Hancock affair: PM has ‘serious questions’ to
answer, says Labour
Sir Keir Starmer queries award of Covid contracts,
issuance of aide’s parliamentary pass and leak of CCTV
Aubrey
Allegretti Political correspondent
@breeallegretti
Sun 27 Jun
2021 19.02 BST
Boris
Johnson still has “huge questions to answer” in the aftermath of Matt Hancock’s
resignation over his affair with a friend and paid adviser, Labour has said, as
the government was urged to launch an investigation into a “potential abuse of
public money”.
Downing
Street was struggling to contain the scandal, which broke last week after CCTV
footage emerged of the married health secretary and Gina Coladangelo kissing in
his Whitehall office only weeks before.
Pressure is
still building as Tory MPs are among those demanding reassurances there was no
wrongdoing over Coladangelo’s appointment to a role paying up to £15,000 a year
as a nonexecutive director at the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC).
She started in September 2020 and stepped down from her post over the weekend.
Sir Keir
Starmer, the Labour leader, said the new health secretary, Sajid Javid, and
Johnson himself have “serious questions to answer”.
He said the
government should come clean on how Covid contracts were awarded, why
Coladangelo was given a parliamentary pass by another health minister and about
how the CCTV images that led to Hancock’s downfall was leaked.
“If anybody
thinks that the resignation of Matt Hancock is the end of the issue, I think
they’re wrong … the resignation is far from the end of the matter,” he said.
Caroline
Slocock, who founded the Civil Exchange thinktank and was private secretary to
Margaret Thatcher, told the Guardian she had “quite significant concerns” that
the focus on Hancock’s breach of Covid rules had “let him off the hook” for
“potentially an abuse of public money”.
She claimed
there had been a “murky series of events” and that, given Coladangelo worked as
a communications director, “it’s quite hard to see” how she was qualified to
advise DHSC on its central policy areas of health and social care.
Slocock
said Hancock had “at best, essentially appointed an old chum”, and added: “To
get your mistress to be marking your homework is not acceptable.”
A Tory MP
and former minister also said there were “more questions” that needed
answering, including about Hancock reportedly relying heavily on a personal
email account to conduct government business, taking Coladangelo to the G7 and
the “apparent favouring” of family and friends for Covid contracts. “It’s very
serious,” they said. “None of this has been clarified.”
Another
said the answers to the lingering questions “will probably influence” whether
Hancock ever returns to the frontbench, while a third admitted the former
health secretary had “few fans” in his own party.
Labour has
also written to the cabinet secretary and information commissioner over the
claims about Hancock’s personal email use.
Angela
Rayner, the party’s deputy leader, said “the buck doesn’t stop with Hancock and
this matter is not closed”.
She added:
“This government is rotten to its core. We need to know how wide this goes and
how much government business is being conducted in secret.”
Sir Ed
Davey, leader of the Liberal Democrats, challenged Javid to “abolish
Conservative cronyism” at the DHSC, starting by ruling that Tory peer Dido
Harding will not be made the next chief executive of NHS England.
“The public
expects so much better from the government during a pandemic,” he added.
Javid will
be tested when he addresses the Commons with a statement on Monday afternoon,
expected to confirm England’s final stage of lockdown easing will not go ahead
on 5 July – the midway review point promised by the government when it
announced the four-week delay expected to end on 19 July.
It will be
the former chancellor’s first performance at the dispatch box since he quit in
a row with Johnson and Dominic Cummings in February 2020.
Tory MPs
loyal to Hancock rallied around him by attacking the installation of CCTV in
his Whitehall office, which captured images – leaked to the Sun newspaper last
week – of him and Coladangelo kissing while stricter social distancing rules
were still in place.
One said
the video monitoring was “utterly unacceptable” while a second said malicious
people had bugged the health secretary’s office and were snooping on him.
Brandon
Lewis, the Northern Ireland secretary, said it is “something we need to get to
the bottom of” because a lot of what goes on in government departments is
“sensitive and important”.
But another
senior Conservative said the row over the cameras, which has prompted an
internal Whitehall investigation, was a “distraction” from the “absolute car
crash” of Hancock’s career.
The scandal
has also prompted renewed speculation about a cabinet reshuffle. Johnson
avoided a mass switch of his top team by appointing Javid and not moving any
other ministers.
But some
insiders think that, given Hancock was likely to be demoted anyway, his
departure has increased the chances of a reshuffle just before parliament’s
summer recess begins on 22 July.
Gavin
Williamson, the education secretary, is one of those said to be most at risk,
and several Tory MPs want to see Hancock’s ally, health minister Lord Bethell,
moved on too.
“We need a
reshuffle and we need it soon,” a senior Conservative said. “Most ministers are
looking slightly beyond what they are doing and awaiting it – they don’t have
their full focus on the jobs.”
A DHSC
spokesperson said all ministers “only conduct government business through their
departmental email addresses”.
The government
has also insisted Coladangelo’s appointment followed the correct procedure and
that secretaries of state are entitled to make direct appointments.
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