Matt Hancock has been branded “two-faced” and in comparison with a “headless chicken” by the previous boss of the COVID vaccines taskforce.
Dr Clive Dix mentioned the outgoing Tory MP, who resigned as well being secretary after being caught breaking social distancing guidelines to pursue an affair with an aide, was “the most difficult of all the ministers”.
“He didn’t take time to understand anything,” he mentioned of Mr Hancock, in an article for The Daily Telegraph.
“He was all over the place, a bit like a headless chicken.”
Dr Dix is very important of Mr Hancock’s want to set public targets, together with driving the objective of vaccinating the complete inhabitants in opposition to the virus.
The damning evaluation of the ex-minister’s conduct throughout the pandemic comes as extra of his leaked WhatsApp messages from the peak of the outbreak emerge.
Earlier, the messages revealed Mr Hancock took his mistress to non-public dinners with the US well being secretary then altered a ministerial response to take away recommendations he invited her.
Some of the most recent texts to be revealed within the Telegraph present Mr Hancock made a collection of adverse feedback about senior figures who labored on the vaccine rollout.
Exchanges from October 2020 present him describing vaccines tsar Dame Kate Bingham as “totally unreliable”.
Mr Hancock mentioned she has a “wacky way” of expressing her views, after a Financial Times interview by which she really useful the UK ought to solely vaccinate “everyone at risk” fairly than the entire inhabitants.
He complained about Dame Kate once more in February 2021, in addition to Dr Dix, amid issues over the UK’s entry to vaccines from India as a backup to jabs from AstraZeneca, which was experiencing manufacturing issues.
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Dr Dix, who grew to become deputy chair of the vaccine taskforce in June 2020 and interim chair on the finish of 2020, mentioned it confirmed the West Suffolk MP was “panicking”.
The UK did procure jabs from India in 2021, which Dr Dix mentioned “had been meant for the developing world”.
A spokesman for Dame Kate instructed the Telegraph that the messages prompt Mr Hancock “was not aware of the published and agreed government vaccine procurement policy”.
He additionally seemingly “did not read the reports by and about the work of the Vaccine Taskforce”.
Read extra:
Leaked messages present Hancock’s response to filmed ‘snog’
‘He was a free cannon’
In his article for the Telegraph, Dr Dix mentioned Mr Hancock’s leaked WhatsApp messages – shared with the newspaper by journalist Isabel Oakeshott – have been “two-faced”.
“We were working as hard as we could, and he thought he could just come in and make a bold statement to the public and tell us that we have got to do it,” he mentioned.
“I don’t think he understood the process. He was a loose cannon.”
Read extra:
How have Hancock’s WhatsApps been leaked – and what’s an NDA?
Hancock fought ‘resistance within the system’
Mr Hancock has dismissed the Telegraph’s reporting, with a spokesperson labelling the tales as “wrong”.
“Matt drove the goal of getting everyone vaccinated, often against resistance in the system,” they mentioned.
Menawhile, earlier, former chancellor George Osborne, defended the previous well being secretary as one of many “sensible” ministers throughout the pandemic.
The former Conservative MP, who crops up within the leaked messages providing recommendation and help to Mr Hancock amid the challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic, instructed Channel 4’s The Andrew Neil Show, the ex-health secretary was a “rational” voice in authorities.
Mr Osborne mentioned: “This is not a fashionable view at the moment – but Matt was one of the sensible people in the room in a supreme crisis for the British state and indeed lots of other countries around the world.”
Mr Hancock’s account of the UK’s response to the pandemic is printed in his memoir, The Pandemic Diaries, which was co-authored by Ms Oakeshott.
Mr Hancock shared the WhatsApp messages along with her as they labored on the guide.
Ms Oakeshott says she leaked them because it was within the “public interest”.
Source: information.sky.com”