4. Submissions by Mr Jacobs

Mr Jacobs: Good afternoon, my Lady.

Baroness Hallett: Sorry, Mr Jacobs, I think I got the name wrong.

Mr Jacobs: Not at all, my Lady.

I represent the Trades Union Congress and the Northern Ireland Committee of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions. The TUC supports its 48 member unions which brings together approximately 5.5 million working people. Many of its member unions have members across England and the devolved nations, including in Northern Ireland.

The Northern Ireland Committee of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions represents affiliated membership in Northern Ireland and, for ease, my Lady, I will refer to it as the Northern Ireland Committee. It is the representative body for 34 trade unions with over 200,000 members across Northern Ireland and, in membership terms, it is the largest civil society organisation in Northern Ireland.

May I make one preliminary observation, my Lady, which is that Ms Dobbin spoke at the outset of her submissions, if I may so, in a sensitive and also compelling way as to how the Inquiry should approach the political sensitivities in Northern Ireland and the focus of the Inquiry and perhaps this Module in particular being on our shared humanity, and I would like to say that that is something with which we agree.

For the purposes of today, I intend to address just a few matters arising out of our written submissions and, of course, stand by the rest.

The first matter is timetabling. I will echo a submission made by Ms Campbell on behalf of the Covid Bereaved just a few moments ago and a submission made by myself and others this morning in Module 2B. The Inquiry has timetabled 14 days for oral hearings in this module. With time permitted for opening and closing statements, and assuming counsel to the Inquiry make such statements also, that will allow 12 or perhaps 13 days of oral evidence.

It is presently the only hearing stated to be taking place in Northern Ireland and focused exclusively on the pandemic in Northern Ireland.

Of course, we do not yet have witness statements, let alone a clear idea on witnesses, but we can say that, to us, 14 days seems extraordinarily short and, although you would have heard me made these points this morning, my Lady, I do feel that it is important that I repeat them in this Module.

As we see it there are two difficulties. The first is a problem of it appearing that the Northern Ireland hearing is the poorer relative with more robust consideration given in relation to Westminster decision making in module 2.

My Lady, I, of course, listened carefully to some of your opening remarks this afternoon and your assurances that the devolved nation modules, if I can call them that, will not be a side show, they will be a vital part of the hearings and devolved nations issues will also be considered in other modules. Let me make clear, we do not doubt those assurances for a moment.

But, we still say that the bare fact of such an apparently short hearing remains problematic. Significant issues will necessarily be left off the table, at least in relation to oral hearings and, with the current time estimate, it appears to us that it will be impossible for it to be otherwise.

The second related problem, my Lady, is the problem of being able to meaningfully test an array of complex issues in such a short timeframe. We recognise of course that an Inquiry of this scale must proceed in significant part with reference to written evidence but, even so, the current time estimate appears to us to be problematic. That is all the more so, given the points which we consider to be compelling, made by the Northern Ireland Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice as to the particular importance of this Module to Northern Ireland and also to its complexities.

At the very least, we ask that whatever practical arrangements the Inquiry is making for the hearings in Northern Ireland, it retains scope for extending the timetable. But as I observed this morning, you may, my Lady, wish to grasp the nettle now and extend the timetable, recognising that it is perhaps inevitable and, when it comes to the next preliminary hearing, it would be helpful if counsel to the Inquiry and others know that further time is available.

My Lady, I turn to Rule 9 requests. In our written submissions, we made observations in relation to four organisations but, for the purposes of my oral submissions, I’m going to focus on the Health and Safety Executive of Northern Ireland.

The TUC has invited a Rule 9 request to be directed in module 2 to the Health and Safety Executive and we understand that that is now in train. It appears to us that that is important because the HSE is a Great Britain-wide regulator for health and safety at work and it has a role to play in providing guidance to employers and also in the monitoring and enforcement of workplace safety, including non-pharmaceutical interventions.

In Module 2C, we say that a Rule 9 request should be made of the health safety executive for Northern Ireland. It is an executive non-departmental body sponsored by the Department for the Economy. It is the lead body responsible for the promotion of health and safety at work standards in Northern Ireland.

I understand from the observations made by Ms Dobbin this morning that no Rule 9 request is to be sent to the Health and Safety Executive of Northern Ireland and the reason for that is said to be that granular issues around enforcement of guidance in the workplace are not within the scope of Module 2C. My Lady, we firmly disagree.

