Matt Hancock resigns: Sajid Javid vows to get country ‘back to normal’ as he takes over as health secretary – as it happened

• Sajid Javid has said that seeking to ensure that life can return to normal after the pandemic “as quickly as possible” will be his most immediate priority as the new health secretary. (See 10.58am and 2.33pm.) Given some of his previous comments, there is speculation that Javid will be more comfortable easing Covid restrictions than his predecessor, Matt Hancock, who was seen as more cautious on this front than some of his cabinet colleagues. (See 12pm.)

• Boris Johnson has been criticised for allowing Hancock to wait until Saturday evening before resigning, instead of sacking him on Friday morning, when the Sun revealed he had broken Covid restrictions by kissing an aide in his office. (See 8.21am and 9.16am.) Labour’s Lucy Powell said that Johnson had “a very dangerous blind spot when it comes to issues of integrity and conduct in public life”.

• Brandon Lewis, the Northern Ireland secretary, has said that Hancock made the right decision by putting the national interest first and resigning. But Labour has criticised Lewis for saying that Hancock deserved “credit” for the move. (See 11.22am.)

• The government will be launching an internal investigation into how CCTV footage of Hancock was leaked, Lewis has said. (See 8.46am.)

• Labour has demanded an investigation into reports that Hancock used a private Gmail account to conduct government business. (See 12.20pm.)

• Brandon Lewis has said that the EU must back up its words about showing flexibility on the Northern Ireland protocol with actions. He told the Andrew Marr show:

We’ve got to make sure that we are delivering for people in Northern Ireland, that we get the flexibility so that people in Northern Ireland have the same experience as they would anywhere else in the United Kingdom in terms of being able to receive products and goods. Now that’s a two-way thing and the EU needs to show the flexibility that they keep talking about.

• Prof Sir Peter Horby, chairman of the New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (Nervtag), has said that it would be a mistake for the government to lift all remaining restrictions for England on Monday 5 July (a week tomorrow). The government has held open the option of going ahead with full lockdown easing on 5 July, but it has said that 19 July is the most realistic date. A final decision is due to be announced tomorrow. Asked if he would back full re-opening on 5 July, Horby told the Marr show:

No, I wouldn’t do that. I think it was a very sensible move to put it back by four weeks and I don’t think we should rush into anything.

• Andrew Marr, the BBC presenter, has revealed that he got a “nasty” bout of Covid after attending the G7 summit, despite being fully vaccinated. The Independent has the full story.

That’s all from me for today.

Thanks for the comments.

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Sajid Javid, the new health secretary, has just issued a statement through the press office at the Department for Health and Social Care. It echoes what he said in his TV clip earlier. (See 10.58am.) In the new statement he said:

I’m incredibly honoured to take up the post of health and social care secretary, particularly during such an important moment in our recovery from Covid-19. This position comes with a huge responsibility and I will do everything I can to deliver for the people of this great country.

Thanks to the fantastic efforts of our NHS and social care staff who work tirelessly every day, and our phenomenal vaccination programme, we have made enormous progress in the battle against this dreadful disease. I want our country to get out of this pandemic and that will be my most immediate priority.

UPDATE: The Sun’s Harry Cole points out that this statement is not quite the same as the one issued earlier (see 10.58am), and that the more idealistic line about life returning to normal has been left out.

These are from Beth Rigby, Sky’s political editor, on Sajid Javid’s appointment as health secretary.

Dame Una O’Brien, who was permanent secretary at the Department for Health between 2010 and 2016, told the World at One that “rarely, if ever” had anyone been appointed health secretary “with the depth and breadth of experience that Sajid Javid brings”. And there has never been a health secretary who has previously been home secretary and chancellor, she said.

(Javid’s other three previous cabinet jobs were: culture secretary, business secretary and communities secretary.)

O’Brien said Javid’s experience was “just what we need at this very difficult time”.

As well as being a former chancellor, Javid held two junior ministerial posts in the Treasury. O’Brien said that “that knowledge and understanding of how your adversary [ie, the Treasury] thinks about the funding of the NHS” would be very valuable to Javid. She said that was bound to be an advantage to the Department for Health in discussions about the funding of social care.

Here is a round-up of some of the more interesting comment on Matt Hancock’s resignation, and his replacement by Sajid Javid, from today’s papers and blogs.

• Camilla Long in the Sunday Times (paywall) asks why character no longer seems to count in politics anymore.

Why is personal character now so irrelevant, when it used to be what really mattered? Read the ministerial code and nearly all of it is a joke: of the seven principles of public life, Hancock has breached every one in this incident alone. No “high standards of behaviour” for him; no being “professional” with colleagues; no being transparent about the people who are working for you when you’re shipping in your old Oxford mates for shags in the office.

