The journalist who sensationally leaked Matt Hancock’s messages seemingly fell out with the ex-Health Secretary after his I’m a Celebrity appearance.
The MP for West Suffolk travelled to Australia in November in the ITV show, for which he was paid £320,000.
But Isabel Oakeshott, who worked on Mr Hancock’s Pandemic Diaries book, said ‘he didn’t tell me he was going’. She said he ‘vanished to the jungle at a critical moment in very difficult dealings with the Cabinet Office’.
She subsequently handed The Telegraph a tranche of 100,000 texts, which she has described as a ‘cache of very raw communications’.
Mr Hancock has since described her actions as a ‘massive betrayal’ used to produce ‘a partial, biased account to suit an anti-lockdown agenda’.
The MP for West Suffolk travelled to Australia in November in the ITV show, for which he was paid £320,000, at a ‘critical moment’ when the pair were working on his book Pandemic Diaries, Isabel Oakeshott (pictured this morning on BBC Breakfast) said
Mr Hancock (pictured leaving the jungle in third place) has described her actions as a ‘massive betrayal’ used to produce ‘a partial, biased account to suit an anti-lockdown agenda’
Ms Oakeshott told The Guardian she didn’t consider working on the pandemic project — which The Telegraph has called the Lockdown Files — until after Mr Hancock’s book was published in December, a fortnight after the ITV show wrapped up.
She said: ‘That process had been utterly all-consuming, especially since he vanished to the jungle at a critical moment in very difficult dealings with the Cabinet Office.
‘He didn’t tell me he was going.’
In an article in The Telegraph on Tuesday defending her decision to share Mr Hancock’s messages, Ms Oakeshott said that the book left out ‘all sorts of interesting WhatsApp messages’ to spare Mr Hancock’s and others ‘blushes’ or because of space constraints.
But ‘even more sensitive material was removed from the manuscript at the eleventh hour under pressure from the Cabinet Office’, she said.
Government officials went through the book ‘line by line’ in a ‘painstaking process’ that led to almost ‘300 requests for deletions and amends on various grounds’, including concerns about diplomatic relations and national security, according to Ms Oakeshott.
Appearing on BBC Breakfast this morning, she hit out at the MP again and accused him of ‘disappearing to the jungle’ at a critical time when writing the book.
She said: ‘I’ve been really clear that I’m not going to get into any kind of slanging match with Matt Hancock.
‘There’s plenty that I could say about the way he approached our professional relationship and the decisions he made about disappearing to the jungle without telling me in a critical time with our dealings with the Cabinet Office.
‘This isn’t about him. I know he tends to think it is. It isn’t about him, it isn’t about me, it is so much bigger than that.’
Ms Oakeshott denied becoming friends with the politician when working with him on his book and said: ‘It is not my job to protect reputations of politicians.
‘It is my job to expose what they do.’
The WhatsApp messages have already revealed that Mr Hancock was given advice from England’s chief medical officer Chris Whitty to test all residents going into care homes for Covid. Yet he did not follow the recommendation — which, he claims, is because of test shortages at the time.
Texts set out that Cabinet Secretary Simon Case joked with Mr Hancock about locking up travellers arriving in UK in quarantine hotels.
And Mr Hancock took told ministers to ‘get heavy with police’ to enforce lockdown rules, according to the messages, which MailOnline has not seen or independently verified.
They also show that Boris Johnson feared that he ‘blinked too soon’ in plunging the UK into a second shutdown after being warned that gloomy modelling which bounced him into the move was ‘very wrong’.
It comes after Ms Oakeshott accused Mr Hancock of sending her a ‘threatening’ and ‘somewhat menacing’ text at 1:20am on Wednesday morning, following the first batch of bombshell revelations.
However, Mr Hancock denied this and said he just told Ms Oakeshott it was ‘a big mistake – nothing more’.
The tranche of more than 100,000 WhatsApps were passed to The Telegraph by the journalist Isabel Oakeshott (right), who was given the material by former Health Secretary Matt Hancock (left) when they were working together on his book Pandemic Diaries
He said: ‘I am hugely disappointed and sad at the massive betrayal and breach of trust by Isabel Oakeshott.
‘I am also sorry for the impact on the very many people — political colleagues, civil servants and friends — who worked hard with me to get through the pandemic and save lives.’
Explaining the message he sent to his co-author, Mr Hancock said: ‘I was accused of sending menacing messages to Isabel. This is also wrong.
‘When I heard confused rumours of a publication late on Tuesday night, I called and messaged Isabel to ask her if she had ‘any clues’ about it and got no response.
‘When I then saw what she’d done, I messaged to say it was ‘a big mistake’. Nothing more.’
He added: ‘Isabel and I had worked closely together for more than a year on my book, based on legal confidentiality and a process approved by the Cabinet Office.
‘Isabel repeatedly reiterated the importance of trust throughout, and then broke that trust.’
Ms Oakeshott today said that the ‘menacing message thing’ was ‘overinflated’ as she is not ‘frightened or intimidated’.
She said: ‘It simply said at 1:20 in the morning: “You have made a big mistake”.
‘You can’t really interpret that as anything other than a threat.
‘He has since followed through with more threats of legal action and so on, but I’m not worried about that. I’m not going to be intimidated or blown off course by that.
‘This is much more important than those considerations.’
On the programme, she also defended her decision to publish the messages, saying: ‘Is it more important for me, a journalist, to protect the blushes and reputation of self-interested politicians, all of whom are by the way hiring lawyers to protect their interests during this public inquiry?
‘Or is it more important for me to reveal information that affected every single one of us — that is where I think my duty is in this case.
‘Of course there are risks associated with breaking written agreements, it wasn’t an NDA (non-disclosure agreement), by the way … but a confidentiality undertaking in a written legal contract.
‘I’m prepared to take that risk in the public interest and if I take a few knocks from people carping about the way it has been done then that’s also fine by me.’
It comes after the journalist yesterday issued a warning shot to the former Health Secretary that there is ‘plenty more’ she can reveal about his behaviour.
Quizzed about how she would describe her actions towards Mr Hancock on BBC Radio 4 today, Ms Oakeshott said: ‘What I’m not going to do, because it wouldn’t be pretty, is get involved in a slanging match with Matt Hancock.
‘He can threaten me all he likes.
‘There are plenty of things I can say about his behaviour, by the way, that I’m not going to do, at least not at this stage, because this is not about Matt Hancock, it is so much bigger than that.
‘Trust me, there’s plenty I can say.’
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