Matt Hancock and his staff worried for hours about whether or not he was breaking Covid orders by kissing his assistant and leaking news on The Telegraph show. The picture of Mr. Hancock kissing Gina Coradangelo was published in The Sun, which is when the WhatsApp message was sent. His spokesman said that the news in the publication was “nothing new” and “absolutely not in the public interest.”
“It’s very invasive, completely wrong, and has been talked about a lot,” he said. The spokesman said that all news had been shared with the public coronavirus inquiry. The BBC hasn’t seen the news or checked on its own to make sure it’s true.
In another conversation, the former health secretary said that the eat-out plan was bad because it “caused problems” in places where there were a lot of Covid cases. The latest 41-hour WhatsApp conversation shows how the former health minister and Ms. Cora d’Angelo were hesitant to tell the truth.
The Sun says that a picture of Mr. Hancock and Ms. Coradangelo was taken at the Department of Health on May 6, 2021, when they were married and had three kids. Their link caused a lot of anger because it seemed to show that Mr. Hancock had broken his own rules about locking down to stop the spread of coronavirus. While waiting for the photos to be released, he sent a special counsel a text message asking, “How bad are these photos?”
Then, in response to a video of the former aide that he and The Sun had found, Mr. Hancock said, “My God. I’m not sure if this is newsworthy, but it doesn’t look interesting to me.” Mr. Corker told Damon Poole, who was his special adviser at the time, to “focus on naming Ms. Cora d’Angelo to continue.”
When Ms. Colatangelo was a non-executive director at the Department of Health and Social Care, she worked as a paid consultant for the government. The health minister at the time also asked another minister to stress that “no rules were broken.”
Mr. Poole told Mr. Hancock and Ms. Colatangelo to “very seriously” consider whether or not they had broken any Covid rules. Mr. Hancock said, “I can’t think of anything, to be honest, other than the obvious over 1m.” He was talking about the social distance rules of 1m distances when 2m would not be possible to keep 1m distances from others.
He also said, “Being kissed before hugs are legalized is the worst thing they can do.” But then Mr. Hancock asked his advisers to explain the exact rules for when the photo was taken. The two then talked about how to deal with the news coverage. That ranged from saying that he “broke social distancing rules” to saying that “no rules were broken.” Matt Hancock said he didn’t think it was possible, adding, “I think I was just going against clinical advice.”
In one conversation, Matt Hancock talked about the social distance rules for workers at the time. He said that workers should “adhere to social distance rules as much as possible.” His adviser said, “Yes, but it’s possible. Clearly.” Not on the photo.” In another exchange that was made public, Matt Hancock asked former prime minister George Osborne if he thought he should announce his resignation in a video statement.
Mr. Osborne said it was “fine,” but he suggested that he “might want to include in your letter the apology you wrote to your loved ones.” He quit in the end because of what happened, and he posted a video about it on his Twitter page.