The council, in a memo to staff at the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) and the UK Health Safety Authority (UKHSA), urged officials to “be positive” in their dispatches to Coffey, who is also deput prime minister of Liz Truss. . Health officials told the Financial Times, which was first reported on the memo, that they found it “over-patronising”, both in terms of framing communications in positive ways and avoiding the Oxford party. Ministry sources confirmed the existence of the document, posted on the DHSC intranet, saying this was not unusual when new ministers arrived. However, they claimed it was prepared without Coffey’s knowledge, with one saying there was probably “a little too much eagerness” in the content. Coffey had previously taken to social media to mock the Oxford comma, the grammatically controversial practice in which a comma is sometimes used to separate the penultimate and penultimate words in a list of terms, in 2015 calling it “one of the my pet haters”. According to the FT, the document, titled: New Secretary of State’s ways of working preferences, asked staff to “be precise” and also “be positive – if we’ve done something good, let’s say it and avoid double negatives ». A person described as having “knowledge of the mood at UKHSA” told the paper the email was seen as “overly patronising”, adding: “It makes you wonder if you’re in the right place when a new minister comes in with It.” A senior public health official said staff viewed Oxford’s party advice as “extremely patronising”. A UKHSA spokesman said: “UKHSA does not comment on leaked emails or updates. We greatly appreciate all of our hard-working colleagues who work tirelessly to make our nation’s health safe.”
