The Telegraph columnist Alison Pearson has called for former health secretary Matt Hancock to be arrested for wilful misconduct in public office.
Writing in today’s paper Pearson summarises the revelations contained in Hancock’s WhatsApp messages, which were leaked to The Telegraph by Isabel Oakeshott.
Hancock handed more than 100,000 messages to Oakeshott when she wrote his lockdown memoir.
They revealed how Hancock gleefully plotted to “frighten the pants off everyone” to ensure lockdown compliance.
Hancock mooted using Covid variants to scare people into changing their behaviour. He supported blackmailing lockdown sceptic MP’s into keeping quiet.
One MP (James Daly, Bury) was told that if he didn’t shut up, his constituency wouldn’t receive funding for a disability hub.
Hancock repeatedly lied about the pressure Covid was exerting on the NHS. He briefed daily that hospitals were collapsing under the weight of Covid cases. The leaked messages reveal that in fact he knew from day one that there was no likelihood of hospital capacity running out.
He even offered beds to French and Italian Covid patients.
The leaks clearly demonstrate that Hancock was lying through his teeth day in, day out.
Has he broken the law? Alison Pearson thinks he just might have.
She concludes her excellent piece in today’s Telegraph, saying:
Are there grounds for a prosecution of the former minister for misconduct in a public office? Did Matt Hancock “wilfully misconduct himself to such a degree as to amount to an abuse of the public’s trust in the office holder without reasonable excuse or justification”?
Some families of care-home residents are preparing a private prosecution against Hancock, I know. The Crown Prosecution Service must then decide if it is in the public interest to proceed. The Lockdown Files should provide critical evidence.
With the third anniversary of lockdown looming, the Rights for Residents campaign asked their members to post a picture of their loved one in happier times, along with the three words that best describe them. (You can see those deeply moving photos here.) Before, that is, those elderly ladies and gentlemen were locked away with no interaction with a close relative or friend.
They were consigned to a living death that was designed by our mad Covid masters to “save lives”. What could ever have justified such a crime against humanity?
Now, that’s what I call an Urgent Question.
