0:00

Hi listeners, it's Louisa Wells here, Head

0:02

of Podcasts at The Telegraph and long-time

0:04

producer of Chopper's Politics.

0:06

We thought that as a listener of Chopper's Politics, you

0:09

might be interested in a new Telegraph podcast

0:11

that we've been working on. The Lockdown Files

0:13

follows our investigations team after they

0:16

broke a huge story at the beginning of this year.

0:18

The Telegraph had obtained more than 100,000 WhatsApp

0:21

messages sent between Matt Hancock

0:23

and some of the most senior people in government.

0:26

Join the investigations team as they search for

0:28

the full picture behind those messages and

0:30

speak to those involved in making the key decisions

0:33

which affected all our lives. Because

0:35

the Covid inquiry may be underway, but

0:37

you shouldn't have to wait years for answers. Here's

0:39

the first episode.

0:41

We hope you find it interesting.

0:48

Anyone who has ever been in a WhatsApp group will

0:51

know those sounds well. WhatsApp

0:54

is perfect when you're trying to plan a party.

0:58

Who's bringing the mince pies at Christmas? Or

1:00

finding your friends for a picnic in the park?

1:02

It's quick, informal

1:05

and playful. But

1:07

what happens when the same chaotic back

1:09

and forth is used at the highest levels

1:11

of government? I'm Claire Newell,

1:14

the Investigations Editor at The Telegraph.

1:16

In December 2022, one of the editors called me

1:19

into their office. They had something big.

1:23

They'd been approached by a journalist called

1:25

Isabel Oakeshott. She had a leak

1:27

for us. So this is the

1:30

huge cache of WhatsApp

1:32

messages. Matt Hancock's WhatsApp

1:35

messages from when he was the health secretary

1:38

during the pandemic. Many members

1:40

of the cabinet, people in number 10, civil

1:42

servants, you've got the chief medical

1:44

officer, 100,000 messages, chief scientific officer. So

1:46

I gathered a team

1:51

of reporters. In March 2023,

1:54

we published our investigation. We

1:57

christened it The Lockdown Files.

1:59

and 100 articles revealing

2:01

what the highest members of government have been talking

2:04

about as we all stayed at home. Now

2:06

that the Covid inquiry is finally underway,

2:09

so many of my patients died.

2:11

The inquiry has to have access to

2:13

the information it needs. these WhatsApps

2:16

are centre stage. Lady Hannah is demanding

2:19

sight of Boris Johnson's private

2:21

WhatsApps and diaries from

2:23

the time of lockdown.

2:25

Here at the Telegraph, we wanted to

2:27

investigate further and tell the story

2:29

of how these government decisions were made. But

2:32

first, I'd like to take you back to

2:34

how it all began. The leak

2:36

that started it all. It's an enormous

2:39

volume of material. Welcome

2:42

to the Lockdown Files podcast.

2:51

I've known Isabelle for more than 15 years, and

2:53

over those years, she's had some really fantastic

2:56

scoops. She's become much more high

2:58

profile and is often now invited

3:00

on TV as a political commentator. I

3:03

definitely have quite a divisive

3:05

image. Certain people would regard

3:08

me as very right

3:10

wing, which I always find quite amusing because I'm

3:12

just essentially a small C conservative.

3:15

And she's also a ghostwriter. I

3:18

like to think I'm very good at what I do. I specialise

3:20

in writing books that make a big impact.

3:22

They're often controversial, but

3:24

they get a lot of media coverage. Isabelle

3:27

read in an article that Matt Hancock

3:29

wanted to write his memoirs of the pandemic.

3:32

And I remember thinking, well,

3:34

that's interesting. And if he does want

3:37

to write a book, then an essay

3:39

is a brilliant writer who's yet to be discovered.

3:41

Then he might want some help with it. And

3:43

so I dropped him a line and said, is this true?

3:45

You know, are you planning on writing a book? Do you need

3:47

any help with it?

3:49

It's not unusual for former cabinet ministers

3:51

to write memoirs. It can be a great way

3:53

to get out their version of events as

3:55

a journalist, and particularly as somebody

3:57

who'd been very passionately.

