The Lockdown Files: professionalism descended into insecure infighting

The Telegraph‘s Lockdown Files series revealed how professional-sounding WhatsApp messages descended into insecure infighting.

This became quite apparent when looking at Matt Hancock’s online exchanges: parts 1, 2 and 3.

The paper’s associate editor Camilla Tominey looked at this in ‘How sober, professional WhatsApp conversations descended into chaos’ (emphases mine):

… what is so striking about the March 2020 “countdown to disaster” is how considered the early conversations on Covid were compared to the cavalier nature of some of the later discussions that played out on the instant messenger app …

With positive cases spreading fast across China and the Pacific, Matt Hancock, the former health secretary, spent the last week of February working on an “action plan”, setting up a WhatsApp group for quick communication between the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), Number 10, Prof Sir Chris Whitty, the Chief Medical Officer, and Sir Patrick Vallance, the Chief Scientific Adviser.

What is obvious from the early messages is the level of deference afforded to the Government’s two top medical minds as Mr Johnson’s then right-hand man Dominic Cummings, official spokesman James Slack, communications chief Lee Cain and Sir Chris Wormald, the permanent secretary of DHSC, grappled with how best to prepare the public for what was coming.

We know from later messages that, far from following the science, Sir Chris and Sir Patrick would go on to be overruled at various junctures – including on the testing of people going into care homes, the 14-day isolation period and the efficacy of face masks …

In the beginning:

There was no scaremongering talk of “frightening the pants off” the public, nor any notion that they should blindly follow governmental diktats without being given all the available information.

That didn’t come until months later, when all the initial formality appeared to leave the online exchanges as the key protagonists seemingly grew rather too comfortable wielding untrammelled power over the lives and civil liberties of an entire nation.

By the time of the second and third lockdowns in late 2020 and early 2021, the decision-making was far less restrained as allegiances, obsessions and insecurities took over.

The need for evidential justification for the restrictions went by the wayside as choices were made for political expediency and public relations reasons rather than the sake of public health …

What the earliest WhatsApp messages show is that this was a group very much in thinking mode – until the groupthink set in.

Sir Jeremy Farrar, from SAGE to WHO

Yet, even in April 2020, cracks began to appear.

When the pandemic started, Sir Jeremy Farrar was a member of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) and director of Britain’s biggest medical research charity Wellcome Trust.

Today, Sir Jeremy is now chief scientist at the WHO, a post he took up at the beginning of March 2023.

‘How Matt Hancock plotted to have “useless loudmouth” Covid scientist sacked’ tells us a bit about how he moved onwards and upwards:

Ministers criticised by one of the world’s most eminent scientists tried to have him sacked from the Government’s Covid advisory committee, leaked messages reveal.

He:

was branded “worse than useless” by Matt Hancock who demanded of his permanent secretary: “Can we fire him?”

He also described Sir Jeremy … as “totally offside” and a “complete loudmouth” who “has little respect amongst the serious scientists”.

The rest of Hancock’s WhatsApp from April 20, 2020 reads:

He needs to be either inside the tent and onside, or outside and commentating. He adds no value internally

It appears that this was because Farrar spoke to the media without Hancock’s permission:

Mr Hancock was already angry that Sir Jeremy had done an interview with Sophy Ridge on Sky News in which he had said: “I hope we would have a vaccine towards the end of this year” but warned of the difficulty of making sure it was safe and then able to be manufactured in billions of doses around the world that “is truly effective”.

It is unclear what part of the Sky News interview so irritated Mr Hancock, but he sent a WhatsApp message to a special adviser at 9.18am on April 20, a day after the interview aired, questioning whether Sir Jeremy had been given permission to speak to the broadcaster.

It is unclear if there was any requirement of Sage members to do so.

Another sticking point at that time was testing:

On the day that he gave the Sky News interview, Lord Bethell told Hancock he had “after massive toing-and-froing” with Sir Jeremy and Professor John Newton, the Government’s testing tsar, agreed on proposals to conduct a survey to test the public on past and present Covid infections.

But Sir Jeremy had raised his concern that the antibody tests in April 2020 were unlikely to be accurate.

In a message circulated to Mr Hancock and Lord Bethell, Sir Jeremy wrote of the tests: “They should not be believed. I have seen no data that shows any currently available rapid test would be useful or informative. Some are frankly dangerous. I appreciate this is not a message that is popular. I wish this was not true. But the RDTs [rapid detection tests] are currently a distraction. In months to come there maybe good RDTs – there are none today in my view and reading of the data.”

