Teachers complained about a lack of PPE in order “to have an excuse not to teach”, Gavin Williamson said in a leaked WhatsApp chat, commenting later that some teaching unions “really do just hate work”.
In new leaked WhatsApp messages from the Telegraph’s investigation, Matt Hancock, the then heath secretary, was asked by Williamson, who was the education secretary, to help unblock school requests for protective equipment if a child became ill at school as classrooms prepared to reopen after the first lockdown.
Williamson said it was “basically as a last resort so they can’t use it as a reason not to open. All of them will but some will just want to say they can’t so they have an excuse to avoid having to teach, what joys!!!”.
Teaching unions, including the National Education Union, were deeply critical of the government’s approach to schools reopening and exams, including a fiasco over A-level results predicted by an algorithm.
In October 2020, Williamson said publicly the following year’s exams would be postponed for a few weeks to make up teaching time. According to the leaked messages, Hancock then got in touch with his cabinet colleague to say “what a bunch of absolute arses the teaching unions are”.
Williamson replied: “I know they really really do just hate work.” Hancock then responded with a laughing emoji and a bullseye.
Dr Mary Bousted, joint general secretary of the National Education Union, said in response to the leak: “Why am I utterly unsurprised to now have it absolutely confirmed that Gavin Williamson was unfit to be secretary of state for education?”
In a statement on Wednesday, Williamson said: “Further to reports in the Telegraph and other outlets, I wish to clarify that these messages were about some unions and not teachers. As demonstrated in the exchange, I was responding regarding unions.
“I have the utmost respect for teachers who work tirelessly to support students. During the pandemic, teachers went above and beyond during very challenging times and very much continue to do so.”
The messages also reveal Hancock fought against Williamson to persuade the government to close schools in January at the height of the wave of the new Covid variant.
After initially losing the argument during a cabinet meeting, the then health secretary told an aide that “the next U-turn [was] born”, and added: “I want to find a way, Gavin having won the day, of actually preventing a policy car crash when the kids spread the disease in January. And for that we must now fight a rearguard action.”
Other disclosures on Wednesday indicated Boris Johnson bemoaning the likelihood of “another U-turn” over face masks in schools after advisers said it was “not worth an argument” over why Scottish schools would enforce them in the classroom but not schools in England.
Hancock also reportedly said No 10 did not want to change the “rule of six” for meetings to include children during lockdown, even though another minister said there was “no robust rationale”.
Discussing the issue of face masks in schools in a WhatsApp group with the prime minister, England’s chief medical officer, Prof Chris Whitty, appeared to say there were “no very strong reasons” either way, but Johnson received advice from senior aides that he would have difficulty communicating the difference.
The Scottish first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, had already announced children would need to wear face coverings in corridors. In a group chat, Johnson said: “Folks I am about to [be] asked about masks in schools. Before we perform another U-turn can I have a view on whether they are necessary?”
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Two senior advisers apparently warned against conflicting communications advice. His then director of communications, Lee Cain, said: “Considering Scotland has just confirmed it will I find it hard to believe we will hold the line. At a minimum I would give yourself flex and not commit to ruling it out … Also why do we want to have the fight on not having masks in certain school settings.”
Simon Case, a senior official in No 10 who would become Johnson’s cabinet secretary, indicated that unless Whitty and the chief scientific adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, were “willing to go out and say WHO and Scots are wrong, I think some nervous parents will freak out about this happening in Scotland, but not in England”.
But Whitty admitted there were “no strong reasons against in corridors etc, and no very strong reasons for”, and then added: “So agree not worth an argument.”
A day after the conversation, the government announced that secondary schoolchildren in areas with heightened lockdown rules would need to wear face masks in corridors. It included many parts of the north-west, Yorkshire and Leicester.
In October 2020, the rule of six policy was questioned by Helen Whately, the minister for adult social care, who said she wanted to “loosen [it] on children under 12 … it would make such a difference to families and there isn’t a robust rationale for it”.
Hancock said No 10 “don’t want to go there on this … Also on curfew – they don’t want to shift an inch.” The rule of six – where gatherings of more than six people were against the law, except in certain circumstances – remained in place for much of the rest of the pandemic, apart from during stricter lockdowns when no social mixing was allowed.
Whately defended her former colleague in the Commons on Wednesday, saying “selective snippets” of leaked WhatsApp messages were misleading.
Hancock issued a furious response to the leaking of his WhatsApp messages, which he had previously given to the journalist Isabel Oakeshott to ghostwrite his book. Oakeshott, who is said to have signed an NDA, said she had made them available to the Telegraph in the public interest.