• Andrew Rawnsley in the Observer says the slowness of Hancock’s departure reflects badly on Boris Johnson.

The prime minister’s initial assumption was his default one about scandals: media storms will blow themselves out and most of the public have as little interest in integrity in government as he does. So the ethics invigilator can judge Priti Patel guilty of breaching the ministerial code on bullying civil servants and she remains as home secretary. Robert Jenrick can be found to have expedited an unlawful planning decision that saved a Tory donor a lot in tax and continue in cabinet. Gavin Williamson can be a serial incompetent and still draw a ministerial salary. Under the same twisted doctrine of non-accountability, the prime minister’s first instinct was that Mr Hancock could cling on as health secretary.

He may have gone now, but the slowness of his departure leaves the continuing impression that Boris Johnson’s government thinks there is one rule for us and no rules for them.

• Paul Goodman at ConservativeHome says the return of Javid makes the succession to Johnson more complicated.

Conspiracy theorists will claim that by building Javid up, the Prime Minister is inching Rishi Sunak down. After all, the new Health Secretary is a former leadership contender himself. The potential succession to Johnson is now just a little bit more complicated.

We’re not at all sure that Javid would have got the job in the bigger shuffle. Work and Pensions, Education or even the Foreign Office were, on balance, more likely.

• Tim Shipman in the Sunday Times (paywall) says Javid’s return represents another step in the demise of the Vote Leave faction in No 10.

Sajid Javid returned to the cabinet as health secretary last night, a Lazarus-like political revival for a key ally of Carrie Johnson.

The former chancellor had been angling for a return to the top table almost from the moment he resigned in February 2020 after Dominic Cummings and Lee Cain, then Johnson’s senior aides, demanded the removal of his political advisers.

Javid’s appointment to replace Matt Hancock represents a final, symbolic, turning of the page from the Vote Leave regime that dominated Downing Street for Johnson’s first year in power, and proof that the “first lady” has triumphed in the power struggle that gripped No 10 for much of last year.

• James Forsyth in the Spectator says Johnson should now delay the departure of Simon Stevens, the outgoing chief executive of NHS England.

The decision on the new head of the NHS is one of the most consequential decisions that Sajid Javid will make as health secretary and asking a newcomer to the brief to make this decision straightaway is unwise, especially as there is such a divide in opinion about who the best candidate for the job is. Stevens continuing would provide some continuity and allow Javid to make a decision once he had time to determine what the health service was most in need of.

The Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice campaign, which has been campaigning for a public inquiry into the pandemic starting now, welcomed the resignation of Matt Hancock in a Twitter thread last night. It starts here.

The group also said Hancock should have gone earlier.

In her column for the Mail on Sunday Sarah Vine, who is married to the Cabinet Office minister Michael Gove, has used the Matt Hancock affair to reflect on why political marriages often end up in difficulty. She says that it is hard to do a “high-level, high-pressure, high-stakes” job, like being a minister, unless you have a partner prepared to look after everything else. This means “you become so entrenched in your respective roles that you begin to drift apart”, she says.

She goes on:

Ministers are surrounded by people telling them how brilliant they are. Their departments treat them like feudal barons. Their every whim is treated as law. No one ever says No to them.

They certainly don’t get asked to unload the dishwasher. And after a while, it changes them. It becomes increasingly difficult for anything to compete with the adrenaline of power.

How can anyone be expected to put the bins out when they’ve just got home from a day saving the world? Domestic life can seem dull and dispiriting by comparison.

And so they begin to avoid it. So much easier to stay late or say Yes to a fundraiser, or show your support at a fellow MP’s drinks party.

Westminster is a place of myriad distractions for the politician seeking refuge from his or her home life.

And when you feel disconnected like that, and because power is such an aphrodisiac, it doesn’t take a huge leap of imagination to see how you can go from being happily married to the kind of person who gets caught so unfortunately on CCTV.

Angela Rayner, Labour’s deputy leader, has described the Sunday Times revelation (paywall) that Matt Hancock used a personal email address for government business when he was health secretary as “very serious”. She is demanding an investigation.

In his story Gabriel Pogrund reports:

Since March last year the former health secretary has routinely used a private account to conduct government business, concealing information from his own officials and potentially the public, according to documents obtained by The Sunday Times.

It means that the government does not hold records of much of Hancock’s decision-making, including negotiating multimillion-pound PPE contracts, setting up the £37 billion test and trace programme and overseeing the government’s care homes strategy.

Pogrund says Hancock’s use of a personal account is disclosed in minutes of a meeting held at the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) in December. Pogrund reports:

The minutes record that David Williams, the department’s second permanent secretary, had warned about Hancock’s conduct, saying that he “only” deals with his private office “via Gmail account”. He stated that “the SOS [secretary of state] does not have a DHSC inbox” ...

