BBC presenter Nick Robinson has today apologised after wrongly claiming a Ministry of Justice cleaner died ‘of Covid’ while working in ‘Downing Street’.
The Radio 4 Today show host brought up the tragic death of government cleaner Emanuel Gomes while grilling Boris Johnson’s chief of staff Steve Barclay over Partygate.
Quoting a report by political sketch magazine, The Critic, he said Mr Gomes had been ‘instructed to keep coming into work during lockdown, had contracted Covid and had died’.
He later referred to Mr Gomes as having worked at Downing Street – where he was ‘surrounded by people who were routinely breaking the rules’.
But Mr Gomes had not been working at Downing Street at the time of his death – because he was a cleaner at the Ministry of Justice.
And while colleagues had raised concerns that Mr Gomes had been suffering Covid-like symptoms in the lead up to his death in April 2020, an official coroner’s report recorded it as hypertension of the heart.
Today the experienced BBC journalist apologised, describing his choice of wording as a ‘mistake’.
It comes amid concerns, raised in Sue Gray’s report, about how Downing Street employees treated support staff such as cleaners during the period of Partygate.
Issuing an apology via the social media site Twitter, Mr Robinson wrote: ‘A correction and 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”.
BBC presenter Nick Robinson has today issued a grovelling apology after quizzing a top Tory MP over the ‘Covid’ death of a ‘Downing Street’ cleaner – who did not work at Number 10
The Radio 4 Today show host brought up the tragic death of government cleaner Emanuel Gomes (pictured) while grilling Boris Johnson’s chief of staff Steve Barclay over Partygate
‘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.’
The error came during a stiff interview with Mr Barclay, who took up the Downing Street Chief of Staff role earlier this year, replacing civil servant Dan Rosenfield.
While taking the MP to task over the Government’s response to yesterday’s Partgate report by Sue Gray, the BBC presenter referenced the death of Mr Gomes.
He said: ‘Thanks to a report in The Critic Magazine today, I learnt this morning that one Government cleaner, instructed to keep coming into work during lockdown, contracted Covid and died.
‘His name was Emanuel Gomes. What do you think this 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 that people could relax after work.
Mr Barclay replied: ‘All our hearts will go out to his family just as a constituency MP I have heard many absolutely distressing stories from my constituents who weren’t able to attend funerals and who lost loved ones. And it was an incredibly fraught time…
But the BBC journalist then interrupted, saying: ‘The point in this case was that this man was instructed to work in Downing Street and he was surrounded by people who were routinely breaking the rules, that he was told to follow.
‘Is it good enough for you and the Prime Minister to say, to him and others who followed the rules, “we didn’t really know what was going on in the building we work in”.
Barclay replied: ‘I think you are characterising this as if this was the norm every day at all times.
‘We are talking about a small minority over the course of a two-year period, often on occasion when the PM was not in the building. Of course, in relation to that specific incident, that is a heartbreaking case to flag.
‘But I think it is important to flag that there were many staff working in Downing Street, they worked incredibly hard getting our vaccine rollout right, getting the PPE outright.
‘I think it would be unfair to suggest the actions of a very small minority on a very specific few days were reflective of the wider effort in terms of getting the big decision right on Covid.’
Mr Gomes, who worked as a cleaner at the Ministry of Justice, died in April 2020 at the height of the first Covid lockdown.
While most civil servants had been sent home, Mr Gomes and his colleagues were told they should keep coming in to the MoJ’s central London office.
According to family members of Mr Gomes, who is originally from Guinea and been working for cleaning firm OCS since 2018, he felt pressure to continue coming into work.
Boris Johnson (left) and Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak at a gathering in the Cabinet Room in 10 Downing Street on his birthday, which has been released with the publication of Sue’s Gray report into Downing Street parties during lockdown
Union officials alleged to The Guardian at the time of his death that one of his colleague had been sacked by text while self-isolating.
According to the paper, colleagues say Mr Gomes, who lived in a rented property in Plaistow, east London, began to feel sick with Covid-like symptoms shortly before his death.
