Covid households demand Matt Hancock inform reality as he faces reckoning over ‘lies’

Families who misplaced family members through the pandemic are demanding Matt Hancock come clear about his errors as we speak.

The former Health Secretary shall be grilled beneath oath about his actions as he seems on the Covid Inquiry this morning. Mr Hancock has been accused of repeatedly failing to inform the reality to ministers and officers through the disaster.

The former Tory MP now sits as an unbiased after shedding the get together whip for showing on ITV’s I’m A Celebrity. Ahead of his look, the Covid 19 Families for Justice group has stated they should be informed the reality about what occurred.

Nicola Brook, a solicitor at Broudie Jackson Canter who’s representing the group, stated: “As the guardian of the nation’s health throughout much of the pandemic, Matt Hancock’s testimony is critical to the inquiry. Many of our bereaved clients hold him directly responsible for the significant and wholly disproportionate loss of life in our country and rightly, demand answers.

“There’s been a common theme running throughout the evidence heard to date about the reliability of Mr Hancock’s word, with multiple witnesses giving evidence that they could not rely on what he said.

“Our clients have waited a long time to hear the former health secretary answer for the catalogue of errors made during the pandemic which had the gravest of consequences for so many, and will be looking for candour, not counterclaims. This is the very least that they deserve.”

During the pandemic, Mr Hancock claimed a “protective ring” had been thrown round care houses. He resigned in June 2021 after CCTV footage emerged of him breaching social distancing steerage by kissing his colleague Gina Coladangelo.

A spokesman for Mr Hancock stated: “Mr Hancock has supported the inquiry throughout and will respond to all questions when he gives his evidence.”

‘Habit of claiming issues’ that weren’t true

Chief Scientific Adviser Sir Patrick Vallance caught the boot into the previous Health Secretary as he appeared on the Inquiry final week. The prime scientist stated: “I think he had a habit of saying things which he didn’t have a basis for and he would say them too enthusiastically, too early, without the evidence to back them up, and then have to backtrack from them days later.

“I do not know to what extent that was type of over-enthusiasm versus deliberate – I feel a number of it was over-enthusiasm. He undoubtedly stated issues which shocked me as a result of I knew that the proof base wasn’t there.” When asked if this meant he “stated issues that weren’t true”, Sir Patrick answered “sure”.

‘Nuclear ranges’ of overconfidence

Helen MacNamara, the previous Deputy Cabinet Secretary, accused Mr Hancock of displaying “nuclear ranges” of overconfidence.

Giving evidence earlier this month, she recalled an occasion early in the pandemic when she asked how the then Health Secretary faring and he told her he was “loving responsibility”. “To demonstrate this [he] took up a batsman’s stance outside the Cabinet Room and said ‘they bowl them at me, I knock them away’,” she added.

Sack Hancock to ‘save lives’

The country’s top civil servant wrote in WhatsApp messages during the pandemic that Mr Hancock should be sacked “to save lots of lives and the NHS “. Lord Sedwill, who was Cabinet Secretary until September 2020, told the Inquiry earlier this month that he had urged Mr Johnson to remove him as Health Secretary.

He accused Mr Hancock of lacking “truthfulness”, saying that officials had to double check claims he made in meetings. In messages shown to the Inquiry, Lord Sedwill wrote that it was necessary to remove Mr Hancock to “save lives and protect the NHS”. At a hearing earlier this month, the former civil servant said this was “gallows humour”.

Other messages included one in which he wrote that Mr Hancock was “so far up BJ’s [Johnson’s] arse his ankles are brown”.

‘Killing God knows how many’

Dominic Cummings claimed Mr Hancock was responsible for “killing God knows how many” people by failing to protect those in care homes. In explosive WhatsApp messages to Boris Johnson, the former top aide demanded the Tory minister was sacked as Health Secretary.

Mr Cummings warned that he was a “proven liar” who should not be in charge of the NHS. The Covid Inquiry has published a series of messages in which concerns were raised about the failure to introduce testing to stop the virus getting into care homes.

On May 7, 2020 Mr Cummings told the PM: “Hancock is unfit for this job. The incompetence, the constant lies, the obsession with media bulls*** over doing his job. Still no f***ing serious testing in care homes, his uselessness is still killing God knows how many.”

In another WhatsApp exchange in the same month, Mr Cummings told Mr Johnson: “You have to assume via timing of binning Hancock. There’s no method the man can keep. He’s lied his method via this and killed individuals.”

In summer season 2020, the senior No10 aide stepped up his requires a reshuffle. In a message in August, he informed Mr Johnson that his Cabinet ministers had been “useless f***pigs”, who had been appearing “feral”. Referring to Mr Hancock, he added: “I also must stress I think leaving Hancock in post is a big mistake – he is a proven liar who nobody believes or shd [sic] believe on anything, and we face going into autumn crisis with the c*** in charge of NHS still.”

‘Sowed chaos’ with mistaken recommendation

As he appeared on the Covid Inquiry earlier this month, Mr Cummings additionally argued that Mr Hancock “sowed chaos” by persevering with to inform the general public in March 2020 that individuals with out signs of a dry cough and a temperature had been unlikely to be affected by coronavirus.

He added: “He was repeatedly informed by [Chief Scientific Adviser Sir] Patrick Vallance that what he was saying was mistaken. But he stored saying it. “So this false meme lodged itself in crucial people’s minds. I don’t understand, never understood why Hancock said this. But Patrick Vallance made extremely clear to me and to others in No 10 that what Hancock was saying was factually wrong.”