A healthcare company, which employs assistant kissing brother Matt Hancock as a senior manager, insisted she had never benefited from the connection with the secretary at home. Health.
Reports suggest that Roberto Coladangelo, chief strategy officer at Partnering Health Limited (PHL group), is the brother of Gina Coladangelo.
And as the family link between the two was confirmed on Saturday, PHL, which provides urgent and primary care services, said it never got a contract from the Department of Health and Social Affairs (DHSC).
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Mr Hancock’s job is on the line after he was caught on camera kissing Ms Coladangelo in her DHSC office.
Ms Coladangelo, married to founder of retailer Oliver Bonas, Oliver Tress, has been a friend of Mr Hancock since their days together at the University of Oxford and was appointed to DHSC last year.
She was first hired as a volunteer advisor on a six-month contract in March 2020, before being appointed non-executive director of the department.
There is no suggestion of wrongdoing with regard to the award of contracts to PHL.
But it comes after Mr Hancock was found guilty of committing a ‘minor’ but unintentional breach of the ministerial code by failing to state that a family business he owned shares in had won a contract with the NHS, following an investigation by the Prime Minister’s ethics counselor.
Independent ministerial standards adviser Lord Geidt said Mr Hancock, 42, should have declared that Topwood Limited, a company owned by his sister and in which he had a 20% stake, had been approved in as an NHS entrepreneur.
Lord Geidt did not recommend that he resign.
In February, Mr Hancock was also forced to defend his ties to Hinpack, a manufacturing company run by former tax collector Alex Bourne.
The Guardian reported at the time that Mr Bourne, who ran the Cock Inn in Little Thurlow, a village in the West Suffolk Health Secretary’s constituency, contacted Mr Hancock via WhatsApp to offer his services during the pandemic .
The company has partnered with a diagnostics supplier to produce specimen collection tubes and funnels for Covid-19 testing, but Mr Hancock and Mr Bourne both said the Secretary of Health did had not been involved in the contract award and told Mr. Bourne to apply through the government website like everyone else.
On Saturday, a spokesperson for PHL said its contracts had always been awarded in the right way.
They said, “PHL has been in operation for over 11 years and has consistently won contracts through the robust tendering and procurement processes put in place by local Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs).
“At no time has any contract been awarded outside of these rigorous processes and no contract has ever been awarded by the Ministry of Health and Social Affairs.”