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Covid inquiry: Helen MacNamara says lack of female perspective ‘impacted’ policies [1]
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Date: 2023-11
The government’s pandemic policies on domestic abuse, childcare, PPE and pregnancy were hampered by a lack of “female perspective”, a former top civil servant has said.
The UK’s Covid inquiry has already heard that Boris Johnson’s “oscillating” and indecisiveness saw vital decisions delayed at key moments.
Now former deputy cabinet secretary Helen MacNamara has claimed other issues were overlooked or misunderstood because of a lack of diversity at the heart of government.
According to evidence she submitted to the inquiry, it was “far too difficult to get people to pay attention to domestic violence” and senior figures felt it “was not an urgent problem because it was not showing up in the data”.
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“You don't want to think that awful things happen to children and partners and parents in their own home,” she told inquiry counsel Andrew O’Connor.
“If you are a more experienced civil servant you have a different sense, unfortunately, of these things and I think it goes to who is involved in advising decision making.
“We were looking at harm through a very narrow lens, without realising that, of course, there can be all sorts of other consequences of things you can't see.”
The inquiry has already heard about issues with PPE provided for NHS workers from ethnic minorities. And today emails submitted in evidence showed problems around PPE designed specifically for women were also known about in government, but as late as April 15 MacNamara felt compelled to ask whether anything was being done about “the fact that most PPE isn’t designed for female bodies”, despite 77% of NHS staff being female.
In her witness statement, MacNamara also said that when it came to policies the “exclusion of a female perspective” led to “significant negative consequences, including the lack of thought given to childcare in the context of school closures”.
She referenced the “narrow perspective” of some government figures and how they underestimated the challenges likely to be faced by some families coping with school closures.
She said: “There wasn't enough thinking about the overall experience of children who might not have quite the same privileges as the people who are in rooms in Whitehall taking decisions.”
MacNamara’s witness statement added: “There was a serious lack of thinking about domestic abuse and the vulnerable, about carers and informal networks for how people look after each other in families and communities. There was not enough thinking about the impact on single parents of some of the restrictions. There was a disproportionate amount of attention given to more male pursuits in terms of the impact of restrictions and then the lessening of the same (football, hunting, shooting and fishing). There was a lack of guidance for women who might be pregnant or were pregnant and what those who were key workers should do.”
She added: “The restrictions around birth and pregnancy care seemed unnecessarily restrictive and were comparatively slow to adapt. I never understood this. Although I appreciated the need to keep hospitals as secure as possible I am sure there would have been kinder ways of managing pregnancy and birth especially given the differential clinical outcomes for women and their babies who become stressed.”
The inquiry is now 16 days into its second module, which focuses on the government’s response in the early stages of the pandemic.
Yesterday, Johnson’s former communications director Lee Cain raised similar concerns about the lack of diversity at the heart of government. Commenting on the government’s hugely unpopular decision not to offer free school meals to children during school holidays, he said: “I remember asking in the cabinet room of 20 people how many people had received free school meals. Nobody had – resulting in a policy and political blind spot. This was a huge blunder. The PM – to some degree understandably – said we needed to draw a line in the sand on public spending commitments, but this was clearly not the place to draw that line.
“I said to him at the time, you know, I don’t think hungry children is the place to start, just from, you know, a moral or political standpoint.”
MacNamara also pointed to discussions around whether to ban fans from football matches early in the pandemic, saying: “Nobody who was involved in that discussion had probably ever been to a football game in quite the way that most people go to football games.”
She also told the inquiry that Downing Street had a “toxic culture” in the early days of the pandemic, which hindered the official response to the virus.
Yesterday, the inquiry was read messages in which MacNamara was described as a “c**t” by Dominic Cummings, a former adviser to Boris Johnson – something she said was “horrible to read” but was “both surprising and not surprising”.
“Macho” overconfidence was pointed to as an issue in government decision making, and this was echoed later by David Halpern, former chief executive at Whitehall’s Behavioural Insights Team.
He said: “There was a sense that we were lucky to have the best team and there’s no doubt they were extremely talented, brilliant people.
“But that can also bring a lacuna with it of overconfidence and particularly, maybe, less openness to other aspects.”
The inquiry continues. openDemocracy is fundraising to pay reporters to cover every day of the public hearings. Please support us by donating here.
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[1] Url:
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/covid-inquiry-ppe-domestic-violence-helen-mcnamara-boris-johnson/
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