Addressing Johnson in the House of Commons on Wednesday, Starmer highlighted claims Johnson made last week, that absolute and relative child poverty has declined since 2012, have been proven “false” by the Children's Commissioner for England.

The opposition leader also took a swipe at the PM for stating in parliament that “there are 4,000 fewer families now living in poverty than there were in 2010,” adding that there was a “theme to these exchanges” at PMQs.

Johnson – refusing to acknowledge that his remarks may have misled the House, appeared to double down, insisting that there are “100,000 fewer children in absolute poverty” in the UK.

The PM also hit back at Starmer’s criticism over the delay of the UK’s contact-tracing app, with the centralized version now scrapped – after being trialed on the Isle of Wight – in favor of a decentralized model using Apple and Google’s technology.

Health Secretary Matt Hancock had promised that the NHS custom-made app would be ready in tandem with their manual track-and-trace program by mid-May.

Johnson challenged Starmer to name one country that had developed a properly functioning app. The Labour MP bluntly shot back: “Germany. 12 million downloads,” adding “I checked that overnight.”

Countries such as France, Australia, Singapore and Latvia are among those that have launched a coronavirus contact tracing app, although user uptake has been reasonably low in some of those nations.