Matt Hancock has been humiliated after the United Nations cancelled his new job jetting to Africa as a top envoy.
The ex-Health Secretary had triumphantly announced his role this week, less than four months after he quit the Cabinet over an affair with an aide.
West Suffolk MP Mr Hancock accepted an offer to be an unpaid “UN special representative on financial innovation and climate change” for the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa.
But his rehabilitation into the upper echelons of public life has stalled amid an enormous public backlash.
A UN spokesperson told Passblue, a non-profit news website covering the UN, that Mr Hancock’s role is “not being taken forward” and the UN Economic Commission for Africa “has advised him of the matter”.
Mr Hancock later confirmed the job offer was withdrawn due to a 'technicality'. He accused the UN of belatedly realising he could not do the job at the same time as being an MP. Despite this, Gordon Brown was made a UN envoy while sitting as an MP in 2012.
The web page which had announced Mr Hancock’s new job has disappeared and now shows the words “access denied”, telling visitors: “You are not authorised to access this page!”
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Global Justice Now director Nick Dearden said: "If Matt Hancock wants to help African countries recover from the pandemic, he should lobby the prime minister to back a patent waiver on Covid-19 vaccines.
"If he'd done that when he was in government, tens of millions more people could already have been vaccinated.
"The last thing the African continent needs is a failed British politician. This isn't the 19th Century."
Mr Hancock had announced his job in the same week a probe found he’d presided over "one of the most important public health failures" in UK history at the start of the Covid pandemic.
A joint probe by the Commons health and science committees found ministers made a “serious error” by taking a “gradual and incremental” approach to lockdowns last year.
Experts said shutting down a week earlier than March 23, 2020, would have cut the 40,000 death toll in the first wave “by at least half”.
MPs concluded: “It is now clear this was the wrong policy, and that it led to a higher initial death toll than would have resulted from a more emphatic early policy. In a pandemic spreading rapidly and exponentially every week counted.”
Yet when she offered him the job in September, UN under secretary-general Vera Songwe hailed Mr Hancock’s “success on the UK’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic”.
She also praised his “global leadership, advocacy reach and in-depth understanding of government processes.”
Mr Hancock's job - which would have run alongside being an MP - would have seen him "working with organisations like the IMF, G20 and COP26" in "supporting Africa's path to recovery" from Covid.
Matt Fowler, co-founder of Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice, who lost his 56-year-old father Ian in April last year, said: "Given Matt Hancock contributed to the 'worst UK public health failure ever' and was forced to resign after breaching his own social distancing measures, maybe he should take care of his obligations to those of us who lost loved ones to Covid-19 in the UK by making sure the evidence the forthcoming inquiry will need is available before taking on any new challenges.
"We aren't sure how he has the time to take up this new role given he seemingly hasn't been able to pass emails from his personal Gmail account that relate to his handling of the pandemic to the Department of Health or Government.
"Then again, maybe when those emails are seen in the cold light of day maybe the UN would think twice about his appropriateness for this role."
TV's Piers Morgan also hit out over the appointment, tweeting: "Hancock’s reward for ‘one of the worst ever public health failures’ during his tenure as Health Secretary - a fancy new job at the UN.
"His timing for this announcement is almost as bad as his handling of the pandemic."
Labour MP Alex Sobel tweeted: "I’m a supporter of International Intergovernmental Organisations but @UN did you even do a little background check on Matt Hancock.'"
Others had congratulated Mr Hancock on his new post, including Communities Secretary Michael Gove, who tweeted: "Wishing @MattHancock well in this critical role supporting the developing world at a crucial time."
In a statement, Mr Hancock said: "I was honoured to be approached by the UN and appointed as special representative to the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), to help drive forward an agenda of strengthening markets and bringing investment to Africa.
"The UN have written to me to explain that a technical UN rule has subsequently come to light which states that sitting members of parliament cannot also be UN special representatives.
"Since I am committed to continuing to serve as MP for West Suffolk, this means I cannot take up the position.
"I look forward to supporting the UN ECA in their mission in whatever way I can in my parliamentary role."
