Matt Hancock is ‘two-faced’ and ‘was like a headless chicken’ during COVID vaccine drive
Matt Hancock has been branded “two-faced” and compared to a “headless chicken” by the former boss of the COVID vaccines taskforce.
Dr Clive Dix said the outgoing Tory MP, who resigned as health secretary after being caught breaking social distancing rules to pursue an affair with an aide, was “the most difficult of all the ministers”.
“He didn’t take time to understand anything,” he said 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 especially critical of Mr Hancock’s desire to set public targets, including driving the goal of vaccinating the entire population against the virus.
The damning assessment of the ex-minister’s conduct during the pandemic comes as more of his leaked WhatsApp messages from the height of the outbreak emerge.
Earlier, the messages revealed Mr Hancock took his mistress to private dinners with the US health secretary then altered a ministerial response to remove suggestions he invited her.
Some of the latest texts to be published in the Telegraph show Mr Hancock made a series of negative comments about senior figures who worked on the vaccine rollout.
Exchanges from October 2020 show him describing vaccines tsar Dame Kate Bingham as “totally unreliable”.
Mr Hancock said she has a “wacky way” of expressing her views, after a Financial Times interview in which she recommended the UK should only vaccinate “everyone at risk” rather than the whole population.
He complained about Dame Kate again in February 2021, as well as Dr Dix, amid concerns over the UK’s access to vaccines from India as a backup to jabs from AstraZeneca, which was experiencing manufacturing problems.
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Dr Dix, who became deputy chair of the vaccine taskforce in June 2020 and interim chair at the end of 2020, said it showed the West Suffolk MP was “panicking”.
The UK did procure jabs from India in 2021, which Dr Dix said “had been meant for the developing world”.
A spokesman for Dame Kate told the Telegraph that the messages suggested Mr Hancock “was not aware of the published and agreed government vaccine procurement policy”.
He also seemingly “did not read the reports by and about the work of the Vaccine Taskforce”.
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‘He was a loose cannon’
In his article for the Telegraph, Dr Dix said Mr Hancock’s leaked WhatsApp messages – shared with the newspaper by journalist Isabel Oakeshott – were “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 said.
“I don’t think he understood the process. He was a loose cannon.”
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How have Hancock’s WhatsApps been leaked – and what is an NDA?
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Hancock fought ‘resistance in the system’
Mr Hancock has dismissed the Telegraph’s reporting, with a spokesperson labelling the stories as “wrong”.
“Matt drove the goal of getting everyone vaccinated, often against resistance in the system,” they said.
Menawhile, earlier, former chancellor George Osborne, defended the former health secretary as one of the “sensible” ministers during the pandemic.
The former Conservative MP, who crops up in the leaked messages offering advice and support to Mr Hancock amid the challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic, told Channel 4’s The Andrew Neil Show, the ex-health secretary was a “rational” voice in government.
Mr Osborne said: “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 outlined in his memoir, The Pandemic Diaries, which was co-authored by Ms Oakeshott.
Mr Hancock shared the WhatsApp messages with her as they worked on the book.
Ms Oakeshott says she leaked them as it was in the “public interest”.
UK drivers are “confused” by the country’s electric car transition, ministers are being warned.
Although most drivers are not hostile towards electric vehicles (EVs), many are confused about what changes are coming and when, according to new research from the AA.
In a survey of more than 14,000 AA members, 7% thought the government was banning the sale of used petrol and diesel cars.
Around a third thought manual EVs exist, despite them all being automatic.
More than one in five said they would never buy an EV.
The government’s plan for increasing the number of electric vehicles being driven in the UK focuses heavily on increasing the supply of the vehicles.
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What you can do to reach net zero
In 2024, at least 22% of new cars and 10% of new vans sold by each manufacturer in the UK had to be zero-emission, which generally means pure electric.
Each year, those percentages will rise, reaching 80% of new cars and 70% of new vans in 2030.
Manufacturers will face fines of £15,000 per vehicle if electric vehicle sales fall short of 28% of total production this year.
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By 2035, all new cars and vans will be required to be fully zero emission, according to the Department for Transport.
Second-hand diesel and petrol cars will still be allowed to be sold after this date, and their fuel will still be available.
There are more EVs – but will people buy them?
In February, 25% of new cars were powered purely by battery and in January, they made up 21% of all new cars registered in the UK.
But despite the growth of electric sales, manufacturers continue to warn that the market will not support the growth required to hit government EV targets, and called for consumer incentives and the extension of tax breaks.
The AA suggested the government’s plan focuses on “supply but does little to encourage demand for EVs”.
It called on ministers to co-ordinate a public awareness campaign alongside the motoring industry which directly targets drivers who doubt the viability of EVs.
“Our message to government is more needs to be done to make EVs accessible for everyone,” said Jakob Pfaudler, AA chief executive.
Which? head of consumer rights Sue Davis said: “When it comes to making sustainable choices such as switching to an electric car, our research shows that people are often held back by high costs, complex choices or uncertainty.
“The government needs to provide the right information on electric vehicles and other sustainable choices so that people have the confidence to switch.”
A Department for Transport spokesperson said: “We’re investing over £2.3bn to help industry and consumers make a supported switch to EVs.
“This includes installing a public charge point every 28 minutes, keeping EV incentives in the company car tax regime to 2030, and extending 100% first-year allowances for zero-emission cars for another year.
“Second-hand EVs are also becoming cheaper than ever, with one in three available under £20,000 and 21 brand new models available for less than £30,000.
“We’re seeing growing consumer confidence as a result.”
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