UK health minister resigns after breaching coronavirus rules
(FASTNEWS | UNITED KINGDOM) – UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock resigned today, a day after apologising for breaching social distancing rules with an aide with whom he was allegedly having an affair.
Gina Coladangelo kissing in an office at the Department of Health. The Sun said the closed circuit television images were taken May 6 — 11 days before lockdown rules were eased to allow hugs and other physical contact with people outside one’s own household.
In a resignation letter to UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Hancock said the government owed “it to people who have sacrificed so much in this pandemic to be honest when we have let them down”.
Johnson said he was “sorry” to receive Hancock’s resignation and that he “should leave office very proud of what you have achieved — not just in tackling the pandemic, but even before Covid-19 struck us”.
Johnson had been facing widespread calls to fire Hancock, who has led the country’s response to the pandemic.
The Sun late yesterday also published a video of the embrace, which had prompted the main opposition Labour Party to deem his position “hopelessly untenable”. Some Conservative lawmakers had also called on Hancock to quit because he wasn’t practising what he has been preaching during the pandemic.