Downing Street had 'toxic culture' and Covid rules were broken every day, former deputy cabinet secretary says

The former top civil servant also expressed her “profound regret” over providing a karaoke machine for a lockdown party.

A senior civil servant about whom Dominic Cummings wrote “violent and misogynistic” messages has accused Boris Johnson of overseeing a “toxic culture” in Downing Street, where the Covid rules were broken ever day.

Helen MacNamara, who was one of the country’s highest ranking female officials, told the UK Covid-19 Inquiry on Wednesday that sexism in No 10 damaged the response to the pandemic, with women sidelined from decision making and forced to turn off their screens during Zoom calls or to sit at the back.

The public hearing was shown messages on Tuesday by Mr Cummings to the then-prime minister describing the then-deputy cabinet secretary as a “c***” who “must be out of our hair”.

Former deputy cabinet secretary Helen MacNamara giving evidence.

Giving evidence on Wednesday, Ms MacNamara said the messages were “horrible to read”, but that in many ways she was not surprised by them considering the “toxic culture” that reigned.

She said: “It is also revealing of exactly the wrong attitude to the civil service. I was doing my job as a civil servant and I am confident about that.

“The way in which it was considered appropriate to describe what should happen to me, yes, as a woman, but, yes, as a civil servant, it is disappointing to me that the prime minister didn’t pick him up on some of that violent and misogynistic language.

“It is just miles away from what is right or proper or decent, or what the country deserves.”

Ms MacNamara added it was a sign of the culture that Mr Johnson said nothing about the messages. She went on to label Westminster and Whitehall as “endemically sexist” environments with No 10 and the Cabinet Office becoming even worse during the pandemic.

Women had to “turn their screens off” on Zoom meetings or were “sitting in the back row” and rarely spoke, she said.

In another section of Ms MacNamara’s statement, shown onscreen, she said: “Pre-Covid and I would not have characterised No 10 or the cabinet office as a particularly abnormally sexist environment in the context of Whitehall and Westminster (Whitehall and Westminster are endemically sexist environments), but what started as a murmur became a roar over the next couple of weeks. Not only were there numerous examples of women being ignored, excluded, not listened to or talked over. It was also clear that the female perspective was being missed in advice and decision-making.”

In a sign of the scale of the rule breaking happening during Covid, Ms MacNamara also suggested the restrictions were being breached on a daily basis just in the conduct of government business.

She explained: “I definitely wasn’t partying in Number 10, I was either at work or at home.

“I think that acknowledging what had happened, acknowledging that some of it was a symptom of the situation, being honest about the fact that – actually, I would find it hard to pick one day when the regulations were followed properly inside that building.”

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 repeatedly”.

“So, I know how exceptional it was to really, really, really properly follow the guidance.

“I think that, in retrospect, obviously, all sorts of things were wrong.”

Ms MacNamara added that “hundreds of civil servants and potentially ministers” could have been liable to being fined for breaches of coronavirus rules.

She said she hoped work was done to look at the organisational culture across Whitehall at the time to understand why coronavirus rules were not followed.

Ms MacNamara continued: “I think those are the civil service questions. Why did this happen? Why did this collective group of people decide to do things that are so clearly in the wrong place?

“And then how do we make sure that that doesn’t happen again?

“I hope that piece of work has happened, because I think it’s really important.”

Ms MacNamara, who provided a karaoke machine for a lockdown-busting leaving-do on June 18, 2020, said she had “profound regret” about the situation.

She said: “I absolutely knew and thought it was actually important for there to be space for – particularly the private office – to be able to gather together and spend time together.

“That was entirely because of the kind of culture that they were working in and entirely because I was really worried about individuals breaking and suffering, and whether they were going to be okay, and how important their colleagues were to each other.

“I’m saying none of that in excuse of my own misjudgment. I’m saying none of that in excuse of thinking any of these things were okay. But it was a much more complex situation than has allowed to be presented for lots of different reasons.

“Mainly, I feel very strongly that is unfair on the junior civil servants who were caught up in it.”

The former top civil servant left the Civil Service in 2021 to work for the Premier League, but left her role as chief policy and corporate affairs officer after less than two years.

She also accused claimed the UK Government had an “unbelievably bullish” approach in Covid-era government meetings which was “not a smart mentality”.

She told the UK Covid Inquiry that she found it “deeply worrying” there was a “de facto assumption that we were going to be great without any of the hesitancy or questioning”.

“I think the thing I was most concerned about at the time was I really thought that people wanted to know the right thing to do. I wanted to know the right thing to do,” she said.

“I happen to have great faith and confidence in that most of the time people will do the right thing … and I felt it was that disconnect that I felt so strongly that actually if we could just tell people what the right and kind and proper thing to do is, people would do that.”

Ms MacNamara said that “sitting there and saying it was great and sort of laughing at the Italians was just … it felt how it sounds.”