Lord Bethell appeared to have been concerned at Sir Jeremy’s stance. “Farar is being a total spanner in the works,” he said in a message to Mr Hancock on April 19, adding: “But I think somehow he needs management. Either a Big Hug. Or a sharp talking to. But at the moment is q tricky.”

On May 29:

Allan Nixon, another of Mr Hancock’s advisers, messaged his boss on WhatsApp: “Jeremy Farrar going off the rails again”, to which the health secretary replied: “ He is definitely no10’s problem not ours”, before adding: “If asked about Farrar by No10, explain that we thought best to relieve him from his duties but were overruled…”

In August, Farrar:

had publicly questioned the Government’s decision to shut down Public Health England (PHE) in August 2020, about six months into the pandemic.

Sir Jeremy … had condemned the proposal to scrap PHE in favour of a new organisation run by Mr Hancock’s friend, Baroness Dido Harding, who had run the NHS Test and Trace programme …

He posted on Twitter early on August 19 2020: “Arbitrary sackings. Passing of blame. Ill thought through, short term, reactive reforms… Preempting inevitable public inquiry” and a link to a newspaper article reporting the axing of PHE.

He was also critical of Test and Trace.

Farrar, possibly unknowingly, managed to galvanise moves against him:

The social media post so infuriated ministers they orchestrated a ring round of Sir Jeremy’s colleagues, including even Baroness Eliza Manningham-Buller, the then chair of the Wellcome Trust and the former head of MI5.

Lord Bethell, the health minister and one of Mr Hancock’s closest friends, told Hancock: “He’ll now know I’ve done a comprehensive ring round. This will irritate him but also warn him. I wonder if there is some sort of official route to talking to him?”

Sir Patrick Vallance, the Government’s chief scientific adviser and chairman of the Sage committee, also became embroiled in the row after Mr Hancock asked: “Does [Sir Jeremy] bring any value at all to SAGE? I’ve never once heard him say anything useful at all” …

That day, August 19 2020, Mr Hancock sent a message to Sir Chris Wormwald, the permanent secretary in the Department of Health.

“We have to do something about Farrar. Can we fire him? This is completely unacceptable,” wrote Hancock in a WhatsApp message. Sir Chris replied: “Would have to be Patrick V to fire him as it’s SAGE. “

The next day, Mr Hancock raised his concern with Emma Dean, a special adviser, asking her to speak to Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer (CMO).

“Can you talk to CMO and see what we can do,” asked Mr Hancock. Ms Dean replied: “Yes. What is your ask? Get rid or neutralise?” to which Mr Hancock responded: “Neutralise. Stop the defamation.”

Later, Mr Hancock, clearly still irritated, said: “Why don’t we kick him off SAGE? he brings nothing.” Ms Dean said removing Sir Jeremy “would make him a martyr and would dine out on it very noisily” and advised against it.

On August 21 the issue over Sir Jeremy is still rankling and Lord Bethell tells Mr Hancock he had spoken to an eminent scientist “about handling Farrar”.

Lord Bethell reports back to Mr Hancock he’s been advised “dont talk to Manning Buller – she’s ferocious and self-important, and would contrive to interpret a call as somehow interfering with Wellcome independence. He suggests I speak to Farrar directly, nicely explaining the challenge of outspoken external criticism when operating as a trusted advisor. I’ve put a call in, he didnt pick up. will update”.

Five days later, Lord Bethell messaged Mr Hancock telling him he had spoken to eminent scientists about Sir Jeremy.

He also spoke with Baroness Manningham Buller: “Manning Buller said she agreed with him 100% and defended his right to say whatever he liked.

“I’ve called and texted JF but he hasn’t replied. He’ll now know I’ve done a comprehensive ring round. This will irritate him but also warn him. I wonder if there is some sort of official route to talking to him?”

The article says:

Mr Hancock’s comments will raise serious concerns over the apparent attempts, behind the scenes, to undermine a senior scientist and member of Sage, the body that provided independent scientific advice on Covid to the Government.

It will also raise questions about ministers’ response to public criticism from eminent scientists who were concerned by the handling of the pandemic.

Sir Jeremy wrote a book, which was published in July 2021:

Sir Jeremy says of the then health secretary: “Matt Hancock shoulders a responsibility for the PPE shortages and testing fiasco, among other failings, that contributed to the dreadful epidemics in care homes and hospitals.”

