Matt Hancock denies ‘completely wrong’ claims he rejected Covid care home testing advice – UK politics live

If Matt Hancock wants to defend his record on care homes, he will get a chance in the Commons at 12.30pm, because Sir Lindsay Hoyle, the speaker, has granted an urgent question on the topic. Liz Kendall, the shadow care minister, has tabled the question. A health minister will respond. Hancock is just a backbencher now, but he can ask a question if he wants and, although questions are meant to be very short, Hancock might get some leeway to go on a bit given that he is leading the news at the moment.

After that there are two statements: one from Dominic Raab, the justice secretary, on an independent public advocate; and another from Andrew Mitchell, the development minister, on aid to Turkey and Syria.

Tory Brexiters can normally spot what they see as a surrender to Brussels in the blink of an eye. But the European Research Group’s so-called “star chamber” of lawyers could take up to a fortnight to scrutinise Rishi Sunak’s Northern Ireland protocol deal, Mark Francois said today.

Francois, the ERG chair, told TalkTV that he expected the “star chamber” to produce an assessment “within a fortnight” but he said there was no deadline. He told the station:

It takes as long as it takes because it’s very important all this. But I think Sir Bill [Cash] and his team are going to try and do this if they can within a fortnight and as I say they will make their conclusions publicly available for all to see.

But because of the importance of this, if it takes a little bit longer than that, then it takes a little bit longer.

Francois also said an “important consideration” would be whether the EU would be able to retaliate if the UK were to use the Stormont brake.

In December last year Isabel Oakeshott wrote an article for the Spectator about co-writing Matt Hancock’s Pandemic Diaries with him in which she said he was “surprisingly inclined to disclosure”. Hancock did not keep a real diary during the pandemic, and so the book, which is written in diary form, was compiled with extensive reference to contemporary records, including WhatsApp messages. She said that she did not expect him to reveal everything, but that he “shared far more than I could ever have imagined”.

Hancock, of course, will be bitterly regretting their collaboration now that Oakeshott has decided to share the material with Daily Telegraph, and, via the paper, the world at large. In an article explaining why she has done so, she says that the public deserves to know the truth about what happened and that the public inquiry is going to take too long. She says:

Announced in May 2021, our public inquiry – which has already cost up to £85 million – has yet to begin formal hearings. Alarmingly, it does not appear to have any specific timeframe or deadline.

We all know what this means – it will drag on forever. After all, the investigation into Bloody Sunday took 10 years and was nowhere near as daunting a task.

The hopelessly open-ended nature of the formal process makes these WhatsApp files all the more important. Amid the ever-present threat of another pandemic, perhaps more deadly than the last, we emphatically cannot afford to wait until the mid-2030s or even beyond to learn lessons. Those who have information in the public interest need to put it out there right now.

The Telegraph’s first story from the document trove accuses Hancock of ignoring medical advice on care homes. In her article Oakeshott barely mentions this, and that might be because she thinks that broadly what he did was right. In her Spectator article in December she set out what she learned about the rights and wrongs of the government’s Covid policy when researching the book, and this is what she said about care homes.

Hancock is more sensitive about this subject than any other. The accusation that he blithely discharged Covid-positive patients from hospitals into care homes, without thinking about how this might seed the virus among the frail elderly, or attempting to stop this happening, upsets and exasperates him. The evidence I have seen is broadly in his favour.

At the beginning of the pandemic, it was simply not possible to test everyone: neither the technology nor the capacity existed. Internal communications show that care homes were clearly instructed to isolate new arrivals. It later emerged that the primary source of new infection in these settings was in any case not hospital discharges, but the movement of staff between care homes. Politically, this was very inconvenient: Hancock knew he would be accused of ‘blaming’ hardworking staff if he emphasised the link (which is exactly what has now happened).

He is on less solid ground in relation to the treatment of isolated care-home residents and their increasingly desperate relatives. His absolute priority was to preserve life – however wretched the existence became. Behind the scenes, the then care home minister Helen Whately fought valiantly to persuade him to ease visiting restrictions to allow isolated residents some contact with their loved ones. She did not get very far. Internal communications reveal that the authorities expected to find cases of actual neglect of residents as a result of the suspension of routine care-home inspections.

Lord Frost, Boris Johnson’s former Brexit negotiator has fired a shot at Rishi Sunak’s Northern Ireland protocol deal, admitting it will “help” but will not remove EU law from Northern Ireland, my colleague Lisa O’Carroll reports.

Frost made his comments in a column in the Daily Telegraph. Here’s an excerpt.

Most of our political class is choosing not to look too closely at any of this because they are tired of the whole problem. Some even argue, as the prime minister did yesterday, that it is actually better for Northern Ireland to be subject to the Protocol than fully part of the UK. But just as some overclaiming by Boris Johnson in 2019 came back to haunt him, so it will for Rishi Sunak in 2023, because moving goods to Belfast will still not really be like moving goods to Birmingham.

