Transcript of Module 1 Preliminary Hearing on 14 February 2023

(10.30 am)

Lady Hallett: Good morning. This is the second preliminary hearing into Module 1 of the Covid-19 UK Inquiry. It is being held remotely and therefore I shall keep my observations to a minimum and I shall try to avoid interrupting the advocates who are speaking.

We intend to deal with a number of important issues that both counsel to the Inquiry and the Core Participants have raised in their written submissions to me. I am very grateful to all of them and I hope that, given I have received the written submissions in advance and had an opportunity to consider them, the advocates can focus on the main parts of their submissions that they wish to highlight today.

I am sitting here in a hearing room on my own. Counsel to the Inquiry are in a separate room and other participants are attending remotely, and I believe that everyone has been informed as to the system that has to be employed should anybody wish to speak who hasn’t already given notice of their intention to do so.

So with those observations, given we have so much to get through today, I will call on Mr Hugo Keith, King’s Counsel, counsel to the Inquiry. Mr Keith.

Mr Keith: (… unclear …)

Lady Hallett: Can you pause, Mr Keith. I don’t know if the public and the Participants are having problems but your sound is not perfect.

Mr Keith: Yes, it appears to be … (unclear).

I think it’s been solved. The echo’s disappeared. Can you hear me clearly now?

Lady Hallett: Yes, we can at the moment, Mr Keith. I’ll interrupt you, if I may, if there are problems again.

1. Submissions by Mr Keith, KC

Mr Keith: Thank you.

So, my Lady, this is the second preliminary hearing of Module 1, the first one held by you on 4 October, some four months ago. I don’t wish to reintroduce the Core Participants or their legal representatives. There remain (… unclear … )

I should say that following the first preliminary hearing on 4 October a number of out of time applications were made unsuccessfully –

Lady Hallett: Mr Keith, I’m sorry. Can you pause there. I’m afraid the audio is not good. If people who are following online have satisfactory audio, that’s okay, I am prepared to put it up with, but I just want to check. I wonder if we could find other members of the Inquiry team following online whether they can hear what Mr Keith is saying clearly.

I have seen a note from the stenographer that it’s not clear enough for the verbatim record and so I will rise to see if the problem can be sorted. I’m very sorry to everybody.

Mr Keith: Thank you, my Lady.

(10.35 am)

(A short break)

(10.41 am)

Lady Hallett: Mr Keith, we hope the problem has been fixed. Would you like to speak so we can test the system.

Mr Keith: We believe it has been fixed, my Lady.

Lady Hallett: Thank you.

Mr Keith: Thank you. So as I was saying, but I wouldn’t have been heard saying it, written submissions for today’s hearing have been received from eight Core Participants, in one case jointly, and we’re very grateful to them for having provided us with their observations and their insights and for the brevity with which they have done so. I believe you will be hearing oral submissions, my Lady, from five of the Core Participants.

Turning to the matters on the agenda, the first issue is to address the matter of progress.

Since 4 October, a great deal of work has been done and at a very considerable pace. As of yesterday, 160 Rule 9 requests have been sent out in Module 1, either in draft form (that is to say, they may be subject to amendment in light of the initial response from the recipient) or in final form, some of them are very long and complex, and the Inquiry team has also had multiple meetings with many of the Government Rule 9 recipients. Only a handful of first time Rule 9s remain to be issued, although of course we anticipate having to send more Rule 9s out in due course, more iterative Rule 9s, as our understanding becomes more complete and we’re able to identify areas which may require further exploration.

We provided details of the Rule 9s which had been issued by 30 January, in annex A of the CTI note of that date, and in that 27-page summary the broad nature of 49 of the Rule 9 requests, which had been sent out on 30 January, were specifically set out. We also set out overviews of other Rule 9 requests to bodies in the voluntary community sector, the trade unions, medical, scientific and other relevant professional bodies and individual scientists. As Mr Weatherby, King’s Counsel, almost submitted in his written submissions, the net has been cast widely. Since 30 January, around 45 further requests have been made. So we’ve received draft and, in some cases, final witness statements from 42 organisations and individuals.

My Lady, the Core Participants were kindly provided by the legal team on Friday with a full list of the organisations and individuals who have provided draft or final witness statements but to give some idea of the scope and extent, for public purposes, they include: the Cabinet Office; clinically vulnerable families; Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice; the Department of Digital Culture, Media and Sport; the Emergency Planning Society; Inclusion Scotland; the Local Government Association; Government Equality Hub; Public Health Wales; Public Health Scotland; the Northern Ireland Council for Voluntary Action; the TUC; the UKHCA; the Vaccine Impact Bereaved United Kingdom; the Welsh Local Government Association, and many, many more.