3:59

opposed to lockdown policy,

4:03

I really was very drawn to

4:05

working with Matt, even though I

4:07

didn't agree and this was very clear to

4:09

him and everybody, with much

4:11

of what he did, I was very drawn to

4:13

working with him to get

4:15

as much as I could of the inside story

4:18

on the government's handling of

4:20

the response to the pandemic. The process

4:22

for co-writing a book differs a lot. With

4:25

celebrities or sportsmen or sportswomen,

4:27

it's often up to the writer to do the majority

4:30

of the work. Most authors, they

4:32

want to write a book about how brilliant they are. Being

4:34

a politician, Matt was at least as inclined

4:37

as the normal person to want to write about how brilliant

4:39

he was. Politicians often want

4:41

to be heavily involved. And

4:44

then,

4:44

in came these WhatsApps. The

4:48

reason Matt Hancock gave the WhatsApps

4:50

to me and my team was because he

4:53

recognised they were pretty much the best record

4:55

of what actually happened. I can give

4:57

you my recollections

4:59

from the top of my head and I can look at my old ministerial

5:02

diaries and so on, but really, if you want

5:04

a proper account of what happened, well,

5:06

you need the WhatsApps.

5:09

Wow, this book has gone from being, well,

5:11

it was going to be quite good, but actually, wow,

5:14

this is really going to make a

5:16

big splash. But the deadlines

5:18

were tight and things were about to get

5:20

worse.

5:24

Shortly before publication, Matt

5:26

Hancock flew out to Australia to join

5:28

I'm a Celebrity, get me out of here.

5:30

And

5:32

he had asked me privately

5:35

if I thought that this was a good idea

5:37

for him to do. And I actually said, you know, on balance,

5:39

I actually think you should do it. It's great for your profile.

5:42

Frankly, my view was,

5:45

look, just go for it. What

5:47

I didn't know was that if he

5:50

was going to go for it, it was literally

5:52

setting off two or three days later.

5:54

So the next thing I know, Matt

5:56

has actually disappeared.

5:58

He never told me that he had to do it.

5:59

decided to do it, he just vanished.

6:06

Hancock's pandemic diaries were published

6:08

in December, 2022, but

6:10

the book had been written in such a rush, Isabelle

6:13

hadn't even been able to read all the

6:15

messages. She had an inkling

6:17

that things had been left out.

6:20

And so she was faced with a conundrum. Shouldn't

6:23

the public know the full story contained

6:25

in these messages and what ministers

6:27

really thought of the decisions they made

6:29

during the pandemic?

6:31

Confidentiality, if you're a ghost

6:33

writer, is really important. I mean, this is how

6:35

I've made a living for the last 10 years. Nobody

6:38

in my position would breach that lightly.

6:41

Can you imagine the outcry

6:44

if I had been seen to be concealing

6:46

this material? 2.3 million

6:49

words of WhatsApps. And

6:51

I, Isabel Oakeshaw, a political journalist,

6:54

decide to sit on that material

6:57

to protect politicians' dark secrets.

7:00

I don't think that would have been an honorable thing to

7:02

do.

7:06

And so Isabel, usually the

7:08

journalist, decided to

7:10

become a source herself.

7:13

At the start of January, the investigation

7:15

began. The messages were stored

7:17

on hard drives. All of this

7:20

was really sensitive. No

7:22

one could know what we were doing.

7:24

One thing that was actually really important

7:27

right from the word go was secrecy.

7:30

My very first time here, I was actually ushered

7:33

in through a separate entrance and

7:35

up a sort of lift which no one else really

7:38

uses. Because what we really didn't

7:40

want to need was

7:42

either the government or Matt Hancock

7:44

getting wind of this and trying

7:46

to block publication.

7:49

The Telegraph's investigations

7:51

team is usually made up of four people. But

7:53

this was so big, we needed reinforcement. We

7:57

brought people in to the news.

7:59

from the newsroom. The editors

8:02

identified a particular room they thought

8:04

would be perfect for us. No natural

8:06

light, doors that locked and

8:08

as safe as big as me to put the hard

8:10

drives in. There were seven of

8:13

us at the beginning secluded in that room

8:15

for two long months. Here

8:17

are some members of the team recounting those early

8:19

days.

