The Cabinet Office has offered Julia Hartley-Brewer a public apology after mandarins unlawfully described her as a “known vaccine sceptic” in official government documents. The apology follows legal action which revealed the government’s “Rapid Response Unit” had spread the misinformation in a report on “vaccine hesitancy”. Hartley-Brewer’s ““No. No. No. NO!!!!” tweet in response to a Telegraph story on childhood Covid vaccinations was deemed sufficient evidence of her supposed scepticism. Despite being vaccinated herself… 

Brewer released a statement last night:

“I am shocked that the British government spent time during a pandemic monitoring, attempting to censor and smearing a journalist who was simply trying to do her job by asking the right questions and challenging the prevailing orthodoxy. I was not a “known vaccine sceptic”, as my on air and online comments clearly prove.

“A government unit that was supposed to challenge foreign governments disseminating lies online was used against British journalists and MPs expressing reasonable concerns about Covid policies. And now we have proof that this same unit was actually responsible for lying about me.

“I am particularly concerned by the fact that the British government shared this false information about me with a US government counter-terrorism unit set up to tackle Russian, Chinese and Iranian propaganda. This is very sinister.”

The Cabinet Office’s not-so secret report was shared with at least 64 UK Whitehall officials, as well as US counter-terror staff. An apology two years later is the least Julia could expect…