The majority of the remainder of the statements and responses to questionnaires are expected to be received during the course of this month. Fourteen corporate statements or full statements, some of them likely to be very lengthy, are expected this week. It follows that many thousands of documents and exhibits have already been received, I think, from around 16 document providers so far and those documents amount to hundreds of thousands of pages. Not all of them are of course relevant and disclosable – that’s not how the system works – but there’s no doubt that we have received a very large amount of documentation.

I want to commend, if I may, the legal team in Module 1 for their diligence and hard work in scoping, drafting and issuing so many Rule 9s and in dealing with the vast array of documentation which has been received.

Turning to disclosure. The extremely burdensome process whereby each documentmust be individually reviewed, then sifted for relevancy, redacted where necessary and then sent back to the document provider for comment, which comment must be provided within three days, has, however, been problematic.

As we explained in the CTI note of 30 January at paragraph 11, each and every document is required to be reviewed and irrelevant information, including to a very large extent personal data redacted in accordance with the redaction protocol, must be removed. Such irrelevant information includes the names of junior officials who have not taken relevant decisions themselves or substantially contributed to the decision-making or had an important role in implementation of decisions. Such persons can be distinguished from those persons who held more senior positions in the senior Civil Service, the names of whom have been provided by all of the Government departments whom we have approached.

I must also make clear that each redaction in this provision and the redaction process is naturally undertaken by the Inquiry, rather than by the particular Government department involved, and it will also be subject to change as a result of our own ongoing scrutiny of the evidence and any matters raised by the Core Participants following disclosure to them of the redacted document.

The problem, however, encountered by the Inquiry is that, given the profusion of policy documents and Government emails, there are literally thousands of such manual redactions that are required. In addition, in many cases, it’s not proved possible for the reviewers, the paralegals and other lawyers who do the review process, to be sure that the particular name which they were seeking to redact was actually irrelevant, notwithstanding the exclusion of that particular name from the lists provided by the Government departments.

So the process of review and disclosure has slowed down considerably, which is why the Core Participants, although they did receive the first disclosure tranche before Christmas, have received in total only around 700 documents in the first three tranches.

Although those disclosure tranches did include exhibits from the main UK Government department concerning preparedness (namely, the Cabinet Office), the amount of disclosure was simply not as we envisaged it would be.

As you would expect, my Lady, the Inquiry team has taken a number of steps which we’re confident will speed the process up, while still ensuring that only irrelevant information is redacted, and those steps include increasing the number of reviewers available each day to review the documents. The Core Participants may rest assured that very considerable resources are being directed at this process.

We hope that, by the time the process is running smoothly, the number of documents reviewed weekly, of which the Core Participants then receive a proportion, will run into the thousands. Another step taken is to put into place a system whereby the headers to the emails are block redacted in the first instance, leaving the later parts of the particular email to be subject to manual redaction of specific names. We’re also working towards the implementation of a system of automatic redaction, a mechanical redaction process, by the document handling system. So those steps together will, we’re confident, lead to the process speeding up.

Nevertheless, I accept that, whilst we have received the documents from the various material providers, broadly in line with the timetable that we initially envisaged, we have not been able to get relevant documents out to the Core Participants as speedily as we would have wished.

My Lady, that brings me to the subject of the commencement date of the public hearing. As I submitted to you on the last occasion and as you observed in the course of your first preliminary hearing and in your ruling which postdated that hearing, the Core Participants play a vital role in this collaborative, forensic process. One of the major ways, as you know, in which they participate is by way of being able to scrutinise the disclosed relevant documentation for themselves and thereby assist with the identification of suitable witnesses to be called and with the important process by which is lines of enquiry and topics are drawn up for the purposes of questioning those witnesses.

In this way, amongst others, the Core Participants participate meaningfully in the public hearing. Put bluntly, we agree that it would be unacceptable for the voluminous disclosure, for example, to be made on the eve of the hearing, as is feared by one of the Core Participants, because that would clearly undermine their ability to participate meaningfully.

As I cannot guarantee that, as was provisionally hoped to be the case, that the Core Participants will receive almost the all the disclosure to which they are entitled by mid-March, I must invite you to consider putting back the provisional start date of May to early June.