8:23

It's

8:23

essentially a room with one long table

8:26

in the middle of it and they had blanked out

8:28

all the windows. Some steel plates up

8:30

against one wall. So nobody could see in and see

8:32

what we were doing. We couldn't keep the door open

8:34

at all because we had to keep what we were discussing

8:37

private which obviously caused quite a lot

8:39

of interest.

8:40

Now I didn't even tell my wife, so secretive

8:42

of this, she knew I was in a box and she knew

8:44

I was trapped with other people. So whilst

8:47

we knew these were WhatsApp messages they

8:49

didn't look like the normal ones you have on your

8:51

phone. There weren't green and white

8:53

bubbles which allow you to follow a

8:55

conversation easily. There

8:57

was no gap between messages, no

8:59

colour coding whatsoever. It was

9:01

tiny compressed text,

9:04

almost impenetrable. It turns

9:06

out lots of ministers like using emojis

9:08

in their messages. What an incredible resource

9:11

it was. Just wild excitement which

9:13

marks me out as a specific type of journalistic

9:16

geek. In front of us there were a list

9:18

of WhatsApp chats with

9:19

Boris Johnson. I've had political

9:21

reporter rights with my whole time trying to work out what

9:23

ministers are doing. And Wallace, Chris Whitty.

9:26

Why they're doing them and who they're talking to and how policy

9:28

decisions are made and here suddenly it was almost like

9:30

a treasure trove. Blimey, how

9:32

are we going to get through all this?

9:34

Honestly it was a bit surreal. The data

9:36

we were given was expansive. Generally

9:38

they're very raw, these messages. That's

9:41

Isabelle again. You know it's not as if the pandemic

9:43

kind of did away with all political

9:46

business as usual. You know you see the

9:48

turf wars, you see the briefing, you

9:50

see the worrying about how they're going to look

9:52

in the media. Reading these messages

9:55

was like lifting the lid of how government

9:57

really worked. Like cabinet secretaries.

9:59

for example. They are a kind

10:02

of shadowy force in British politics

10:04

and we always assume that the Cabinet Secretary is this kind

10:06

of faceless mandarin or a kind

10:08

of Sir Humphrey figure from Yes

10:10

Minister. Here's

10:11

Tony Diver. He joined our

10:13

team for the investigation. He's usually

10:16

a political reporter based in Westminster.

10:18

And

10:18

actually what we saw was kind of the opposite.

10:21

She's someone making highly politically

10:24

charged comments, having a key

10:26

involvement in decision making,

10:28

which is not necessarily what you might expect.

10:30

Of course there's a caveat to these messages.

10:33

It's not the full picture. Yes,

10:36

Matt Hancock is chatting to Boris Johnson

10:38

about lockdown plans, but it's probably

10:40

not the only way they were communicating.

10:43

There would have been calls and emails. Sometimes

10:46

you don't see the full replies

10:48

because somebody that Matt Hancock

10:50

has messaged

10:51

has picked up the phone instead. In

10:54

the room we had to reconstruct what was going

10:56

on in between the chats.

10:58

As a precaution, our computers

11:00

weren't connected to the internet. We

11:02

couldn't risk someone hacking into the material.

11:05

The

11:05

last thing we wanted was for the leak

11:08

to leak. It made researching

11:10

information laborious because

11:12

we had to swap over to a laptop so

11:14

there was no copy and paste. And you

11:16

had to work out on that date what

11:18

it was that they were talking about that for example just

11:21

happened in schools or just happened in care homes. That's

11:23

my colleague Hailey Dixon. She does some of the

11:25

paper's biggest stories and joined

11:27

our team for the investigation. So you had

11:29

to go back through newspaper cuttings and

11:32

website archives to work out the

11:34

context of what you're talking about. So it wasn't just about

11:37

opening these files and reading what was said. It was about

11:39

piecing together

11:41

what was happening at that moment in time both

11:43

within and outside the room. One

11:46

thing that was slightly frustrating for us personally

11:48

was there were a lot of Twitter links and because the

11:51

computers that we were using weren't connected to the internet.

