london british prime minister boris johnson was under mounting pressure on saturday to fire his health secretary after the admission that he broke covid19 guidelines by kissing an employee sparked accusations of blatant hypocrisymatt hancock 42 has been at the centre of the governments fight against the pandemic routinely telling people to follow strict rules and even welcoming the resignation last year of a senior scientist who broke restrictions in a similar mannerhancock apologised on friday after the sun newspaper showed him kissing and embracing a senior aide in his office last month at a time when it was against the rules for people to have intimate contact with a person outside their householdthe opposition labour party also questioned whether he had broken the ministerial code the woman a longtime friend of hancocks was appointed as a nonexecutive director on a taxpayerfunded salary to oversee and scrutinise the running of his departmenti accept that i breached the social distancing guidance in these circumstances hancock said i have let people down and am very sorryjohnson said on friday he considered the matter closedbut britains leading newspapers which all splashed the story on their front pages said hancock had lost any moral authority and must go one lawmaker in his party duncan baker called on him to resignmr hancock cannot now hope to put on a straight face and tell us how to behave and seriously expect us to listen the sun said in its leader column there is the rank stench of hypocrisytime to gowith 128000 deaths britain has one of the highest official death tolls from covid19 in the worldwhile new daily cases have risen in the last month with almost 16000 reported on friday a rapid vaccine rollout appears to have broken the link between infections and deaths and most restrictions could be dropped by july 19british people have largely accepted the imposition of rules designed to contain the virus but the hancock revelation drew comparison to an incident last year when johnsons then most senior adviser dominic cummings also broke the rules sparking fury across the countryjohnson prime minister since 2019 has refused on a number of occasions to sack ministers including his interior minister who was found to have broken rules by shouting and swearing at staff prompting the official ethics adviser to resign insteadthe prime minister has himself been criticised in an official report over his personal financesand the countrys spending watchdog has criticised the way the government awarded billions of pounds of contracts related to fighting covid19 after some multimillion pound orders went to companies with links to ministers lawmakers and officialsthe health ministry has said it needed to move quicklythe revelations have led to charges of cronyism and incompetence although johnsons conservative party remains comfortably ahead in opinion polls the times newspaper said johnsons approach to governing put public support at riskthe danger is that this cavalier approach to rules is becoming corrosive to that most precious commodity for any government public trust