In the general scheme of your Inquiry, this is a fairly modest adjournment application but it will allow, if you grant it, a proper opportunity to the Core Participants to get on top of the materials and, as a necessary part of that process, time to get the documents to them.

My Lady, you will immediately have appreciated of course that the putting back of Module 1, if that be your decision, will have a direct impact on Module 2 and indeed on each of the Inquiry’s remaining modular public hearings, though not necessarily on the overall length of the Inquiry. But given that today is concerned with Module 1, I don’t propose to say any more on that subject. Suffice to say a great deal of thought will of course be given to the various ramifications if you do order a delay, modest though it may be, in the commencement of Module 1.

A related issue is the length of the Module 1 public hearing. Some of the Core Participants argue with considerable force that the current provisional timetable of four weeks is too short to address the issues that will arise in Module 1 and to be able to call the number of witnesses from whom you must surely hear. I agree. A fortuitous consequence of putting back the start of Module 1, if that again be your decision, would be that it would allow us to extend modestly the length of the public hearing and I would invite you to consider doing so if you ordered that the commencement be put back.

May I then turn to scope, which comprises an important part of the submissions made by the various Core Participants. The Core Participants have very helpfully enquired as to our position in relation to such matters as devolved preparedness in Northern Ireland, including issues related to the collapse in the power sharing agreement, the land border with the Republic of Ireland and particular role and functions of local authorities. Also issues arising in relation to the Welsh infrastructure dealing with preparedness, including issues of funding, intergovernmental relations, coordination and the standard in approach to planning and preparation.

One of the Core Participants has also asked us to address preparedness for infection control in hospitals and resourcing for infection control measures in hospitals and care homes, also in relation to PPE and stockpiling.

The Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice Cymru also ask whether we’ve issued Rule 9s relating to the Welsh Government’s role in resilience and civil emergencies, into organisational co-operation and pandemic planning.

Query has been raised in relation to the World Health Organization at CEPI, a coalition for epidemic preparedness innovations, whose offices are in Oslo, London and Washington.

The Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice group and the Northern Ireland Bereaved Families for Justice group, together for the purposes of this preliminary hearing, also ask about the state of play concerning the Rule 9s for key politicians, civil servants and administrators from the UK Government and the devolved administrations, which is an issue that we flagged up in the CTI note.

Finally, the TUC has asked for more detail about later modules in light of its concern about the extent of overlap that may exist between Module 1 and the later modules. So by way of example, my Lady, they ask whether preparedness in connection with social care, to give just one example, be considered in Module 1 or left for your consideration in later modules, in particular the module dealing with the care sector, and similarly preparedness in relation to PPE, preparedness in relation to the Health & Safety Executive.

So dealing with them all together, may I just observe, by way of initial comment, that we understand that the Core Participants have not of course seen the actual Rule 9s and so quite understandably cannot know the nature of the mesh, even if they know that the net has been widely cast. The actual scope of Module 1 and the issues and questions that will arise for scrutiny will, however, become clear from the material that is gathered under the Rule 9 process and then disclosed and from the witness evidence proposals. But in advance of reaching that stage, I can provide the following information.

In relation to Northern Ireland, we had sent a Rule 9 request to the Local Government Association, the Welsh LGA, the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, the Northern Ireland LGA and the National Police Chiefs’ Council, in order to ascertain the position and to receive information about the local government level and the structure, the role that they play in the overall structure for preparedness and civil emergencies.

This has been done with the intention of gathering a range of evidence across the whole United Kingdom but, in particular, in relation to the key players at that level. They were involved in local resilience forums, regional resilience partnerships, and local resilience partnerships in Scotland and, most importantly for the purposes of the Northern Ireland Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice, question the emergency preparedness groups in Northern Ireland.

We readily appreciate that Northern Ireland is distinct in terms of which bodies carry relevant statutory duties related to civil contingency matters and so the Rule 9s which have been issued to the emergency preparedness groups are specifically designed to ensure that we have a more complete picture of preparedness in Northern Ireland.

In relation to the request concerning the Welsh Government, we have addressed the majority of the issues raised in the written submissions but, in relation to the specific issues of preparedness for infection control in hospitals and resourcing for infection control measures in hospitals and care homes and resourcing for PPE and stockpiling, some part of Module 1 will of course be concerned with the overarching, high-level issue of funding and resourcing generally across the organic structures concerned with preparedness. But given that Module 1 is concerned with the structural position and the policy position, those specific issues are more readily considered in the context of your later modules because, of course, they deal more directly with the specific issues of PPE, stockpiling and infection control measures. So they will be more appropriately addressed later.

