The claim of a ‘protective ring’ put around England’s care homes was a lie, says Labour
special adviser, spoke about Sir Gavin as he argued during a Zoom meeting with the prime minister for schools to open as planned in January 2021.
As the pair watched Sir Gavin make his submissions, Ms Dean said that the education secretary was freaking out”, adding: “You can tell he isnt [sic] being wholly rationale [sic]. Just by his body language.” Mr Hancock responded: “I’m having to turn the volume down”.
At the end of the Zoom meeting Mr Hancock said that he did not want to have “a call with the testing team later to go over the plan for school testing” and instead wanted to “fight a rearguard action”.
His conversations with Mr Rosenfield do not appear in the conversations that have been leaked to this newspaper. Mr Hancock instead provided his personal email address after the PM’S chief of staff agreed to discuss the issue.
It is unclear whether conversations on private email will be handed over to the Covid inquiry although Hugo Keith KC, chief counsel for the inquiry, yesterday said that witnesses have been encouraged to disclose “any informal or private communications”. ‘Families will be insulted by the sight of politicians writing books portraying themselves as heroes’ Keir Starmer called on Rishi Sunak to bring forward the inquiry timetable to report by the end of the year and took an extraordinary swipe at Mr Hancock over payments he received for the publication of his diary of the pandemic.
Sir Keir said: “Families across the country will look at this, and the sight of politicians writing books portraying themselves as heroes will be an insulting and ghoulish spectacle for them.”
Liz Kendall, Labour’s shadowsocial care minister, who asked the urgent question, said: “Throughout the Covid pandemic, ministers repeatedly claimed they threw a protective ring around England’s care homes and always followed the evidence and scientific advice, but Whatsapp messages from the former health secretary revealed in today’s Telegraph, suggest nothing could be further from the truth.” Downing Street said yesterday that there is “significant public interest” in the Lockdown Files.
“That’s why we have established an independent public inquiry that will look to establish the facts,” the Prime Minister’s official spokesman said.
“It’s not for me to look at individual claims put out. “Claims related to how the Government acted, related to testing and who did or did not receive tests at different points during the pandemic I’m