3. Ms Kate Bell

MS KATE BELL (affirmed).

Questions From Counsel to the Inquiry

Mr O’Connor: Could you give us your full name, please.

Ms Kate Bell: It’s Kate Bell.

Counsel Inquiry: Ms Bell, you are the assistant general secretary of the TUC.

Ms Kate Bell: I am.

Counsel Inquiry: I know you’ve worked for the TUC for some time. I think it may be right you didn’t hold that post during the pandemic?

Ms Kate Bell: That’s right, I was previously head of our rights, international, social and economics department.

Counsel Inquiry: I think that was a post that you had held since 2016?

Ms Kate Bell: That’s right.

Counsel Inquiry: You have provided the Inquiry, Ms Bell, with two statements. We’ll look at them both in the course of the next half an hour or so. First of all, there was a lengthy statement dated 24 May of this year.

Perhaps we could have it on screen, please. It’s INQ000215036.

Ms Bell, I’m sure you’re familiar with that statement.

Ms Kate Bell: I am.

Counsel Inquiry: We don’t need to go to the last page, but it’s been signed by you. Is that your statement?

Ms Kate Bell: It is.

Counsel Inquiry: Are the contents of it true to the best of your knowledge and belief?

Ms Kate Bell: To the best of my knowledge and belief.

Counsel Inquiry: Let’s now just look briefly at your second statement, which I mentioned while I was reading out that narrative. This is a much more recent statement, it’s dated 27 September this year. Again, we will go to some parts of this, but that’s the statement which contains a series of short narratives from members of your unions.

Ms Kate Bell: That’s correct.

Counsel Inquiry: Is it, insofar as it contains your own evidence, true to the best of your knowledge and belief?

Ms Kate Bell: To the best of my knowledge and belief, yes.

Counsel Inquiry: Thank you.

I want to start, Ms Bell, with what I think will be a brief overview of the organisation of the TUC and its aims and objectives. I say brief because it is, of course, a very well known organisation. It’s also true that you deal in some detail with the structures of the TUC in your statement, and we of course have that, so we don’t need to cover it in length with you orally.

In brief, we learn from your statement, first of all, there are 48 member unions within the TUC?

Ms Kate Bell: Yes.

Counsel Inquiry: And that comprises something like 5.5 million working people?

Ms Kate Bell: That’s right, it’s just over 5 now.

Counsel Inquiry: Those unions, those people, are drawn from all over the UK, so England and Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales?

Ms Kate Bell: So the TUC represents, yes, workers across the UK as far as national matters are concerned.

Counsel Inquiry: Just then descending into a little bit of detail, there is within the TUC an organisation called the Welsh TUC?

Ms Kate Bell: That’s part of our organisation, yes.

Counsel Inquiry: Exactly. And I think, as I understand your statement, you describe that that organisation, as part of the TUC, has, as it were, devolved responsibility for certain matters relating to Welsh employment relations?

Ms Kate Bell: Exactly, in relation to the Welsh Government, yes.

Counsel Inquiry: Rather separately, there are also the Scottish TUC and the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, the latter of which includes members both from Northern Ireland and Republic of Ireland; those two organisations are not part of the TUC in the same way as the Welsh TUC is?

Ms Kate Bell: That’s right, they’re independent organisations.

Counsel Inquiry: But no doubt you do work closely with them?

Ms Kate Bell: We work closely together in a formal body which is called the Council of the Isles which brings us together to discuss matters of common concern.

Counsel Inquiry: Yes. As I’ve said, the TUC is a very well known organisation and I’m sure we all know that the TUC represents working people and campaigns for their interests.

Ms Kate Bell: That’s right.

Counsel Inquiry: We’ve heard, of course, particularly in the last couple of days, about the disproportionate impact that Covid had on elderly people, many of whom would have been retired and not in the employment market, but it’s also of course true that Covid had a very grave impact on workers, some of whom, of course, were also elderly, and we’ve heard something of that in the narrative that I read out immediately before you gave evidence.

Many people of working age died from Covid. Your statement gives a figure of 15,000 people of working age who died; is that right?

Ms Kate Bell: That’s correct.

Counsel Inquiry: And many of those, as we’ve heard, were frontline workers, working in health, social care, transport, food processing and so on. Again, as has also been mentioned, many more of those workers caught Covid, no doubt many of them suffering amongst those who have long Covid, experiencing protracted symptoms.

