Throughout the pandemic, ministers repeatedly insisted that they were ‘following the science’.
Ex-Health Secretary Matt Hancock repeated this mantra as early as March 5 2020, when the UK had logged just 85 Covid cases, to defend not closing schools.
But a tranche of more than 100,000 WhatsApp messages, leaked to The Telegraph, suggest that Mr Hancock and advisers did not always adopt this approach.
He claimed that testing everyone moving into care homes from the community just ‘muddies the water’, despite that being advice from Sir Chris Whitty. And that’s just one example that MailOnline has uncovered…
1. ‘Rejected Sir Chris’ call to test all residents going into care homes’
WhatsApp exchanges on April 14 2020 show that England’s Chief Medical Officer recommended a wide-ranging Covid testing programme in care homes.
In a group chat with aides, Mr Hancock said: ‘Chris Whitty has done an evidence review and now recommends testing of all [care home residents] going into care homes, and segregation whilst awaiting result.
‘This is obviously a good positive step & we must put into the doc.’
The document referred to is the Government’s ‘Action Plan for Adult Social Care’, which was published the following day and set out how the service should function throughout the pandemic.
In one message on April 14, Mr Hancock said Sir Chris had finished a review and recommended ‘testing of all going into care homes, and segregation whilst awaiting result’. Mr Hancock described it as ‘obviously a good positive step’. However, the investigation said he later responded to an aide: ‘Tell me if I’m wrong but I would rather leave it out 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’
However, in a message to his team 10 hours later, Mr Hancock said: ‘Tell me if I’m wrong but I would rather leave it out 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.’
The final guidance states that the Government will ‘move to’ a policy of testing all residents prior to care home admission but that this would begin ‘with all those being discharged from hospital’.
Mr Hancock dismissed claims that he ignored advice, with his spokesperson saying they were ‘flat wrong’.
He was allegedly told during a meeting that it was ‘not currently possible’ to carry out the tests at the time due to capacity issues.
MailOnline has not seen or independently verified the WhatsApp messages, leaked to The Daily Telegraph by Isabel Oakeshott, the journalist who helped Mr Hancock write his book Pandemic Diaries.
Mr Hancock’s spokesman has said the WhatsApp exchanges present an ‘entirely partial account’ and that ‘the right place to consider everything about the pandemic objectively is in the public inquiry’.
2. ‘Health ministers knew there was no evidence to justify making kids abide by rule of 6 – but No10 didn’t want to exempt them’
Ministers knew there was no ‘robust rationale’ for imposing the ‘rule of six’ on young children by autumn 2020.
At the time, the system meant that any gather of more than six people indoors or outdoors — unless it was for work or education — was against the law.
And a tier system saw parts of the country classified as tier one to four, depending on Covid levels.
In WhatsApp messages on October 11 2020, social care minister Helen Whately told Mr Hancock: ‘Wish we could loosen on children under 12 on rule of 6 for tier 1.’
In WhatsApp messages on October 11 2020, social care minister Helen Whately told Mr Hancock: ‘Wish we could loosen on children under 12 on rule of 6 for tier 1.
Ms Whately said removing it would make such a difference for families and there isn’t a robust rationale for it.
‘Now is a really good chance to show we have listened. (Lots of MPs were pushing on this during last weeks’ debates)’.
But Mr Hancock responded that No10 ‘don’t want to go there’ and ‘don’t want to shift an inch’.
3. ‘Admitted he broke social distancing guidance during affair’
Mr Hancock was caught having an affair with his married aide Gina Colangelo.
Footage, published by The Sun on June 25 2021, showed the pair kissing, in breach of social distancing guidance in place at the time.
The footage was taken inside the Department of Health on May 6 that year, two days after the affair began.
At the time, Government rules, which had been in place since March 2020, set out people had to stay two metres apart from anyone who was not in their household or bubble.
Mr Hancock was caught having an affair with his married aide Gina Colangelo
Matt Hancock and Gina Coladangelo’s affair was revealed in The Sun in June 2021 after pictures of the couple kissing were handed to journalists
Legal restrictions that banned indoor meetings among people from different households were not lifted until May 17 — 11 days after the footage was taken.
