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| - “Every Downing Street pandemic press conference except one was fronted by a male politician.”
“Every single Downing Street pandemic press conference bar one was fronted by a male politician.”
In response to testimony at the Covid Inquiry about the experiences and treatment of women working in government during the Covid-19 pandemic, columns in the Guardian and The Times last week claimed “every” daily press conference held in Downing Street during the pandemic except for one was fronted by a male politician.
This isn’t quite right, and both The Times and the Guardian have corrected their articles after being contacted by Full Fact.
We’ve not been able to find a comprehensive list of speakers at all the pandemic press conferences. Looking at old livestreams which remain on the Number 10 YouTube channel we can find evidence of only one female Cabinet minister—then-home secretary Priti Patel—leading a Downing Street press conference during the pandemic. However she did so on more than one occasion.
We found at least five of the daily press conferences were fronted by Ms Patel: on 11 April 2020, 25 April 2020, 22 May 2020, 12 January 2021 and 21 January 2021.
The vast majority of the press conferences, which were usually held daily during the spring of 2020 and the following winter, were fronted by male ministers, including then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson, then-chancellor Rishi Sunak, then-health secretary Matt Hancock and then-Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab.
The columns in the Guardian and The Times were written after the publication by the Covid Inquiry of messages sent by Dominic Cummings, former chief advisor to the Prime Minister. One of the messages was described by the Covid Inquiry lead counsel Hugo Keith KC as “misogynistic”, something Mr Cummings denied. The Inquiry also heard evidence from former senior civil servant Helen MacNamara describing “sexist” treatment of women working in Number 10 and the Cabinet Office during the pandemic.
In her written statement to the Inquiry, Ms MacNamara said “the overwhelming majority of ministers and advisers managing the response were men”. However she did not specifically reference the number of press conferences fronted by women in either her written or spoken testimony.
Newspapers should make every effort to achieve due accuracy in all output. Inaccurate claims should be appropriately and clearly corrected in a timely manner, as has happened in this case.
Image courtesy of Number 10
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