British MP
Matt Hancock’s problems do not seem to go away. Hancock, who resigned from the
position of UK Health Secretary due to a scandal in June, had his new job at the
United Nations cancelled due to backlash.

 The West Suffolk MP had accepted an offer to
be an unpaid “UN special representative on financial innovation and climate
change” for the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa.

But now according to a report by Passblue,
a non-profit news website covering the UN, Hancock’s role is “not being taken
forward” and the UN Economic Commission for Africa “has advised him of the
matter”.

Hancock himself confirmed the
withdrawal, saying that it was done due to a technicality. He accused the UN of
belatedly realising he could not do the job while being a sitting MP.

“If Matt Hancock wants to help
African countries recover from the pandemic, he should lobby the prime minister
to back a patent waiver on COVID-19 vaccines. If he’d done that when he was in
government, tens of millions more people could already have been vaccinated. The
last thing the African continent needs is a failed British politician. This
isn’t the 19th Century,” Global Justice Now director Nick Dearden was
quoted by the Mirror as saying.

A report had come out earlier in the
week stating that the British government waited too long to impose a lockdown
in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, missing a chance to contain the
disease and leading to thousands of unnecessary deaths.

The deadly delay resulted from
ministers’ failure to question the recommendations of scientific advisers,
resulting in a dangerous level of “groupthink” that caused them to dismiss the
more aggressive strategies adopted in East and Southeast Asia, according to the
joint report from the House of Commons’ science and health committees.