In relation to the World Health Organization and CEPI, we’ve contacted the World Health Organization. They were unable to provide a written statement. Rule 9 obviously has intraterritorial jurisdiction in effect only but they had provided us with certain information and material which we are considering and we will ponder further the utility of contacting the CEPI.

We’ve sent out approximately 45 Rule 9s to key politicians, civil servants and administrators from the United Kingdom Government and the devolved administrations, and more are imminent. So in response to the issue and the question raised by the Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice and Northern Ireland Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice, the state of play concerning Rule 9s in relation to that part of the Government structure is that it is well underway and a great deal of work has been done dealing with gathering evidence from those respective bodies.

The final matter is that of the overlap concern raised by the TUC. Again, I repeat that high-level preparedness on the part of the United Kingdom Government and devolved administrations will of course be addressed in Module 1 but sectorial and operational readiness will be addressed as part of your later modules and I hope that will help give some guidance to the Core Participants as to our direction of travel.

The next item concerns the document management system, Relativity. Some Core Participants have expressed a degree of frustration with the functionality of the Relativity system. One Core Participant invites you, my Lady, to change horses in mid-stream and move to an entirely different system.

Relativity, my Lady, is arguably the industry standard in the context of statutory inquiries and has, in fact, stood up well to the demands placed upon it. We, of course, acknowledge that functionality differs between systems but may I suggest that the answer to the possible lack of familiarity with the functionality of the system and its peculiarities, it’s for the Core Participants to contact the Inquiry secretariat for assistance, as one or two of them have already done.

Epiq (who are the body concerned with the management of the system and its provision) have, in fact, provided sessions over the last two weeks, having invited all Core Participants, and have emailed the Core Participants again with a link which will enable them to access videos of those training sessions.

One Core Participant wisely, to ease its own use of the system, persuaded the Inquiry team to alter the field tagging system so that documents can be marked with additional fields relating, in fact, to relevancy and whether or not the particular document was a key document, alongside the comments which they are manually able to make on the system.

So we would invite the Core Participants to contact the secretariat and if they’ve got problems or difficulties with their use of the system to see what assistance can be given to them.

My Lady, turning then to the issue of Parliamentary privilege, we raised this issue, my Lady, in the CTI note out of an abundance of caution so that the Core Participants could understand the general approach that the Inquiry is likely to take.

At the heart of this issue is Article 9 of the Bill of Rights 1689 which provides that the freedom of speech and debates or proceedings in Parliament ought not to be impeached or questioned in any court or place out of Parliament. An important point of principle does in theory arise, namely whether in a statutory inquiry, such as your own, the impeaching or questioning of statements made in or to Parliament or the introduction to these proceedings of Parliamentary statements or reports, for the truth or worth or validity of what is being said, infringes Article 9 of the Bill of Rights.

Of course, there’s no debate and there’s no issue about this, that reference may be made to any Parliamentary material for historical context, but what Mr Weatherby, King’s Counsel, has suggested in his written submissions is that there is a purposive argument which leads to the proposition and the conclusion that because a statutory inquiry, including one under the 2005 Act, is not permitted to enquire into civil or criminal liability, it is not therefore a place or a court which attaches the protections of Parliamentary privilege. So, in essence, he advances a purposive argument. But, on the face of it, we respectfully suggest that that argument is unlikely to be correct. Firstly, on the face of it, this Inquiry is arguably any court or place out of Parliament. The word “place” must be given a meaning beyond that of “court”.

Secondly, that the Joint Committee on Parliamentary Privilege of March 1999 opined that a place did indeed include a tribunal and that, were this issue to have arisen in the context of the statutory scheme then in force in 1999, which was the predecessor Act to the Inquiries Act 2005, namely the Tribunals of Inquiry (Evidence) Act 1921, the privilege would undoubtedly apply.

The Joint Committee, in fact, recommended the place should be defined in statute to include any tribunal having power to examine witnesses on oath so that any statutory inquiry would be such a place. That would then bring, or would have brought, the position in the United Kingdom into line with the Australian position, under the Parliamentary Privileges Act 1987 Australia, which replaces the wording “court or place” with the words “with any court or tribunal”.

