Yesterday’s post discussed the first release of The Telegraph‘s Lockdown Files articles.

N.B.: Please open links below in a new tab, as they no longer do that automatically. I am still waiting for an answer from WordPress on that loss of functionality.

This was The Telegraph‘s front page on Wednesday, March 1, 2023:

The fallout was huge, as we can see from Metro‘s front page on Thursday, March 2:

Parliamentary debate

I left off yesterday mentioning the Urgent Question (UQ) in the House of Commons from Labour’s Liz Kendall about The Lockdown Files.

Lightweight Helen Whately, whom Hancock often lumbered with ministerial responsibility for questions he should have been answering during the pandemic, represented the Government. She was Hancock’s Social Care Minister, which she resumed under Rishi Sunak’s premiership.

The Telegraph‘s Madeline Grant wrote an excellent parliamentary sketch of the UQ debate. Excerpts follow, emphases mine:

Given the subject matter, Kendall might have at least concealed her glee a teensy bit … “And above all”, she said, glowering across the despatch box, “we need answers”. There was just one problem – the man in question was nowhere to be seen.

Instead, carrying the can was Whately, who professed herself “shocked and disappointed” by Kendall’s tone …

Whately stuck to the same talking points, delivered in a tone of reedy indecision; speaking of the “practicalities of implementation” and arguing again and again that the official Covid inquiry would prove a better forum for a “reasoned” discussion. Frazzled, waif-like, the Social Care Minister resembled a Victorian mudlark …

Soon the heckling began. “People died… unnecessarily!”, “You were warned at the time!” screeched Wes Streeting [Labour].

A few Tory backbenchers hit back. The Rt Hon Sir Oliver Heald KC complained of “trial by media and party politics”. (In Westminster? Sacre bleu!)

“Shameless politicking,” cried Dr Kieran Mullan of Crewe and Nantwich. Mullan demanded an apology from every Labour MP who’d accused Britain of having the worst death toll in Europe. He had a point – the opposition had flitted from years of clamouring for lockdown to launching a fleet of Captain Hindsights in very short order. At the same time, complaining about “politicking” in the Commons was a bit “no fighting in the war room”.

I wondered if, at some point, Helen Whately might crack, and begin a well-deserved rant: “I hate Matt Hancock! Why am I up here defending him? He ignored my care home warnings and scuttled off to do I’m A Celebrity, but not before handing over all his incriminating messages to a journalist!” Instead, she simply reminded the House once again of the importance of waiting for the public inquiry.

Who knows how long the public inquiry will take? We could experience more pandemics by the time it’s over.

GB News’s Tom Harwood says there is no end date:

Hancock lashes out at Isabel Oakeshott

Many of us are eternally grateful to Isabel Oakeshott, co-author of Matt Hancock’s Pandemic Diaries, who released 100,000 WhatsApp messages to The Telegraph.

Hancock is decidedly less so.

Oakeshott’s column for Thursday’s edition was ‘Matt Hancock can threaten me all he wants, our nation’s children must never suffer this way again’, which opened with this:

Of all the travesties and tragedies of the pandemic, the treatment of children is arguably the most egregious. Almost three years after the blind panic over the virus triggered the first ill-fated decision to shut schools, the casualness with which a generation of little ones were sacrificed so that politicians could continue to insist they were doing everything possible to “save lives” should still exercise every one of us. More than anything else, it is the appalling disregard for the wellbeing of young people – which should have been paramount– that has driven me to release these WhatsApp messages: even in the face of a threatening message from Mr Hancock at 1.20am on Wednesday – hours after the Telegraph published.

A Telegraph article about her appeared that day, ‘Isabel Oakeshott defends WhatsApp leak: “Anyone who thinks I did this for money must be utterly insane”‘.

She appeared on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme to answer questions from presenter Nick Robinson.

She told Robinson she was not going to get into a public spat with Hancock:

“Do you know what I’m not going to do, because it wouldn’t be pretty, is get involved in a slanging match with Matt Hancock.

“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 on the claim, which Mr Hancock denies, that he sent a threatening or menacing message to her, Ms Oakeshott declined to withdraw the claim.

“I’m saying that he sent me a message at 1.20am in the morning. It wasn’t a pleasant message.”

