Former chancellor Sajid Javid appointed health secretary after Matt Hancock resigns

Former Chancellor and home secretary Sajid Javid will replace Matt Hancock as health secretary, Downing Street has announced.

Hancock resigned as health secretary after he breached social distancing guidance by kissing a colleague.

In letter to Boris Johnson, he said the government “owe it to people who have sacrificed so much in this pandemic to be honest when we have let them down”.

It comes after embarrassing footage emerged of Hancock in a clinch with his aide Gina Coladangelo on 6 May, when the public were still being advised not to hug people outside their household.

In written response, Johnson wrote: “You should leave office very proud of what you have achieved – not just in tackling the pandemic, but even before Covid-19 struck us.”

The health secretary had already faced questions about his relationship with Coladangelo, a university friend who he brought in as non-executive director at the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC).

The CCTV footage was taken on 6 May, according to the Sun, which obtained the pictures. Under the government’s unlocking timetable, intimate contact with people outside your own household was only permitted from 17 May, at step 3 of the process.

Hancock had already come under intense pressure in recent weeks, with Boris Johnson’s former aide Dominic Cummings claiming he had urged the prime minister to sack the health secretary up to 20 times, for allegedly lying to colleagues about care homes, testing, and other aspects of the pandemic response.

Cummings subsequently published private messages in which the prime minister called Hancock “totally fucking hopeless”. The Queen was filmed earlier this week at an audience with Johnson, referring to Hancock as “poor man”.

In November last year, Labour complained about apparent cronyism after it emerged that Coladangelo, head of marketing at the Oliver Bonas retail chain, was first made an unpaid adviser at the DHSC and then a non-executive director, a part-time role paid £15,000 a year.

Labour said that while ministers were “entitled to a private life”, there needed to be full transparency about whether any rules had been broken over the appointment.

Responding to his resignation, the Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer, tweeted: “Matt Hancock is right to resign. But Boris Johnson should have sacked him.”