ICO found insufficient evidence against those suspected of capturing footage of the former health minister with his colleague, Gina Coladangelo.

The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has announced that insufficient evidence to prosecute the two suspects of "unlawfully obtaining and disclosing CCTV footage from the Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC)" was found.The ICO would go on to state that, "After taking legal advice, the ICO concluded that there was insufficient evidence to charge anyone with criminal offences under the Data Protection Act 2018".

The footage in question prompted Matt Hancock's resignation after it was leaked to the Sun in June last year.The footage and stills showed Matt Hancock embracing and kissing Gina Coladangelo, who acted as a non-executive director at the DHSC, inside his ministerial office.During the period that this interaction occurred (May 6th 2021), intimate contact with people outside your own household was not permitted until the 17th May.

Consequently, Matt Hancock and Gina Coladangelo were in breach of Covid social distancing rules.The DHSC and its property management firm Emcor would go on to make a complaint to the ICO, alleging that the CCTV stills had been taken without permission. The ICO would comment that: "Given the seriousness of the report and the wider implications it potentially had for the security of information across the government, the ICO had a legal duty to carry out an impartial assessment of the evidence available to determine if there had been a breach of the law,""Forensic analysis revealed that the leaked images were most likely obtained by someone recording the CCTV footage screens with a mobile phone"

However, despite seizing six mobile phones and other devices after raiding two homes they found that they did not contain any relevant CCTV footage.In a statement the DHSC said that: "We take the security of our personnel, systems and estates extremely seriously."Since this incident, we have worked with security specialists from across government to review procedures and will keep them continually under review."