British Health Secretary Matt Hancock has resigned following reports of an affair with a close associate. But the question remains how the images from a surveillance camera from his office could get to the public.
How could this have happened? And that does not mean the cheating affair that forced British Health Minister Matt Hancock to resign after publishing a kiss with his colleague. Rather, the question arises: How did the video, which apparently came from a surveillance camera in his office, get into the hands of the newspaper?
“We have to find out how it could come to that,” said Cabinet member Brandon Lewis on Sunday the broadcaster Sky News. The Ministry of Health will launch an internal investigation.
Matt Hancock initially refused to resign
Hancock resigned on Saturday evening after the said pictures of him and his colleague Gina Coladangelo were published on Friday by The Sun newspaper. At the time of the recordings, there were strict distance rules to members of other households that Hancock had drawn up himself. The 42-year-old admitted to violating distance rules. He initially refused to resign.
The pressure then became so great that he finally announced his departure from the cabinet. Those who set up the corona rules have to stick to them, said the conservative politician in a video that was published on Saturday evening. In a resignation letter to Prime Minister Boris Johnson, he wrote: “We owe it to the people who have sacrificed so much in this pandemic to be honest when we have let them down – as I did by breaking the rules.” He doesn’t want his private life to distract from the fight against the corona pandemic, added Hancock.
Johnson had backed his minister then. The prime minister accepted Hancock’s apology and considered the matter closed, his spokesman said. For this he was sharply criticized by the Labor politician Lucy Powell.
Criticism of Prime Minister Boris Johnson
The fact that the head of government had not fired the minister, but rather had his back first, shows that Johnson has “a very dangerous blind spot” on questions of integrity and conduct in public life. The opposition called for an investigation into whether the minister hired his alleged lover before the affair began or only afterwards. In addition, he should be denied the planned severance payment of 16,000 pounds (around 18,500 euros). Anything else would be terrifying and the population would not tolerate it, Powell said.
The Minister and Coladangelo know each other from their studies and are both married. She used to work as a lobbyist before joining Hancock’s team of advisors. As Minister of Health, Hancock was instrumental in the fight against the corona pandemic and the UK vaccination program. Former finance minister Sajid Javid will now take over the post.
Hancock always under pressure
Hancock had recently come under heavy pressure after revelations from Johnson’s ex-advisor Dominic Cummings. Cummings published chat transcripts in mid-June in which Johnson complained about his “hopeless” health secretary. According to the logs, Johnson blamed the lack of ventilators, among other things, at the start of the pandemic. “It’s Hancock. He’s hopeless,” wrote the prime minister via Whatsapp to his advisor at the time, Cummings.
Previously, Hancock had come under pressure to get a friend placed on a job. It also became known that Hancock has a stake in a family company that also received an order in the corona pandemic.
In Great Britain, the number of infections had recently risen sharply again due to the rapidly spreading delta variant. The government had therefore postponed the lifting of all corona measures in England planned for June 21 by four weeks.
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