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Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, the Tory Cabinet minister was confronted on the Government’s delay in rolling out its coronavirus contact tracing system to further the easing of the lockdown measures. As it was revealed unemployment rose by 50,000 in the first three months of the year in the UK, Ms Coffey was grilled on the tracing scheme in order to help people return to work and take up new employment. BBC host Mishal Husain asked: “The contact traces have been recruited, so what’s the problem with putting a date on how soon you can have it all functional?”

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The Work and Pensions Secretary replied: “I think that the final elements of recruitment of people happened in the last few days and the Health Secretary, I’m sure, will be laying out more.

“But in terms of the app, I think it’s fair to say that we announced that we would get that out as soon as possible in the coming weeks.

“But it’s important on the app, that it is only one element of the tracing, is to make sure that we get it right. And it’s probably better to have that fully ready and that we’re confident that it’s fully ready rather than rush something out.”

To which Ms Husain blasted: “Yes, but it’s all overdue, isn’t it?

“It was all supposed to be ready by the middle of May.

“We’re beyond that point now.”

It comes as UK unemployment claims soared by more than 69 percent in April after the coronavirus lockdown gripped the labour market, official figures reveal.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said that jobless claims under Universal Credit surged by a record 856,000 to 2.1 million in April, compared with the previous month.

Official statisticians also said early estimates for April 2020 indicate that the number of paid employees fell by 1.6 percent compared with March, as firms began to feel a greater impact from the lockdown.

Job vacancies also significantly decreased, with the number of empty posts in the three months to April diving by 170,000 to 637,000, compared with the previous quarter.

The ONS also revealed that unemployment increased by 50,000 to 1.35 million in the three months to March, as the impact of the pandemic first started to be felt in the UK.

The rate of unemployment nudged marginally higher, to 3.9 percent, but remained markedly below economists’ predictions of 4.3 percent.

Meanwhile, the number of people in work increased by 210,000 to 33.14 million for the quarter to March.

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Jonathan Athow, deputy national statistician for economic statistics at the ONS, said: “While only covering the first weeks of restrictions, our figures show Covid-19 is having a major impact on the labour market.

“In March employment held up well, as furloughed workers still count as employed, but hours worked fell sharply in late March, especially in sectors such as hospitality and construction.

“Through April, though, there were signs of falling employment as real-time tax data show the number of employees on companies’ payrolls fell noticeably, and vacancies were sharply down too, with hospitality again falling steepest.”

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