I should say, lest Mr Weatherby is concerned that we are infringing Parliamentary privilege by referring to Parliamentary material for the purposes of this debate, you are, of course, empowered as a rule court to rule on whether the privilege applies at all and there is high authority, a Privy Council case of Buchanan v Jennings, which provides or makes plain that the courts may refer to Parliamentary material for the purposes of ruling on whether or not the privilege attaches.

Thirdly, the subsequent Government consultation paper to the Joint Committee report proceeded on the premise – the clear premise that the privilege did extend to tribunals and courts and the Joint Committee on Parliamentary Privileges report of June 2013 recommended that no statutory changes were needed.

We might also add that the purposive argument advanced is probably wrong because it fails to recognise that Parliamentary privilege extends to public law proceedings, in which there is, of course, no determination of civil or criminal liability and in which Pepper v Hart and Wilson v First County Trust Limited represent exceptions to the Parliamentary privilege rule.

Then, lastly, my learned friend refers to the Chilcot Inquiry. That was, of course, a non-statutory inquiry, for the precise reason that it should be enabled to examine proceedings in Parliament.

So, my Lady, provisionally, we respectfully suggest that there is no real argument about the fact that the privilege does apply to your Inquiry. However, the submissions overstate the significance of the issue in the actual circumstances of your Inquiry.

The issue of Parliamentary privilege is very unlikely to present a problem because, as the CTI note sets out in detail, what we’ve done is we’ve sought simply to replicate such statements or materials, the reliance upon which might have breached Parliamentary privilege, by way of formulating our Rule 9 request in full knowledge of what we know the witnesses to have already said or provided to Parliament, and we’ve also sought on our own account and afresh the documents which have been provided to select committees and the bodies such as the National Audit Office.

So to a very large extent – in fact, completely – we have covered the ground by way of our own Rule 9 requests and our own seeking of and the provision of relevant documentation.

As for the opinions and reports from the select committees themselves, they are covered by Parliamentary privilege if, in principle, the privilege attaches to your Inquiry, but they have little utility in the general scheme of things because of the obvious feature that it is for you to examine the evidence and to reach your own conclusions. Therefore, the conclusions and reports from select Parliamentary committees and the National Audit Office may be of little assistance to you as part of that process, although of course I repeat there will be multiple references to such material as part of the historical context underpinning Module 1.

We venture to suggest that our approach is the right one. It’s been described pleasingly as a sensible one by Scottish Covid Bereaved, and so we don’t at this stage, at any rate, the issue presents a practical problem.

May I therefore invite you to consider that the issue requires no resolution or ruling now but, naturally, you will keep the matter under review. If we do encounter material that is deemed relevant, and which we’re unable to introduce into the Inquiry by way of replicating the oral evidence or statement or resourcing the document, then we will bring the issue back to you, at which point there may be – only may be – a requirement to resolve the point of principle.

Turning to expert evidence, the Core Participants refer to the receipt of Professor Heymann’s draft report. He, my Lady, as you know, is the expert instructed to deal with the issues of epidemiology and virology. We have received his draft report. We are in the process of reviewing it and we anticipate being able to provide it to the Core Participants in the next ten days.

We anticipate receipt of the other draft reports from Professor Whitworth, Dr Hammer, Professor Marmot, who you will recall is the author of the seminal report Fair Society, Healthy Lives in February 2010, Professor Bambra, Bruce Mann and Professor David Alexander, and we anticipate receiving those reports in March. Again, we will need to review them before they can be provided to the Core Participants but we’re confident that we will receive them by the end of March, so the picture is not as grim as may have been painted.

If you do order Module 1 to start in early June, there will be sufficient time for their proper consideration.

Then there is the submission by Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice and Northern Ireland Bereaved Families for Justice that experts be appointed to examine the issue of structural racism and discrimination as part of Module 1. My Lady, I have very considerable reservations about the wisdom of this proposal for a number of reasons.

Firstly, the Inquiry is already looking intensely at the way in which protected characteristics were or were not probably safeguarded in the particular context of each module but most particularly Module 1, for present purposes. Protected characteristics include, of course, race so the foundational basis of any finding of structural racism is already part of the Inquiry’s remit and, therefore, on its face, does not require further evidence or expert evidence to be pursued and obtained specifically on the issue of whether or not, as a conclusion, there was structural racism.

