Ex-Health Secretary Matt Hancock takes lover Gina Coladangelo on romantic £87-a-night Alpine holiday

Former health secretary Matt Hancock has whisked his lover way for a romantic break in the Swiss Alps, it was revealed tonight.

The ex-minister, 42, and Gina Coladangelo, 44, tried to keep a low profile as they stayed at a £87-a-night resort tucked in the mountains in the village of Villars-sur-Ollon, near Montreux. 

Pictures which were seen tonight appeared to show the pair heading out for dinner with friends. Mr Hancock wore a baseball cap, sunglasses and a face mask while Miss Coladangelo dressed casually in denim. 

The couple drove to the resort from the UK for what is thought to be their first holiday abroad together since their relationship was revealed in June, The Daily Express reports. 

It was Mr Hancock’s second holiday in as many weeks after he was spotted hitting the surf in Cornwall with his children last month. 

The sighting comes just months after Mr Hancock was forced to quit the Cabinet when CCTV from his Whitehall office was leaked of him kissing his married aide Miss Coladangelo in breach of Covid social-distancing guidance. 

Mr Hancock’s kiss with Miss Coladangelo, a mother-of-three whose husband Oliver Tress is the founder of clothing shop Oliver Bonas, is alleged to have taken place on May 6 this year. 

After the footage emerged, Mr Hancock confirmed his resignation and said he wanted to ‘reiterate his apology for breaking the guidance’.

He said: ‘The last thing I would want is for my private life to distract attention from the single-minded focus that is leading us out of this crisis.

‘I want to reiterate my apology for breaking the guidance, and apologise to my family and loved ones for putting them through this. I also need (to) be with my children at this time.’

And a letter issued to the public read: ‘I am writing to resign as Secretary of State for Health and Social Care

‘We have worked so hard as a country to fight the pandemic. The last thing I would want is for my private life to distract attention from the single-minded focus that is leading us out of this crisis.’  

In the wake of the scandal, Mr Hancock reportedly told his wife Martha, who he married in 2006, that their marriage was over and announced he would be spending time away from the spotlight to focus on his three children. 

Earlier in the summer, he was seen moving boxes, suitcases and clothes out of his marital home in London.    

Mystery surrounds the recruitment of Miss Coladangelo, who met Mr Hancock while volunteering at the student radio station at Oxford University in the 1990s. 

She worked on Mr Hancock’s failed Tory leadership campaign in 2019 and was secretly taken on as an unpaid adviser at the Department of Health last year before being made a non-executive director on a £15,000 contract. 

This year a Tory source said the pair had become inseparable, adding: ‘They always appeared to be incredibly close. Her status was always slightly mysterious but she went everywhere with him. She was in every meeting.’ 

Friends insisted the extramarital affair only began in May, the same month that Mr Hancock and Miss Coladangelo were caught in the incriminating footage.

But others said the pair, who have known each other since university days when they met at Oxford, have raised eyebrows for some time.

Miss Coladangelo was confronted as long ago as 2019 by ministerial aides who asked outright if there was any romance between the pair, something the twice-married mother-of-three flatly denied. 

Appointed Health Secretary in 2018 after spending 18 months in the culture brief, Matt Hancock has been a prominent figure for the Government during its handling of the coronavirus pandemic until his resignation on Saturday. 

Mr Hancock, who in 2018 became the only MP in British politics to launch his own app, took only eight years to rise from West Suffolk MP to Health Secretary.

The former has made a big play of his varied life before entering politics.

The Oxford and Cambridge educated father-of-three previously worked as an economist at the Bank of England and as chief of staff to George Osborne when he was shadow chancellor of the Exchequer, before becoming an MP.

Mr Hancock, who is said to have met Miss Coladangelo at university, had been married to his wife Martha for 15 years and they have three children together.

Miss Coladangelo told a BBC Radio 4 profile on the politician that the pair met at the Oxford University student radio station, Oxygen FM, where she was a news reader and he a sports reporter.

The marketing and communications director at Oliver Bonas, a British retailer founded by her husband Oliver Tress, told the BBC about how Mr Hancock had ‘told a white lie’ to his radio news desk after failing to make it to cover an international rugby match.

She said: ‘He actually overslept and hot-footed it to the train but didn’t make it to Twickenham in time from Oxford, so had to get off the train at Reading, find a pub, watch the first half in a pub and then go to a phone box outside and report in.

‘So he told a white lie, pretended he was at Twickenham watching the rugby when in fact he was in a pub in Reading.’ 

The Cheshire-raised politician first attended cabinet after being appointed Minister for the Cabinet Office in 2015 by then prime minister David Cameron.

Mr Cameron’s successor Theresa May later promoted him to the role of culture secretary.

He initially threw his hat into the ring to replace Mrs May in No 10 during the 2019 Conservative Party leadership contest, but withdrew from the leadership race part way through and was quick to throw his weight behind Mr Johnson.

He was among the handful of ministers to retain his brief when Mr Johnson took power in July 2019, making him one of the most prominent ministers when coronavirus rocked Britain eight months later.

The latest scenes come after Mr Hancock announced this week that he would be running the London Marathon next month to raise funds for a hospice.