Five things we’ve learned from Hancock’s lockdown files

It’s not just the spectre of Brexit that is haunting Westminster. Overnight the Telegraph has released a smorgasbord of stories based on a cache of Matt Hancock’s WhatsApps during the Covid pandemic. Some 100,000 messages were handed to the newspaper by the co-author of his diaries Isabel Oakeshott. Below are some of the stand out news lines on day one of the ‘lockdown files’…

Hancock rejected Whitty’s advice on care home tests

So blares the Telegraph splash headline today. The paper reports that the then-Health Secretary did not follow advice from Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty to test all residents going into English care homes for the coronavirus. He instead chose to test those being admitted from hospital but not the community, saying that doing the latter ‘muddies the waters’. 

In one WhatsApp exchange, Hancock’s special adviser Allan Nixon wrote that ‘Just to check: officials are saying your steer is to *remove* the commitment to testing on admission to care homes *from the community*, but *keep* commitment to testing on admission to care homes *from hospital*.