Since the meeting, Hancock has been given an official email account, although two Whitehall sources said that he still preferred to use Gmail. This is considered to be a less traceable form of communication.

The DHSC told the Sunday Times that “ministers understand the rules around personal email usage and only conduct government business through their departmental email addresses”.

Sky’s Rob Powell has posted dug up a quote from Sajid Javid, the new health secretary, from an interview last year that suggests Javid will be more inclined to side with the lockdown-sceptics in cabinet debates than his predecessor, Matt Hancock.

Here is a random selection of tweets about Sajid Javid’s appointment as health secretary from opposition politicians. There have been plenty of supportive tweets too from his Conservative colleagues (some of which may have just been posted out of routine politeness or sycophancy, but some of which reflect the fact that he is popular with colleagues).

Here are four critical, policy-focused comments

From the former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn

From the Labour peer Stewart Wood

From the Labour MP Zarah Sultana

From the Sinn Féin MP Chris Hazzard

And here are two more friendly, personal comments.

From Humza Yousaf, the Scottish government’s health minister

(Yousaf, like Javid, is of Pakistani heritage. Both men have been pioneers as politicians from Muslim families reaching high office in the Scottish and UK governments respectively.)

From Jonny Oates, a Lib Dem peer and chief of staff to Nick Clegg when he was deputy PM in the coalition government

Anneliese Dodds, the Labour party chair, has criticised Brandon Lewis, the Northern Ireland secretary, for saying Matt Hancock deserves “credit” for resigning. (See 8.44am.) In a statement she said:

It speaks volumes about the total lack of integrity at the heart of Boris Johnson’s government that a minister could think Hancock deserves credit for resigning.

Hancock’s record includes wasting huge sums of taxpayers’ money, leaving care homes exposed and breaking his own Covid rules.

If Boris Johnson had any backbone, he would have removed him.

Here is the full quote from Lewis. He was responding to a question from Sky’s Trevor Philipps about why it took Hancock and Boris Johnson so long to realise Hancock’s position was untenable. Lewis said:

I do think it was right that the prime minister and Matt were focused, even in the last couple of days, in making sure that experience, that knowledge gained through the last year and a half or so in dealing with the pandemic, was there to be able to focus on the pandemic.

And I don’t think that is in any contradiction at all to Matt also taking the opportunity to look at the situation and to reflect and decide that his position was distracting from the work that has come out of the pandemic.

And I think, credit to Matt, that his focus is not just on his family but on the wider country and the best interests of the UK.

Prof Linda Bauld, professor of public health at Edinburgh University, told Sky this morning that Boris Johnson’s decision to support Matt Hancock, even for just 48 hours, was “very unfortunate”. She said:

I think the problem in the behavioural messaging is: we can’t have one rule for them and another for us.

That divides the country. And if the government is asking people to change their behaviour, as they still are, and comply with public health guidelines, they need to do it themselves and lead by example.

Sajid Javid, the new health secretary, has recorded a brief clip for broadcasters. He said that his priority would be trying to ensure that people can return to normal, in terms of seeing Covid restrictions lifted, as soon as possible.

Here is the full quote.

I just want to start by saying I think Matt Hancock worked incredibly hard. He achieved a lot, and I’m sure he will have more to offer in public life. [This is also what the PM said to Hancock - see 8.15am.]

I was honoured to take up this position. I also know that it comes with huge responsibility. And I will do everything I can to make sure that I deliver for the people of this great country.

We are still in a pandemic and I want to see that come to an end as soon as possible, and that will be my most immediate priority - to see that we can return to normal as soon and as quickly as possible.

Now, I’ve got a lot of work to do. I’m sure you appreciate that. And if you can excuse me, I’d like to get on with it.

It is a fairly innocuous quote, although a health minister with more than 12 hours’ experience might not have phrased it quite like this. Most health experts think a full return to “normal” is still some way off; they tend to talk instead of life returning closer to normal.

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In his interview on the Andrew Marr Show Jeremy Hunt, chair of the Commons health committee, said he thought the intelligence agencies would want to find out how a cabinet minister was filmed inside his own office. Hunt said:

It’s completely unacceptable from a security point of view that ministers are being filmed inside their own offices without their knowledge.

And so there’ll be issues that our intelligence agencies will want to look at very, very carefully.

But there’s also another issue which is that ministers do need to have the ability to have frank, private conversations with their senior officials to debate things, so that they can understand issues, and know that those conversations will remain private if they’re going to be able to go through the thought processes that enable them to make the right decisions and so I think that will also be something on the minds of government ministers today.

As a former foreign secretary, Hunt used to oversee MI6.

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