6. Submissions on Behalf of the Trades Union Congress by Ms Murphy

Ms Murphy: Good afternoon, my Lady.

If I may begin, please, with extending an apology on behalf of Ms Gallagher King’s Counsel and Mr Jacobs, who have prior professional commitments today. No discourtesy is intended, and I offer the important reassurance that my understudy arrangement is a temporary one.

Lady Hallett: I think I would like to reiterate my congratulations to you, Ms Murphy, on your recent appointment to the rank of King’s Counsel.

Ms Murphy: That’s very kind, my Lady, thank you.

My Lady, as you’re aware, I appear instructed by Thompsons Solicitors on behalf of the Trade Union Council, and it is meaningful to do so in a week when our clients and the trade union movement globally remember all workers who have lost their lives to workplace illness or injury, and who re-commit on 28 April every year to take action to reduce workplace injury and fatality.

The TUC’s commitment to assisting your Inquiry to the fullest extent of its resources falls squarely within this annual commitment to action, as they recognise that without lessons being identified they cannot be learned and the necessary change will not come.

My Lady, I have some very brief submissions, as most of the matters that concern us have been carefully addressed by others. We make first a few short observations and secondly, but again briefly, a submission of substance relating to the social care sector.

So, my Lady, the initial observations.

The Trade Union Council is cognisant and appreciative of the industry that your team has brought to bear to ensure that this is an Inquiry that will proceed at rapid pace. The TUC continues to support the Inquiry’s maintenance of a challenging timetable, while acknowledging and supporting the submissions made to you this afternoon with regard to the challenges that this in turn places upon the non-state core participants.

It is in that context that the TUC, in common with others from whom you have heard today, have been deeply concerned to hear that central government departments have failed to provide statements within the scope of the requests made of them, have offered insufficient detail, have caused your team to devote resources to making follow-up requests to address matters that they have omitted, and to expand on matters that had been included with insufficient detail.

We welcome Mr Keith King’s Counsel’s confidence that the issues have been addressed, but, my Lady, your Inquiry is of course entitled to the fullest possible co-operation and assistance from central government, and in particular such co-operation is of course essential if this process is to meet the laudable objectives that you have set for it, including specifically the effective participation of the bereaved and those we represent.

We are confident you, my Lady, will not tolerate the repetition or continuance of non-co-operation by central government, and we are equally reassured by your reference this afternoon to use your significant powers to ensure that co-operation, if that proves necessary.

My Lady, before I move off that topic, we note and request further clarification of the nine individuals who have not replied to Rule 9 requests and the six who have declined to provide responses.

If I might deal briefly with Mr Keith KC’s point 13, which arises from paragraphs 26 to 32 of the written submissions on behalf of the TUC, the list of bodies and the scope of Rule 9 requests to them.

My Lady, we do consider it sensible to comment once we’ve had the opportunity to consider the responses from the Local Government Association, so we say nothing further about that this afternoon.

So far as Dr Kirchelle is concerned, we’re grateful for the practical suggestion made by Mr Keith King’s Counsel, and we will follow up on the constructive offer made.

If I might then turn to the submission of substance, which relates to the list of issues or scope of Module 1, and specifically the nature of the planned scope pertaining to the social care sector within issue 4.

We are of course grateful for Mr Keith KC’s clarification that the prescient concerns raised in the context of Operation Cygnus in 2015 as to the capacity within the social care sector to permit the NHS to implement its proposed reverse triage plans will fall within the scope, and that addresses one aspect of the TUC’s submissions on this topic, at paragraphs 18 to 22 of our written submissions.

But more broadly, the TUC consider the interface between public health services and social care, and the structural problems within social care that made that interface so problematic during the pandemic, to be topics of critical, central importance to your consideration of pandemic preparedness and planning at a high level.

The concerns are not limited to sectoral or operational matters that can be raised with witnesses in later modules.

