According to a news outlet, the Health Secretary nursed a glass of white wine in the Smoking Rooms commons bar until at least 10.25 pm and a senior Tory MP said that Matt Hancock arrived at the bar just before 9.40 pm and ordered a glass of French sauvignon blanc.
He is then said to have quipped to other MPs, saying that the drinks were on him and that Public Health England was in charge of the payment methodology so he wouldn’t be spending anything.
The joke reportedly came after he had endeavoured to demonstrate to the Commons why the under fire public body had lost some 16,000 coronavirus tests and Matt Hancock’s apparent infringement of his own rules comes despite Speaker Lindsay Hoyle insisting that the Commons bar must abide by the same 10 pm curfew that applies to venues across the country.
However, in a statement given to a news outlet, a spokesman for Matt Hancock repudiated that any rules had been violated and they said that no rules had been broken and that the Secretary of State had been in the Smoking Room before the vote that evening.
And it was said that the Secretary of State had left the Smoking Room to vote and that the vote took place at 9.42 pm and that after, the Secretary of State left the Parliamentary manor to go home.
However, the spokesman refused to respond on whether Matt Hancock returned to the bar after voting and before he returned home.
Charles Walker, the Tory MP who oversees the Commons bars, has since promised an inquiry into the allegations that the curfew was broken and Charles Walker, chairman of the Common’s Administration Committee, told a news outlet that he would be speaking to senior management within the catering department and that alleged drinking after the curfew needed to stop.
Politicians have since attacked the Health Secretary’s tasteless alleged witticism and Munira Wilson, the Liberal Democrats Health spokesman, told a news outlet that if these vulgar remarks were factual, Matt Hancock must apologise and that Matt Hancock has no shame.
And she added that rather than taking responsibility for testing failures, the Health Secretary was making jokes at their expense. However, one source revealed to the news outlet that Matt Hancock’s apparent gag did get quite a laugh from the twenty or so other MPs in the room.
If the Government want the public to follow their rules, then they need to lead by example, and any breaches by officials regardless of who they are must be met head-on and dealt with as severely as the rules permit because the failure to do so will see the public stick two fingers up at the Government and they will just do their own thing.
Although, it appears that people are doing that already and these MPs and Government are playing with people’s lives and their livelihoods, destroying their prospects. Yet they disregard the rules and laugh at them whilst they do so, and still, people support the Government and obey their rules despite overwhelming proof it’s not working.
And of course, the track and trace system isn’t working because not everyone takes their phones everywhere they go, and not everyone has their locations on – so no, the Government don’t know their every move.
There are numerous people out there that won’t care that Matt Hancock was in the bar past 10 pm, but they will care that they are going to kill our economy, where millions will lose their jobs and homes and perhaps the reason numerous people aren’t following the lockdown rules is that our so-called leaders should be setting an example, but are not, and leadership in this country has gone down the drain.
The Tories in general just have no empathy. It continues to amaze me that as a nation we voted for the shambolic Boris Johnson.
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