Matt Hancock plotted to try and oust Sir Simon Stevens, a longtime thorn in the government’s side, from his role as the head of the NHS in England, the former health secretary’s leaked messages reveal.
Hancock conspired with Dominic Cummings, the chief adviser to then prime minister Boris Johnson, to remove Stevens before the Covid-19 pandemic was declared in March 2020.
But his determination to force Stevens out appears to have been strengthened by a series of subsequent clashes over how to tackle the virus and the introduction of the first Covid vaccine in late 2020.
The latest batch of Hancock’s WhatsApp and text messages, disclosed in the Sunday Telegraph, show that he also sought to have Sir Jeremy Farrar – who will become chief scientist at the World Health Organization in April – removed as a member of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage). The scientist had criticised the government’s handling of Covid.
On Stevens, Cummings messaged Hancock on 21 January 2020 to ask: “Where are we with SS?” The health secretary replied: “It’s in train. I am first getting [NHS England board member and ex-Labour health minister] Ara Darzi to persuade him it’s in his best interests to go now. If that doesn’t work I’ll move directly.”
Two weeks later Cummings suggested to Hancock: “We must get on with it now. Announce next week as part of reshuffle frenzy and it will all get lost in that.”
The messages do not reveal why the minister and No 10 adviser wanted Stevens out. However, the NHS chief – a former Labour councillor who advised Tony Blair on health in the early 2000s – had irritated a succession of Conservative ministers since taking over the post in 2014 with his outspoken criticisms on their handling of the health service, especially its funding.
The Covid lockdown intensified existing tensions. The messages also show that Hancock’s special adviser Allan Nixon warned his boss that “you look like you’re losing grip in front of No 10” when he became visibly angry at Stevens in a Downing Street meeting.
The health secretary replied: “It’s OK – he needs to know he is massively fucking up.”
Stevens also incurred Hancock’s ire in May 2020 by not warning him of plans to announce that dental surgeries would be able to reopen to patients the month after. Johnson told Hancock that the NHS boss “grovelled” to him because ministers had hoped to make the announcement themselves.
Early December 2020 brought another clash. Stevens was angered by media reports that “millions” of people would receive a Covid jab before Christmas. In a message to a WhatsApp group that included Hancock and senior officials, Stevens said: “There is no version of reality whereby ‘several million people will receive the vaccine before Christmas’ so whoever briefed that might want to urgently undertake some course correction before that inevitably becomes clear.”
When Stevens announced in April 2021 that he was quitting after seven years in the post and left that summer, Hancock praised him for being “a steadfast and sage leader for our National Health Service, and that had been especially true during this most testing period in NHS history”. He also lauded Stevens’s “formidable contribution” to the running of the NHS. Stevens became a life peer in summer 2021 and sits as a crossbencher.
Hancock branded Farrar as “worse than useless” and “a complete loudmouth” after a series of disagreements over government Covid policy. Farrar was a world-renowned expert on infectious diseases and the director of the Wellcome Trust medical research charity as well as a member of Sage. He lambasted the government’s abolition of Public Health England (PHE) and the appointment of Tory peer Dido Harding as the head of the widely criticised Test and Trace programme.
Farrar tweeted in August 2020 that axing PHE involved “arbitrary sackings. Passing of blame. Ill thought through short term, reactive reforms ... Preempting inevitable public enquiry.” That prompted Hancock and Lord Bethell, a health minister, to see if the scientist could be removed from Sage.
Hancock also told Chris Wormald, the permanent secretary at the Department of Health and Social Care: “We have to do something about Farrar. Can we fire him? This is completely unacceptable.”
Farrar recently left Wellcome to assume his new role at the WHO.
Hancock’s messages also show that he accused his fellow cabinet member Michael Gove of making “a play for my job” when the then chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster told the Times that the NHS would cut treatment waiting times, despite Covid having heaped extra pressure on it.
Hancock told Damon Poole, his media special adviser, that he was “not at all happy” with Gove, with whom he was otherwise very friendly, the messages show.
