Matt Hancock kept Boris Johnson in dark over Covid vaccines success
Matt Hancock failed to tell Boris Johnson about a major Public Health England (PHE) study showing the effectiveness of vaccines against the Indian or delta variant during a key meeting to decide whether to extend Covid restrictions, The Telegraph can disclose.
The Telegraph understands that the Health Secretary had known about the PHE data three days before the "quad" of four senior ministers, led by the Prime Minister, met last Sunday to decide whether to postpone the planned June 21 reopening until July 19. However, multiple sources familiar with the meeting said it was not raised by Mr Hancock or discussed at all during the course of the talks.
The data was also not included in briefing papers given to Mr Johnson, Rishi Sunak, the Chancellor and Michael Gove, the Cabinet Office minister, in advance of the meeting.
The bombshell disclosure raises the possibility that the quad could have opted to press ahead with lifting the restrictions on Monday if they had been aware of the study, which showed that both the AstraZeneca and Pfizer vaccines were more effective at preventing hospitalisation with the variant than they were against previous strains. It comes after it emerged last week that Mr Johnson had called Mr Hancock "hopeless" over his handling of the pandemic last year.
On Saturday night, senior Tories asked whether the Health Secretary had "bounced" the Prime Minister into extending the current measures. The disclosure will fuel calls for the measures to be lifted on July 5 the halfway point before July 19 at which Mr Johnson said the Government could decide to lift them early.
One Cabinet minister insisted there must now be a "political decision" to allow businesses to operate fully again due to concerns about severe harm being done to the economy with relatively "little benefit".On Saturday night Steve Baker, the deputy chairman of the Covid Recovery Group of Conservative MPs, said: "Either Matt Hancock thought this data was insignificant or he thought it should be withheld from the Prime Minister and other key ministers.
"Either way, the mind boggles at what conversation must now be necessary with the Prime Minister, and I feel confident it will be a matter of interest to my colleagues on the relevant select committees. If Matt Hancock was deliberately withholding relevant information, what was he trying to gain? Was the Prime Minister bounced?"
A Department of Health spokesman denied that Mr Hancock "bounced" the Prime Minister. Senior ministers were said to be furious with how the decision-making process was handled.
Sources close to members of the "quad" also said they were not provided with the usual explanations that accompany modelling by Sage scientists presented at the meeting, which showed that a June 21 reopening would lead to a large resurgence in hospital admissions.
A source close to the "quad" said: "They were presented with the [Sage] data without the assumptions that it was based on." Members of the quad were said to be "very annoyed".