Matt Hancock

On 8 January 2018, Hancock was appointed Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport in Theresa May's 2018 cabinet reshuffle, succeeding Karen Bradley.[31] On his first day in the role he criticised the BBC for the amounts of pay its foreign journalists received, and said that some men at the corporation were paid "far more than equivalent public servants".[32]

In August 2017, Hancock oversaw the strengthening of UK data protection law. As Digital Minister he announced people would have more control over their personal data and be better protected in the digital age.[33]

In early 2018, Hancock was the first MP to launch his own mobile app,[34] which was meant as a social network for him to communicate with his constituents and give people updates in relation to his cabinet role.[35] The head of privacy rights group Big Brother Watch called the app a "fascinating comedy of errors",[36] after the app was found to collect its users' photographs, friend details, check-ins, and contact information.[37] Hancock said his app collects data once consent has been granted by the user.[38]

In May 2018, as Media Secretary, Hancock confirmed the highest stake on fixed odds betting terminals would be cut to £2, after Prime Minister May sided with him over the issue.[39]

Following the appointment of Jeremy Hunt to the position of Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, Hancock was appointed Secretary of State for Health and Social Care for England and Wales on 9 July 2018.[25]

In November 2018, Hancock was criticised after appearing to endorse a mobile phone health app marketed by the subscription health service company Babylon in the Evening Standard. Babylon allegedly sponsored the newspaper article. Justin Madders wrote to Theresa May accusing Hancock of repeatedly endorsing the products of a company that receives NHS funds for patients it treats, which contravenes ministerial guidelines. The ministerial code includes that ministers should not "normally accept invitations to act as patrons of, or otherwise offer support to, pressure groups or organisations dependent in whole or in part on Government funding".[40]

In April 2019, Hancock, who had previously said the NHS would face "no privatisation on my watch", was criticised by Labour for allowing 21 NHS contracts worth £127 million to be tendered.[41]

After Theresa May announced her intention to resign as Prime Minister on 24 May 2019, Hancock announced his intention to stand for the Conservative Party leadership. During this campaign, Hancock opposed the prorogation of Parliament to deliver Brexit and called on his fellow leadership candidates to join him on 6 June 2019.[42] He proposed a televised debate with other candidates.[43] He withdrew from the race on 14 June shortly after winning only twenty votes on the first ballot.[44] Following his withdrawal, he endorsed Boris Johnson for the role.[45]

Hancock continued in his role as Health Secretary in Prime Minister Boris Johnson's cabinet. He supported the prorogation of parliament in 2019 by Johnson which he had previously opposed while running for the leadership of the Conservative Party earlier in the year.[46] On 24 September the Supreme Court ruled that the prorogation was unlawful.[47]

In a September 2019 Channel 4 News interview, Hancock was asked to respond to allegations that at a private lunch in 1999 Boris Johnson had groped the leg of journalist Charlotte Edwardes under a table. Edwardes also claimed that Johnson did the same to another woman at the same private lunch. In his reply to the Channel 4 News question, Hancock said of Charlotte Edwardes, "I know Charlotte well and I entirely trust what she has to say. I know her and I know her to be trustworthy", a view shared by fellow Conservative MP Amber Rudd. Both Johnson and anonymous Downing Street officials denied the allegation.[48][49][50]

In October 2019, Hancock was lobbied by former Prime Minister David Cameron and financier Lex Greensill to introduce a payment scheme. Hancock was implicated in the Greensill scandal as the payment scheme was later rolled out within the NHS.[51]

In November 2019, Hancock publicly apologised to Bethany, a teenager diagnosed with autism, for being kept in solitary confinement in various psychiatric facilities. Hancock apologised "for the things that have gone wrong in her care" and said her case in particular was "incredibly difficult and complex", calling Bethany's case "heart-rending" and saying that he had insisted on "a case review of every single person in those conditions."[52]

