Disgraced Matt Hancock told lawyers he should be immune from court action over Covid blunders – just days before the WhatsApp scandal broke.
He said he should not carry the can for his department’s failure to safeguard care home residents simply because he was Secretary of State – and that it should be the whole Government instead.
And the Tory who happily lapped up publicity on I’m A Celeb moaned that lawyers pursuing him “were chasing tabloid headlines” in a talk over his book, Pandemic Diaries.
Mr Hancock has furiously denied claims that his leaked WhatsApp messages show he ignored Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty’s advice to test all people going into care homes.
His department’s policy of discharging untested patients into them from hospital was ruled unlawful by the High Court in April in a case brought by Dr Cathy Gardner, who lost her father.
The messages leaked to the Daily Telegraph this week by Isabel Oakeshott, the co-author of Mr Hancock’s memoir, show he thought committing to testing people coming into care homes from the community – including staff – didn’t “add anything” and “muddies the waters”.
Another High Court case, brought by campaign group the Good Law Project, ruled against him over the use of a “VIP lane” to hand PPE contracts to firms recommended by ministers and officials.
But despite losing both judicial reviews, neither Mr Hancock nor his department faced consequences.
And 12 days ago he told leading London legal firm Mishcon de Reya in an online question and answer session it was wrong that a Secretary of State of a department should be held legally responsible for failures and it should be “HMG” instead. Currently, the defendant in any judicial review against a Government department has to be the Secretary of State.
But Mr Hancock said: “I don’t think it’s an appropriate use of the courts to essentially go chasing tabloid headlines. You know, ‘Hancock broke the law’ – I didn’t break the law.”
In the Q&A, Mr Hancock also claimed to have “banned alcohol” in his department to stop his team being “more social”.
But leaked WhatsApps reveal then-aide Gina Coladangelo telling him there were drinks in the fridge to celebrate hitting his testing target in May 2020.
She wrote, adding a beer glasses emoji: “Drinks cold in fridge at DH. Feel free to open before we are back”.
A spokesperson for Mr Hancock confirmed he did not introduce a booze ban until the next January.
Mr Hancock also blasted criticism of the Tories’ bungled PPE procurement as “offensive” in the Q&A and justified writing off £12billion of PPE, most of it unusable, saying: “I’d rather save lives.”
Latest figures reveal the Government is still storing about 6.6 billion items of unused or unusable PPE in warehouses, costing £319,000 a day.
Footage of Mr Hancock kissing Ms Coladangelo – then his mistress but now his partner – eventually led to his resignation. And in latest leaked messages he tells a special adviser: “How the f*** did anyone photograph that?” Meanwhile, activist Gina Miller, leader of the True and Fair Party and who took the Government to court over Brexit, has written to Met Police Chief Sir Mark Rowley calling for Mr Hancock to be prosecuted.
She wrote: “The threshold has been met to investigate Mr Hancock for gross negligence manslaughter… a common law offence that carries a maximum of life imprisonment.”
Ex-Shadow Health Secretary Jonathan Ashworth, Mr Hancock’s opposite number in the pandemic, said: “We were pushing the Government to do more to protect care homes. They never put a protective ring around them.
"And that has now been exposed yet again.”
