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Nick Robinson says sorry for wrongly claiming No 10 cleaner died of Covid

By Sam Greenhill Chief Reporter

NICK Robinson has apologised after wrongly claiming a government cleaner died of Covid after being surrounded by partying Downing Street staff.

Grilling a minister on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme yesterday, Mr Robinson claimed Emanuel Gomes had been ‘instructed to keep coming into work during lockdown, had contracted Covid and had died’.

The presenter said Mr Gomes had been ordered to work in Downing Street, where he was ‘surrounded by people who were routinely breaking the rules’.

But Mr Gomes, who was originally from Guinea, was actually a cleaner at the Ministry of Justice.

And while colleagues had raised concerns Mr Gomes had been suffering Covidlike symptoms in the lead up to his death in April 2020, an official coroner’s report recorded it as hypertension of the heart.

The experienced journalist has now apologised on Twitter, describing his choice of wording while interviewing Boris Johnson’s chief of staff Steve Barclay as a ‘mistake’.

It comes amid concerns, raised in Sue Gray’s report, about how Downing Street employees treated support staff such as cleaners during the period of Partygate.

A Whitehall source said: ‘It is a total humiliation for Nick and just the sort of cheap and nasty, over-dramatic journalism that has ruined the Today programme.’ No 10 said the Today programme would issue an on-air correction.

RISHI’S £21BN SPLURGE

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