Also many workers were severely impacted because of the nature of the work they were required to do. Again, we’ve heard something of that in the narrative document. Their working conditions changed dramatically during the pandemic.

For all of those things, we know from your statement, the TUC campaigned and represented those interests during the pandemic.

Perhaps we can just look at page 3 of your first statement, the lengthy statement, and look at paragraph 7, which is the bottom half of that page. You state at the beginning of paragraph 7:

“The TUC engaged in numerous interactions (and attempts at engaging) with the UK Government during the pandemic …”

Correspondence, meetings and so on.

Then you list seven particular focuses of that engagement. If we just look at them together, dialogue between unions and employers in the workplace, at a national and sectoral level. Then the second one, NPIs. We’ve heard something about – tell us a little about the particular concerns in regard to NPIs.

Ms Kate Bell: So we were particularly concerned around the guidance on safety at work. We met the government on numerous occasions and brought evidence to the government on how – before guidance was in place, how the ability to follow social distancing and other measures to protect workers at work was difficult due to the lack of guidance, and we repeatedly pressed the government to clarify its guidance, and in particular raised issues around mandatory publication of risk assessments, we talked about the need for specific risk assessments for those groups who were particularly at risk. And if you look at the last bullet point, that disparate impact of the pandemic on protected and vulnerable groups, was something that we were raising in our evidence around the guidance for workplace safety.

Counsel Inquiry: Yes.

The question of guidance relating to lockdowns perhaps also falls – clearly lockdown is one of the NPIs which you’ve probably already covered, but the next bullet point, PPE, again a recurring theme but something which the TUC was very active in campaigning about?

Ms Kate Bell: Absolutely, yes.

Counsel Inquiry: And perhaps the last one, that you haven’t mentioned so far, relating to schools, was that primarily from the point of view of those who worked in schools?

Ms Kate Bell: That’s right, so that was representing the views of our education unions, representing – both teachers, classroom assistants, headteachers, were raising the concerns around safety both for pupils and staff within schools.

Counsel Inquiry: Thank you, Ms Bell. We will, in the course of your evidence, touch on a number of those points, come back to them in more detail, but on a very general level, can you give us an idea of how successful you felt your engagement was with the government across these issues during the pandemic?

Ms Kate Bell: Well, I think going into the pandemic it’s important to note there was no regular or overarching forum for trade unions to engage with the government, and one of the calls we made on repeated occasions was for a kind of overarching forum bringing together unions, government and business to discuss the NPIs and the other measures that would be needed to be taken in the workplace.

I think our engagement was successful in some ways in convincing the government to – you know, of the need for clearer guidance, but there were clearly issues we raised which were not taken up in that guidance, and those included the need for specific risk assessments for black and minority ethnic workers, sector-specific issues.

We’d called for a bus safety summit very early in the pandemic; that’s not a call that was heeded, and we know about the devastating impact on workers in that area of the sector.

We called for areas which could have given a greater confidence in the return to work, so for example the publication of risk assessments and the need for workers to have a clear sense of what their own employer was doing.

We called repeatedly for the need for additional resources for inspection and better enforcement, and of course, as I think we may go on to discuss, the need for better support for self-isolation, the need for better financial support, was something we repeatedly raised and we did not think we had an adequate response to.

Counsel Inquiry: Yes, well, as you say, I’m going to come on to that last issue in just a moment.

Before we leave the general picture, I suppose we should observe that one thing the government did do, and you refer to this in your statement, is of course fund the furlough scheme and the related sort of sister schemes to it, which was obviously of great benefit to the working population?

Ms Kate Bell: Absolutely. And that was something we called for, a good area of engagement with government where we did have that union/business/government engagement which we thought would have benefited other interventions across the rest of the pandemic response.

Counsel Inquiry: Yes.

As I said, let’s come back to that point now, which of course we – well, in fact, we heard something about this issue of self-isolation and sick pay yesterday when we looked at a medical article before the pandemic, forecasting, as it were, that workers in care homes would be amongst those who would be reluctant, perhaps, to stop working even if they did get ill with some sort of respiratory virus.

Then we’ve heard more in the summary that I just read about this particular issue of workers on the one hand knowing they’re ill, knowing they’re infectious, being told they need to isolate, but on the other hand finding it very difficult at least to make the financial sacrifice that that involves.