Hancock, as usual, had much more to say:

Matt Hancock has said he is “hugely disappointed” by what he said was a “massive betrayal and breach of trust by Isabel Oakeshott”.

In a statement, Matt Hancock added: “There is absolutely no public interest case for this huge breach. All the materials for the book have already been made available to the Inquiry, which is the right, and only, place for everything to be considered properly and the right lessons to be learned.

“As we have seen, releasing them in this way gives a partial, biased account to suit an anti-lockdown agenda.”

“Isabel and I had worked closely together for more than a year on my book, based on legal confidentiality and a process approved by the Cabinet Office. Isabel repeatedly reiterated the importance of trust throughout, and then broke that trust.”

Mr Hancock continued: “Last night, I was accused of sending menacing messages to Isabel. This is also wrong. 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.

“I will not be commenting further on any other stories or false allegations that Isabel will make. I will respond to the substance in the appropriate place, at the inquiry, so that we can properly learn all the lessons based on a full and objective understanding of what happened in the pandemic, and why.”

Oakeshott’s interview on Radio 4 clears up two other issues of speculation on Wednesday — payment from The Telegraph and breaking a non-disclosure agreement:

Ms Oakeshott denied any suggestion she was paid by The Telegraph for the messages …

“They did not pay me for the messages, I’ve been helping the Daily Telegraph with the investigation, you’ll see that I’ve been writing stories for the Daily Telegraph” …

“You broke a written legal agreement, a non-disclosure agreement,” Mr Robinson said.

Ms Oakeshott said it was a matter of “public record” that she had signed an NDA, and that the “public interest is far more important”.

She is not wrong.

The inquiry is supposed to start this month — March 2023 — but there is no indication as to when.

Hancock determined to close schools

Thursday’s articles from The Lockdown Files concerned education:

Gavin Williamson, former Conservative Chief Whip, was the Education Secretary at the time.

Although there is clear water between him and Hancock right now, they did agree at the time on one thing — teachers’ unions.

‘Teachers looking for “excuse” not to work during pandemic, said Gavin Williamson’ says:

Sir Gavin Williamson criticised both school staff and unions for their response to coronavirus, saying that the latter “really do just hate work”.

Sir Gavin made the comments in a discussion with Matt Hancock as school staff prepared for the re-opening of classes in May 2020.

Surely ‘October 2020’ (see below):

By this point, schools had been effectively shut for two months with only vulnerable children and those whose parents were key workers allowed to attend in person. Ministers and teachers were planning for lessons to begin returning in June.

At the time there was a shortage of personal protective equipment and Sir Gavin said he had originally been told by officials that they could get this through the local resilience forums, composed of representatives from local public services, including the emergency services, and local authorities, but that the Department of Health had backtracked.

He contacted Mr Hancock to ask him to help unblock the request as it “will be very small demand as most schools will already have it and it is only aimed at the situation if a child is clearly ill”.

Mr Hancock agreed to help, noting that it was a “tiny amount” and it would only be needed when there were “no alternatives” …

The National Education Union (NEU) was a vocal critic of the Government’s handling of schools and had attacked ministers for a string of U-turns …

By the autumn, unions had made a number of demands including additional teachers, smaller classes and better access to tests for staff and students. Some were calling for exams to be cancelled for the second year running.

On the evening of Oct 1, the Telegraph released a front page confirming that Sir Gavin was planning to delay A-level exams for a few weeks.

At almost 10pm Mr Hancock got in touch with his Cabinet colleague, writing: “Cracking announcement today. What a bunch of absolute arses the teaching unions are”

Sir Gavin responded: “I know they really really do just hate work” …

Of course, in Parliament and to the media, Government ministers and Boris Johnson praised teachers.

However, Hancock had to prevail over his peers heading other departments, including Education.

‘Matt Hancock staged “rearguard” action to close schools’ tells us:

Matt Hancock mounted a “rearguard action” to close schools despite Sir Gavin Williamson battling “tooth and nail” to keep classrooms open, leaked WhatsApp messages reveal.

Exchanges seen by The Telegraph reveal that the then health secretary battled the education secretary in late December 2020 and suggested it was “mad” that Sir Gavin was attempting to keep schools open.

