Matt Hancock’s plan to ‘frighten the pants off everyone’ about Covid
Leaked WhatsApp messages reveal how health secretary hoped to shock public into complying with ever-changing lockdown rules
Throughout the course of the pandemic, officials and ministers wrestled with how to ensure the public complied with ever-changing lockdown restrictions. One weapon in their arsenal was fear.
“We frighten the pants off everyone,” Matt Hancock suggested during one WhatsApp message with his media adviser.
The then health secretary was not alone in his desire to scare the public into compliance. The WhatsApp messages seen by The Telegraph show how several members of Mr Hancock’s team engaged in a kind of “Project Fear”, in which they spoke of how to utilise “fear and guilt” to make people obey lockdown.
An Imperial College survey of Covid infections in the community – called the React programme and led by the eminent professor Lord Darzi – provided “positive” news for Mr Hancock and his team.
The study they referred to appeared to have been a survey showing “decreasing prevalence” of Covid through May and an R number – the reproduction rate of the virus – of just 0.57.
The study was in line with an Office for National Statistics (ONS) survey. But when the media focused on a separate report by Public Health England and Cambridge University showing a high transmission rate in some parts of the country – prompting speculation that local lockdowns could follow – Mr Hancock said: “That’s no bad thing.” Sir Patrick Vallance, the Government’s Chief Scientific Adviser, agreed. On June 5 2020, there were 1,020 reported daily cases of Covid and 160 deaths.
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