A fairer statement of the position would be “this deal softens the application of the Protocol, but does not remove it. It’s the best we could persuade the EU to do because we weren’t prepared to use the protocol bill and the EU knew it”. That doesn’t mean the deal shouldn’t go ahead. It will help. But it won’t remove the underlying tensions, even if the DUP does decide to go back into Stormont. It leaves the government still only partly sovereign over all its territory. Just as in 2019, that is a bitter pill to swallow.

Good morning. Covid has soared backed to the top of the news agenda, after the Daily Telegraph published a front page story claiming Matt Hancock ignored medical advice on testing people going into care homes in the early days of the pandemic, when he was health secretary. Hancock says the story is “completely wrong”, based on a partial use of confidential material that is in effect stolen, and published to support the Telegraph’s anti-lockdown agenda.

Hancock is also considering suing the paper for libel.

Here is the key allegation from the Telegraph’s splash.

Matt Hancock rejected the chief medical officer’s advice to test for Covid all residents going into English care homes, leaked messages seen by The Telegraph reveal.

Prof Sir Chris Whitty told the then health secretary early in April 2020, about a month into the pandemic, that there should be testing for “all going into care homes”. But Mr Hancock did not follow that guidance, telling his advisers that it “muddies the waters”.

Instead, he introduced guidance that made testing mandatory for those entering care homes from hospital, but not for those coming from the community. Prior to the guidance, care homes had been told that negative tests were not required even for hospital patients. The guidance stating that those coming in from the community should be tested was eventually introduced on Aug 14.

In response, a spokesperson for Hancock said that the guidance only mandated testing for people entering care homes from hospital because the capacity was not available to test people entering care homes from the community as well at that point. The spokesperson said:

Having not been approached in advance by the Telegraph, we have reviewed the messages overnight.

The Telegraph intentionally excluded reference to a meeting with the testing team from the WhatsApp. This is critical, because Matt was supportive of Chris Whitty’s advice, held a meeting on its deliverability, told it wasn’t deliverable, and insisted on testing all those who came from hospitals.

The Telegraph have been informed that their headline is wrong, and Matt is considering all options available to him.

The spokesperson also accused the Telegraph of attacking him to promote the paper’s anti-lockdown agenda. The spokesperson said:

It is outrageous that this distorted account of the pandemic is being pushed with partial leaks, spun to fit an anti-lockdown agenda, which would have cost hundreds of thousands of lives if followed.

What the messages do show is a lot of people working hard to save lives.

The full documents have already all been made available to the inquiry, which is the proper place for an objective assessment, so true lessons can be learned.

Those who argue there shouldn’t have been a lockdown ignore the fact that half a million people would have died had we not locked down. And for those saying we should never lock down again, imagine if a disease killed half those infected, and half the population were going to get infected – as is happening right now with avian flu in birds. If that disease were in humans, of course we’d want to lockdown.

The story spun on care homes is completely wrong. What the messages show is that Mr Hancock pushed for testing of those going into care homes when that testing was available.

Instead of spinning and leaks we need the full, comprehensive inquiry, to ensure we are as well prepared as we can be for the next pandemic, whenever it comes.

The Telegraph story is wrong, based on partial, spun leaks – and they did not approach Matt before publication.

The Telegraph obtained its material from Isabel Oakeshott, the journalist who co-authored his Pandemic Diaries. She was shown his WhatsApp messages subject to a non-disclosure agreement, but she has said it is in the public interest for them to be be published. This is not the first time she has turned against someone having collaborated with them on a book; it happened to Aaron Banks, the Ukip and Leave.EU donor whose Brexit memoirs she ghost wrote.

What makes this story particularly concerning, not just for Hancock but for the government as a whole, is that it is not a one-off. The Telegraph says that it has more than 100,000 WhatsApp messages from Hancock and that it will be publishing a series of revelations from them in the coming days. It has set up a dedicated web page to the story – always a worrying development, as those caught up in its MPs’ expenses investigation will recall.

I will post more on this through the day. But we have also got PMQs, and ongoing discussion about the Northern Ireland protocol deal.

Here is the agenda for the day.

10.15am: Dominic Raab, the justice secretary and deputy PM, gives evidence to the Lords constitutional affairs committee.

12pm: Rishi Sunak faces Keir Starmer at PMQs.

2.45pm: Kemi Badenoch gives evidence to the Commons women and equalities committee in her capacity as minister for women and equalities. (She is also business secretary.)

I’ll try to monitor the comments below the line (BTL) but it is impossible to read them all. If you have a direct question, do include “Andrew” in it somewhere and I’m more likely to find it. I do try to answer questions, and if they are of general interest I will post the question and reply above the line (ATL), although I can’t promise to do this for everyone.

If you want to attract my attention quickly, it is probably better to use Twitter. I’m on @AndrewSparrow.

Alternatively, you can email me at andrew.sparrow@theguardian.com.