Matt Hancock is facing a series of claims based on a leaked cache of more than 100,000 WhatsApp messages that provide an insight into the way the UK government operated at the height of the pandemic.
They include the suggestion that, while health secretary, he rejected advice from England’s chief medical officer, Prof Sir Chris Whitty, to test everyone going into care homes in England for Covid-19.
Hancock vehemently denies overruling clinical advice. A spokesperson called the claim “categorically untrue”.
What is the key claim?
Whitty told Hancock in April 2020 there should be testing for “all going into care homes”, according to the messages.
On 14 April 2020, Hancock told aides Whitty had conducted an “evidence review” and recommended “testing of all going into care homes, and segregation whilst awaiting result”.
Hancock said the advice represented a “good positive step” and that “we must put into the doc”, to which an aide responded that he had sent the request “to action”.
The message came a day before the publication of Covid-19: Our Action Plan for Adult Social Care, a government document outlining plans to keep the care sector functioning during the pandemic.
But the exchanges from 14 April suggest Hancock ultimately rejected the guidance, telling an aide the move just “muddies the waters”, and introduced mandatory testing only for those coming from hospitals rather than the community.
Hancock said he would rather “leave out” a commitment to test everyone entering care homes from the community and “just commit to test & isolate ALL going into care from hospital”.
“I do not think the community commitment adds anything and it muddies the waters,” he said.
How has Hancock responded?
The claim he rejected clinical advice on care home testing was “flat wrong”, a spokesperson said, because Hancock was told it was “not currently possible” to carry out the tests.
The spokesperson said the U-turn followed an operational meeting in which Hancock was advised it was not possible to test everyone entering care homes.
“These stolen messages have been doctored to create a false story that Matt rejected clinical advice on care home testing,” the spokesperson said. “This is flat wrong.”
Hancock “enthusiastically accepted” the advice from Whitty, the spokesperson said, but “later that day he convened an operational meeting on delivering testing for care homes where he was advised it was not currently possible to test everyone entering care homes, which he also accepted”.
“Matt concluded that the testing of people leaving hospital for care homes should be prioritised because of the higher risks of transmission, as it wasn’t possible to mandate everyone going into care homes got tested.”
Guidance stating that tests should be carried out for everyone entering care homes was not introduced until 14 August 2020. Thousands of people in care homes in England died from Covid between April and August 2020.
Hancock has previously claimed he put a “protective ring around care homes” from the start of the pandemic.
What other claims have been made?
Other WhatsApp messages show that in September 2020, when there was a huge backlog in testing, one of Hancock’s advisers helped get a test sent to Jacob Rees-Mogg’s home.
The aide messaged Hancock to say the lab had “lost” the original test for one of the then Commons leader’s children, “so we’ve got a courier going to their family home tonight”.
He added: “Jacob’s spad [special adviser] is aware and has helped line it all up, but you might want to text Jacob.”
Messages also revealed that the then prime minister, Boris Johnson, was told it was “not worth an argument” with Nicola Sturgeon over the issue of face masks in schools.
Johnson went ahead with the policy in August 2020 despite Whitty saying there were “no very strong reasons” to do so.
Secondary school pupils in England were required to wear face masks in corridors and communal areas until the policy was lifted 16 months later.
The messages also show that the government knew there was no “robust rationale” for including children in the “rule of six” but backed the policy anyway. The rule limited the number of people who could gather in one place and was criticised by the children’s commissioner at the time.
Meanwhile, the prime minister was told by the government’s most senior scientific advisers that shielding measures were not “very effective”.
Patrick Vallance, the chief scientific adviser, sent a message in August 2020 that said that shielding implementation, requiring people who were clinically “extremely vulnerable” to isolate, had not been “easy or very effective”.
The WhatsApp messages also show Hancock texted his ex-boss George Osborne, the former chancellor who was then editing the Evening Standard, to “call in a favour”.
As he battled to meet his own target of 100,000 Covid tests a day, Hancock told Osborne he had thousands of spare testing slots which is “obvs good news about spread of virus” but “hard for my target” and asked for front-page coverage.
Osborne responded: “Yes – of course – all you need to do tomorrow is give some exclusive words to the Standard and I’ll tell the team to splash it.”
Hancock later added: “I WANT TO HIT MY TARGET!”
Hancock’s WhatsApp groups had names such as “Top Teams”, “Covid-19 senior group” and “crisis management” – the name of a group created to deal with the fallout from his relationship with his aide, Gina Coladangelo.
How have the WhatsApp messages emerged?
The Daily Telegraph obtained more than 100,000 messages sent between Hancock and other ministers and officials at the height of the pandemic.
The messages were passed to the newspaper by the journalist Isabel Oakeshott, who has been critical of lockdowns. Oakeshott was given copies of the texts while helping Hancock write his own book, Pandemic Diaries.
Hancock’s spokesperson said the messages had been “spun to fit an anti-lockdown agenda”.
How has Isabel Oakeshott responded?
Oakeshott, who has described lockdowns as an “unmitigated disaster”, said she was releasing the messages because it would take “many years” before the end of the official Covid inquiry, which she claimed could be a “colossal whitewash”.
“That’s why I’ve decided to release this sensational cache of private communications – because we absolutely cannot wait any longer for answers,” she said.
