Ministers and officials have come under fire for joking about “locking up” travellers in quarantine hotels during the pandemic, leaked WhatsApp messages reveal.
Hancock provided Oakeshott the messages after commissioning her to ghost-write his account of his time in office, The Pandemic Diaries.
During one exchange in early February 2021, published on Thursday (2 March) by The Telegraph, Hancock messaged cabinet secretary Simon Case – the country’s most senior civil servant – to say: “We are giving big families all the suites and putting pop stars in the box rooms.”
Case replied: “I just want to see some of the faces of people coming out of first class and into a Premier Inn shoe box.”
A few days later, Case asked Hancock: “Any idea how many people we locked up in hotels yesterday?” to which Hancock replied: “None. But 149 chose to enter the country and are now in quarantine hotels due to their own free will!”
Case responded: “Hilarious.”
The Hancock texts also show the then-health secretary messaging a story to Johnson about a man and a woman being fined £10,000 each for failing to quarantine upon their return from Dubai, to which Johnson replied: “Superb.”
