Matt Hancock has denied allegations that he repeatedly lied to colleagues and the public during the course of the government’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Former Downing Street chief of staff Dominic Cummings had told MPs on Wednesday that the health secretary had nearly been sacked by the prime minister for his conduct.
Answering an urgent question from Labour on the issue in the House of Commons on Thursday, Mr Hancock said he rejected the allegations “around honesty” – though he did not specifically address others.
“These allegations that were put yesterday … are serious allegations and I welcome the opportunity to come to the House to put formally on the record that these unsubstantiated allegations around honesty are not true,” he said.
“I’ve been straight with people in public and in private throughout.”
Boris Johnson meanwhile made little comment when quizzed on Mr Cummings’ claims during a visit to a hospital later on Thursday.
“You’ve got to recognise – and I think people do understand this – that when you go into a lockdown, it’s a very, very painful and traumatic thing for people’s mental health, their lives and their livelihoods.
“Of course you’ve got to set that against the horrors of the pandemic and of Covid. At every stage, we’ve been governed by a determination to protect life, to save life, to ensure that our NHS is not over run. And we followed to the best we can the data and the guidance.
“And what we are doing now is still following the data, still looking very carefully at where we’re going, and looking at what’s happening with the new variant.”
During parliamentary exchanges on Thursday morning MPs repeatedly asked the Home Secretary about specific claims made by Mr Cummings – including whether Mr Hancock had known that people who had not been tested for Covid were being discharged into care homes.
“The challenge is we had to build testing capacity, and at that time of course I was focused on protecting people in care homes and in building that testing capacity so that we had the daily tests to be able to ensure that availability was more widespread,” he said.
Meanwhile Conservative MPs came to his aid – using time allocated for questions to the minister to attack Mr Cummings and the opposition.
Wellingborough Tory MP Peter Bone described Mr Cummings as an “unelected Spad who broke Covid regulations, admitted he had leaked stuff to the BBC and, by his own admission, wasn’t fit to be in Number 10 Downing Street”.
Mr Bone added: “The only mistake the Prime Minister made in this pandemic is he didn’t fire Dominic Cummings early enough.”
Meanwhile another Tory, Cherilyn Mackrory, said: “Given the gravity of the situation the Government faced at the beginning of the pandemic and considering we now know there was a hugely disruptive force in the form of Dominic Cummings, I’d like to congratulate ministers.”
She added: “Can [Mr Hancock] assure me that he will ignore unsubstantiated Westminster gossip and stay focused on delivering the vaccine rollout and our manifesto promises?”
Mr Hancock replied: “I think that’s what the public expects us to do.”
But Labour’s shadow health secretary Jonathan Ashworth said: “Isn’t the truth that his failures on testing and PPE contributed to covid spreading like ‘wildfire’ in care homes?
“It is clear to the country and the families who lost loved ones that we have been let down by this Government, this Prime Minister, and this Health Secretary.
“The truth matters. The least these families and the country now deserve is clear answers from the Health Secretary and Prime Minister today.”
Asked why Mr Johnson had delayed calling a lockdown in the face of scientific advice that it was needed, the prime minister’s official spokesperson said: “We are guided by the latest scientific advice throughout. It’s the prime minister’s job and that of the cabinet to take that advice and put it alongside wider implications of measures such as lockdown and consider the longer-term impact of those measures. That’s what the prime minister did. He balanced that judgement and took action whenever necessary during this pandemic.”
On Mr Hancock’s comment that it was “too early” to say whether the final step of relaxing lockdown would go ahead on 21 June, the PM’s spokesperson said: “The secretary of state was reflecting the fact that we as yet don’t have crucial pieces of information about this variant that will enable us to make the final decision with regard to step four.
“We always built in weeks in the roadmap to gather this data. Albeit we didn’t know about this new variant, we build in the time gap between steps so we can review the data.”
