“It was really, really obvious that not only were there hardly any women there, that when they were there, you know, they had to turn their screens off… ”
A lack of diversity among top officials in Boris Johnson’s government led to deaths during the pandemic, the Covid Inquiry has heard.
It also raised concerns about personal protective equipment not being designed for women’s bodies. She said Mr Johnson raised the issue with the former chief executive of the NHS in England Simon Stevens and that Mr Stevens said there was no problem. “It was really striking at the time for those of us who have children in state schools, like the vast majority of the country, the differential experience of some children and other children,” she said.
One example she cited was the belief that football matches were relatively safe because they were outside, suggesting a lack of knowledge of public transport, packing into pubs and going through turnstiles. Elsewhere in her evidence, MacNamara said she believed there was a “level of ignorance” about how the NHS worked in Downing Street during the pandemic response.
Ms MacNamara was asked about a line in a draft report into improving the culture at Downing Street, which said: “We need a modern culture of organised collaboration, not superhero bunfight.” Reading an extract from her statement, counsel to inquiry Andrew O’Connell KC noted her saying “Women who had worked in the Cabinet Office and No 10 reported feeling as if they had become invisible overnight”.
Expanding on her statement in evidence, Ms MacNamara said: “It was really, really obvious that not only were there hardly any women there, that when they were there, you know, they had to turn their screens off… on the Zoom meeting or they were sitting in the back row or – there just weren’t any women talking.”
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