Hancock and US Secretary of Health Xavier Becerra at G7 Health ministers' meeting, 2021

On 31 January 2020, COVID-19 was confirmed to have spread to the UK, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Hancock said the Government was considering "some quite significant actions that would have social and economic disruption".[53] After the Government gave strict social distancing advice which was defied by large numbers of people, Hancock took a stronger line than the prime minister on condemning those still socialising in groups and derided them as being "very selfish".[54] The Government later implemented legislation banning such groups from forming.[55]

On 27 March 2020, along with Boris Johnson, Hancock himself tested positive for COVID-19.[56] He stayed in self-isolation with mild symptoms for seven days, before delivering an update on COVID-19 testing targets and on Government plans to write off £13.4 billion of NHS debt.[57][58][59]

In April 2020, Hancock was criticised when it emerged that the target he had set for 100,000 daily COVID-19 tests had been met only by changing the method of counting, to include up to 40,000 home test kits which had been sent, but not yet completed.[60] This change was challenged by the UK Statistics Authority[61] and labelled a "Potemkin testing regime".[62]

On 5 April 2020, Hancock warned that all outdoor exercise in England could be banned in response to COVID-19 if people did not follow social distancing rules, saying: "So my message is really clear. If you don't want us to have to take the step to ban exercise of all forms outside of your own home then you've got to follow the rules and the vast majority of people are following the rules."[63]

Hancock received criticism for perceived sexism after suggesting on 5 May 2020 that Labour MP and shadow health minister Rosena Allin-Khan change the "tone" of her comments.[64] Allin-Khan, a doctor, had stated in Parliament a lack of testing was costing lives when Hancock suggested she should "take a leaf out of the Shadow Secretary of State's [Jonathan Ashworth's] book in terms of tone".[65]

On 15 August 2020, The Daily Telegraph reported that Hancock was to merge Public Health England and NHS Test and Trace into a new body called the National Institute for Health Protection, modelled on the Robert Koch Institute. The new body, renamed as the UK Health Security Agency, was set up before autumn amid "a feared surge in coronavirus cases".[66]

On 11 October 2020, Hancock denied breaching a 10 pm drinking curfew in the Smoking Room bar in the House of Commons, put in place because of the pandemic.[67][68][69] Eight days later, the Daily Mirror published a photograph of him riding in his chauffeur-driven car without wearing a mask.[70]

On 2 December 2020, Hancock incorrectly claimed that the MHRA's fast approval of the first COVID-19 vaccine was possible because of Brexit. The MHRA stated that it had followed an expeditious procedure allowed under EU legislation which was still in force in the UK during the transition period.[71]

In January 2021, shopping vouchers for families in need were reintroduced.[72] On Good Morning Britain, Hancock praised the Government for reintroducing the scheme, despite being repeatedly reminded by Piers Morgan that he had opposed it in Parliament.[73]

On 19 February 2021, after a legal challenge by the Good Law Project, a High Court judge ruled that Hancock had acted unlawfully by handing out PPE contracts without publishing details in a timely way. A ruling released by the High Court stated: "There is now no dispute that, in a substantial number of cases, the secretary of state breached his legal obligation to publish Contract Award Notices (CANs) within 30 days of the award of contracts." The details were published within 47 days.[74]

In April 2021, it was reported that Hancock had been given 20% of shares in Topwood Limited, a firm based in Wrexham which is owned by his sister and other close family members.[75] The company specialises in secure storage, scanning and shredding of documents. It won a place on a "procurement framework" listing to provide services to NHS England in 2019, as well as contracts with NHS Wales. There has been no suggestion that Hancock intervened in the normal processes, and in April 2021 the company had not earned anything through the framework.[76] Lord Geidt later produced a report on ministerial interests saying that the awarding of the contract to Topwood could be seen to "represent a conflict of interest" that should have been declared. Hancock responded by saying: "I did not know about the framework decision, and so I do not think I could reasonably have been expected to declare it."[77]

