WILTSHIRE MPs say it was “right” for Health Secretary Matt Hancock to resign.
The Health Secretary quit on Saturday after photographs emerged of him kissing his aide Gina Coladangelo.
The couple were caught on camera kissing behind a closed door in his Whitehall office in May in breach of Covid-19 pandemic social distancing guidelines.
Chippenham MP Michelle Donelan said: "I think it’s right that Matt Hancock resigned as Secretary of State for Health and Social Care.
"He played a pivotal role creating and shaping policy in our response to the pandemic including the restrictions. It is therefore unthinkable that he could remain in his post given his breach of the restrictions.”
Devizes MP Danny Kruger said: “I think it was right for Matt Hancock to resign, and I detect from my inbox that many people locally think so too.
“The Government has been regulating private life with an unheard-of degree of intrusion for 18 months, including a ban on embracing people not in your household.
“This on its own was enough to make the defence that his affair was ‘a personal matter’ untenable.
“I also think the public/private distinction is weak anyway, as if national leadership (or any responsibility, for that matter) were purely a question of technical skill irrespective of private character.”
South West Wiltshire MP Dr Andrew Murrison has also been asked for a comment.
Mr Hancock is understood to have left Martha, his wife of 15 years, while his relationship with Ms Coladangelo, whom he has known since his Oxford University days, is said to be “serious”.
After resigning and referring to his breach of the Covid-19 social distancing guidelines, Mr Hancock said "those of us who make these rules have go to stick by them."
Prime Minister Boris Johnson was criticised by the Labour and Liberal Democrat parties for not immediately firing Mr Hancock.
He has since appointed former Chancellor Sajid Javid as the new Health and Social Care Secretary.
An investigation has now been mounted into how the photograph taken from a CCTV security camera inside his departmental office was leaked to the media.
Questions are also being asked into Mr Hancock's appointment of Ms Coladangelo as his aide in March last year.
Six months later, she was promoted to a director role at the DHSC being paid £15,000 a year for 15-20 days' work a year. She has now quit that job.
Mr Hancock and Ms Coladangelo have been friends since they worked together on a student radio station while studying the same degree at Oxford University.
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said there were still "huge questions" to answer, while Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey said there appeared to have been a "serious security breach" and that the government needed to sort itself out.
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