Police and travel industry react angrily to Matt Hancock lockdown texts

Messages show Hancock urging ministers to get heavy' with police and making light of hotel quarantine situation

Ministers have come under fire from police officers and the travel industry after private messages from Matt Hancock highlighted the rapid and occasionally haphazard way in which they wrote Covid lockdown policies.

Senior representatives of the police service attacked the government's handling of the pandemic after the Telegraph published messages showing the former health secretary urging ministers to get heavy with the police" over lockdown enforcement.