Markus Andrews

Matt Hancock should be denied the £16,000 severance pay he is entitled to by law, Labour has demanded.Sir Keir Starmer’s party said the public would be “appalled” that Mr Hancock, who dramatically resigned last night, could be in line for the payout that all ministers typically receive when they leave office.It comes after the former health secretary announced his decision to leave the cabinet following the emergence of footage of him breaching Covid rules with aide Gina Coladangelo in his private office at the Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC).Speaking on Sunday, the party’s shadow housing minister Lucy Powell said people would be “appalled to think that there’s going to be a severance payment to Mat Hancock in this circumstance”.On top of an MPs’ salary of £81,000, cabinet ministers are entitled to a further £67,505, according to the latest figures, and are also eligible for a severance payment upon leaving government.Under the Ministerial and other Pensions and Salaries Act 1991, ministers under the age of 65 are entitled to a quarter of their ministerial salary — regardless of whether they resign or are sacked — meaning Mr Hancock could be in line for around £16,876.It was not immediately clear, however, whether the former health secretary will accept the payment all ministers are given when departing office.Speaking to Sky News’s Trevor Phillips on Sunday, Ms Powell contrasted the potential payout of thousands of pounds with the one per cent pay proposal for the NHS, insisting people would be “pretty disgusted”.“We will certainly be calling that out and asking the prime minister not to give him that,” she added.Munira Wilson MP, the Liberal Democrat health spokesperson, also piled pressure on over the severance paying, saying: “Taxpayers will be appalled that a minister resigning in disgrace stands to be rewarded with a £16,000 payout.”The prime minister’s judgement was already under question following his decision to stand by Matt Hancock just 48 hours ago. Now the public will be scratching their heads again as Boris Johnson is set to reward his mate with a bonus for his failings. It is a totally out of touch thing to do and the PM should scrap the payment immediately.”Labour have also suggested the police should investigate whether Mr Hancock broke the law and separate questions continue to mount over his former department’s appointment process for Ms Coladangelo – a University friend of Mr Hancock.Ms Powell said her colleague Fleur Anderson had referred the former health secretary to the police to investigate whether any laws had been broken, saying: “At the time, you’ll remember, when this video was taken, we were all told that we could only have close contact with those that we were in a bubble with, they were our bubble, and that was the only people we could have close contact with, that was the law at the time.“It now turns out that Matt Hancock was actually in two bubbles at the same time, unbeknown to other people in that bubble, and that is how infection spreads. So yes, there are serious issues here which need further investigation.” More

Dominic Cummings appears to have reignited his feud with former chancellor-turned health secretary Sajid Javid, branding him an “awful” choice to replace Matt Hancock. Mr Javid was appointed health secretary around 90 minutes after Mr Hancock announced his resignation on Saturday after it came to light that he had broken social distancing guidelines by kissing an aide while on the job.In a statement, Mr Javid said he was “honoured” to take up the role, which comes following his short stint as chancellor in 2019 to 2020 before he quit after a power struggle with No 10 – and in particular, with Mr Cummings. The former chancellor had resigned from his role after being told he had to sack all his advisers if he wanted to keep his job.While some welcomed Mr Javid’s return to Boris Johnson’s cabinet, with former health secretary Jeremy Hunt calling the ex-chancellor an “excellent choice” for the role, Mr Cummings was less impressed by the appointment. Responding to the news, Mr Cummings suggested in a tweet that the prime minister’s wife, Carrie Symonds was responsible for getting Mr Javid back on the frontbench. He also appeared to imply that he had intentionally pushed the PM to force Mr Javid out from his past role as chancellor.“So Carrie appoints Saj! NB If I hadn’t tricked PM into firing Saj, we’d have had a [HM Treasury] with useless SoS/spads, no furlough scheme, total chaos instead of JOINT 10/11 team which was a big success,” Mr Cummings tweeted.“Saj = bog standard = chasing headlines + failing = awful for NHS” Mr Cummings said, before adding “need #RegimeChange”.In his statement announcing that he had been asked to serve as health secretary, he said he looks “forward to contributing to our fight against the pandemic, and serving my country from the Cabinet once again”.The Independent has contacted No 10 for comment. More

