Women’s voices barely heard in Boris Johnson’s No 10, Covid inquiry told

Johnson in March 2020. Female officials were routinely not invited to key meetings at the height of the pandemic, the inquiry heard. Photograph: Leon Neal/AFP/Getty Images

Boris Johnson’s Downing Street was so “macho and egotistical” that women’s voices were heard for as little as 10 minutes in five hours of meetings during a key week of coronavirus policy, the Covid inquiry has heard.

Three weeks into the first lockdown, the most senior female civil servant in No 10 emailed a group of other women to say she believed “the lack of women’s voices in decision making is causing a substantive problem”.