The journalist who leaked Matt Hancock’s WhatsApps sent during the Covid pandemic said she has since received a “menacing message” from the former Health Secretary.
Isabel Oakeshott leaked more than 100,000 messages after writing Mr Hancock’s book, the Pandemic Diaries. He has since been accused of ignoring clinical advice on testing for residents of UK care homes in 2020, among a raft of other revelations.
In an interview with TalkTV, Ms Oakeshott said she had received a “somewhat menacing message at 1.20am” on Wednesday morning from Mr Hancock.
“I’m not going to repeat what was in the message,” she told Piers Morgan.
“You can easily surmise if he is my friend at this point.
“He is extremely troubled about how to respond to this.”
In response Mr Hancock said that he is “hugely disappointed” in the “massive betrayal and breach of trust” by Ms Oakeshott.
He also denied sending the journalist a menacing message.
“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.”
On Wednesday Ms Oakeshott confirmed she had signed a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) but chose to leak the messages due to “overwhelming public interest”.
Following the publication of Mr Hancock’s book, she told TalkTV she was “left over with an enormous amount of very important information”.
“It was more in the public interest for me to release that stuff than to protect myself from accusations that I’ve broken an NDA with a politician.”
But on Thursday Mr Hancock said there is “absolutely no public interest case for this huge breach”.
“All the materials for the book have already been made available to the (Covid) 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.
“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.”
Ms Oakeshott said she did not have an “agenda to miscredit Matt Hancock”, and she hoped he “doesn’t go to war” with her.
“This is much is bigger than him,” she told TalkTV.
“I’ve had a number of messages from serving ministers today who said: ‘Obvisouly we can’t say this publicly, but well done and thankyou for what you did, it needs to be done’.”
On Wednesday, Mr Hancock was accused of rejecting advice from one of England’s health chiefs at the start of the pandemic over testing people going into care homes.
The Telegraph published further revelations from the WhatsApp messages on Thursday.
Mr Hancock was involved in a bitter behind-the-scenes clash with then-education secretary Sir Gavin Williamson over moves to keep schools open during the Covid pandemic, according to the latest tranche of leaked messages.
The paper highlighted an exchange between Mr Hancock and one of his aides from December 2020 after Sir Gavin persuaded Boris Johnson that schools in England should reopen as planned at the start of the January term.
He said they needed to fight a “rear-guard action” to prevent a “policy car crash” when children returned to the classrooms and started spreading the disease.
Responding to Labour’s Urgent Question in the House of Commons on Wednesday, Social Care Minister Helen Whately said “the courts have agreed” that Government decisions on Covid tests during a shortage were “completely rational”.
She and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak pointed to the Covid inquiry as the “right way” to respond to questions surrounding the Government’s handling of the pandemic.
“It is vital that we learn lessons and equally vital that we learn those lessons in the right context,” Ms Whately said.
“Selective snippets give a limited and misleading insight into the machinery of the Government at the time. That’s why the Covid inquiry is so important.”
But Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said the Covid inquiry has already cost taxpayers £85 million and has yet to hear from a single Government minister.
The Labour leader added: “Families across the country will look at this, and the sight of politicians writing books portraying them as heroes will be an insulting and ghoulish spectacle for them.”
The Prime Minister urged people not to focus on “piecemeal bits of information” and to let the inquiry “get on with the job”.
