June he told this House ‘I can undertake now to get all tests turned in 24 hours by the end of June’.

“They’ve had six months to get this right and yet the Prime Minister still can’t deliver on his promises.

“The Health Secretary said yesterday it would take weeks to sort this situation out.

“We don’t have weeks.”

In reference to Dominic Cummings’s trip to Barnard Castle earlier this year, Ms Rayner added: “The next time a man drives from London to Durham it will probably be to get a Covid test.”

Ian Blackford, the SNP’s Westminster leader, quizzed Mr Johnson on an article he wrote while a journalist at the Daily Telegraph, in which he said “’devolution is causing all the strains that its opponents predicted and in allowing the Scots to make their own laws while free-riding on English taxpayers, it is simply unjust’.”

Mr Blackford said: “So let me ask the Prime Minister two specific questions that need two specific answers – Firstly, does he still think that devolution in Scotland is unjust? And secondly, where does he believe full spending and decision-making powers over our NHS, education, infrastructure, economic development, culture and sport, should be held? With Scotland’s parliament or with Westminster?”

Mr Johnson responded: “Obviously there is a very considerable, and there has been, a massive devolution of powers to Scotland and the Scottish people had the opportunity to vote for more in 2014, as he will recall in a once-in-a-generation event, and they chose decisively to reject that I recall and I think that he said it was a once-in-a-generation event as well.

“They now have the opportunity to vote to support the further devolution of powers in the UK Internal Market Bill and I hope that he will join us in the lobbies in support of that.”

Mr Blackford said he “never once said” the Independence would be a once in a generation event and urged the Prime Minister to withdraw his remarks.

Orkney MP Alistair Carmichael asked Mr Johnson to publish the legal guidance given to the government about the internal markets bill.

The Liberal Democrat said: “ Last week the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland said that the UK Internal Market Bill would breach our obligations under international law. Yesterday the Advocate General for Scotland said that the Secretary of State was wrong to say that.

“Today the Secretary of State says that the Advocate General was wrong to say that he was wrong. Now it’s of course possible that they are both right in saying that the other is wrong, but surely an important matter such as this requires clarity and for that reason will the Prime Minister now undertake to publish the advice he’s had from all his law officers so that the House can make an informed decision on the question of legality come Monday?”

Mr Johnson replied: “As he knows we don’t publish attorney generals’ advice, Government’s don’t normally publish such advice, but what I can certainly say is what I’ve said to (SNP Ian Blackford), of course this Bill is intended to uphold the economic, the political, territorial integrity of the UK and I believe it should be supported by every member of this House.”

Finishing the session, SNP MP Martyn Day asked what the Prime Minister planned to do to help the hundreds of thousands of WASPI women who will not receive compensation as result of yesterday’s court ruling on pensions.

Mr Johnson said he had to study the terms of the court’s ruling, and vowed to come back to him on the matter.