UK – (WARSOOR) – Matt Hancock has resigned as health secretary after he breached social distancing guidance by kissing a colleague.
In a letter to the PM he said the government “owe it to people who have sacrificed so much in this pandemic to be honest when we have let them down”.
Boris Johnson said he was “sorry” to receive the resignation.
Former chancellor Sajid Javid has said he is “honoured” to have been chosen as Mr Hancock’s replacement.
Mr Hancock had been under increasing pressure to quit, after the Sun published pictures and then a video of Mr Hancock and Gina Coladangelo, who are both married with three children, kissing. The newspaper said they had been taken inside the Department of Health on 6 May.
Several newspapers have reported that Mr Hancock has ended his 15-year marriage to his wife, Martha. The BBC understands that the reports are accurate.
Fellow Tory MPs, as well as Labour and the Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice group, had called for the health secretary to be sacked and a senior Tory figure told the BBC that many MPs had told their whips on Saturday that he ought to resign.
BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg said No10 had stressed that it had been Mr Hancock’s decision to go and that he had not been pushed out by the prime minister.
She said Ms Coladangelo was also leaving her role as a non-executive director of the Department of Health.
In a video posted on Twitter, Mr Hancock said: “I have been to see the prime minister to resign as secretary of state for health and social care.
“I understand the enormous sacrifices that everybody in this country has made, that you have made, and those of us who make these rules have got to stick by them and that’s why I have got to resign.”
Source: BBC