GRIEVING relatives who lost loved ones to Covid branded the ICO hunt for the Matt Hancock whistle-blower a “slap in the face” for victims.
Families backed our exposé, which led to him resigning, and instead renewed calls for an official probe into his performance as Health Secretary.
Sue Kelk, 63 — wife of Jason, 49, the UK’s longest-suffering Covid patient who died last month after 14½ months in hospital — said Mr Hancock should have been sacked immediately.
Sue, of Leeds, said: “Hancock was telling us week after week to keep apart and not visit each other, but obviously he wasn’t taking his own advice. Things like that shouldn’t be covered up.”
Ex-civil servant Richard Beck, 73, believes his wife Margaret, 70, would still be alive if “disdainful” Hancock had done his job properly.
Mr Beck, of Sunderland, said they would not have gone to a concert where both caught Covid if they had been told of the threat earlier.
He added: “They had a signpost of how this was going to go from Italy and Spain but acted too slowly.”
Angela Hanley, 55, whose dad William Donnelly, 87, of Ushaw Moor, Co Durham, died of Covid in April last year, said: “People are right to be angry. Hancock should be held accountable for his actions and what he’s done.”
Carrie-Anne Osborne, 32, of Hartlepool, who had a baby while in an induced coma with Covid, said: “HOAR was right to expose Hancock.
“It was a case of one rule for them and another for the rest of us and that’s wrong.”