11:53

So you would often spend quite a long time typing

11:55

out the Twitter link to realize that you've got one number

11:58

or one letter wrong and they have to go back and check it out.

11:59

it again, but obviously without knowing what it

12:02

said in that link, the context to what they're talking

12:04

about becomes impossible to know. Nonetheless,

12:06

the messages do give us a glimpse of how the

12:09

decisions which impacted all our lives

12:11

were made during a once-in-the-lifetime crisis.

12:14

As a newspaper, we're used

12:16

to working with large leaks.

12:18

Ten years ago, The Telegraph obtained

12:20

a copy of almost every MP's

12:22

expense claim thanks to a whistleblower.

12:25

These messages were no different, but

12:27

it was on a much larger scale. We

12:29

divided the WhatsApp chats between us and

12:32

started with current cabinet ministers.

12:34

Of course, that meant it included the current Prime

12:37

Minister, Rishi Sunak, and the former one,

12:39

Boris Johnson. So I mean,

12:41

I made the case that with my

12:43

political experience, I should be the one that gets

12:46

to look at some of those number 10 chats, which

12:49

is an argument I won. I think I then got some

12:52

of the worst group chats as

12:55

a punishment.

12:56

As we read through the messages, we realised

12:59

it was important to work in a uniform way.

13:01

That meant we could cross-check our notes.

13:03

With eight reporters in the room, we couldn't afford

13:06

to miss anything. Within a month,

13:08

we had pretty much finished our first read, and

13:10

it was time to start again. But as

13:12

we did this, we also started drafting

13:14

stories. It can be the only way

13:17

to decide if something works. When

13:19

you see it on the screen,

13:20

does it seem shocking or new? Would you

13:23

put it on the front of a paper or on the

13:25

top of a website? Is it the

13:27

kind of story that blows your mind

13:30

and makes you want to WhatsApp everybody you

13:32

know? Just wow, I can't believe that's the

13:34

way that they actually run things and do things, really.

13:37

That's my colleague, Hayley. Because of the

13:39

nature of the data that we're using, public interest

13:42

from day one was at the top

13:44

of everyone's mind in that room. There

13:46

is a difference between the public interest and what public find interesting.

13:49

We always were thinking about what we were reading

13:51

in

13:51

terms of why does this matter?

13:54

At the beginning of this process, there were some areas

13:57

where we knew there were going to be stories.

13:59

that schools, for example, were something

14:02

that I'd covered quite a lot during the pandemic, but

14:04

also is really important in terms of lesson learned

14:06

because it's children who have paid a lot of price

14:08

for this pandemic. So I think very early on, I certainly

14:11

had my eye

14:13

out, my news radar out for

14:15

stories in schools. Another obvious

14:17

one was care homes, generally accepted

14:20

to be one of the government's biggest failures.

14:22

We've tried to throw a protective

14:25

ring around our care homes. But

14:27

tens of thousands of residents died

14:29

in the first wave and there was more

14:32

to come. We knew the area

14:34

was a good one for us to delve into

14:36

and it paid off.

14:37

It was an example of what we collectively

14:40

called not following the science.

14:42

Times where advice from scientists

14:44

was apparently ignored. To ignore

14:47

the scientists' advice and then to

14:49

have the gall or the audacity to

14:52

actually say that we will put a ring

14:54

of care, that he actually said that,

14:57

well, where was this ring of care?

14:59

It was one of the themes which developed and

15:02

emerged as we combed through the data. It became

15:05

the basis of what we call our day one

15:07

splash. Basically the story

15:09

you stick on the front page, which leads the coverage.

15:13

Then at the start of March, it

15:16

was D-Day. Before we published,

15:18

we came down and we read the proofs. So

15:20

what that means is when the designers have laid

15:22

it all out on the page and made it fit.

15:24

We're all going through printed out copies of

15:27

all of these WhatsApp messages, literally sitting

15:30

there with pen and paper circling problems that

15:32

there were on the page, typos or formatting

15:35

problems, going back to the sub editors, getting it changed,

15:37

coming back, taking a new page. We slowly sort

15:39

of worked our way all the way through pretty much until the

15:41

last moment.