The Health and Safety Executive of Northern Ireland, as I said, is the lead body responsible for the promotion of health and safety at work standards in Northern Ireland that, it appears to us, gives rise to important questions that do fall squarely within Module 2C. What did it know about the effectiveness of non-pharmaceutical interventions in the workplace and the guidance being published or not published by the Northern Ireland Government?

What did it know about the impact in the workplace of the virus but also of the non-pharmaceutical interventions upon protected and vulnerable groups?

Crucially, were concerns about those matters known to the Health and Safety Executive of Northern Ireland communicated to the Northern Ireland Government? Equally crucially, if they were communicated what governmental response was there?

Where the Health and Safety Executive of Northern Ireland needed Government assistance in relation to monitoring and enforcing non-pharmaceutical interventions did it get it? Was there adequate governmental co-operation?

To us, these all appear to be crucial questions of significant importance to Module 2C, to the political and administrative decision making of the Government.

We do not accept that the Health and Safety Executive of Northern Ireland or evidence from that organisation can be described as simply being granular issues around enforcement.

Workplace safety was crucial in the pandemic and should have been crucial to government and governmental and administrative decision making.

It was in the workplace that many would have caught the virus that resulted in a loss of life. It was also in the workplace that many of the unequal and disparate impacts were felt by frontline workers.

Deciding not to hear from or even, in fact, not to seek evidence from the lead regulator for workplace safety in Northern Ireland would, in our view, be a matter of concern.

Quite separately, if granular issues around the workplace enforcement of non-pharmaceutical interventions are not going to be considered in Module 2 or 2A, 2B and 2C, we ask that urgent consideration is given as to where those issues will be considered and that is something we have urged before.

Numerous sectors saw difficulties in workplace safety. In Northern Ireland, in particular, there were concerning outbreaks at food processing sites as early. As March 2020 Unite Northern Ireland regional officer Sean McKeever described:

“Food and retail workers are now frontline workers in the battle against the Covid-19 virus but are at risk of being sacrificed by our politicians. The Northern Ireland Executive’s shameful failure to bring forward any meaningful enforcement mechanisms whatsoever cannot be allowed to continue. The HSE is chronically under-resourced and understaffed to deal with the scale of this challenge. They no longer conducting inspections of workplaces, leaving workers to fend for themselves.”

My Lady, I say that is striking. Frontline workers, often low paid and in a workforce with a number of protected and vulnerable groups disproportionately overrepresented, working with their lives at risk and without any inspections of the places in which they work, without change that will happen again.

In the pandemic, non-pharmaceutical interventions in the workplaces were crucial and in a future pandemic they will be crucial again but non-pharmaceutical interventions in principle, without any effective means of monitoring or enforcement, is a fundamentally flawed system and we say it must be grappled with in this Inquiry. It is a key area for lessons to be learned.

So to summarise, my Lady, we say that evidence from the Health and Safety Executive for Northern Ireland absolutely is relevant to Module 2C, certainly in relation to its communications with Government. Quite separately, we are concerned by the idea that issues of workplace enforcement do not fall within this or other Module 2 modules and ask where it does fall.

My Lady, next and very briefly, the issue of strand tying hearings. Again, I raise this for the record, having raised it earlier but it is certainly our view that it will be important to have some opportunity to consider after Modules 2A, 2B and 2C the lessons that are to be learned across the four nations. Counsel to the Inquiry this morning in Module 2B spoke of it being, in that respect, a unique opportunity and that is something with which we absolutely agree.

Just finally, my Lady, the listening exercise. We wish to put on record that we strongly endorse the importance of the listening exercise. It will be important that the listening exercise captures the experiences of those at work and both the TUC and the Northern Ireland Committee stand ready to assist.

My Lady, those are my oral submissions for the purposes of today.

Baroness Hallett: I’m very grateful Mr Jacobs. You have made the concerns of those organisations you represent very clear and I shall obviously pursue them all but, in particular, I understand, having heard you this afternoon, the concerns about the Health and Safety Executive at work. So I will explore those matters with counsel to the Inquiry.

Thank you very much for all your submissions.

Ms Dobbin, do you have any submissions by way of response?