10 things we learned from former deputy cabinet secretary Helen MacNamara at the Covid inquiry

The Covid inquiry has heard from the most senior female civil servant in government at the time the pandemic broke out: former deputy cabinet secretary Helen MacNamara. She is the top official who was the subject of disparaging remarks on a WhatsApp message from Dominic Cummings to Boris Johnson.

Here are 10 things we learned from her evidence to Lady Hallett’s inquiry on Wednesday:

Top official warned Boris Johnson ‘we’re going to kill thousands of people‘

On 13 March, 2020, as it became increasingly clear inside No 10 that their Plan A to delay and contain the virus would not work and almost certainly overwhelm the NHS, Helen MacNamara, the then deputy cabinet secretary, walked into Boris Johnson’s office and told him: “We are in huge trouble. I have come here to tell you that I think we are absolutely f**ked. I think this country is heading for disaster. I think we are going to kill thousands of people.” She told the inquiry: “It was horrible. There was increasing concern that we were really radically in the wrong place.”

Covid rules were not followed inside Downing Street for a single day

Ms MacNamara told the inquiry she wanted to ease pressure for people working inside No 10 and the Cabinet Office by allowing them to meet up socially, as long as it was within the rules. She said she regretted attending one event which was later investigated as part of the “Partygate” scandal. There were “hundreds” of ministers and members of staff who broke Covid distancing rules during the pandemic, but that she “profoundly disagreed” that No 10 later lied about parties inside Downing Street. Ms MacNamara told the inquiry she would “find it hard to pick one day when the regulations are followed properly inside that building”.

There was no plan for what to do if the prime minister died from virus

Ms MacNamara spoke of the “dystopian nightmare” at Mr Johnson, the then PM, becoming seriously ill with Covid in April 2020. The then cabinet secretary Mark Sedwill also contracted the virus and “we felt very vulnerable”, she said. She had to draw up a plan of action for what might happen if Mr Johnson could no longer communicate while he was ill. This came to pass when Mr Johnson was admitted to intensive care, and the deputy PM Dominic Raab stood in. But there was no plan for what would happen under “scenario C”, if his illness worsened further or died. Her initial draft of the plan read: “God knows what we say here… I suppose the brutal truth here is if we get to the stage where the PM can no longer fulfil his role, that will become apparent within a few days based on how the disease seems to play out.”

Mr Johnson failed to tackle ‘toxic and macho’ culture inside No 10

On Tuesday, the inquiry was shown a WhatsApp message from Mr Johnson’s chief adviser Mr Cummings in which he referred to Ms MacNamara as a “c**t” and that he wanted to have her escorted from the building in handcuffs. In her evidence, she told the inquiry she found this “horrible to read” but also “both surprising and not surprising to me”. She added: “It’s disappointing to me that the prime minister didn’t pick him up on the use of some of that violent and misogynistic language.” She told the inquiry that junior women civil servants were often talked over in meetings, or had to turn their Zoom cameras off, or were barely asked to speak and that the atmosphere was “confident and macho”. Mr Johnson’s failure to curb this culture was “miles away” from what was “right or proper or decent, or what the country deserves”.

Women died from domestic abuse ‘due to lack of diversity in No 10‘

This culture extended to a lack of diversity inside No 10, Ms MacNamara said, which meant issues such as childcare, domestic abuse, abortion and school closures were given less attention than lockdown measures relating to traditionally “male pursuits” such as hunting, shooting, fishing and football. The inquiry was told there was a lack of provision for domestic abuse victims during the first lockdown, and an email from Ms MacNamara from the time read: “It is very difficult to draw any conclusion other than women have died as a result of this.” She told the inquiry: “People don’t want to think about these things, so you don’t want to think that awful things happen to children and partners and parents in their own home.”

Head of NHS claimed there was not a problem with female staff finding PPE that fit

Ms MacNamara said she tried repeatedly to raise the lack of personal protective equipment (PPE) designed for women’s bodies. An email she sent dated 15 April, 2020 asks if PPE discussions “picked up the fact” that most aren’t designed for women’s bodies, “yet the overwhelming majority of people who need PPE are women”, adding: “to state the bleeding obvious, women’s bodies are different and particular face shape with masks”. After Mr Johnson eventually raised the issue with Sir Simon Stevens, the former chief executive of NHS England, he allegedly reassured ministers the issue had been misreported, and there wasn’t in fact a problem. Cleo Watson, Mr Johnson’s then deputy chief of staff at the time, emailed Ms MacNamara to say: “Astonishing. 2 weeks later and finally raised in one of these meetings.”

Matt Hancock had ‘nuclear levels of confidence‘

Ms MacNamara told the inquiry in her written witness statement that the then health secretary Mr Hancock repeatedly told Cabinet the Government had a plan to deal with Covid, but that the plans never appeared. She also claimed he had “nuclear levels of confidence” in his ability to handle the pressure of being the minister in charge at the time of the pandemic. When he returned to No 10 after a bout of Covid, Ms MacNamara asked if he needed any help as the burden of the responsibility must be “weighing heavy on his shoulders”. She told the inquiry: “He reassured me that he was ‘loving responsibility’ and to demonstrate this took up a batsman’s stance outside the cabinet room, and said, ‘they bowl them at me, I knock them away’.” Ms MacNamara said she found his behaviour “jarring”.

Officials kept reassuring No 10 that NHS capacity was ‘elastic’

Having raised concerns about NHS capacity in the early days of the pandemic, Ms MacNamara said she was repeatedly told that this was “elastic” – suggesting that it could expand to cope with demand if thousands became seriously ill from the virus. But in her witness statement she said: “It was only much later that I realised that what was meant by NHS capacity being elastic was the capacity of people working in the NHS to work themselves into the ground to keep people alive.”

Downing Street waited seven months for hand sanitiser

“Maddening” bureaucracy in the Cabinet Office meant that basic steps such as installing hand sanitiser near to the busy door between that department and Downing Street was not installed for seven months after the virus first emerged, Ms MacNamara said, adding that there was a “failure to recognise that there was a duty of care for the people who worked in No 10 or the secretariat or the taskforce”. Inquiry counsel Andrew O’Connor KC told her: “It’s perhaps unsurprising that so many of you got Covid at the same time.”

Mr Johnson suggested hairdryer could kill Covid

Mr Cummings’s written witness statement to the inquiry reveals that at one stage during the pandemic, Mr Johnson asked chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance and chief medical officer Professor Sir Chris Whitty what they thought about a video on social media “of a guy blowing a special hair dryer up his nose ‘to kill Covid’”. Mr Cummings remarked that this was a “low point”.