Boris Johnson’s Downing Street displayed an “unbelievably bullish” and dismissive approach to Covid despite being warned of a “total disaster”, a former senior top civil servant has said.
Helen MacNamara, former deputy cabinet secretary, said she could not recall “one day” when rules were followed at No 10 – and added that hundreds of officials and ministers broke the guidelines.
The former top civil servant told the Covid inquiry: “I’m certain that there are hundreds of civil servants and potentially ministers who in retrospect think they were the wrong side of that line.”
She also criticised an “absence of humanity” and revealed that No 10 officials were “laughing at the Italians” who were overwhelmed in the early stages of the crisis – with Mr Johnson expressing a breezy confidence about sailing through the pandemic.
In scathing evidence to the UK Covid-19 Inquiry on Wednesday, Ms MacNamara slammed a toxic and macho culture at No 10 – a day after misogynistic messages about her written by Dominic Cummings were heard.
She also revealed that it took seven months to get a hand sanitiser station by the door between No 10 and the Cabinet Office, and shared her “profound regret” over Partygate.
On 13 March, just a week before the first lockdown, she warned Mr Cummings and others in Mr Johnson’s office that the country is “absolutely f*****” and “heading for a disaster” in which thousands of people would die.
Ms MacNamara said her warnings in January and February did not register with the PM. She added that in early Cabinet meetings Mr Johnson was “very confident that the UK would sail through” and that they should be “careful of over-correcting”.
The ex-top official said there had been a “jovial tone” and that “sitting there and saying it was great and sort of laughing at the Italians was just … it felt how it sounds”.
She added: “I would say that undoubtedly the sort of unbelievably bullish, we’re going to be great at everything approach is not a smart mentality to have inside a government meeting.”
Ms MacNamara made headlines for providing a karaoke machine for a lockdown event in No 10 in June 2020 and was fined for her part in the leaving do, which she called an “error of judgment”.
The official insisted at the inquiry: “I definitely wasn’t partying in No 10, I was either at work or at home” – even though she was one of the people issued with fines over illegal gatherings.
She conceded that there should have been an admission that rules were broken – something Mr Johnson repeatedly denied.
“My profound regret is for the damage that’s been caused to so many people because of it, as well as just the mortifying experience of seeing what that looks like and how rightly offended everybody is in retrospect,” she said.
Referring to the rule-breaking within government, Ms MacNamara added: “Actually, I would find it hard to pick one day when the regulations were followed properly inside that building,” she said of both No 10 and the Cabinet Office.
She said there was “one meeting where we absolutely adhered to the guidance to the letter” – the Cabinet meeting – “and everybody moaned about it and tried to change it repeatedly”.
Inquiry lead counsel Hugo Keith KC suggested it was hardly surprising that so many people working in Whitehall contracted Covid. Ms MacNamara replied: “It’s not surprising at all, and also is indicative of, of just a lack of care, actually.”
She condemned Mr Johnson’s “following the science” mantra – calling it a “cop out”, especially when many at No 10 didn’t understand what the science was.
She also said that the UK was already on the back foot when Covid hit due to Brexit. She criticised the “monomaniacal” way Mr Johnson’s team focused on Brexit and then the 2019 election at the expense of planning.
Cummings shown own texts to Helen MacNamara after denying misogynistic behavior
Ms MacNamara said there was “definitely a toxic culture” in government when asked about August 2020 messages referring to Ms MacNamara sent by Mr Cummings which said: “We cannot keep dealing with this horrific meltdown … while dodging stilettos from that c***”.
“It’s horrible to read,” she responded. “But it’s both surprising and not surprising to me.” She said she was disappointed Mr Johnson did not do more to stop such “violent and misogynistic language”.
She also criticised what she called a corrosive culture of leaking at the height of the pandemic – suggesting decisions “got bent out of shape” by leaks from cabinet ministers.
Ms MacNamara was also scathing about then health secretary Matt Hancock’s performance, after Mr Cummings referred to him as a liar.
The former deputy cabinet secretary said she lost confidence in whether “what he [Hancock] said was happening was actually happening” in the NHS.
Ms MacNamara also told how her struggles obtaining evidence from the Cabinet Office to provide to the inquiry made her feel like her “own forensic archaeologist”.
Having played a key role in the coronavirus response, she left the civil service in 2021 before taking up a senior role at the Premier League.