If we look at again, please, your longer statement, page 44, this is where you pick this theme up.

It’s paragraph 147 of the statement. 147 – I might have the wrong page. Yes.

So you say, the assertion you have there:

“… the effectiveness of self-isolation was hampered by the availability of adequate financial support for the very many who have limited or no right to adequate sick pay.”

That was an issue, as I think you’ve said, that you campaigned on, as we will see, from the very earliest days of the pandemic?

Ms Kate Bell: That’s right.

Counsel Inquiry: I’m going to take you to a document, we’ll talk a little bit about the particular issues, but in general terms did in fact the government ever provide what you regarded as adequate financial compensation for isolating during the course of the pandemic?

Ms Kate Bell: No, this was an area where we did not see sufficient progress and we think that had devastating implications.

Counsel Inquiry: Let’s go, then, Ms Bell, to a document – can we call it up, please – it’s INQ000192239.

I know this is a document you’re familiar with, Ms Bell. It’s a TUC press release, is it not?

Ms Kate Bell: That’s correct, from 3 March 2020.

Counsel Inquiry: Yes, so the first thing we can see is the date, which is 3 March 2020, so what’s that, three weeks even before the first lockdown?

Ms Kate Bell: That’s right.

Counsel Inquiry: We see the bullet points there, the fact that it said:

“Nearly 2 million workers aren’t eligible for Statutory Sick Pay, including a third of zero-hours contract workers.”

And your call, the TUC’s call, for:

“… emergency legislation to provide sick pay for all workers from day one of sickness, regardless of how much they earn.”

Ms Kate Bell: That’s right. And there was a third call in that press release for the level of statutory sick pay to be raised to enable people to be able to take time off work and claim statutory sick pay without falling into financial hardship.

Counsel Inquiry: Yes, so let’s come on to that. There is a reference to the letter, which I think we can skip over because we’ll get to the detail, but you see the paragraph starting “Currently”, so:

“Currently, nearly 2 million of the lowest-paid workers don’t earn enough to qualify for statutory sick pay.”

So, just pausing there, there was a threshold, was there not, that unless one earned a certain amount of money – which was £120 a week, was that right?

Ms Kate Bell: That’s right.

Counsel Inquiry: Then one simply wasn’t entitled to sick pay, statutory sick pay, at all?

Ms Kate Bell: That’s right, it’s a remnant of the national insurance system, it’s called the lower earnings limit, and if you don’t earn enough you don’t qualify for any statutory sick pay.

Counsel Inquiry: So people in that category simply – if they were isolating, they wouldn’t have got the statutory sick pay at all?

Ms Kate Bell: They would have no statutory sick pay.

Counsel Inquiry: The bullet points you then set out refer to: 34% of workers on zero hours contracts; one in ten women in work, more; than a fifth of workers aged 16 to 24; and more than a quarter of workers aged 65 and over.

So it would seem, certainly from those bullet points, that this problem was focusing in on women, the very youngest people in the workplace, and also the very oldest people in the workplace.

Ms Kate Bell: That’s right. And there are other disproportionate impacts which we highlighted in later reports, so for example, black women are twice as likely to be on zero-hours contracts as white men, so that exclusion of sick pay for those in insecure work has disproportionate impacts on black communities as well.

Counsel Inquiry: If we can scroll up a little bit further, please, because we then see what it was that you were calling for at this – perhaps let’s remind ourselves – very, very early stage, perhaps it’s even too early to describe it as being during the pandemic, in those first few days of March.

So the first point you were calling for was:

“Emergency legislation to ensure Statutory Sick Pay coverage for all workers from the first day of sickness, regardless of how much they earn.”

So if we just separate those two points. The “first day of sickness”, even those who were entitled to statutory sick pay weren’t entitled to it, at that stage, for the first three days, I think –

Ms Kate Bell: There was a three-day waiting period. Then that bullet – that specific bit was addressed in the budget of, I think, 11 March 2020.

Counsel Inquiry: That’s my note. So in fact just over a week after this press release –

Ms Kate Bell: Yeah.

Counsel Inquiry: – that particular point. So if you were above that threshold of £120 a week, there wasn’t the three-day gap –

Ms Kate Bell: The three-day waiting period was removed for coronavirus.

Counsel Inquiry: But the second part of that bullet point “regardless of how much they earn”, there you are calling for a sort of abolition of that threshold; and did that ever happen?

