Covid Inquiry UK: who is Helen MacNamara? Partygate official gives evidence - what did Dominic Cummings say?

Coronavirus rules were broken on a daily basis during Boris Johnson's tenure in Downing Street, one of the government's former top civil servants has told the Covid Inquiry.

Helen MacNamara, the former deputy Cabinet Secretary, said: "I would find it hard to pick one day when the regulations were followed properly inside that building.” She told the Inquiry that there was “one meeting where we absolutely adhered to the guidance to the letter ... and everybody moaned about it and tried to change repeatedly”.

She also told the Inquiry that at the start of the pandemic "injections of caution" about Covid "did not register with Johnson" and he had a "jovial tone ... and breezy confidence". She is the latest pandemic-era senior official to face questions about the government's coronavirus response, after two days of hearings revealed the dysfunction, indecision and dithering inside Boris Johnson’s government.

Dominic Cummings denied he had been misogynistic while working with MacNamara in Downing Street, after WhatsApp messages were read out when he called her a "c***". She said that the messages were "horrible to read" and that she was disappointed that the Prime Minister did not pick up on the "violent and misogynistic" language".

MacNamara was fined by police after providing a karaoke machine during one of the partygate bashes, and then left her job at the Premier League. She told the Inquiry that this "should never have happened" and "we should have been following the rules". She was portrayed by Charlotte Ritchie in the Channel 4 film Partygate. This is part of the second phase of the UK's Covid-19 inquiry, which has the goal of establishing how effective the UK government's leadership and decision making was in controlling and restricting the virus.

Who is Helen MacNamara?

Helen MacNamara is an experienced former civil servant, who rose to become deputy Cabinet Secretary - one of the most senior roles in the civil service. She first joined the government in 2002 as principal private secretary to Tessa Jowell, who was Culture, Media and Sport Secretary. She helped prepare London for the 2012 Olympic Games, and also set up the Leveson Inquiry into phone hacking and the media.

She worked for the government preparing for the 2015 general election, and from 2016 to 2018 was director general of housing in the Housing, Communities and Local Government department. In May 2018, she succeeded Sue Gray as head of propriety and ethics at the Cabinet Office. There she investigated allegations that Priti Patel had bullied aides.

In 2020, she was promoted to deputy Cabinet Secretary and played a key role in the Covid response. She left government in February 2021 to start a senior job at the Premier League, however she has since left that. In April 2022, she was issued with a fixed-penalty notice by police for her role in Partygate (read more about this below). She is married to Alex Towers and has four children.

What has Helen MacNamara said at the Covid Inquiry?

MacNamara has told the Covid inquiry that rules and regulations were broken in Downing Street on a daily basis. She said: "I would find it hard to pick one day when the regulations were followed properly inside that building.” She told the Inquiry that there was “one meeting where we absolutely adhered to the guidance to the letter ... and everybody moaned about it and tried to change repeatedly”.

Speaking about the early part of the pandemic, she said there was a dismissiveness of warnings by Boris Johnson. In January and February 2020, she said her “injections of caution” about the uncertainty of the situation surrounding Covid “did not register with Johnson”.

“In those early Cabinet meetings in particular Johnson was very confident that the UK would sail through and we should all be careful of over-correcting in advance of something that was unlikely to have a huge impact and for which – in any case – we were well prepared," she said.

She added that he still had a "breezy confidence" in March 2020, which jarred with her. Her witness statement said: "It was the day on which there was a question about whether the Prime Minister should shake hands with people on a visit to the hospital and there was a jokey discussion about alternative greetings to handshakes.

"The Prime Minister felt – not unreasonably – that it was a bit ridiculous for him to suggest alternative greetings. But the jovial tone, the view that in implementing containment measures and suspending work and schooling, the Italians were overreacting, and the breezy confidence that we would do better than others had jarred with me. I remember saying that I thought that all people wanted to know was what was the right thing to do – and that was not clear."