LONDON: UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock resigned on Saturday following revelations that he broke the government’s own coronavirus restrictions during an affair with a close aide.

The frontman for Britain’s response to the pandemic, particularly the nationwide vaccine roll-out, quit in a letter to Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

“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,” he wrote.

Johnson said he was “sorry” to receive Hancock’s resignation, and that he should be “immensely proud” of his service.

The prime minister had initially stood by his beleaguered health secretary after he admitted to breaking Covid rules on social distancing, at a time when he was urging the public to stick by the measures, including curbs on funeral numbers.

Opposition parties accused the government of hypocrisy over breaches of lockdown rules which have seen many members of the public slapped with fines.

Hancock conceded he had let the public down after The Sun newspaper published a security camera still obtained apparently from a whistleblower showing him kissing the aide in his office on May 6.

The main opposition Labour party said the government needed to answer questions about the undisclosed appointment of the aide, former lobbyist Gina Coladangelo, to Hancock’s top advisory team. Both she and Hancock are married, and first met at university.

Last week, Hancock rejected criticism of his handling of the Covid pandemic after private WhatsApp exchanges emerged in which Johnson appeared to describe him as “hopeless”.

Published in Dawn, June 27th, 2021