15:43

It was nerve wracking. We had

15:45

enough articles to fill pages one to

15:47

six of the paper. We had a special

15:49

design that would dominate the Telegraph website.

15:53

We decided to publish late at night, just

15:55

before 11.

15:57

It's much later than usual, but

15:59

in our business. it's all about protecting

16:01

our work. A late drop meant

16:03

it would be hard for rivals to rip us off. And

16:06

then slowly

16:08

it became clear that someone

16:10

somehow had found out what we were doing. And

16:12

there was a bit of a concern that

16:15

it was going to leak. And so people

16:17

started to text me, people from Westminster

16:19

saying, oh, I hear your story's being published tomorrow.

16:22

I hear this big thing that you've been working on for so long, it's going to come

16:24

out.

16:24

Until finally, it was time.

16:27

At 10.45 PM, we

16:29

all took a deep collective breath.

16:32

When

16:35

you're sitting in a bunker for two months, you

16:37

have no idea how anything that you do is

16:39

going to land, really. As the minutes passed,

16:41

we watched. And then it happened. Social

16:44

media exploded.

16:46

And by the next morning, it was leading the

16:49

news.

16:55

Fresh revelations. Elite WhatsApp messages.

16:57

The Daily Telegraph. Big decisions under

16:59

new scrutiny. Former Health Secretary Matt Hancock's

17:02

handling of the COVID pandemic. Jokes

17:04

about mandatory hotel quarantine.

17:06

Mr. Speaker, the families of the 43,000

17:09

care home residents who lost their lives will

17:11

be appalled. Relatives of those who

17:13

died during the COVID pandemic were dismayed

17:16

not only by the revelations, but also

17:19

the tone of some of the messages. How

17:21

casually ministers and advisers discuss

17:24

massive decisions like masks

17:26

on children.

17:27

Matt Hancock responded to the articles

17:30

by saying that it was outrageous and

17:32

a distorted account of the pandemic. He

17:35

criticized us for spinning an anti-lockdown

17:37

agenda, which would have cost hundreds

17:39

of thousands of lives if followed.

17:41

His spokesperson said, what these messages

17:43

do show is a lot of people working

17:46

hard to save lives. As I'm

17:48

recording this episode, the public inquiry

17:50

has just started. But the problem is, it's

17:53

going to take years.

17:54

And people are saying, we just can't wait that

17:56

long.

18:00

Because we all want answers, we decided

18:02

to examine the messages again in a new light.

18:05

Sometimes they allude to a document or

18:07

a meeting. An obvious step

18:09

is for us to speak to people in government at the time

18:12

and ask them, looking back, what

18:14

do you think of the choices you made? It

18:16

will be difficult. Not everyone is happy

18:19

that the lockdown files were published. I'm

18:22

Claire Newell and this is the Lockdown Files

18:24

Podcast. Thank you for listening. And

18:27

if you like the series, please leave a

18:29

five star rating and a short review

18:31

on Apple podcasts. It will help

18:33

listeners find us and help keep this investigation

18:36

going. Please consider taking out

18:38

a Telegraph subscription. We couldn't

18:40

have made this show without our subscribers.

18:43

Listeners to this podcast can get exclusive sign

18:45

up deals at telegraph.co.uk

18:49

forward slash lockdown files podcast.

18:52

Don't forget that you can find exclusive details

18:54

from the series at telegraph.co.uk forward

18:58

slash news forward slash lockdown

19:01

hyphen files. And if you've got

19:03

any information to share, please

19:05

email us on lockdown files

19:07

at telegraph.co.uk. The

19:11

Lockdown Files Podcast was written by me,

19:13

Claire Newell and Adele Pojman-Ponte.

19:16

The investigation scene behind it, a Catherine

19:18

Rushton, Sophie Barnes, Janet Easton

19:21

and Jack Leather. The other reporters

19:23

who worked on the Lockdown Files are Robert

19:25

Mendick, Hailey Dixon and Tony

19:27

Diver. This episode

19:29

was produced by Adele Pojman-Ponte

19:32

with further production and mixing from Jack

19:34

Boswell. The executive producer

19:36

is Louisa Wells.