In the book, Sir Jeremy also said Baroness Harding’s appointment as chair of Test and Trace was a “grave error” and that “even worse” than PHE “being thrown under the bus” was the decision to put Baroness Harding in charge of the new body.

Dame Kate Bingham, vaccine tsarina

Thanks to The Lockdown Files, we found out more about Dame Kate Bingham, the first head of the UK’s vaccine taskforce.

On March 5, The Telegraph published ‘The hidden tensions between Matt Hancock and Kate Bingham, his vaccines tsar’. I prefer to call her the vaccines tsarina.

Back then, she was Kate Bingham. Her damehood came afterwards:

But Matt Hancock, then the health secretary, clashed with her over the rollout, including Dame Kate’s refusal to back a plan to buy tens of millions of vaccines from India.

Advisers to Mr Hancock flagged up their concerns in Oct 2020 after Dame Kate gave an interview to the Financial Times in which she said that the vaccination of the entire population was “not going to happen”. She explained: “We just need to vaccinate everyone at risk.”

It is understood that she was following government policy at the time.

In leaked WhatsApp messages obtained by The Telegraph, Damon Poole, Mr Hancock’s media special adviser, said: “This is unhelpful,” and included with it a link to the article. 

Mr Hancock protested that he did not have a subscription and then said: “But is that Kate?… If so we absolutely need No10 to sit on her hard. She has view and a wacky way of expressing them & is totally unreliable. She regards anything that isn’t her idea as political interference” …

Dame Kate was appointed chairman of the Vaccine Taskforce by Boris Johnson, the former prime minister. She answered to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) …

Two days later, in a further sign of tensions, Mr Hancock and his advisers suspected Dame Kate of leaking vaccine rollout plans to The Economist magazine.

Mr Hancock asked Mr Poole on Oct 6 2020 if the leak was from the vaccines tsar. Mr Poole replied: “Well I don’t know that for sure but I have some evidence to suggest it might have been. I.e – the fact she had a meeting yesterday with the journalist who has the leak. But it’s an old NHS plan apparently, I’ve not seen the document yet.”

Then there were her PR consultants:

A month later, The Sunday Times reported that Dame Kate had spent £670,000 on public relations consultants.

In a WhatsApp message to Mr Poole on Nov 7 2020, Mr Hancock admitted to being aware of the use of consultants but said he had not realised they were being paid for by the taxpayer.

Mr Hancock said: “Who the hell signed this off? … I knew she had these consultants. I was cross about them and asked for it to stop. But I had absolutely no idea taxpayers were paying for them. Unreal.”

Mr Poole said the use of advisers was “bonkers” and “pretty appalling”. At the time, BEIS said “specialist communications support was contracted by the Vaccine Taskforce for a time-limited period” and “in line with existing public sector recruitment practices”.

It is understood that the communication consultants were contracted by BEIS to create a registry on the NHS website to recruit people onto clinical trials to test the vaccines.

Having previously agreed only to a short-term contract, Kate Bingham left in December 2020. By then, she and her team had been able to secure enough vaccine doses for the UK, so her job was finished.

Her deputy, Clive Dix, replaced her for a short time. I wrote about Dix on March 23, quoting his first-person article for The Telegraph where he said that Hancock was ‘a headless chicken’. Dix left because of a problem in the manufacture of the required doses, and he did not wish to source vaccines from India as a substitute.

Returning to this article about Kate Bingham, however, we learn more about Hancock’s view of Dix:

In Feb 2021 – at a time when the Government had earned plaudits over the vaccine rollout – Mr Hancock asked Nadhim Zahawi, then the vaccines minister, to arrange a meeting to explain to Dr Dix that “he knows to expect that I’m not going to give him executive authority but DO think he has a huge role”.

Mr Zahawi reported back that Dr Dix is “all sorted”. But two days later, on Feb 18 2021, the taskforce chairman told the minister he wanted to make a “personal decision” on whether the UK had enough vaccine doses or needed to procure more from India.

That prompted Mr Hancock to question whether Dr Dix might quit.

“He can’t threaten to reisgn and continue in post. Either you accept the principle of ministerial decisions making, or you don’t,” Mr Hancock said in a message to Mr Zahawi.

Later that day, just after 11pm, Mr Hancock sent Mr Johnson a message accusing Dame Kate and Dr Dix of blocking the purchase of vaccines from the Serum Institute of India (SII) four months earlier in Oct 2020.

