A PUBLISHER has denied reports that it approached Matt Hancock about writing a book on his experience as English health secretary during a pandemic - branding them "incorrect".

The news comes despite Hancock having told The Daily Mail that he had "been approached to write a book".

With the news covered across the UK's media outlets, publisher HarperCollins spoke out on social media on Saturday evening.

The firm wrote on Twitter: "As we told the Mail before it ran its story about Harper Collins and Matt Hancock, we have no knowledge of such a book and are not in talks.

"The story is incorrect."

The disgraced former health secretary was reportedly considering writing a book on how he “won the Covid war”.

He had apparently wanted to paint himself in a “heroic light” in the tome which would come out ahead of the start of the official inquiry into the UK Government’s handling of the pandemic.

The Daily Mail said the deal would be worth £100,000.

However, people who have lost family members to Covid-19 said they should not be forced to “listen to his spin on their loved ones’ deaths”.

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One source told the Mail that Hancock would use the book to paint himself as “saving the NHS and rising above petty Downing Street squabbles”, while hitting back at Boris Johnson’s former chief adviser Dominic Cummings.

In a series of remarkable attacks on the then health secretary in May, Cummings accused Hancock of “incompetence” and said he should “have been fired for at least 15, 20 things”.

The following month, Cummings published WhatsApp messages which appeared to show the Prime Minister calling Hancock “f***ing hopeless”.

A spokesperson for Matt Hancock said the former minister had been approached about a book deal, but it did not yet exist and “no decisions have been made”.

However those claims have now been contradicted by the publisher.

Lobby Akinnola, spokesperson for Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice, told The Independent: “You’d think the health secretary who presided over one of the worst death tolls in the world would have some humility or seek to reflect on the many lives lost, rather than try and cash in on the tragedy.

“The fact that Matt Hancock thinks it’s appropriate for bereaved families to have to listen to his spin on their loved ones’ deaths, before the truth has come out via the inquiry, says it all about the attitude of the man.”

Hancock was finally pushed out of his role as health secretary after footage was released of him engaging in extramarital relations in his ministerial office - which at the time was also a breach of Covid rules.