Amidst all the election drama and hurried campaign launches, it would be easy to forget the public inquiries taking place at present. But fear not, Mr S has gathered together the most notable parts of today’s Covid Inquiry, where Cabinet Secretary Dr Simon Case is making a rather delayed appearance after he was unable to attend last year due to illness. Let’s take a look at what he has said so far…
Bad language
Today’s hearing had barely started before Case was forced to apologise for the use of some rather, um, robust language highlighted in message exchanges where he had insulted both Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak, amongst other senior government figures. Solemn in his apology, the Cabinet Secretary admitted that his messages had shown ‘very raw, in-the-moment, human expressions’ — which is certainly a unique way of describing swear words. In fact, the most senior civil servant in the country made a valiant attempt to defend his bad language, arguing that explicit expressions of emotion aren’t present in more official archives: ‘The best you get is a handwritten note from Churchill in the margins.’
Missing WhatsApp messages
A long-running theme of the Covid Inquiry has been the issue of WhatsApp messages. First, there was the revelation that under former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, politicians and civil servants engaged in ‘government by WhatsApp’. Second was the development that a number of senior government figures had, um, deleted many of their WhatsApp exchanges. Like many who appeared before him, Case was guilty of not having provided some message conversations to the inquiry. The former civil servant admitted that yes, there was an understanding from early on in the pandemic that ‘records should be kept’ but told the inquiry that some of his exchanges had been lost as he tried to transfer them from his phone. ‘It’s my own idiocy,’ Case confessed to his unimpressed interrogator, Hugo Keith KC.
‘Toxic’ atmosphere
The Cabinet Secretary was questioned about conversations he’d had with former civil servant Helen McNamara, in which he quizzed her on ‘tired, grumpy, bitchy ministers and officials’. McNamara told Case that there was ‘far too much ego and bitching going on and not enough focusing on actually doing stuff as opposed to commentating/arse-covering’. She then went on to describe No. 10 as the ‘most actively sexist environment I have ever worked in’. Crikey.
And in today’s inquiry, Case told the KC that he found reading McNamara’s inquiry evidence ‘quite difficult’ and that preparing his own notes for the session was also ‘quite emotionally difficult’. The Cabinet Secretary went on to describe the ‘toxic’ behaviour of officials in No. 10 before adding, with the hint of a tremor in his voice, that during pandemic preparations ‘good people were just being smashed to pieces’. Case told the inquiry No. 10 was a ‘rats’ nest’. Oo er.
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