The Department of Health will be launching an internal investigation into how leaked footage of Matt Hancock embracing an aide was leaked, a cabinet minister has announced.Confirmation of the probe came after the health secretary tendered his resignation to Boris Johnson on Saturday evening, reiterating his apology for breaching Covid rules as he faced a mounting backlash from MPs.Pressed on concerns of how a leak of the apparent CCTV footage from Mr Hancock’s private office was leaked to the media, cabinet minister said the Whitehall department will be “looking into” the matter.The Northern Ireland secretary told Sky News the government needed to “understand exactly how that was recorded and how it got out of the system”, stressing it was an issue “we need to get the bottom of” due to the “sensitive and important” work occurring in government offices.“Yes I do know that is something the Department of Health will be taking forward as an internal investigation and let them have the space to do that to understand how this happened to ensure this type of situation can’t happen again,” he added.Stills of the footage — showing Mr Hancock embracing and kissing aide Gina Coladangelo, who is on the government payroll — were first published in The Sun newspaper on Friday, before a video of the encounter at DHSC was also released.According to the Mail on Sunday, the former cabinet minister’s allies said they had no idea the cameras existed in the office.On Sunday, ex-cabinet ministers Alan Johnson and Rory Stewart both said there had never been cameras in their offices during their time in government.“I could never understand why there was a camera in the secretary of state’s office,” Mr Johnson said. “There was never a camera in my office when I was health secretary or in any of the other five cabinet positions.”Mr Stewart, who was international development secretary from May to July 2019, said in a tweet: “I definitely did not know that there were cameras in any of my ministerial offices (in fact I was told – when I asked if there were any cameras – that there were not cameras in my office in DfiD).”He added: “If it were a departmental camera – perhaps focused on the door for security reasons – then it would be seen by the security officers.Earlier this weekend, the Metropolitan Police said it was “aware of the distribution of images alleged to have been obtained within an official government premises”.But the force added: “No criminal investigation has been launched. At this time this remains a matter for the relevant government department.”Labour is also urging the government to investigate the appointment of Ms Coladangelo, a friend of Mr Hancock’s from the University of Oxford, as a non-executive director at the department, and whether any conflicts of interest were recorded. More

Matt Hancock’s decision to resign as health secretary yesterday over his failure to comply with social distancing rules has left a sea of questions wide open in the aftermath.To name but a few – was he any good as health secretary? Why would a cabinet minister take such risks with their career? It has been confirmed former Chancellor Sajid Javid has replaced him – is he the right replacement? In a bid to help bring some clarity to the situation I will be here tomorrow to answer your questions about the weekend’s drama.The former health secretary resigned after leaked CCTV footage showed Mr Hancock embracing aide Gina Coladangelo.The now former health secretary, who announced his decision to resign on Saturday evening, met married aide Mrs Coladangelo when the pair studied together at Oxford University. She was initially taken on as an unpaid adviser in the DHSC on a six-month contract last year, before being appointed as a non-executive director at the department.The way in which Mr Hancock left his job and was swiftly replaced by Mr Javid also tells us a great deal about Boris Johnson as prime minister.He seems not to like sacking people, offering Mr Hancock initial support while allowing him to come to his own conclusions. When Mr Hancock said yesterday, “Those of us who make these rules have got to stick by them, and that’s why I’ve got to resign,” nobody could disagree. The prime minister has been here before. He didn’t sack Javid as chancellor; he just allowed his chief adviser Dominic Cummings to make Javid’s position impossible. Cummings even boasted on Twitter yesterday that he “tricked” Johnson into getting rid of Javid – and criticised Javid’s appointment as health secretary, saying he is a “bog standard” politician given to “chasing headlines” and the result will be “awful for the NHS”.The new health secretary certainly faces some huge challenges. NHS funding has been squeezed for 10 years, and promises of higher spending in future have been knocked sideways by the pandemic, which leaves a huge hangover in waiting lists, both recorded and hidden.On top of which Javid now inherits the prime minister’s pledge to sort out social care, a problem that was urgent when Johnson claimed to have a plan to fix it when he became prime minister two years ago, which has become more so because of the weaknesses revealed by coronavirus. As a former local government minister, Javid does at least know about the complex relations between the NHS and local councils in managing care.I will be here at 4pm tomorrow to answer your questions. If you have a question, submit it now, or when I join you live at 4pm on Monday (28 June). All you have to do is register to submit your question in the comments below.If you’re not already a member, click “sign up” in the comments box to leave your question. Don’t worry if you can’t see your question – they will be hidden until I join the conversation to answer them. Then join us live on this page at 4pm as I tackle as many questions as I can. More

