Matt Hancock has said he is “hugely disappointed” by what he described as a “massive betrayal and breach of trust by Isabel Oakeshott”, who gave WhatsApp messages from his time as health secretary to the Daily Telegraph. Oakeshott was given the WhatsApp exchanges by Hancock while they were collaborating on a book about the pandemic. Messages have been leaked so far from the former prime minister Boris Johnson, England’s chief medical officer, Prof Chris Whitty, the cabinet secretary, Simon Case, Johnson’s former director of communications Lee Cain and Hancock’s adviser Emma Dean. In the latest revelations, texts from Hancock and Gavin Williamson show the former education secretary alleging that teachers complained about a lack of PPE in order “to have an excuse not to teach”, commenting later that some teaching unions “really do just hate work”. The former health secretary apologised on Thursday for the impact of the release of the messages on those he had worked with during the pandemic. In a statement, Hancock said: “I am hugely disappointed and sad at the massive betrayal and breach of trust by Isabel Oakeshott. I am also sorry for the impact on the very many people – political colleagues, civil servants and friends – who worked hard with me to get through the pandemic and save lives.” He said there was “absolutely no public interest case for this huge breach” because all the material used for his Pandemic Diaries book was given to the Covid-19 public inquiry.
Oakeshott defended her decision to release the messages on Thursday. She claimed publishing the messages with the Telegraph this week was in the public interest because they shed light on the inner workings of government as it responded to the Covid pandemic. Addressing her decision not to reveal them until after she had finished working for Hancock, she told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “My responsibilities, having finished that book with him, are now to the public interest. “Not one journalist worth their salt would sit on a cache of information in such an important matter, such a historic matter, and cover that up. Do you know what would have happened if I hadn’t released this stuff? The usual suspects would have had a massive go at me for sitting on these files, wouldn’t they? We know that.” When it was put to her that she had in fact sat on the files for more than a year while writing Hancock’s book, Oakeshott said: “There were 2.3m words. I was trying to write a book in an extraordinarily tight deadline.” She accused Hancock of sending her a threatening message in the early hours of the morning before the Daily Telegraph’s first story was published on the messages, though she has declined to give details.
Speaking to Today, she said: “He can threaten me all he likes. There are plenty of things I can say about his behaviour, by the way, that I’m not going to do – at least not at this stage – because this is not about Matt Hancock. It is so much bigger than that.” Pressed for more details, she would only say: “I’m saying that he sent me a message at 1.20am in the morning. It wasn’t a pleasant message.” Later on Thursday, Hancock released his statement and explicitly denied this. “When I heard confused rumours of a publication late on Tuesday night, I called and messaged Isabel to ask her if she had ‘any clues’ about it, and got no response. When I then saw what she’d done, I messaged to say it was ‘a big mistake’. Nothing more.” Responding to his statement that there was no public interest case for the leaks, Oakeshott told TalkTV: “What a ridiculous defence. For someone who’s as intelligent as Matt Hancock to issue a statement saying there is no public interest in these revelations is patently absurd. And he knows that very well.”