In practice, it means there will already be, and you have ordered that there be consideration of the extent to which the Government and the various bodies did take into account the position and the needs of minority groups and other vulnerable groups and those suffering from inequalities when making civil emergency plans, and race, as I’ve already indicated, is a necessary part of that examination and is referred to, we anticipate, in Professor Marmot’s draft report.

Next, structural racism is a conclusion, in effect, to the effect that public policies, institutional practices, cultural representations have been seen to be worked in a way which perpetuated racial group inequality. But Module 1 is not looking at and could not possibly look at all policies and all institutions and all institutional practices and all cultural representations across all the Government departments and the local authorities involved in the United Kingdom and devolved administrations emergency preparedness. The bodies and institutions which are part of the examination of Module 1 are not a unitary body, for example, a police force. They are the whole breadth of Government. So the search for the necessary indicia of structural racism would be an impossible task for Module 1.

Module 1, in connection with inequalities, is looking at the extent to which, by contrast, relevant bodies failed to have proper regard to the needs of minority groups and those suffering from inequality, not whether there was structural racism on the part of some or all of those bodies. So we would respectfully suggest that the issue which underpins the submission, namely the extent to which Government practices and decision-making was affected by a proper consideration of the needs of individuals, minorities and sectors is properly addressed by the way in which Module 1 is going about its task and later modules of course, as you know, will, in fact, directly be examining the issue of inequalities.

So for all those reasons, we would invite you not to pursue or to go down the route advocated by that particular Core Participant, which is to order the instruction of expert evidence covering the issue of structural racism.

A further point raised by Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice and Northern Ireland Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice is the request that letters of instructions to the experts be disclosed now because they fear that they won’t, at least under the process as originally envisaged, receive the draft reports in time to be able to contribute meaningfully to the process of identifying additional areas which will require to be reported upon.

In my submission, providing letters of instruction now is neither necessary nor sufficient. It’s not necessary because if you do decide that the commencement of the public hearing will be put back there will be time enough in late March, in advance of the process of inviting the Core Participants to contribute to the witness evidence proposals, for them to receive and consider the draft expert reports. But it’s also not sufficient, my Lady, because the letters of instruction provide only the framework for the expert reports themselves and they say nothing about what the ultimate opinion may amount to. The Core Participants need the draft reports in order to be able to understand what is being opined upon and that is, of course, what we will be providing in due course.

I should say also that, as you know, the Core Participants have been given a list of topics in addition, upon which each expert is being invited to provide their opinion.

Turning then to the issue of the evidence proposal procedure and Rule 10, we note the submissions advanced by Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice and Northern Ireland Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice. May I emphasise that, contrary to their reading of the CTI note, there is no suggestion at all that they will not be permitted to ask questions under Rule 10. The note merely stated what is obvious, which is that Core Participants have no right to ask questions. They require your permission. But, obviously, counsel to the Inquiry does not require analogous permission.

The Scottish Covid Bereaved and Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice Cymru invite the Inquiry team to consider instituting an additional process whereby Core Participants may be permitted to meet counsel to the Inquiry after they have submitted their proposals on the CTI evidence, lines of questioning proposals, so that they have an opportunity to better explain to us the rationale underpinning their observations. In effect, what is sought is a further informal route by which they can return to the fray and seek to persuade CTI that there are areas and issues of such centrality that they must be raised in the course of the prospective witnesses’ evidence. It’s a second opportunity, my Lady, to bend our ears.

You may consider it’s a sensible proposal because it is far better that issues which may become red lines for the Core Participants are raised with us and thrashed out in advance of the witness giving evidence, rather than being raised ex post facto and requiring further time and energy to be devoted to such Rule 10(4) applications as may then be made. So may we then give thought as to the mechanics of how this might work in practice.

The TUC reserves its position on this issue but I need again to emphasise that all Core Participants will be entitled naturally to make applications under Rule 10(4) for permission to ask questions of a witness.

Turning to the Scottish Inquiry, the Scottish Covid Bereaved and NHS National Services Scotland both raised the issue of the Scottish Inquiry and the absolutely proper need to avoid duplication. My Lady, both Inquiries are committed to minimising duplication in respect of investigation, evidence gathering and reporting, as is set out, indeed, in their respective Terms of Reference.

You have met, of course, your counterpart at the Scottish Inquiry and you will be continuing to do so and the Inquiry teams are close to agreeing and publishing memoranda of understanding. That will set out in terms how both Inquiries intend to minimise duplication because it will set out a framework for how they work together, how the secretariats and legal teams will meet and, specifically, how they will co-ordinate matters such as hearing scheduling, requests from material providers, disclosure and the calling of witnesses.

