Lack of No 10 diversity 'led to women's deaths'

Women died as a result of domestic abuse during the first lockdown partly because of a lack of diversity in N o 10, a former senior civil servant has said, criticising Boris Johnson for failing to challenge “violent and misogynistic language” used about her.

- Ben Quinn, Aletha Adu

Helen MacNamara was giving evidence to the Covid-19 inquiry a day after Dominic Cummings, Johnson’s former top aide, who was asked about messages in which he said No 10 was “dealing with the meltdown of the British state while dodging stilettos from that cunt ”. MacNamara, who served as deputy cabinet secretary and was one of the country’s highest -ranking female officials, told the inquiry: “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 the use of some of that violent and misogynistic language.”

Asked what she thought about Cummings’s WhatsApp messages, and Johnson’s apparent failure to act, she replied: “It is just miles away from what is right or proper or decent, or what the country deserves.”

In the latest inquiry hearing laying bare the extent of conflict and dysfunction inside Downing Street during the pandemic, MacNamara spoke of a “toxic environment” where female civil servants found they had “become invisible overnight”. They were spoken over or ignored, she said, while meetings were dominated by men .