Matt Hancock has left his wife of 15 years for the aide he was pictured kissing at work, it has been reported.The health secretary’s relationship with Gina Coladangelo is “recent but serious,” according to Sky News’ Beth Rigby.Martha Hancock, an osteopath with a clinic in Notting Hill, has said nothing publicly about the revelations surrounding her husband’s behaviour.She is described as very private and has kept a low profile.The Sunday Times also reported that Mr Hancock had left his family home. The couple married in 2006 and have three children – a daughter and two sons aged 14, 13 and eight.Flowers were delivered to the Hancocks’ London home early on Saturday.The pink peonies in a glass vase were placed on the front doorstep by a delivery driver just after 10am. More

Matt Hancock is reportedly facing an investigation after using a personal email account to conduct government affairs, in breach of UK guidelines. According to The Sunday Times, the former health secretary, who resigned from his role on Saturday, regularly used a private email account for government dealings, thereby concealing information from officials and potentially from the public. The Times said it had obtained documents proving Mr Hancock had routinely been using his personal email since March 2020, when the coronavirus pandemic began. The disclosure was reportedly revealed in minutes from a meeting between senior officials at the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC).David Williams, the department’s second permanent secretary, warned that Mr Hancock “only” deals with his office “via Gmail account”.Mr Williams said the health secretary did not even have an official email as he warned that the government could not freely access personal email records, with the “threshold” for requesting them having “to be substantial”. He also said that junior health minister Lord Bethell also used a personal email account for government business.The alleged breach of guidelines would mean that the government does not have records on all of Mr Hancock’s exchanges, including key negotiations on multimillion-pound contracts for personal protective equipment (PPE) and emails setting up the £37 billion test and trace programme.Mr Hancock’s private email exchanges also would have included talks on the government’s widely criticised care homes strategy. In a statement, a DHSC spokesperson said: “All DHSC ministers understand the rules around personal email usage and only conduct government business through their departmental email addresses.”Mr Hancock had a departmental email address since becoming health secretary, according to the department. As did Lord Bethell.The development comes after Mr Hancock resigned as health secretary for breaching social distancing guidelines by kissing an aide amid growing concerns over the spread of the Delta coronavirus variant.Mr Hancock had faced pressure to resign from his role after The Sun published images of the then-health secretary and non-executive director of the Department of Health Gina Coladangelo kissing, with both being married with children.The newspaper said the photos had been taken inside the Department of Health’s offices on 6 May, amid raised concerns around the Delta variant, which was first identified in India. In his resignation letter, Mr Hancock told Prime Minister Boris Johnson that the government “owe it to the people who have sacrificed so much in this pandemic to be honest when we have let them down”. He reiterated an apology for “breaking the guidance” and apologised to his family for “putting them through this”.Mr Johnson said he was “sorry” to receive the resignation letter. Sajid Javid is set to replace Mr Hancock as health secretary, with the former chancellor saying he is “honoured” to take on the role. More

