oops.... another COVID 19 casualty:
Inside the plot to expose Matt Hancock's affair: Friends talk of secret camera hidden by Chinese... or No10. In fact it was footage from his office CCTV and a whistleblower in his own department, reveals GLEN OWEN
The sting that brought down
Matt Hancock was executed by a whistleblower in his department who contacted opponents of the Health Secretary's stance on
lockdown to help expose his affair, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.
The footage of Mr Hancock kissing Gina Coladangelo was caught on a CCTV camera in his office on May 6, and secretly recorded by a member of his department's staff.
After allowing a month to elapse, the whistleblower approached lockdown sceptics and asked them to help sell the incendiary footage to the media.
Throughout the pandemic, Mr Hancock has been a leading lockdown 'dove', arguing that the ultimate priority of government policy should be protecting the
NHS against being overwhelmed. His critics have argued that the cost of the measures has been too high.
When the images detonated on The Sun's front page on Friday, Mr Hancock's allies speculated that he had been the victim of a 'hit' by No 10, or even a foreign power such as China.
They said they had no idea the camera existed, that it was 'unheard of' for cameras to be installed in Ministers' offices, and wanted to know why it had been put there without Mr Hancock's permission – and with what motivation. It was speculated that the images had been caught by 'a small covert camera that had been placed in a light fixture'.
In fact, pictures taken in September 2017, just before Mr Hancock moved in, show that the camera which caught the clinch is clearly visible on the ceiling of his office.
It is trained on the area by the doorway where the couple embraced.
Six weeks after the fateful images were captured – and a fortnight after they had been wiped from the department's CCTV system – the worker who had secured the footage contacted an anti-lockdown campaigner, who promised to try to place them in the media.
The Mail on Sunday was not one of the outlets approached. It is not known if The Sun obtained the video from the whistleblower or from another source entirely.
In a series of Instagram messages seen by this newspaper, the whistleblower says they need 'to be very careful with the information I am about to share'.
They add: 'I have some very damning CCTV footage of someone that has been recently classed as completely f*****g hopeless.'
The first message was sent on June 17, the day after former No 10 aide Dominic Cummings released a text exchange between him and the Prime Minister in which Boris Johnson expressed his frustration with Mr Hancock.
Matt Hancock's affair footage was from his office CCTV, says GLEN OWEN
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