‘There must be no actual or perceived conflicts of interest. The precious principles of public life – integrity, objectivity, accountability, transparency, honesty and leadership in the public interest – must be honoured at all times.” So reads Boris Johnson’s foreword to the ministerial code, written almost two years ago. Yet Matt Hancock, who resigned as health secretary yesterday evening, is only the latest minister to disrespect the citizens of this country by flouting this code.
Health secretary Matt Hancock’s private affairs are his own business, but he has made his intimate relationship with his old friend, adviser and paid director of the Department of Health a public matter. First, as he has openly admitted, he has broken the Covid regulations he was responsible for. Members of the public who were unable to hug loved ones before they died, who missed funerals and who went months without seeing newborn grandchildren will be justified in feeling furious at a minister breaking the rules to engage in an affair. Hancock has also said that public figures in far less high-profile positions were right to resign for breaking the regulations. His hypocrisy undermines faith in the government’s approach to public health during a pandemic. This alone was enough to prompt his immediate resignation.
But the affair also underlines his lack of integrity. He first appointed Gina Coladangelo as an “unpaid adviser”, a role with potentially hugely significant influence, but little transparency. Such roles are not governed by a code of conduct and there are no formal means by which parliament can hold them to account. Hancock then appointed her as a paid, non-executive director of the Department of Health. This is a role meant to scrutinise decision-making, yet since they were introduced by the Conservatives a decade ago, have increasingly become filled with friends, supporters and donors.
The following questions still hang over Hancock, even after his resignation: was he in an intimate relationship with Coladangelo when he appointed her, first to an unpaid, then a paid, position? Did he declare this relationship as a potential conflict and when, and if not, why not? It has also emerged that Coladangelo’s brother is the director of a company that won significant contracts from the Department of Health. Hancock has form: he failed to declare that the 15% of shares he owns in a company that is a supplier to the NHS in Wales has his sister as a director. More broadly, the National Audit Office has found personal ministerial contacts were directed to a high-priority PPE procurement channel, where they were 10 times more likely to be successful in winning government contracts.
Hancock is also responsible for many deaths in this pandemic. It is true that he learned from the mistakes in delaying the first lockdown to push for an earlier lockdown in the second wave, unlike Boris Johnson and the chancellor, Rishi Sunak. This is, however, a low bar. He also oversaw disastrous government policy on care homes early in the pandemic. A lack of testing and PPE meant care homes quickly became the centre of the pandemic, with thousands of residents losing their lives.
This serious incompetence coupled with an undermining of the government’s emergency response by transgressing its regulations and a breaking of the ministerial code mean that his position was untenable. But his resignation does not fix the wider lack of integrity in government. Johnson is a prime minister who has ripped up the political honour code. He lies to the public when it is politically convenient and, like Hancock, he has repeatedly failed to declare personal interests: his intimate relationship with Jennifer Arcuri, whose company received thousands of pounds from City Hall when he was mayor of London and the appointment of the mother of one of his children as an adviser. He bears even more responsibility for the terrible pandemic death toll than Hancock. And he has permitted other ministers who have been found to have transgressed the ministerial code, such as Priti Patel, to continue in office.
The Hancock affair goes beyond the conduct of the health secretary. It speaks to a rotten culture of impunity, where blind and unswerving loyalty matters far more in high office than competence, integrity and honesty. The cabinet is filled with ministers who do not regard themselves as subject to the same rules as the rest of us, who regard public office as an opportunity for financial gain, who time and again disrespect ordinary citizens who obey the law and stick to the rules. This is government by people who see politics less as a chance to serve their country and more as a game at which they are entitled to play, regardless of the consequences. Hancock’s position was untenable. But his resignation will do nothing to change the fundamental character of our government while Johnson remains prime minister.
