He said the transition had been a joy to watch — particularly as he saw boys push themselves academically to keep up with their newer peers. This was despite masks being recommended by other experts and made mandatory in certain places later that year. When you think about it, this is wholly unsurprising due to the way we are socialised as infants. Parents and caregivers don't mean to treat boys and girls differently, but evidence shows they clearly do. It starts before birth, with mothers describing their baby's movements differently if they know they are having a boy. Male babies were more likely to be described as "vigorous" and "strong", but there was no such difference when mothers did not know the sex. The hostage swap deal has also shone a light on Israeli detention and sentencing practices in the Palestinian territories, where Palestinians are tried in military courts and minors are regularly imprisoned. If from infancy, boys are discouraged from playing with toys we might associate as feminine, then they may not develop a skill set that they might need later in life. If they are discouraged by their peers from playing with dolls, while at the same time they see their mother doing most of the childcare, what does that say about whose role it is to care? And so we enter the realm of "biological essentialism", where we ascribe an innate basis to a behaviour that is, when you delve a bit deeper, highly likely to be learned.

This continues as adults. Women have been shown to underestimate their abilities when asked how well they scored on maths tasks, whereas men will overestimate their scores. Women will also do worse on a test if they are first told that their sex typically does worse. Of course this could and does affect school, university and career choices. Encouragingly, 97.5% of NAPs, 77.1% of Adaptation Communications, and 75% of NDCs submitted until December 2022 explicitly refer to gender, with a notable increase in the case of NDCs – 90% of the NDCs submitted in 2021 and 2022 mention gender, compared to 35% of those submitted in 2020. Mr Keith asks if Mr Gove's appointment to the Cabinet Office had anything to do with the burgeoning crisis of coronavirus.Mr Gove says he was "making clear to Number 10" that there was an issue within weeks of being appointed a minister for the Cabinet Office. Mr Gove added: "It became a sort of Mary Poppins bag into which different prime ministers will shove things in which they believe should be dealt with by the government nanny."

She claimed in mid-March 2020 that wearing masks could actually increase the risk of COVID infection for the average member of the public as they could "actually trap the virus in the mask and start breathing it in", putting them "at more risk rather than less". Hugo Keith, counsel for the inquiry, begins his questioning of Levelling Up Secretary Michael Gove with questions about his ministerial roles throughout the COVID pandemic.

Mass testing - then not planned in the UK, although recommended by the World Health Organisation - she claimed was "unnecessary" in March 2020. And, he said, ministers never carried out a "drains up exercise" as its remit grew to work out what should be done there, and what should be handed to other departments, including Number 10.