Man charged with assaulting Matt Hancock on Tube train

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A 61-year-old man has been charged with assaulting former health secretary Matt Hancock on the London Underground.

Geza Tarjanyi, from Leyland, Lancashire, was charged with common assault and two public order offences, British Transport Police said.

The MP who appeared on I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! is understood to have been unhurt in the alleged attack on Tuesday, which his spokesman described as an “unpleasant encounter”.

Police said they received a report of a man being “assaulted and harassed” at the station next to the House of Commons before 9am.

A spokesman for Matt Hancock added “this sort of behaviour is a rare occurrence” and stressed the “importance of shutting down baseless misinformation which causes so much harm”.

“Matt wants to put on record his thanks to TfL and the British Transport Police for their extraordinary work,” the spokesman added.

Footage posted to social media showed a member of the Tube staff walking with Mr Hancock along a platform and getting on a Tube train, then pleading with a man to stop following them and making accusations.

At one point, the MP for West Suffolk, who was unhurt in the incident, tells the employee that he appreciates her walking with him.

She also accompanies him during the Tube journey while a man is heard continuing his accusations and using foul language.

Mr Hancock, 44, was health secretary when the coronavirus pandemic struck and was a key figure in the lockdown restrictions and vaccine rollout that followed.

He resigned after leaked CCTV image showed him kissing an adviser in his office, in breach of his own social distancing guidance.

Having been stripped of the Conservative whip over the appearance on I’m A Celebrity, Mr Hancock said he would not contest his seat at the next election when he will step down.

After leaving office in June 2021, Mr Hancock faced criticism over shortages of personal protective equipment (PPE) in the NHS in the early stages of the pandemic, the award of contracts to supply masks and the decision to move elderly patients into care homes without Covid testing to free up hospital beds.

High Court judges ruled last April that discharging patients who had had the coronavirus to care homes without testing them was unlawful.

Mr Hancock said last month he would not stand as an MP at the next election and would instead find “new ways to reach people” who were disengaged with politics.

After making it to the final three contestants, he said he would give up his seat at the next election, saying he realised there were different ways to “reach people” other than representing them in parliament.

The programme was one of the most complained-about of last year, when viewers objected to the inclusion of Mr Hancock in the series.