Boris Johnson’s Downing Road was so “macho and egotistical” that ladies’s voices have been heard for as little as 10 minutes in 5 hours of conferences throughout a key week of coronavirus coverage, the Covid inquiry has heard.
Three weeks into the primary lockdown, probably the most senior feminine civil servant in No 10 emailed a gaggle of different girls to say she believed “the shortage of ladies’s voices in resolution making is inflicting a substantive drawback”.
Helen MacNamara, then the deputy cupboard secretary, mentioned the tradition was so male-dominated that feminine officers have been routinely not invited to key conferences, weren’t listened to once they have been, or have been “not being requested for views on one thing they usually lead on or are knowledgable about”.
One of many recipients, Alexandra Burns, Johnson’s then personal secretary, replied to say that males in No 10 usually didn’t even hassle to study girls’s names: “I’ve inexplicably been referred to as Katie and Rosie since being down right here, and typically simply sort of vaguely gestured at.”
In her electronic mail, despatched on 13 April 2020, MacNamara mentioned she estimated that in additional than 5 hours of discussions over the earlier week throughout Downing Road’s every day 9.15am assembly “I believe girls spoke for 10-15 minutes in whole”.
This, she mentioned, primarily comprised Penny Mordaunt, then the paymaster basic, and Katherine Hammond, the top of the Civil Contingencies Secretariat, who set out the most recent Covid statistics. “My concern is that in the intervening time the working atmosphere/tradition is simply too macho and egotistical. This isn’t going to get the very best outcomes and it’s demoralising to work in,” MacNamara wrote.
She despatched the mass electronic mail with the recipients anonymised, saying that whereas she had had conversations with among the folks, “I felt a bit uncomfortable about naming you – which might be indicative of the sensitivity surrounding elevating this as a difficulty”.
MacNamara’s electronic mail, printed by the inquiry amid an enormous haul of latest paperwork on the finish of the module wanting into decision-making on the prime of presidency, mentioned the gender imbalance gave the impression to be an issue particular to Covid.
“I believe that the shortage of ladies’s voices in decision-making is inflicting a substantive drawback – each due to the particular perspective and points for ladies that aren’t being given sufficient consideration (home abuse and abortion have been good – dangerous – examples within the early weeks) and since there’s inadequate humanity in decision-making,” she wrote.
One other doc confirmed that three weeks later, MacNamara emailed Johnson’s principal personal secretary, Martin Reynolds, to warn about “a superhero tradition” within the Cupboard Workplace. She additionally pushed again towards a plan to encourage extra officers to work in individual, saying this risked “folks principally wanging on in conferences endlessly as a substitute of creating stuff occur”.
When she gave proof in individual, MacNamara echoed these considerations in regards to the macho atmosphere inside Johnson’s No 10, saying in a parallel written assertion that ladies working in Downing Road and the Cupboard Workplace “have been experiencing very apparent sexist remedy”.
The inquiry was additionally proven aggressive and misogynistic messages from male officers, notably Dominic Cummings, Johnson’s then chief adviser. One confirmed that Cummings tried to sack MacNamara, saying No 10 was “dodging stilettos from that cunt”.
Among the many different paperwork uploaded to the inquiry’s web site was one which detailed the extent of Cummings’ affect. In his witness assertion, Allan Nixon, an adviser to the well being division, recalled being in a gathering wherein an official described needing ministerial approval to constitution a plan, to which he mentioned Cummings mentioned that “they didn’t want to attend and that they’d authority from him”.
One other doc detailed how the Treasury thought-about encouraging folks to eat at cafes and eating places by handing out vouchers or playing cards loaded with cash. The second thought was dropped given the “vital dangers related to tens of tens of millions of playing cards being distributed by way of the submit as a part of a extremely publicised and marketed scheme, resembling theft, fraud and loss”.