“Nadhim & I have got to the bottom of why we didn’t get the SII doses when they were first offered in October,” Mr Hancock told then prime minister.

“Turns out it was blocked by Kate & Clive Dix. That’s why we kept getting b——t excuses. Thankfully it is nearly over the line now – but they’ve cost us six months on this one and the comms will need handling.”

Boris messaged back:

Aha. I do remember asking Kate ages ago

I think she said it was all because the mhra [Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency] wouldn’t approve it fast enough

And by the time mhra had approved it we wouldn’t need it

Hancock replied:

Yes. And it turns out it’s because she and Dix didn’t want to

The Telegraph spoke with Dame Kate, who said:

I stood down as chair of the VTF in December 2020 after serving for seven months having initially agreed to do it for six months. I left after deals had been made to secure vaccines, two of which were approved by then with one of these (Pfizer) being administered.

Before I left, the VTF had discussed buying vaccines from India but was persuaded against doing so as the VTF did not think the MHRA would be able to approve vaccines from India on the required timescale.

These vaccines had been funded by international organisations to provide vaccines to low-income countries, including India itself. The vaccines from India were originally intended for developing countries. The second half of the vaccine order from India that was placed in 2021 (after I left the VTF) was halted by the Indian government.

When it came to who to vaccinate, the advice was always determined by the JCVI and the vaccination policy that Matt Hancock and the Government were committed to at the time. I never questioned these – I only ever repeated government policy at the time in 2020. My role was to follow government policy not to create it. The VTF sought to procure vaccines based on the number of people that the JCVI and the Government advised should be vaccinated at that time in 2020.

BEIS contracted communications support to launch and drive sign-up to the NHS registry of clinical trials volunteers. 500,000 people signed up. This was critical to establishing that Covid-19 vaccines worked and were safe. I also participated in Covid 19 vaccine trials through this registry.

These WhatsApps suggest that Matt Hancock was not aware of the published and agreed government vaccine procurement policy, did not read the reports by and about the work of the Vaccine Taskforce, and did not understand the difference between complex biological manufacturing and PPE procurement.

When I stood down as chair, the VTF shared recommendations for the Government – one of which was that Government needs a pandemic adviser who understands the pandemic threat, science when it comes to viruses, bioengineering – what is involved in the development and manufacture of vaccines – and has relationships with industry to be called upon when needed. I have continued to call for this ever since. These WhatsApps starkly reveal the need for this.

The vaccine conspiracy theory

Remember back in 2020 when people said that Bill Gates was planning to put nanochips in the vaccines that would track everyone who had them?

The Lockdown Files had an article about that, too: ‘Matt Hancock cracks joke about Bill Gates Covid conspiracy’:

Matt Hancock joked that Bill Gates “owes me one” considering “how many people I’m getting his chips injected into”. 

The then health secretary was hoping to get Microsoft billionaire Mr Gates’s help in promoting an offer of UK expertise in identifying coronavirus variants when he made the quip in January 2021 …

On Jan 25, 2021 Damon Poole, Mr Hancock’s media adviser, sent him a WhatsApp message asking him if he had spoken to Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director general of the World Health Organisation, about the New Variant Assessment Platform (NVAP), which offered other countries UK expertise to detect and assess new variants around the world …

The European Union even issued lengthy advice on how to persuade people that the microchip plot was fiction …

Mr Gates did not, in the event, endorse the NVAP.

Dominic Cummings sets cat among pigeons

In 2021, Boris’s former adviser, Dominic Cummings, who left Downing Street late in 2020, appeared before two parliamentary Select Committees. In his March appearance, he called Hancock’s Department of Health and Social Care a ‘smoking ruin’. In May, he accused Hancock of a number of failures as Health and Social Care Secretary.

In 2020, Hancock and other Cabinet members defended Cummings, who had broken lockdown rules by taking his wife and young child from London to Barnard Castle in County Durham and back. Cummings said that he had had problems with his eyesight on the day they came back.

‘What Sunak and Hancock really thought of Dominic Cummings’ tells us about the reaction to Cummings’s appearance before the select committees.

On March 17, 2021, after Cummings first appeared before the select committees, Hancock WhatsApped his Spad (special adviser) Jamie Njoku-Goodwin:

How would you deal with this Cummings crap?

