Messages from Matt Hancock’s WhatsApp account have been leaked to The Telegraph, with over 100,000 messages being passed to the paper.
These messages have become available via the journalist Isabel Oakeshott, who obtained them whilst helping Hancock write his book, The Pandemic Diaries.
She has broken a non-disclosure agreement by making them public, stating that the messages are “in the public interest.”
One message from a civil servant read that there was a need to prioritise testing for asymptomatic staff and residents in care homes which had been affected by Covid cases in the last two weeks.
Hancock was agreeable as “long as it does not get in the way of actually fulfilling the capacity in testing.”
Professor Chris Whitty, Chief Medical Advisor, recommended testing all patients coming into care homes, but Hancock just wanted to test patients entering from hospital, not from the community as well.
Between March 2020 and January 2022, the Office for National Statistics stated there were 43,256 deaths involving care homes in England.
Messages from Helen Whately, the former social care minister, said that not allowing husbands and wives to visit each other in care homes was “inhumane,” as Covid restrictions limited visits to care homes.
Upon former Education Secretary Gavin Williamson’s decision to postpone A-Level results day in 2020, Mr Hancock sent a WhatsApp congratulating him over this decision.
The leaked messages also saw Hancock stating that teaching unions are “a bunch of absolute arses,” to which Williamson replied that they “really really do just hate work”.
Williamson clarified via Twitter on Wednesday evening that these messages were about the unions not teachers stating that “during the pandemic, teachers went above and beyond during very challenging times and very much continue to do so.”
In a statement by Hancock on March 2 said that the leaked messages were a “massive betrayal and breach of trust” as well as apologising to individuals who worked with him during the pandemic.
A spokesperson for Hancock has said that the messages “have been doctored to create a false story.”
The spokesperson also highlighted that Hancock had prioritised residents arriving from care homes due to the increased risk of them having Covid as well as being able to mandate those in care homes to be tested.
“File:Official portrait of Rt Hon Matt Hancock MP crop 2.jpg” by Richard Townshend is licensed under CC BY 3.0