Helen MacNamara told the COVID inquiry that Mr Hancock was 'loving' the responsibility of being health secretary during a global pandemic, and mimed being a cricket batter to demonstrate his confidence - saying 'they bowl them at me, I knock them away'. But others doubted his competence.
Matt Hancock showed 'nuclear levels' of confidence at the start of the COVID pandemic - and 'regularly' told colleagues in Downing Street things 'they later discovered weren't true' - according to a senior civil servant who was there at the time. Helen MacNamara was deputy cabinet secretary during the pandemic and was giving evidence to the COVID inquiry today.
There was a 'pattern of being reassured that something was absolutely fine and then discovering it was very, very far from fine', she said. Andrew O'Connor KC, the lawyer for the inquiry, asked Ms MacNamara: 'Does it come back to the fact that Mr Hancock regularly was telling people things that they later discovered weren't true?' 'Yes,' she replied.
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