The Spad responded with some colourful language then ended his message with:

You went out and backed him over Barnard Castle, and he responds by briefing against you relentlessly, in private and now in public. He’s a psychotherapist

*pyschopath [sic]

Hancock responded that he, not Cummings, called for the creation of the Vaccine Taskforce and appointed Kate Bingham, then ended with:

The vaccines have only been such a success because we kept Dom out of it while he caused chaos in Testing!

The Spad responded:

But best to rise above it

Hancock, still perturbed, messaged back, in part:

Why should I take this crap lying down

The Spad responded:

I suppose because until 6 months ago he could get you sacked

Hancock replied:

But he can’t now

On May 26, after Cummings’s appearance before the second select committee in May, in an exchange with Rishi Sunak, still Chancellor then, Hancock posited that Cummings wanted a job in ‘the future Sunak administration’, which was interesting.

Sunak replied:

Ha! Ironic given I haven’t spoken to him since he left!

Hancock messaged:

It’s just awful & stark reminder of how hard governing was

Sunak replied:

Yup. It was such a difficult time for all of us. A nightmare I hope we never ever have to repeat.

That day:

In a reference to Mr Cummings’ widely ridiculed claim he had driven to Barnard Castle to test his eyesight, Mr Hancock WhatsApped an aide:

His insight is no better than his eyesight.

Rishi’s Eat Out To Help Out scheme

Although I thought then-Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s Eat Out To Help Out was a great plan in the summer of 2020, a lot of people disapproved of it, including those in Government.

Those who disapproved of helping out the hospitality sector, which, by that time, was on its knees, said that Rishi’s plan would only drive up Covid cases.

Perhaps it did.

On March 4, The Telegraph published ‘Rishi Sunak urged to “come clean” over flagship Eat Out To Help Out scheme’:

Rishi Sunak is under pressure over his flagship Eat Out To Help Out scheme amid claims of a “cover up”.

The Lockdown Files show Matt Hancock’s disdain for the initiative and worry that it was contributing to the spread of the virus.

The scheme, which was aimed at encouraging the public to return to restaurants, formed part of a package of measures launched by Mr Sunak, the then chancellor, in the summer of 2020.

In August 2020, while the scheme was still operating, Mr Hancock mentioned his concerns about it in messages to Simon Case, the then Downing Street permanent secretary in charge of the Civil Service response to Covid. 

Mr Hancock told Mr Case that the scheme was driving up Covid cases in some of the worst hit areas and that the problems it was causing were “serious”. But he added that he had “kept it out of the news”.

The then health secretary said the Treasury had been informed about the “problems” the scheme was causing in Covid “intervention areas”.

“We’ve been protecting them in the comms,” he said, adding that “thankfully” it has not yet “bubbled up”.

Eat Out to Help Out offered diners 50 per cent off food and non-alcoholic drinks on Mondays to Wednesdays in August, capped at £10 per head. The final total cost to the taxpayer was £849 million – far in excess of the £500 million original forecast by the Treasury.

The Prime Minister has now been urged to “come clean” about what he knew about the risks of the scheme and explain why “warnings were apparently ignored and evidence concealed” …

A study by Warwick University, published in October 2020, concluded that the scheme had “caused a significant rise in new infections… accelerating the pandemic into its current second wave”.

Academics claimed the scheme contributed between eight and 17 per cent of new Covid infections at the time …

A Government source said: “Many European countries experienced an uptick in transmission at the same time as the UK, including those without similar schemes.”

The Guardian has more on the Warwick study:

A working paper published by Thiemo Fetzer, an economics professor at Warwick University, found the initiative was closely linked to an increase in new cases during August and into early September. The paper found the virus spread more rapidly in areas with lots of participating restaurants and said the scheme might have “public health costs that vastly outstrip its short-term economic benefits”.

Fetzer said on Saturday he had made a submission to the Covid-19 public inquiry and he considered the scheme should now be examined as part of the hearings. He said: “The second wave of the pandemic was seeded in the summer and eat out to help out contributed to that.

“It was only available on Monday, Tuesdays and Wednesday, so people shifted their dining patterns. It created crowded spaces.”

He said the Treasury had dismissed his work, but had not provided any substantial evidence that the scheme did not cause a rise in infections. “They did not do a rigorous analysis,” he said. In January 2021, the Treasury said its own analysis had shown that areas with a high take-up of the scheme had low subsequent Covid-19 cases. The Institute for Government said that analysis was “pretty thin” and did not engage properly with criticisms of the scheme.

Although this post finishes the WhatsApp revelations, I will follow up next week with reaction to The Telegraph‘s Lockdown Files.