ONE of the senior Government aides fined over breaking lockdown rules has broken her silence over the scandal.
Helen MacNamara, the Government’s former ethics chief, was among the first to receive a fixed penalty notice from the Metropolitan Police after numerous people at the highest levels of government were found to have broken the law.
MacNamara, the former deputy cabinet secretary, apologised for ignoring strict Covid rules to attend the leaving party of a Cabinet Office colleague on June 18, 2020.
She said: “I am sorry for the error of judgement I have shown. I have accepted and paid the fixed penalty notice.”
MacNamara was handed a £50 on Friday while others were fined for attending a party on the eve of Prince Philip’s funeral.
READ MORE: Former ethics chief fined over Partygate scandal
She was the director general of propriety and ethics in the Cabinet Office from 2018 to 2020.
Labour leader Keir Starmer has branded the Prime Minister “unfit for office” over the scandal.
He said: “It is absolutely important that the Prime Minister is honest and accountable to Parliament. I shouldn’t have to say that.
“That has been a principle for a very long time. The idea that we are even debating whether it is all right for the Prime Minister to have lied about this shows just how far the standards have sunk under this Prime Minister.
“He needs to come to Parliament to be held to account. He has not only misled the public about this, he has presided over widespread criminality in his home and his office and that is why I am convinced he is unfit for office.”
All those fined should be named publicly, the leader of the opposition said.
The Daily Telegraph reported that MacNamara, who was in charge of ethics in Whitehall at the time, received the fine after police concluded she had broken Covid laws by attending a leaving party for Hannah Young, a Downing Street aide, who was moving to New York to take up a role with the British Consulate General.
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