A top Tory was confronted today over a government cleaner who died with suspected Covid symptoms - after a damning report revealed staff were “disrespected” during lockdown parties.
Steve Barclay called the death of Emanuel Gomes a "heartbreaking case" as he faced questions over the Partygate scandal in the wake of Sue Gray's report.
The Whitehall enforcer slammed No10's treatment of staff who uncovered evidence of rule-breaking parties during the pandemic, saying there were "multiple" occasions when workers were treated with "a lack of respect".
Insiders told the BBC security ‘custodians’ were mocked for questioning lockdown parties while cleaners had to mop up red wine from the walls.
Mr Gomes, a father who was an outsourced cleaner in the Ministry of Justice, died in April 2020 after working for five days with suspected Covid symptoms. He believed he could not afford to lose income.
The BBC's Nick Robinson questioned Mr Barclay, the Cabinet Office minister and No10 chief of staff, on what he would say to Mr Gomes' family now the public know the full details of what happened in Downing Street during lockdown.
Mr Robinson said: "His name was Emanuel Gomes.
“What do you think his family, what do you think his friends will be thinking today when you say to them that the Prime Minister didn’t know that booze was being brought in in industrial quantities so people could relax after work?"
Mr Barclay replied that Mr Gomes' was a “heartbreaking case" - but the actions of people with Downing Street were by “very small minority on a number of specific days”.
He said: "All our hearts will go out to his family.
“Just as a constituency MP I’ve heard many absolutely distressing stories from my constituents who weren’t able to attend funerals, who’d lost loved ones, and it was an incredibly fraught time."
But he added: "You’re characterising this as if this was the norm every day at all times.
“We’re talking about a small minority over the course of a two year period often on occasions when the PM was not in the building."
The United Voices of the World (UVW) union has run a ‘Justice for Emanuel’ campaign.
The union said he was born in Guinea Bissau and had worked at the Ministry of Justice since February 2018, outsourced to the cleaning firm OCS.
“As an agency worker, he was not entitled to holidays, sick pay, and had no security when taking strike action or engaging in other union organising,” the union said on the fundraising page.
At the time, OCS told The Guardian protective equipment including rubber gloves and aprons had been given to cleaning staff, though masks were not required in public health guidelines at the time. The firm also said sick pay was available.
A friend of Emanuel told the union: “He had lost his appetite and wasn’t eating, he had flem and seemed to have a fever. He was really sick and I wanted to call an ambulance.
“Some people thought that an ambulance wouldn’t come and that the hospitals were full so there was no point.
“I took him home on transport. When we got to Victoria station he didn’t even know where he was.”
BBC host Mr Robinson later corrected the way he had described Mr Gomes during the interview.
He tweeted: “A correction & an apology : This morning in an interview with the prime minister’s chief of staff I raised the case – reported in the Critic magazine - of “one government cleaner who contracted Covid and died”.
“I went on to describe this man as an individual who had been instructed to work in Downing Street who was surrounded by people breaking the rules. That was a mistake and I apologise for it. Emanuel Gomes worked in the Ministry of Justice
“There is, incidentally, a dispute about the cause of Mr Gomes’s death in April 2020 before COVID testing was routine. The family were reportedly told that he had died of COVID but the post-mortem recorded a different cause of death.”
