It’s not just the spectre of Brexit that is haunting Westminster. Overnight the Telegraph has released a smorgasbord of stories based on a cache of Matt Hancock’s WhatsApps during the Covid pandemic. Some 100,000 messages were handed to the newspaper by the co-author of his diaries Isabel Oakeshott. Below are some of the stand out news lines on day one of the ‘lockdown files’…

Hancock rejected Whitty’s advice on care home tests

So blares the Telegraph splash headline today. The paper reports that the then-Health Secretary did not follow advice from Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty to test all residents going into English care homes for the coronavirus. He instead chose to test those being admitted from hospital but not the community, saying that doing the latter ‘muddies the waters’.

In one WhatsApp exchange, Hancock’s special adviser Allan Nixon wrote that ‘Just to check: officials are saying your steer is to *remove* the commitment to testing on admission to care homes *from the community*, but *keep* commitment to testing on admission to care homes *from hospital*. Is that right?’ Hancock’s team claims the paper did not include the earlier part of his message when Nixon noted he ‘wasn’t in [the] testing mtg’ that had had happened earlier at which, they claimed, it was believed it wasn’t feasible to test everyone being admitted to care homes.

Rees-Mogg’s child had a Covid test during shortages

The Telegraph reports that Jacob Rees-Mogg had a Covid test for one of his children couriered to his home by health officials at a time when there was a testing shortage.

An initial test for one of Rees-Mogg’s children had been lost by the laboratory, prompting Matt Hancock’s special adviser to organise a courier to deliver a new test that night, wait for the child to take the new test, and then take it directly to the laboratory.

Two days before the test was personally delivered to the Rees-Mogg family home, the director of testing at NHS Test and Trace had been forced to issue her ‘heartfelt apologies to anyone who cannot get a Covid test at present.’ There was a reported 185,000 backlog of tests the day after it arrived at the Rees-Mogg family home…

How Hancock met his 100,000 tests a day target

We always suspected Hancock achieved his headline 100,000 tests a day through some statistical jiggery pokery. And now we know how: the target was hit by counting tens of thousands that were despatched but which might never be processed. Hancock also expressed fears that testing in care homes could ‘get in the way’ of his target.

Hancock sought to guarantee favourable press coverage

To keep up political momentum, Hancock got in touch with an old friend and former boss – George Osborne, the editor of the Evening Standard at the time. He said he could ‘really do with a testing splash’ to help meet his famous 100,000-tests-a-day target, according to the messages. ‘Yes – of course – all you need to do tomorrow is give some exclusive words to the Standard and I’ll tell the team to splash it’, Osborne replied. One for the journalism text books?

The WhatsApps also reveal Osborne’s dry style of texting, telling Hancock bluntly that ‘no one thinks testing is going well, Matt’ at one point.

Hancock could take legal action

A bullish 1 a.m. statement was released by Hancock’s spokesman. ‘Matt is considering all options available to him’ they declared ominously. Team Hancock is accusing the Telegraph of ‘a partial, agenda-driven leak of confidential documents’ and says the proper place to examine all this is the official Covid inquiry.

Well they can hardly not discuss them now…