Day 5 of the Telegraph’s Lockdown Files and the most startling stories yet. Here’s what’s new:
- Matt Hancock asked when he could ‘deploy the variant’
When the more contagious Alpha (then ‘Kent’) variant started spreading in December 2020, many were scared. Good, thought Hancock. The former health secretary told his adviser that ‘we [can] frighten the pants of [sic] everyone with the new strain’ on 13 December, and wondered when ‘do we deploy the new variant’. Five days later, Boris Johnson cancelled Christmas.
2. Simon Case saw the benefit in fear-mongering
At least Sir Humphrey was subtle. The Cabinet Secretary told Hancock early in the third lockdown that ‘the fear/guilt factor’ was ‘crucial’ in keeping restrictions in place, if not going further. Case also told Hancock that the Nightingale hospitals would be full within days. Our data editor Michael Simmons points out that Nightingale admissions peaked at 57 a day (capacity 4,000 beds).
3. Other advisers thought scare factor was no bad thing
Chief scientific adviser Patrick Vallance told Hancock that it wasn’t a bad idea for him to ‘suck up [a] miserable interpretation’ of case numbers in front of the public, and then ‘over deliver’. Worse, Hancock’s adviser Damon Poole said in October 2020 that he didn’t mind not releasing surveillance data, since it ‘helps the narrative that things are really bad if we don’t publish’. Not the facts, the narrative.
4. Hancock and Gove’s love-in
The two ministers were in lockstep over lockdown right throughout the pandemic. Texts show Hancock angrily asking Gove during a meeting ‘what are we trying to achieve?’ Gove replied: ‘Letting people express concerns in a therapeutic environment before you and I decided the policy’. ‘You are glorious’, cooed Matt.
There was more. Gove texted Hancock late in the evening on the first anniversary of lockdown, telling him ‘U r a hero. Never forget it.’ The Telegraph also released a rather cryptic text from Gove to Hancock on 26 May 2021: a simple ‘I ❤️you’, sent in the evening.
5. Sunak called life under Cummings a ‘nightmare’
During Dominic Cummings’s appearance before MPs in May 2021 (in which he slammed Hancock and praised Sunak), Hancock texted the then chancellor to tease him that Cummings was ‘ doing this to secure his place at the heart of the future Sunak administration’. Sunak denied that he had spoken to Cummings since his departure in November 2020, but said that his reign was ‘such a difficult time for all of us. A nightmare I hope we never have to repeat.’
6. Ministers spoke about sacking NHS chief
Not pretty reading for former NHS head Simon Stevens this morning. Cummings lobbied Hancock to sack Stevens in January and February 2020, which never happened. Hancock told Cummings in early August that ‘removing SS will be a massive improvement’.
7. Hancock wanted to have ‘useless loudmouth’ Sage scientist silenced
As the Lockdown Files have shown, Hancock doesn’t much like dissent. He told aides in April 2020 that ‘we need a Jeremy Farrar handling strategy. He is totally offside, a complete loudmouth, has little respect amongst the serious scientists’. In August 2020, he kept asking ‘can we fire him?’. Last laugh goes to Sir Jeremy: he’s still a member of Sage three years on.
Mr S wonders if we’re in head-rolling territory now…
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