One colleague, Amadou, told The Guardian: ‘In the last few days he was really ill. He lost his appetite, he had phlegm and he seemed to have a fever.
‘I helped him home … by the time we got to Victoria station he was so sick he didn’t know where he was.’
Mr Gomes’s death came at a time when widespread testing had not yet been implemented.
The London Ambulance Service and Metropolitan Police officially categorised Mr Gomes’s passing as ‘death due to Covid-19’
However, according to Tortoise, his family waited eight weeks before receiving a formal notice from the coroner.
After a post-mortem, a coroner at Walthamstow Coroner’s Court recorded Mr Gomes’s death as a result of hypertension of the heart.
Mr Robinson’s apology comes as yesterday Boris Johnson defended attending certain Downing Street lockdown parties by saying it was his ‘duty’ to attend farewell events for colleagues.
Sue Gray’s long-awaited report into lockdown parties delivered a scathing verdict on the culture in No10, saying many events ‘should not have been allowed to happen’.
The Prime Minister was challenged by senior Tory MPs yesterday evening, who questioned whether he should lead them into the next general election.
He insisted it was necessary to meet with departing No10 officials to ‘thank them for their service’, while adding that it was ‘one of the essential duties of leadership’, The Telegraph reports.
Johnson publicly said he had been vindicated over Partygate but he faced a terse meeting with his own MPs at the 1922 Committee – where loud banging of desks could apparently be heard from the hallways.
According to one Conservative source, the PM is reported to have said that Downing Street staff were not ‘partying as if it was Saturday night in July in Ibiza, they were actually working extremely hard – flat out’.
The PM said that, after months of investigations, it was now time to ‘move on’ and ‘focus on the priorities of the British people… easing the hardship caused by the rising costs people are facing’.
In a major statement of intent, Rishi Sunak will today unveil £10billion of cost of living support for those most in need.
The Chancellor’s package, partly funded by a windfall tax on the oil and gas giants, will include grants to help low income families with energy bills, together with help for the so-called ‘squeezed middle’ – potentially council tax discounts.
Johnson (right) at a gathering in the Cabinet Room in 10 Downing Street on his birthday in 2020. The PM said he had been ‘vindicated’ by the report but faced a meeting with own MPs yesterday evening at the 1922 Committee
A snap YouGov poll after the report found 59 per cent of Britons believe Mr Johnson should quit – but just 7 per cent thought that he would do so
Johnson pictured at a gathering in 10 Downing Street for the departure of a special adviser on November 13, 2020.
Addressing MPs on the findings of Miss Gray’s 37-page report, the Prime Minister said he took full responsibility, adding: ‘I have learnt a lesson.’
Mr Johnson told MPs he had been ‘appalled’ by lurid details of bad behaviour by officials at drunken parties. But he said it had been his duty to gather staff to ‘briefly’ attend leaving dos for senior officials working flat out on the pandemic – and he said this view had been ‘vindicated by the investigation’.
The PM also turned the tables on Sir Keir Starmer, who called on the PM to ‘pack his bags’, despite the fact he himself is under police investigation for an alleged breach of lockdown rules.
In a reference to the Labour leader’s beer and curry event with activists in Durham last year, Mr Johnson mocked his opponent as ‘Sir Beer Korma’.
Mr Johnson’s Tory critics had long seen the publication of the report as the pretext for a coup against his leadership. But the lack of new evidence directly against him saw the plot fizzle out.
One image showed the PM and Chancellor a few feet apart next to a table with pitchers of juice and M&S sandwiches.
The report detailed a number of events that appeared to include clear breaches at lockdown restrictions.
At a farewell party for a senior adviser in June 2020, Miss Gray reported ‘excessive’ alcohol consumption by some, leading one official to be sick and others to end the night in an ‘altercation’.
In a statement, the campaign group Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice said: ‘Just as we will never forget being apart from those closest to us whilst they passed away, or having to hold miserable funerals with only a handful of people, millions will never forgive them for the disrespect they’ve shown.’
Sir Keir said the report by Whitehall ethics chief Miss Gray would stand as a monument to hubris and arrogance.
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