Opinion

Claire Simpson: Matt Hancock should have resigned months ago

Health Secretary Matt Hancock. Picture by Hannah McKay, Press Association
Health Secretary Matt Hancock. Picture by Hannah McKay, Press Association Health Secretary Matt Hancock. Picture by Hannah McKay, Press Association

Matt Hancock's resignation after he was accused of having an affair with an adviser he appointed to a taxpayer-funded job came as a surprise.

The health secretary didn’t resign over any of approximately 1,278 other scandals including a tactic of sending vulnerable hospital patients to care homes without a Covid test and PPE shortages which led to clinicians using bin bags as protection.

Under Boris Johnson's leadership, pushing policies which may have led to the deaths of thousands of people is fine, but getting caught having an affair is ultimately a sacking offence.

It's clear that several senior politicians were gunning for Mr Hancock's departure long before the incriminating CCTV footage emerged.

But how bad a minister do you really have to be to prompt someone to pass on security footage from within your own department to The Sun?

According to leaked WhatsApp messages, Boris Johnson charmingly described Mr Hancock as “f***ing useless”.

Mr Johnson couldn't sack the health secretary himself, mainly because he never willingly stood down over his many affairs and rejected claims about one of them as an “inverted pyramid of piffle”.

Mr Hancock's resignation letter showed an incredible lack of self-awareness - less a decent apology and more a list of all the wonderful things he claimed the government had accomplished including "building a better NHS".

In 2002, Labour MP Estelle Morris resigned as education secretary, saying the job was too important to have "second best”.

The former teacher bluntly said she had to be “really honest with myself” and had felt more comfortable in her previous role as schools minister than as a secretary of state in charge of a huge department.

Almost 20 years on, the humility Ms Morris showed appears entirely absent from our present government.

While the vaccination programme has been a success, albeit a rare one, 21 million people in the UK remain unvaccinated - high enough to drive a third wave of cases.

The pandemic is on a global scale but little has been done to help developing countries.

The UK said it will donate 100m surplus coronavirus vaccine doses within the next year to low-income nations.

In total, G7 countries have committed to distributing at least 1 billion doses to poorer countries.

But the commitment falls short of a solution. Unicef has predicted that it could be 2024 before all African nations reach the same levels of vaccination seen in the west.

And warnings have been there for months.

In February, the Irish head of the World Health Organisation's Covid-19 response team insisted that western countries must share Covid vaccines with healthcare workers and vulnerable people in developing countries.

In a passionate address, Co Sligo-born Dr Mike Ryan said the global distribution of vaccines was unfair and favoured the richest countries in the northern hemisphere.

"The north doesn't need to share all of its vaccines, it needs to share some of its vaccines in order that the most vulnerable and the most at risk in the developing world would have access,” he said.

He pointed out that the west is prepared to invest trillions of dollars every year in defence systems and “almost nothing in the microbes which have brought our civilisation to its knees over the last year”.

Five months on, the richest countries still aren’t acting quickly enough.

Claire Simpson
Claire Simpson Claire Simpson

Coronavirus is still doing what viruses do - mutating. It is no surprise that the Delta variant of Covid, thought to be behind the enormous surge in cases - and deaths - in India in the spring has also been responsible for a surge in the UK.

The ineffective quarantine system, which was brought in too late, certainly has not helped.

The pattern of new variants is likely to be repeated.

Unless the poorest countries receive enough vaccines, and even more crucially are given the logistical support they need to distribute them, Covid cases will continue.

There will be no return to normal until we can be sure that the disease is reasonably under control.

During the torturous Brexit negotiations, commentators were fond of saying that nothing would be agreed until everything was agreed.

With Covid, no one will be safe until everyone is safe.