Former Health Secretary Matt Hancock said he broke the Covid guidelines he himself had introduced because he had fallen in love with his aide.
Mr Hancock resigned last year after leaked CCTV footage showed him in his Whitehall office in an embrace with adviser Gina Coladangelo. He left his wife and children to start a relationship with Ms Coladangelo, who was also married with children.
The Mirror reports that the footage was taken on May 6 2021, when indoor social gatherings of people from different households were banned under law and guidance urged people to stay two metres apart and avoid "face to face contact".
In an interview with Diary of a CEO podcast, Mr Hancock, 43, insisted he did not break the law. He said: "We fell in love and that's something that was completely outside of my control.
"Of course I regret the pain that's caused and the very, very public nature - anybody who has been through this knows how difficult it is, how painful it is."
Mr Hancock said he fell in love with Ms Coladangelo - whom he has known since his student days - while they were working together at the Department for Health and Social Care.
The West Suffolk MP said: "It all happened quite quickly, It actually happened after the rules were lifted, but the guidance was still in place. So I’m not trying to claim that, I hold no bitterness about this because I broke the rules, I fess up, I broke the guidance.”
He went on: “I resigned because I broke the social distancing guidelines by then. They weren’t actually rules. They weren’t the law. But that’s not the point.
"The point is they were the guidelines that I’d been proposing. And that happened because I fell in love with somebody.”
Mr Hancock initially tried to hang on to his job and was supported by some of his Conservative Party colleagues. But Prime Minister Boris Johnson was criticised for failing to sack him and Mr Hancock finally resigned.
