LONDON – British Health Minister Matt Hancock resigned after a clip emerged of him kissing a colleague in his ministerial office in a breach of Covid restrictions.
The 42-year-old, father of three, handed his resignation to Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Saturday after a British tabloid published the pictures of him embracing a woman who he had appointed to a taxpayer-funded role to scrutinize the performance of his department.
I have resigned as Health Secretary pic.twitter.com/eyWi1AA19i
— Matt Hancock (@MattHancock) June 26, 2021
In his resignation letter to Prime Minister Boris Johnson, the 42-year-old wrote ‘I want to reiterate my apology for breaking the guidance, and apologize to my family and loved ones for putting them through this, and I also need to be with my children at this time.’
— Matt Hancock (@MattHancock) June 26, 2021
‘The last thing I would want is for my private life to distract attention from the single-minded focus that is leading us out of this crisis.’ He further said ‘we owe it to people who have sacrificed so much in this pandemic to be honest when we have let them down as I have done by breaching the guidance.’
Reports in international media cited that the pictures that enraged the masses were captured on May 6 – almost 11 days before lockdown rules were eased.
The conservative party member has been at the center of the government’s campaign against the Covid pandemic, routinely appearing on mainstream media to tell people to follow the strict rules to contain the deadly virus.
An opposition leader took to Twitter and wrote that ‘Hancock was right to resign but Boris Johnson should have sacked him.’
Meanwhile, the United Kingdom has one of the highest official death tolls from the novel disease in the world as almost 128,000 people have succumbed to the pandemic.
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