BORIS Johnson’s Government is lining up officials to take the blame for failings in the UK’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, it has emerged.

The revelation came amid reports of strained relations between the Prime Minister and the head of the UK civil service, Sir Mark Sedwill, after Johnson’s speech last week and the unveiling of a new “Stay Alert” slogan.

The moves which included controversial plans to reopen schools to some pupils in England from next month and a message to people south of the Border to return to work if they couldn’t work from home left people bewildered.

During a Downing Street meeting in the days after the speech the Prime Minister was said to have asked Sedwill, “Who is in charge of implementing this delivery plan? Is it you?”

To which Sedwill replied: “No, I think it’s you Prime Minister”, according to a report in the Sunday Times at the weekend.

The paper quoted a government aide suggesting ministers were “not such fans of Sedwill”.

The UK currently has the second highest death toll in the world from Covid-19 with 34,796 lives lost to the virus. A total of 89,562 people have died in the United States, which has the largest global death toll.

As the number of fatalities in the UK exceeded any other European country last week, a slide showing an international comparison of deaths in connection to the coronavirus was dropped from the daily Downing Street press conference.

The report in the Sunday Times at the weekend said there was a fear on the civil service side that Johnson’s circle were lining up “fall guys” ahead of a public inquiry into the handling of the crisis.

“There is frustration that they are not sure how to deliver this plan,” a Whitehall source told the paper. “They think it’s a mess.”

Speaking at the daily briefing on the pandemic, Nicola Sturgeon rebuked politicians considering shifting the blame onto civil servants and officials.

The First Minister came to the defence of her national clinical director, Jason Leitch, when asked about criticism by politicians directed against him, saying he was doing “a very good job”.

“If anyone has criticisms to make they should make them of the elected politicians because we firstly are accountable, and are in a better position if we find those criticisms unfair or not well founded, we can answer back.

“Officials and clinicians, remember, work for the government of the day,” she said.

“I think there is something really invidious about a politician in particular attacking a clinical director or official who is there to offer advice.

“Politicians decide and we should be subjected to scrutiny and, where it’s justified, we should be subjected to criticism.

“I never have, and never will have any issue with that. But I do have an issue with people subjecting officials to unfair criticism of that nature.

“Jason Leitch in my view does a very good job. He has done an incredibly important job in communicating messages to the public.”

Allan Sampson, national officer for the FDA for Scotland and Northern Ireland, welcomed the First Minister’s remarks.

“Welcome comments from FM Nicola Sturgeon today regarding recent press criticism of civil servants,” he tweeted.

“Any criticism should be directed towards politicians who are accountable for decision-making and able to respond. Attacks on officials and clinicians are unacceptable,” he wrote.

Last week the Independent Sage group of scientific and medical experts criticised the Government’s handling of the epidemic and called for an expansion of public health capacity to identify, isolate, test and treat all cases. It hit out at the decision to abandon community testing and tracing on March 12, limiting it to hospitals. Downing Street has been asked for comment.