MacNamara also said that "hundreds" of Whitehall officials, and probably ministers as well, had breached the government's own rules during the pandemic.
There was such disregard for Covid rules in Downing Street, that there was hardly a day when the rules weren’t broken, a senior civil servant has told the Covid inquiry, in yet more evidence of just how callous the government was towards the pandemic.
Helen MacNamara, the second most senior civil servant in the country at the time, told the inquiry that she ‘would find it hard to pick one day when the regulations were followed properly inside that building’.
MacNamara also said that “hundreds” of Whitehall officials, and probably ministers as well, had breached the government’s own rules during the pandemic. The revelations will cause yet more pain for those who lost loved ones to Covid.
She also revealed that the only place where the guidance was probably complied with fully, was at Cabinet meetings, but that everybody ‘moaned about it and tried to change it repeatedly’.
MacNamara also blamed a ‘macho’ culture in Downing Street for harming the UK’s response to the pandemic, claiming that a ‘toxic’ environment affected decision-making during the crisis and that female experts were ignored, and women were ‘looked over’.
The second-most senior official at the height of the pandemic also accused Boris Johnson of failing to tackle “misogynistic language” used by Dominic Cummings.
Basit Mahmood is editor of Left Foot Forward
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