By Tony O’Reilly-
Irresponsible former Health Secretary, Matt Hancock,(pictured) has been exposed for unethically trying to bypass Education Secretary Gavin Williamson to have schools closed in December 2020, messages published by the Daily Telegraph suggest.
Journalist Isabelle Oakwood, exposed Whassap messages revealing Hancock’s poor judgement in going ahead of the Education Secretary in wanting to close school’s down during the height of the pandemic.
She had become privy to the messages due to her collaboration with Hancock on a book, but soon realised the Health Secretary had been overstepping his boundaries as a politician.
Mr Hancock had been acting very unprofessionally, more like a pub lout, in his description of teaching unions as “absolute arses”.
Sir Gavin Williamson also disappointingly replied that teachers hated work.
The leaked messages, among more over 100,000 sent by ministers and officials during the pandemic, which Ms Oakeshott passed to the paper, revealed just how unprofessional politicians were behaving. It is no wonder many shamefully breached lockdown rules, with partygate being the height of stupidity in government at the time.
Ms Oakeshott who was a vocal critic of lockdowns, admitted breaking a non-disclosure agreement by releasing the messages because in her words, it was “in the public interest”.
In a statement, the former health secretary said there was “absolutely no public interest case for this huge breach” because all the material used for his book had been handed to the Covid-19 public inquiry.
He also complained he was the victim of a “massive betrayal and breach of trust” by Ms Oakeshott, and said he was sorry for the impact on political colleagues, civil servants and friends “who worked hard with me to get through the pandemic and save lives”.
Earlier a spokesman for Mr Hancock said the latest leaks were like Tuesday night’s, providing “partial accounts, obviously spun with an agenda”.
Schools minister Nick Gibb told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme decisions were taken “based on what was in the best interests of children”.
“We were always reliant on and followed the advice of the chief medical officer and the evidence that was emerging. Day by day, new evidence was emerging as the scientists were learning about this virus.”
He said it would be up to the public inquiry to decide whether the government made the right decisions, he added.
One exchange on 28 December 2020 appears to show Mr Hancock messaging an aide during a video meeting with then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson to discuss the rising number of Covid cases.
Closure Of Primary Schools
All primary schools in England to return as normal in January after months of closure, and the opening of secondary schools was to be delayed by two weeks to allow time for mass testing to be set up.
Mr Hancock, who wanted to keep school closed, described Sir Gavin as battling “tooth and nail” to keep them open and “going absolutely gangbusters” over the issue.
“He’s freaking out. You can tell he isn’t being wholly rationale [sic]… just by his body language,” Mr Hancock’s aide, Emma Dean, wrote.
“I’m having to turn the volume down,” Mr Hancock responded.
Later, having apparently failed to persuade the prime minister that schools should stay shut, Mr Hancock wrote: “The next U-turn is born.”
He adds: “I want to find a way, Gavin having won the day, of actually preventing a policy car crash when the kids spread the disease in January. And for that we must now fight a rear-guard action.”
Mr Hancock then contacted Dan Rosenfield, Mr Johnson’s chief of staff, to discuss how to “avoid the car crash we have just set up for January”.
Humble Pie Bullying
In an exchange on 1 January, as the number of Covid cases continued to rise, Mr Hancock described Sir Gavin as having had to eat “a lot of humble pie”. This was bullish language.
On 3 January, the prime minister repeatedly insisted that “schools are safe” on BBC One’s Andrew Marr Show.
The next day, hours after pupils returned, he announced the closure of all schools and colleges, as they “may act as vectors for transmission”.
Writing for the Telegraph, Sir Gavin said he felt the closure decision “wasn’t done for the right reasons” and he considered resigning in protest. He remained as education secretary until September 2021 when Mr Johnson reshuffled his cabinet.
Messages between Mr Hancock and Sir Gavin in May 2020 reveal them discussing a shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE) for schools.
Sir Gavin said he wanted to make sure PPE was provided so schools “can’t use [a shortfall] as a reason not to open”, and that some would want to use it as “an excuse to avoid having to teach”.
In October, Sir Gavin announced that A-level exams would be delayed by several weeks, a shorter period than some unions had called for.
“Cracking announcement today,” wrote Mr Hancock to Sir Gavin. “What a bunch of absolute arses the teaching unions are.”
Sir Gavin replied: “I know they really really do just hate work.”
Emojis’
Mr Hancock responded with some emojis of a person laughing and another of a dart hitting a bullseye.
Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, told BBC Breakfast the reported comments made by Sir Gavin were “contemptible because we have to remind ourselves that this was an age of extraordinary anxiety. We hadn’t got vaccines.”
Mr Barton said there was a “very snarky debate” going on about whether face coverings should or shouldn’t be worn.
“The very people who then brought those young people back into school are being described in those snide terms by the former education secretary,” he said.
Sir Gavin Williamson says he considered resigning in protest at school closures in January 2021
He added that as someone who wants the “brightest and best” young people to become politicians, “that is less likely this morning because of that sneering denigration of the teaching profession”.
Writing on Twitter following the latest leaks, Sir Gavin said he wanted to “clarify that these messages were about some unions and not teachers”.
“I have the utmost respect for teachers who work tirelessly to support students. During the pandemic, teachers went above and beyond during very challenging times,” he added.
Mr Gibb has defended Sir Gavin Williamson, telling LBC: “People say things in the heat of the moment on WhatsApp that they don’t really believe.
“Gavin’s own wife is a primary school teacher. I’ve worked with Gavin for two years; I know he holds teachers in the highest regard.”
Other leaked messages purportedly show that children who tested positive for Covid, but might not actually have had the disease, were sent home anyway because officials did not want to “unpick” a policy that had already been written.
When schools returned after the third lockdown in March 2021, government policy said a child who tested positive with a lateral flow test should isolate for 10 days, even if they later tested negative with a PCR, a more reliable test.
Mr Hancock asked advisers to look into the issue but was told that the policy had been “written and distributed and schools prepared” and that it would be “difficult to unpick now”.
Only three weeks later, on 30 March, the policy was indeed “unpicked”, and schools were told that a positive lateral flow test should be confirmed by a PCR.
The latest leaks also appear to show that an August 2020 change in government policy requiring secondary pupils in England to wear face masks was introduced mainly to avoid a row with the Scottish government.
Following its introduction in Scotland, Mr Johnson posted in a WhatsApp group asking whether the UK government would need to change its stance.
Downing Street’s director of communications Lee Cain warned that “nervous parents would freak out” if Scotland’s example was not followed, while Sir Chris said there were no strong reasons for or against the policy, and the issue was “not worth an argument”.
Quite clearly, there is a massive interest in all the above facts being revealed. They should the extent of unreliability and self interested motives in keeping schools closed under the ptences of COVID 19.
Frazer Nelson, aptly states in his article for The Spectator that ”there is always a question of cognitive bias: publications that backed lockdown would perhaps be less interested in exposing the shoddiness behind those decisions. Yet, true journalism always requires a complete and unbiased revelation in public interest about poor judgements and weak grounds for various decisions, regardless of whether one agrees with the decision,
Oakwood has rightly exposed the sham behind many lockdown decisions which many wuld rather remain hidden under the dirty carpet.