We have emphasised at paragraphs 20 to 22 structural problems that were or ought to have been identified in the pre-pandemic period, in the context specifically of pandemic risk management and preparedness.

By way of a very specific example, at paragraph 21 of our submissions, we have discussed the lack of structural preparedness in relation to data collection. As you will appreciate, my Lady, the national audit unit picked up in June 2020 that the non-availability of a mechanism for the collation of daily data from the social care sector caused real difficulty at the start of the outbreak.

The Inquiry has also received important evidence on this topic in the form of a statement dated 14 December 2022 – and the reference is INQ80743 – which we invite you to consider with care in relation to this aspect. That statement addresses multiple occasions when the escalating fragility of the social care sector was brought to the attention of the government, long before 2019, and specifically in the context of pandemic planning.

Structural issues going directly to the question, to use Mr Keith KC’s term of this morning, whether we were properly ready. This is of course a topic that directly affected an enormous proportion of those adversely affected by the pandemic.

The statement to which we have made reference informs that adult social services support over 1.1 million people receiving state funded social care, and those adult social services have, in addition, safety netting responsibility in relation to organisations delivering care outside the state sector. There are some 17,700 such organisations and, in addition, as at the 2011 census, 6.5 million people in the UK were carers.

All will be concerned by the issue of whether there was a structural lack of preparedness in relation to the social care sector.

This same statement informs that 1.54 million people worked in adult social care, a higher number than within the NHS, and the NHS has itself spoken clearly of the impact of the pressures in social care on delivery of health services. The relationship is an essential one, it is one of interdependence.

The point has been repeatedly made that both pandemic planning and the early response to this pandemic epitomise the under-recognition of social care on(?) the people needing it and the people working within it, and that social care was not well understood, nor the impact of swingeing austerity cuts affecting the sector.

Lord Kamall, Parliamentary Undersecretary at the Department of Health and Social Care, said in the Lords on 8 September 2022 that the government recognises that for a long time the social care sector has been treated like Cinderella, a poor relation to the health system; and the TUC press the point that your Inquiry should not replicate that imbalance, and must put considerations of social care, planning and resilience at the front and at the centre of Module 1.

We invite you to do so, my Lady, at this stage by reference to – by making amendments to the scope identified for Module 1, because there are of course implications for the witness lists and for the instruction of experts.

We do invite your careful consideration of this aspect and we’re grateful, my Lady, for your ongoing careful attention to the issues that we raise.

Unless there is anything further we can assist you with, those are our submissions.

Lady Hallett: Thank you very much indeed, Ms Murphy.

As you say, there are a number of matters there that you have raised and others have raised during the course of today, and I will consider them very carefully with the Inquiry team. Thank you very much for your help.

Mr Keith, any further comments from you?

Mr Keith: My Lady, I think only to offer that if of course there are any matters on which you would particularly like to hear me respond on, then I am available to address them. But obviously there are a number of matters here to which you will, we all know, be giving the closest consideration. Whether or not they require specific rulings is another matter, but I know that these will all be debated within the Inquiry team and be the subject of resolution by yourself in the usual way.

Lady Hallett: Thank you, Mr Keith.

I think the best thing is if I consider the submissions very carefully, obviously, and then consult with the Inquiry team and see the extent to which we can allay the concerns which have been raised today. As I have indicated, I will bear all the submissions made in mind, and see whether or not any rulings are necessary. I suspect, as you do, that rulings aren’t necessary, but obviously close co-operation with the core participants will be.

So, thank you, everybody, for attending today’s hearing.

I believe this may be the last hearing which we conduct remotely, although there may be one more preliminary hearing, but it’s certainly I hope the last hearing we will be conducting remotely as far as Module 1 is concerned. So on the next occasion we meet, I hope it will be in the hearing centre.

Thank you all very much indeed.

Mr Keith: Thank you, my Lady.

(2.50 pm)

(The hearing adjourned)