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A “macho” culture in Downing Street harmed the UK’s response to the Covid pandemic, a top official from the time has said.
Former deputy cabinet secretary Helen MacNamara told the Covid inquiry a “toxic” environment affected decision-making during the crisis.
She said that female experts were ignored, and women were “looked over”.
She also accused Boris Johnson of failing to tackle “misogynistic language” used by Dominic Cummings.
The then-prime minister’s failure to take action over abusive WhatsApp messages by his top adviser – that were revealed on Tuesday – had been “disappointing”, she told the inquiry.
Ms MacNamara, who was the second-most senior official at the height of the pandemic, was thrust into the spotlight last year when she revealed she was fined by police for breaking Covid rules during the Partygate scandal.
She hit the headlines again this week, when it emerged Mr Cummings told colleagues on WhatsApp during the crisis he wanted to “personally handcuff her and escort her from the building”.
“We cannot keep dealing with this horrific meltdown of the British state while dodging stilettos from that [expletive],” Mr Cummings wrote about her in one message from August 2020.
In her own testimony earlier on Wednesday, Ms MacNamara said “it is disappointing to me that the prime minister didn’t pick him up on some of that violent and misogynistic language”.
His reaction was “just miles away from what is right or proper or decent, or what the country deserves”, she added.
Giving evidence to the inquiry on Tuesday, Mr Cummings accepted his language was “deplorable” but denied he had been misogynistic, adding: “I was much ruder about men.”
‘Superhero bunfight’
In her own evidence, Ms MacNamara described a “macho, confident” environment within government when Covid struck in early 2020, with an “unbelievably bullish” approach about the UK’s ability to respond.
She recalled people “laughing at the Italians” during meetings over restrictions they had imposed in response to the virus, with her witness statement recording a feeling the country was “overreacting”.
In other extracts from her statement, she expressed concern that the lack of a “female perspective” on the crisis in a number of policy areas.
This included a “lack of thought” about childcare during school closures, the impact of restrictions on victims of domestic violence, and a lack of guidance for pregnant women.
She also wrote that a “disproportionate amount of attention” was given to the impact of lockdown on “male pursuits”, citing football, hunting, shooting and fishing.
In a draft of a report she prepared on improving the working environment, the atmosphere was likened to a “superhero bunfight”.
In an email sent to female staffers from April 2020, read out at the inquiry, she described the “egotistical and macho” culture as “demoralising to work in,” noting that women had only spoken for “10-15 minutes” in over five hours of meetings earlier that month.
She told the inquiry she had found the lack of female participation “striking”, with women turning their screens off during Zoom calls or “sitting in the back row” during meetings.
The Royal College of Nursing’s chief nurse, Nicola Ranger, said senior men in government “relied on nursing staff to deliver care to the highest standard, whilst failing to meet basic professional standards themselves”.
“As a 90% female profession, nursing staff will find today’s reminders painful,” Ms Ranger said. “These cavalier and misogynistic attitudes left nursing staff, especially women, at even greater risk and with deadly consequences.”
In other evidence heard by the inquiry:
- Ms MacNamara said she would struggle to “pick one day” when Covid regulations were followed properly inside Downing Street
- She also accused Downing Street of “lying” about parties, in its initial response to the Partygate scandal
- She criticised an over-reliance on following advice from scientists, calling it a “cop out” from ministers and unfair on the scientific experts
- In one email, she said there was a tendency to treat the advice of scientists like “the word of God”
- She also said former health secretary Matt Hancock displayed “nuclear levels” of overconfidence, but had a habit of making assurances that turned out not to be true
- She described a “jarring” episode where he imitated a cricket batsman, before saying “they bowl them at me, I knock them away”
- She also said she had failed to retrieve messages on her work phone after leaving the Civil Service, but the Cabinet Office had deleted them
Elsewhere in her evidence, she described a “lack of care” for government staff, which she added proved “damaging in all sorts of ways”.
She recalled that it was over seven months into the pandemic before a hand sanitizing station was placed near a link bridge between the Cabinet Office and No 10 with a Pin pad regularly used by officials.
She also said she repeatedly requested but failed to receive “psychological support” for civil servants working on on the Covid response, adding “I don’t really understand why we couldn’t do that”.
She told the inquiry the government’s response in a number of areas showed an “absence of humanity,” adding in her testimony that the reaction to the Covid situation in prisons “felt very cold”.
Matt Fowler, co-founder of Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice UK, said the evidence coming from the inquiry was “worse” than feared.
He said the evidence showed “special advisors from privileged backgrounds” were not interested in “how their decisions would impact the disabled, low-income households, at-risk children and others who weren’t like them”.