Mr Hancock initially lost a Cabinet argument during which he tried to persuade the Prime Minister to close schools ahead of their return in January 2021.

After Boris Johnson sided with Sir Gavin, Mr Hancock told an aide: “The next U-turn is born” and added: “I want to find a way, Gavin having won the day, of actually preventing a policy car crash when the kids spread the disease in January. And for that we must now fight a rearguard action.”

Messages show that Mr Hancock immediately contacted Dan Rosenfield, Mr Johnson’s chief of staff, and began an attempt to have schools closed before children returned. He then provided his private email address.

As the planned reopening became increasingly chaotic over the following week, with U-turns on dates and testing requirements for secondary schools, Mr Hancock and his team said Sir Gavin was having to eat “humble pie”.

On Jan 4, after many younger children had returned to classes for a single day, Mr Johnson announced that schools would close and exams would be cancelled amid a national lockdown. After the closures on Jan 4, schools did not reopen until March 8, depriving nine million children of another two months of education …

December 2020 ramped up the tension between Hancock and Williamson:

Despite ministers including Matt Hancock saying that they were doing all they could to keep schools open, behind the scenes the then health secretary was running a “rearguard action” to keep pupils at home. WhatsApp messages reveal that while he was offering to help Sir Gavin to his face, behind his back Mr Hancock and his advisers were mocking him for “freaking out” and joking that he was having to eat “humble pie”.

The article includes several WhatsApp screenshots.

Interestingly, there is no trace of Hancock’s exchanges with Dan Rosenfield, at least for now:

His conversations with Mr Rosenfield do not appear in the conversations that have been leaked to the Telegraph. Mr Hancock instead provided his personal email address after the PM’s chief of staff agreed to discuss the issue with him.

It is unclear whether conversations on private email will be handed over to the forthcoming Covid inquiry, although Hugo Keith KC, the chief counsel for the inquiry,  said on Wednesday that witnesses have been encouraged to disclose “any informal or private communications”.  

Tens of thousands of children in the UK never returned to schools once they reopened. They are known as ‘ghost children’. No one knows what happened to them:

The Lockdown Files show that Mr Hancock’s push to shut schools was just one of a number of repeated instances where the interests of children were apparently disregarded in favour of restrictions. Many of the measures went against the counsel of scientific advisers.

The decisions made around children’s education were among the most controversial of the pandemic. Studies have shown that keeping children away from the classroom led to a rise in mental health problems and a decline in development. Some children lost more than 100 days of schooling because of closures alone.  

The Telegraph allowed Gavin Williamson to have his say, ‘Maybe I should have resigned when my plea to put children first was ignored’. I’m not fond of the man, but I do have empathy for him here:

What was most upsetting about closing down schools for a second time in January 2021 was that I felt it wasn’t done for the right reasons.

When the first lockdown happened, no one really knew what Covid was. It was such a new disease and the prevailing medical advice was that schools should close, so we obeyed it. There didn’t seem to be any choice about that at all. We had taken the view that we should follow the science.  

But data from November 2020 told us that only 0.1 per cent were absent from school due to confirmed cases of coronavirus. So in my mind, the evidence pointed to keeping schools open.

Despite the fact we’d dispatched close to a million laptops, it was children from disadvantaged backgrounds that would be impacted most significantly if schools closed again. That’s what I worried most about.  

I totally understood the need to protect the NHS but I also felt it was right to do everything we could to protect the futures of our young people.

The weekend before schools were due to go back after the Christmas holidays, we were being told it was absolutely okay for schools to return. That morning, you had Boris saying schools must stay open – only for that advice to completely change in a four hour period. By lunchtime, he was having to say that schools must close. 

The data that they’d received over the weekend indicated a surge, and suddenly the Government was having to perform a U-turn. It was absolutely crushing. It was one of the worst moments of the entire pandemic.

You understand you’re the one who has to carry the can for it, but it is devastating to be put in that position.

Looking back now, I wonder whether I should have resigned at that point. I certainly thought long and deeply over whether I should have gone then. I just felt so personally upset about it. Ultimately, if the medical experts were saying that’s what needed to be done then you’re torn even if – in your heart of hearts – you know the best place for children was in school.

