Simon Case has come under fire for messages he allegedly sent at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Photo: File.
The head of the United Kingdom Public Service, Simon Case, who is alleged to have described the government as a “terrible, tragic joke” in private WhatsApp messages at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, was expected to be questioned about this and other correspondence when he appears before the official COVID inquiry.
However, a late report stated that Mr Case was now on medical leave.
Mr Case was to give evidence to Lady Hallett’s inquiry either at the end of October or in early November.
Sources say that many more messages involving Mr Case will be produced, raising further questions about the quality of government actions during the national emergency.
Lady Hallett’s inquiry is examining questions about “core UK decision-making and political governance” to establish how well the Whitehall machine reacted under the huge pressure of the pandemic.
Several top Cabinet Office officials and public servants in key positions at the time will give evidence, including Mr Case and then Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s former Principal Private Secretary, Martin Reynolds.
Some astonishingly frank messages from Mr Case have already been released to the inquiry. His most damning comments were made in a WhatsApp exchange that included Lee Cain, Mr Johnson’s communications chief, and Dominic Cummings, the Prime Minister’s senior adviser.
In one, Mr Case said: “The Government doesn’t have the credibility needed to be imposing stuff within only days of deciding not too [sic]. We look like a terrible, tragic joke. If we were going hard, that decision was needed weeks ago. I cannot cope with this.”
In other disparaging comments, he said Mr Johnson’s wife Carrie appeared to be “the real person in charge” of the government.
He also wrote that at one point he was “going to scream” after hearing about a plan by former Secretary for Health Matt Hancock to draw up a so-called “regional circuit breaker” to curb the spread of the virus.
However, it was later reported that Mr Case was stepping back from his job and taking medical leave.
Speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to speak publically, officials said Mr Case was expected to be gone for a number of weeks.
This comes as the retiring head of the government’s ethics watchdog has said the system for ensuring compliance with standards is very weak and the UK could become a corrupt country if this is not addressed.
Lord Jonathan Evans, who is about to step down as chair of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, said the low priority that departments currently give to compliance with standards “opens a door to opacity and potentially to corruption”.
The former MI5 chief picked out the publishing of transparency reports by government departments as a particular area of concern, saying it was obviously not a priority for them.