In May 2021, the former Downing Street chief adviser Dominic Cummings claimed, "tens of thousands of people died who didn't need to die" during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic due to what he claimed to be "criminal, disgraceful behaviour" within Downing Street under the supervision of Hancock.[78][79] Cummings also said that Hancock should have been fired as Health Secretary for "15 to 20" different things.[80] Following his testimony, YouGov noted that more people in the general public thought Hancock should resign than stay in his post, despite questions over the accuracy of Cummings's statements.[81] Prime Minister Johnson defended Hancock and his decision-making.[82]

On 25 June 2021, it was revealed that Hancock had breached COVID-19 social distancing restrictions with Gina Coladangelo, an adviser in the Department of Health and Social Care with whom he was having an extramarital affair, after CCTV images of him kissing and embracing her in his Whitehall office on 6 May were published in The Sun newspaper.[83] The Government's guidelines allowed intimate contact with people from a different household only from 17 May.[83] The previous year, Hancock had failed to declare he had appointed Coladangelo as an unpaid adviser at the department and later to a paid non-executive director role on its board, for which Coladangelo would earn between £15,000 and £20,000 annually from public funds.[84][85] Coladangelo had become a close friend of Hancock after meeting him while they were both undergraduates at Oxford University.[84][86]

Later that day (25 June), Hancock said that he had "breached the social distancing guidelines in these circumstances" and apologised for "letting people down".[87] Boris Johnson later said that he accepted the apology and considered the matter "closed".[88] However, Hancock resigned on the evening of 26 June, stating "those of us who make these rules have got to stick by them", and he had not because of his "breaking the guidance".[89][90] He was replaced as Health Secretary the same day by Sajid Javid.[91]

Hancock said he had no idea that the camera, which was hidden inside a smoke detector in his office, existed.[92] Former Cabinet ministers Alan Johnson and Rory Stewart both said there had never been cameras in their offices during their time in Government, with Johnson saying: "I could never understand why there was a camera in the Secretary of State's office. There was never a camera in my office when I was Health Secretary or in any of the other five Cabinet positions."[92] It was reported that the CCTV footage was leaked by a DHSC employee who opposed the Government's lockdown restrictions, and on 27 June it was confirmed that an internal investigation was undertaken by the department to find the culprit, for fear of future CCTV footage being leaked to states hostile to the UK, for the purposes of blackmail.[93]

News of the scandal was met with a mixture of public anger and ridicule.[94][95] The Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice group warned that Hancock's actions could undermine adherence to coronavirus restrictions, similar to the Dominic Cummings scandal.[96] Amanda Milling, Co-chairman of the Conservative Party, opined that Hancock's affair was a factor in the Conservative Party's failure to win the Batley and Spen by-election on 1 July.[97]

On 15 July, investigators seized computers after searches at two homes in southern England, after the Information Commissioner's Office announced that it had set up an inquiry into the leak in the CCTV images.[98]

On 29 July, the council of the second largest town in his constituency, Newmarket, passed a no-confidence vote against Hancock as its MP.[99] Mayor Michael Jefferys cast the necessary vote to pass the motion.[100]

On 12 October 2021, Hancock announced his appointment as the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa special representative for financial innovation and climate change,[101] an unpaid position advising the Commission on the African economy's recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.[102] Following objections related to his record as Secretary of State for Health,[103] the United Nations announced on 16 October that the offer had been rescinded.[104]

In December 2021, Hancock presented the Dyslexia Screening Bill to Parliament, to ensure all children are screened for dyslexia before they leave primary school.[105]

On 1 November 2022, Hancock announced that he would be a contestant on the 22nd series of British reality television show I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here!, which would be filmed whilst Parliament was to be in session. Immediately following this announcement, the Conservative Party suspended the whip for Hancock—in effect, removing him from their parliamentary group but retaining him as a party member.[106][107] He will sit as an independent in the House of Commons.