Trevor Phillips, the Sky News presenter, recalled his daughter’s recent death and funeral to question a government minister over the hypocrisy of now deposed health secretary Matt Hancock’s coronavirus rule breach. After a few minutes of quizzing Northern Ireland secretary Brandon Lewis live on air, Mr Phillips said he wanted “to do something I wouldn’t normally do and put a personal, private, question to you”.He continued: “For the past two days, MPs have come out to essentially defend the prime minister and Matt Hancock.“The pictures we saw were on 6 May. On 11 May, my family buried my daughter who had died not of Covid, but during the lockdown. Three hundred of our family and friends turned up online but most of them were not allowed to be by the graveside, even though it was in the open air, because of the rule of 30. “And because of the instruction by Mr Hancock.”Before allowing Mr Lewis the chance to respond, Mr Phillips finished by saying: “Now the next time one of you tells me what to do in my private life, explain to me why I shouldn’t just tell you where to get off.”Mr Lewis failed to acknowledge Mr Phillips’s loss, and said: “Look I absolutely accept the frustration, even the anger, from people and the situations they’ve been through.”“I’ve lost friends whose funerals I’ve not been able to go to. That is such a tragic situation for any of us to be in, which is why it’s so important for all of us to do what we can to keep ourselves and family members safe.”He again defended the former health secretary, and added: “What Matt did was wrong and that’s why he apologised and acknowledged that.”Mr Phillips, who is covering for Sophy Ridge’s Sunday morning politics show on Sky News, was referring to the death of his daughter who died in April after living with the eating disorder anorexia for more than two decades. Sushila Phillips, who worked as a freelance journalist, “died peacefully in her own bed” with her parents at her side, according to reports at the time. She was 36 when she died. It comes after Mr Hancock resigned on Saturday evening, following leaked CCTV footage of him in a tryst with government aide Gina Coladangelo inside his Department of Health office.He remains as an MP and will join the Tory backbenches, replaced as health secretary by former chancellor Sajid Javid. For anyone struggling with the issues raised in this piece, eating disorder charity Beat’s helpline is available 365 days a year on 0808 801 0677.NCFED offers information, resources and counselling for those suffering from eating disorders, as well as their support networks. Visit eating-disorders.org.uk or call 0845 838 2040. More

News of former health secretary Matt Hancock’s resignation dominated the front pages on Sunday, 27 June. “Gone – Hancock quits after day of humiliation”, The Observer’s main headline said. Branding Mr Hancock’s resignation a a “blow to [Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s] authority”, The Observer detailed Mr Hancock’s downfall after it came to light that he had broken social distancing guidelines last month by kissing his aide, Gina Coladangelo, in his ministerial office. The Sun on Sunday, meanwhile, went with the headline ‘Matt finished’, branding Mr Hancock a “hypocrite” over the photos and videos revealing his affair with Ms Coladangelo, which were first revealed by The Sun. The Mail On Sunday had “Hancock quits his job – and marriage”, splashed across its front page, with the publication revealing it had learned that the former health secretary ended his marriage on Thursday evening after “telling his devastated wife Martha” about his affair just hours before pictures of him kissing his aide were published.The Sunday Telegraph highlighted Mr Hancock’s own words in his resignation letter: “Those of us who make these rules have got to stick by them”, while The Sunday Times went with “humiliated Hancock quits” as its own main headline.The latter publication also shared the news that Mr Hancock had ended his 15-year marriage to his wife Martha just hours before the revelation of his affair was made to the public. “Matt finished”, The Sunday Mirror said, as The Sunday Express described Mr Hancock as being “forced to quit”. Sunday People branded the former health secretary “Hopeless & jobless” in its main headline as the Daily Star on Sunday branded Mr Hancock’s apology the “tears of a clown”. More