WhatsApp messages show that Mr Hancock told his adviser that he had ‘obviously’ broken the one metre plus rule.
But he had to ask what the rules were at the time of his encounter with Ms Colangelo.
4. ‘Dismissed advice from Sir Chris not to enforce the sex ban during the pandemic’
Under the original Covid lockdown imposed on March 23 2020, Boris Johnson told Brits to stay at home and avoid contact with people living in other households.
The rules, in reality, amounted to a sex ban for all couples living separately because they were not allowed to meet up indoors.
Sir Chris, England’s chief medical officer, was asked to clarify the expert advice on the matter.
Sir Chris, England’s chief medical officer, was asked to clarify the expert advice by the then-PM’s spokesman the next day after being inundated by journalists wanting answers to the ‘biggest Q of the day’. Texts unearthed today reveal Sir Chris said: ‘I think a bit of realism will be needed.’ He added: ‘If it’s a regular partner I don’t think people are likely to listen to advice not to see them for three weeks or maybe more. ‘We could say; if they can avoid seeing one another they should, and if either of them has an older or vulnerable person in the house they must’
Texts reveal Sir Chris said: ‘I think a bit of realism will be needed.’
He added: ‘If it’s a regular partner I don’t think people are likely to listen to advice not to see them for three weeks or maybe more.
‘We could say; if they can avoid seeing one another they should, and if either of them has an older or vulnerable person in the house they must.’
Yet a different message was presented at a press conference that same day, when Jenny Harries, Sir Chris’ deputy, said couples should ‘ideally’ should stay in their own households if they don’t live together — or ‘test the strength of their relationship’ and move in together.
Mr Hancock added: ‘There you go: make your choice and stick with it.’
5. ‘Rejected Sir Chris’ calls to ease isolation rules’
Mr Hancock rejected Sir Chris’ recommendation that close contacts of positive cases could test for five days rather than staying at home for two weeks.
On November 17 2020, Mr Hancock asked Sir Chris about the status of ‘test to release plans’.
At this point, people with confirmed or suspected Covid only had to isolate for ten days but close contacts had faced a 14-day quarantine.
There was also a legal duty to quarantine and those who broke the rules could be fined £1,000 — increasing to £10,000 for repeat offenders.
Sir Chris said that the UK’s Chief Medical Officers (CMOs) and Sage, a group of scientists that advised No10, backed daily Covid tests for five days instead of isolating among close contacts.
He suggested that it would need to be piloted initially to ‘check it works’ and noted that the UK’s medicines watchdog had not yet approved Covid tests for self use.
But Mr Hancock replied: ‘So test every day for just five days? That sounds like a massive loosening’.
Sir Chris said: ‘The modelling suggests it’s pretty well as good [as isolating for two weeks]. And we think adherence likely to be good.’
Sir Chris said that the UK’s Chief Medical Officers (CMOs) and Sage, a group of scientists that advised No10, backed daily Covid tests for five days instead of isolating among close contacts. He suggested that it would need to be piloted initially to ‘check it works’ and noted that the UK’s medicines watchdog had not yet approved Covid tests for self use. But Mr Hancock replied: ‘So test every day for just five days? That sounds like a massive loosening’
The former health secretary said he was ‘amazed’. ‘This sounds very risky and we can’t go backwards — wouldn’t test every day for ten days be a safer starting point,’ he said.
Sir Chris said: ‘We could push out to seven but the benefits really flatten off after five. We would expect symptomatic people to get a PCR test as normal.’
Mr Hancock questioned whether the two-week isolation advice had been ‘too long all this time’.
The policy drove down cases by around 4 per cent compared to ten-day isolation but ‘almost certainly at the expense of reduced adherence’, Sir Chris said.
Data from Sage at the time suggested just one in five people fully complied with the self-isolation rules.
Mr Hancock said: ‘I think moving to seven-day daily testing for contacts would be HUGE for adherence, but going below that would serious worry people and imply we’d been getting it wrong.
‘Presumably we can explain some of the shorter period because the test would pick up the disease before symptoms’.
Sir Chris said he would feed this back to the other CMOs who he thought would ‘be sympathetic to this’.
The Government reduced self-isolation to ten days on December 14, four weeks after the exchanges between the two men.
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