The Covid Inquiry has been taking evidence from Helen MacNamara, Deputy Cabinet Secretary from 2020 to 2021. During Dominic Cummings’s cross-examination yesterday it was revealed that he had wanted to ‘handcuff her [MacNamara] and escort’ her out of No. 10. Yet much of her evidence this morning corroborates his account (or rather criticism) of Whitehall in March 2020.
One key point of agreement was the lack of effective planning for these scenarios. According to MacNamara, Matt Hancock, the then Health Secretary, told cabinet ‘time and time again’ shortly before the pandemic that the government had plans in place to deal with Covid. In her oral evidence, she says she heard Hancock say this in person, and assumed he was right, but that these plans never materialised. His evidence session is likely to focus on addressing these claims.
Another example of a lack of poor planning was provided when the then Prime Minister fell ill with Covid. MacNamara confirmed that there were no plans to prepare for Johnson being absent, and it felt like they were living and working in a ‘dystopian nightmare.’ A document had to be drafted in April 2020, with crude plans for scenarios in which Johnson could not communicate his wishes. Speaking to the Inquiry, she accepted that she had to ‘make it up’ as she went along and referred to precedents rather than plans.
MacNamara’s account also supports the impression that Boris Johnson did not take the virus seriously enough. She noted a ‘jovial tone’ when Johnson discussed whether to shake hands with people on a visit to a hospital. This lack of concern likely exacerbated the problems facing those in No. 10 as they struggled with the virus themselves. According to MacNamara’s evidence, it took seven months for a hand sanitiser to be placed at the door between No 10 and the Cabinet Office, where people had to use a keypad to enter. It is therefore, in her words, ‘not surprising at all’ that Covid spread like wildfire through Downing Street.
Johnson, she says, was ‘very confident that the UK would sail through’ and the atmosphere in meetings was ‘confident and macho’ – comments which chime with Lee Cain’s criticisms about a ‘lack of diversity’. Her evidence suggests that ‘the lack of women’s voices in decision making’ meant issues like domestic abuse and abortion were given insufficient attention during the pandemic.
There was an overconfidence that produced a ‘superhero bunfight culture’ which did not get the best out of staff. As MacNamara put it, ‘If I think about working for Mrs May, I don’t think there’s any world in which we could have got from January to May and had this sort of culture because it just wasn’t there in the DNA of the organisation at that time.’
The evidence session continues this afternoon.
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