Mr Harper blasted the Labour party for spending too much of taxpayers’ money, implying the party thinks that “taxpayers’ money is a bottomless pit”. This comes as the Government is set to end the provision of free lateral flow tests on April 1, which costs the UK £2bn per month. Labour leader Keir Starmer criticised the plans, saying it is “not a responsible approach”.
He said: “We can’t turn off Britain’s radar before the war is won.
“‘Ignorance is bliss’ is not a responsible approach to a deadly virus.
“It actually risks undoing all the hard-won progress the British people have achieved over the last two years.”
But Mr Harper said that the UK Government should be spending their money on “other things”, rather than “testing millions of asymptomatic people”.
Speaking at the British Politics after Brexit 2022 Conference, he hit out at the Labour Party saying: “Every time we have a debate in parliament about anything, Labour’s approach is still ‘spend loads of money’.
“On Covid, we made a choice on testing – you can’t keep spending £2billion per month on testing millions of asymptomatic people when you have fantastic protections with vaccines and anti-virals.
“You just can’t keep spending that money.
“There are other things to spend it on: fixing the elective surgery backlog, improving opportunities for people.
“But Labour’s approach was ‘let’s keep doing testing’.
“And I just think, you’ve got to make some choices about where you spend the money.
“For me, I want to spend the money on improving opportunities for people, giving people better opportunities to reach their potential and those are the choices we’re going to have to set out at the next election.
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But Dr Lawrence Young, a Professor at Warwick Medical School, described the changes as “a real concern”.
He told Express.co.uk: “That’s a real concern actually.
“Again, it’s the messaging of all this really, because it suggests that somehow this is all over and done with.
“And I think people will have a false sense of security and be letting their guard down at a time when we should remain cautious because we know that we are going to be faced with other variants.
“We can’t return to a pre-pandemic world where we pretend that covid doesn’t exist. It does.
“It will continue to mutate and change and we will inevitably be faced with other variants.
“This is all about the need to adapt and part of it, particularly for symptomatic people, is having access to free testing.”
