Pressure grows for cronyism probe over aide’s jobs

BORIS Johnson was under mounting pressure last night to launch a ‘cronyism’ investigation into Matt Hancock’s hiring of his close aide for taxpayer-funded roles.

The Prime Minister yesterday accepted his Health Secretary’s apology for breaching social distancing rules after he was pictured kissing Gina Coladangelo in his office.

But there are growing calls for Downing Street to order an ethics probe into the appointments Mr Hancock has handed to a woman he has been close to since they were at Oxford University together.

Mr Hancock made Miss Coladangelo a nonexecutive director at the Department of Health last September, on a salary of £15,000 for 15 to 20 days of work a year. Before that, she spent six months as an unpaid adviser in a role that was never publicly disclosed.

Between June 2019 and February 2020 Mr Hancock also arranged for Miss Coladangelo, then marketing director for her husband’s clothes shop Oliver Bonas, to have a coveted Commons pass.

By having an affair with a colleague or failing to disclose his long-standing friendship with her, Mr Hancock could have broken two clauses of the Ministerial Code. These require ministers to have ‘proper and appropriate’ working relationships and to ensure ‘no conflict arises between their public duties and private interests’.

Only No 10 can trigger a probe by independent adviser on ministers’ interests Lord Geidt.

Last night Labour’s deputy leader Angela Rayner wrote to the Prime Minister, copying in Lord Geidt, urging him to act.

She said Mr Hancock had failed to declare he was in a relationship with someone he had appointed to roles at taxpayers’ expense.

‘Such a failure would appear to be a further breach of the Ministerial Code, which in these circumstances should surely result in his

removal from office,’ she wrote. ‘If you are not prepared to act on your own initiative as Prime Minister, I would urge you to instruct your independent adviser to immediately investigate the Health Secretary’s conduct and his apparent breach of the Ministerial Code.’

Mr Hancock has already been found to have committed a ‘minor’ breach of the Ministerial Code after he failed to declare immediately that his sister’s document-shredding firm had been given permission to win NHS contracts.

And as the Mail revealed yesterday, the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards Kathryn Stone has launched a probe into his late declaration of his shares in the family firm Topwood Ltd. Sir Alistair Graham, former chairman of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, said: ‘From the information publicly available, it’s clear Lord Geidt should be asked to examine and see if the Health Secretary has breached the Ministerial Code.

‘As a matter of urgency, Lord Geidt should be asked to investigate this matter.’

Transport Secretary Grant Shapps insisted yesterday that Miss Coladangelo would have gone through an ‘incredibly rigorous process’ to get any Government or advisory role.

Tory peer Baroness Warsi told Channel 4 she was concerned about ‘whether or not Matt Hancock is acting in ways where his family and friend’s private interests are being put above his job’.