Also, because each Inquiry has its own Listening Exercise, both Inquiries have been working together to minimise confusion for the public, when sharing their experiences with the Inquiries, and the secretariats from both Inquiries are currently exploring the extent to which such experiences, which may be shared with each Inquiry, can be shared with the other and the obvious value to each other’s investigations and being able to supply that information to the other Inquiry. So the matter is well in hand.

In relation to the Listening Exercise – Every Story Matters, most of the Core Participants, my Lady, have restated their commitment to continue working with the Inquiry team to assist in its development.

The Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice Northern Ireland Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice group have expressed a certain lack of understanding of and confusion in relation to what the Listening Exercise or Every Story Matters exercise amounts to, so may I repeat that the Every Story Matters exercise is an essential part of your Inquiry. It supports the aims of your Inquiry because it is designed to, and will, gather individual experiences of the pandemic. It will analyse those experiences and the way in which, of course, they have been received to ensure that the conclusions are methodologically robust and then it will provide a set of comprehensive reports to the Inquiry’s legal process, so that they may be admitted into evidence and of course it will be disclosed to the Core Participants.

So this will assist you to obtain an even wider evidence base, not just about the human impact of the pandemic but also enabling you to reach robust findings and recommendations.

Attached to the counsel to the Inquiry note of 30 January was an annex, Annex F, and it contains a considerable amount of detail, including the extent of consultation with the Core Participants themselves, amongst others, the professional assistance being provided on a piloted basis in relation to research and analysis, communications, community engagement and, most importantly, the vital information which is that each and every person will be enabled to share their experience with the Inquiry through a web form or phone line assistance or on paper, also through community listening events and approaches, targeted approaches, which will be made in due course to be able to open up the line of communication with seldom heard groups and the digitally marginalised. All that will be supported by a very extensive media and communications campaign.

So a great deal of resource and time and energy has already gone into setting up this very extensive structure. More information will be provided in the coming weeks, including by way of a webinar.

Then, finally, in relation to the substantive topics, commemoration. Again, this is addressed in detail in annex F to the CTI note of 30 January. A series of meetings are in the process of being scheduled with the leads for the Bereaved Families for Justice groups and I think they anticipate meetings next week or very shortly thereafter to ask for their support in finding people who would be willing either to be filmed for the videos which, will form an integral part of the commemoration process, or to speak with artists to help the Inquiry team to shape the tapestry of which the annex talks.

Separately, my Lady, I believe that many of the Core Participants and members of the public have helped the Inquiry already with the issue of the commemorative art for the hearing centre room and we’re, of course, very grateful to them for their assistance.

My Lady, in summary, that matter and that important part of your Inquiry proceeds like the rest of it at pace.

The only other matters which I would like to raise with you are less substantive and more administrative. May we please have your permission to publish the Core Participants submissions and the CTI note. At the moment, of course, they are available to the Inquiry but they haven’t been publicly disclosed. In relation to the forthcoming hearings and the public hearing in Module 1, may I say that the public hearing in early June, if that is when you order it to take place, will be held at Dorland House, Paddington, W2.

Lastly, some of the Core Participants have sensibly suggested that there be a further preliminary hearing. We do have this in mind. If you order that one be held, further details will be provided, of course, in due course but there is the possibility, subject to your ruling and the availability of the various moving parts, to have a preliminary hearing at the end of March, around the 28th. If there is one, it will be online as with the current preliminary hearing.

My Lady, those are all the matters that I wish to raise with you by way of what I am afraid has become rather a lengthy opening, but I believe that they address all the matters which have been raised in the very helpful submissions that we have received from the Core Participants.

Lady Hallett: Thank you very much indeed, Mr Keith. I have been asked to take regular breaks for the benefit of the stenographer, who copes extraordinarily well with recording our words. It’s probably best, rather than interrupting Mr Weatherby’s submissions, if we break now. So I think we will break now. It’s 11.25 by my watch or thereabouts and we will return at 11.40.

Mr Keith: Thank you, my Lady.

(11.27 am)

(A short break)

(11.41 am)

Lady Hallett: Mr Weatherby.

Mr Weatherby: Good morning. Can you hear me okay?

Lady Hallett: I can, thank you, Mr Weatherby.