AMID election campaigns launching and the ongoing coronavirus pandemic now is likely not the best time for any news site to be misleading its readers.

That's why we've decided to bring you something different on April Fool's Day 2021, with a list of seven claims from Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his Tory Cabinet since April 1 last year which are more far-fetched than anything we could have come up with.

For the current Westminster Government, making a fool of oneself is not simply reserved for a single day in spring, they've chosen to make it a defining characteristic of their "world-leading" reign in Downing Street.

Of course, we could have compiled this list based on Boris Johnson alone, but we thought we'd include some of his chums that have taken up the slack.

1. Test and Trace App

On June 23, 2020, Johnson said: "Yes of course it's perfectly true that it would be great to have an app, but no country currently has a functioning track and trace app."

He was replying to a question from Labour leader Keir Starmer in Westminster, who raised concerns about "the gaps in the current system [for tackling Covid-19], including the absence of an app".

At the time the Prime Minister made this statement, Germany, France, Australia, Poland, Singapore, Denmark, Japan and Italy were using track and trace apps.

2. Covid Tests

Matt Hancock - the UK's Health Secretary and a man who works very hard to get his mates PPE contracts despite their lack of experience - said this on November 2, 2020: "In April, on schedule, we delivered the target of 100,000 tests a day.”

While these tests were delivered to people, there were not 100,000 tests completed every day, as Hancock seemed to be suggesting. Tests that are sent out were included in the Public Health England figure that Hancock was using.

According to the fact-checking website Full Fact, “of the 122,347 tests that the Government has said were completed on April 30, 27,497 are home tests and 12,872 were sent out to satellite sites. This suggests that just 81,978 of the tests were actually processed”.

3. Child Poverty

On June 17, 2020, Starmer asked Johnson about a Social Mobility Commission conclusion that there are now "600,000 more children living in relative poverty".

Johnson replied: "He is completely wrong in what he says about poverty. Absolutely poverty and relative poverty have both declined under this government and there are hundreds of thousands – I think 400,000 – fewer families living in poverty now than there were in 2010."

The UK Government's own Social Mobility Commission defines poverty as where household income after housing costs is below 60% of the national median. Under this definition, the commission said the number of children living in poverty had risen by 600,000 since 2011.

Other fact-checking sources have not found any evidence for the PM's alternative figure.

4. Free School Meals

Manchester United footballer Marcus Rashford led a campaign to get Westminster to continue free school meals, for children who needed them, through the summer holidays. 

This was a very ugly time for the Tory Party and the campaign dominated news across the UK, but as the Government U-turned on a decision not to provide meals to hungry kids, Johnson said: "I talked to Marcus Rashford earlier today to congratulate him on his campaign, which to be honest I only became aware of very recently – well, today."

If this statement is true, it doesn't say much about Johnson's ability to keep up with current events.

5. Border Security

Michael Gove has been notably quiet since Brexit caused massive amounts of damage to Scottish and UK exports. It's odd because he loved to give a quote during the time when the Tories were rushing Brexit through parliament.

On security and intelligence, on October 19, 2020, Gove said: “There are many areas in which we can co-operate more effectively to safeguard our borders outside the European Union than we ever could inside. Through a variety of methods and arrangements open to us, open to Border Force and open to our security and intelligence services, we can intensify the security that we give to the British people.”

As a direct result of Brexit, the UK no longer benefits from the same real-time sensitive data-sharing agreements and it has automatically forfeited its membership of Europol, Eurojust and the European Arrest Warrant.

The UK has also lost access to the EU's Schengen Information System II (SIS II) database of alerts about wanted or missing people and items such as stolen firearms and vehicles.

6. Coronavirus Contracts

The Tory Government misled Westminster over Covid contracts by failing to publish details of many in the required time limit. It has also been found that many contracts were given to Tory Party donors and people Cabinet ministers knew personally (see Matt Hancock giving a PPE contract to a mate who ran his local pub).

A court order showed that 608 out of 708 relevant contracts for supplies and services relating to Covid-19 awarded on or before October 7, 2020.

It was found by a judge that the UK Government had acted unlawfully in not publishing contracts within a set period of time.

The month before, Johnson told MPs: "All I will say is that the contracts are there on the record for everybody to see.”

The record showed that they were not all there.

7. Care Home Staff Covid Tests

At PMQs on May 20, 2020, a time when people were worried about the coronavirus causing a disproportionate number of deaths in elderly care homes, Johnson told the Commons: "The reality is that already 125,000 care home staff have been tested, 118,000 – perhaps he didn’t know that Mr Speaker – 118,000 care home workers have been tested and we are absolutely confident that we will be able to increase our testing not just in care homes but across the whole of the community.”

The PM likes to use big numbers at PMQs, with varying levels of success and accuracy. On this point, his numbers are off and he has used are the number of tests given out while indicating that the number refers to the number of people tested. 

Firstly, these stats include staff in all care settings, not just elderly care homes. Secondly, the figure Johnson refers to was revealed to be 124,906 Covid tests carried out for care staff at that time and the Government's own testing methodology notes that "for clinical reasons, some people are tested more than once".