I’ve always been a team player, but you often found that different departments had different priorities and you sometimes felt that what was said one day was very rapidly changing the next day.

… I felt the situation in January was different to that earlier on in the previous year, and I felt that the prioritisation of children should mean protecting their right to go to school.  

… I will never stop believing that arguing for schools to stay open in January 2021 was the right thing to do.

At all stages of the pandemic, we saw teachers, teaching assistants and support staff doing so much, caring for children, putting them first. Amazing work was being done in schools up and down the country.

I think all those who are passionate about education knew that children were best in the classroom – and I stand by this argument, as I hope others do too.

GB News panellists react

Dan Wootton is on a fortnight’s holiday with his relatives.

Patrick Christys was guest host on Wednesday, and, as ever, was a triumph.

The full video is here:

Highlights follow, beginning with Christys’s opening editorial, accompanied by an article in the second tweet:

The channel’s detractors say that GB News promoted the Government line during the pandemic. GB News did not start broadcasting until the June 13, 2021. Furthermore, it has always had an abundance of Covid sceptics, then and now. Tonia Buxton was and is one of them:

A columnist from Conservative Home said that Hancock should not face a criminal investigation and advised us to wait for the results of the inquiry. Christys and the two panellists, one representing care home patients and the other schoolchildren, disagreed with him:

Barrister Francis Hoar, another Covid sceptic, appeared later to say that the Government failed ‘to protect the most vulnerable’:

A member of the public, Tony Stowell, whose mother died in a care home during the pandemic, described his creepy encounter with Matt Hancock. Chilling:

At the end of the show, Laura Dodsworth, yet another Covid sceptic, was named Greatest Briton for that day and Matt Hancock the Union Jackass:

Well worth watching.

Why The Lockdown Files are crucial

Everyone has been commenting on The Lockdown Files, and rightly so.

The paper has a round-up of media personalities from both sides of the political spectrum giving their opinion, ‘Famous names react to The Telegraph’s Lockdown Files revelations’. All are positive.

Their columnist Allister Heath explained the importance of the revelations in ‘Untruth after untruth was peddled to justify the great lockdown disaster’:

Let’s face it: Whitehall has learned almost nothing from the fiasco of 2020-22. There has been no proper cost-benefit analysis of lockdown. We haven’t engaged in a genuine inquest, our institutions haven’t been reformed, and the official inquiry will take too long and risks being captured by an establishment desperate to defend its legacy. Sir Keir Starmer, favourite to be our next prime minister, was at one with the Government and Matt Hancock on lockdowns – his only criticism was that he wanted more of the same, faster.

This is why The Telegraph’s Lockdown Files are so important, and so clearly in the public interest. Given officialdom’s glacial progress, the free press has a duty to release information, accelerate debate and hold power to account.

One question in particular that should trouble all of us is why so many of the claims made during the pandemic turned out not to be true …

Or take the origins of the virus. Those who sought to explore whether it might have originated in a Chinese laboratory in Wuhan were demonised, ridiculed or cancelled. Now, the director of the FBI has concluded that this is the most likely explanation. This begs a crucial question: would we have followed China’s methods – lockdown and extreme social control – had we imagined the Beijing authorities were covering up a Chernobyl-style disaster? Might we not have gone for a more voluntarist, Swedish style approach? Where are the profuse apologies from all those who tarred supporters of the lab leak hypothesis as “racist”, “Trumpites” or “conspiracy theorists”? …

Covid saw endless politicians, bureaucrats, public health officials, scientists, professional journal editors, Twitter activists, Left-wing broadcasters and especially big tech firms transmogrify into authoritarian censors. They thought that “following the science” meant that their role was to amplify whatever the public health establishment’s most risk-averse current consensus was, rather than to pursue the truth independently. They convinced themselves that dissidents were heartless, paranoid freaks. They went on a terrifying power and ego trip.

The lesson is clear. Even in a crisis, free speech and open inquiry must be nurtured: elite groupthink is too often wrong, and must at all times be scrutinised. Long live the free press.

I could not agree more.

The official inquiry will find The Telegraph‘s revelations difficult to ignore. Heads should roll — in time. I would also like to see prison sentences dished out to the greatest offenders.