Ms Kate Bell: That never happened.

Counsel Inquiry: The next point, you’re calling for:

“An increase in the amount of sick pay to the equivalent of the real living wage of £320 a week.”

So does this address a concern that, even for those who were entitled to statutory sick pay, the amount was very low?

Ms Kate Bell: Absolutely. So at that time average earnings were around £500 a week, so you can see it would be a significant income drop to go to £90 a week, so we called for the level to be increased so that people could afford to not be at work.

Counsel Inquiry: I was going to come to this, I don’t think we have introduced this yet, but the level of sick pay for those entitled to it, I think it was £94.25 a week?

Ms Kate Bell: That’s right.

Counsel Inquiry: So far below what, as you say, the average worker would have been earning, which introduced its own question of whether people could afford to go on to that?

Ms Kate Bell: Absolutely. And we’d said in that press release, in fact, as it stands many people won’t be able to meet basic living costs if they stay home from work.

Counsel Inquiry: Then just skipping down to the fourth bullet point, you call for an emergency fund to assist employers with the cost and to cover workers not currently eligible for statutory sick pay.

So obviously there might have been various ways in which your concerns could have been met, but an emergency fund sounds a little bit like the furlough scheme and a sort of block of money being allocated to solve this problem during the pandemic?

Ms Kate Bell: Yes, so employers are responsible for the costs of statutory sick pay, so we were suggesting that government may need to offer them some additional financial support in this particular emergency situation.

Counsel Inquiry: There was an amount of money allocated by the government to address this problem, but it came much later; is that right?

Ms Kate Bell: That’s right. So in – I think in 28 September, the government introduced –

Counsel Inquiry: Just pause there, of 2020?

Ms Kate Bell: Of 2020, sorry – the government introduced the £500 Test and Trace Support Payment. That’s not something they’d consulted the TUC on and was administered through local authorities in a way where people, rather than getting it through their normal work processes, through the normal process of sick pay, they needed to apply from that payment. And when we did some research into the operation of that payment, we found that 70% of applications for a Test and Trace Payment were being rejected by local authorities, and later on that was the first series of freedom of information requests we did into the operation of that scheme, because we were worried it was not providing the support needed, the second set we found that only a fifth of workers had actually heard of that payment, whereas of course sick pay is well known about as a normal workplace intervention.

Counsel Inquiry: So on its face the £500 Payment was the type of level that you had been calling for, but the problem with the scheme lay in the accessibility of the funds for workers?

Ms Kate Bell: It was, of course, a step forward that some financial support was made available, and of a, you know, magnitude which provided more support, but the complicated application process, the discretionary nature and the fact that funds were limited for local authorities, so some people were applying and being told, you know, “There’s no money left”, meant that we didn’t think this was an adequate form of financial support.

Counsel Inquiry: Did you discover the amount of money that was made available by the Treasury for this scheme? Let me suggest a figure which is in your witness statement, £50 million, and how did that compare, to your mind, with the types of funding that had been given, for example, to the furlough scheme and Eat Out to Help Out and these other large schemes during the pandemic?

Ms Kate Bell: Well, I think it was very clear that it was inadequate. As our research went on to show, many people were being turned down for this financial support.

Counsel Inquiry: That was September 2020 and you’ve explained the freedom of information requests and so on that you made after that date. Did you continue to campaign on this issue throughout the pandemic?

Ms Kate Bell: Yes, we published numerous reports on it. If I just find my note, I have a list of them somewhere.

Counsel Inquiry: In some –

Ms Kate Bell: But we published numerous reports on it, we continued to highlight the issue, we continued to try to undertake research and – with workers to understand the impact. We also worked with business organisations to try to put pressure on the government to fund an adequate statutory sick pay scheme and to remove that lower earnings limit. So it’s something we raised, I think, in – I would be confident in saying in almost every interaction we had with ministers and civil servants.

Lady Hallett: Can I pause you both there, please. We do have another module where we’re going to be looking at government support, Mr O’Connor.

Mr O’Connor: Yes.

Lady Hallett: I think probably we’ve had sufficient on this for this module.

Mr O’Connor: I was about to move on to other issues, my Lady.

Lady Hallett: Thank you.

Mr O’Connor: Let’s move on, Ms Bell, to impact issues, and in a later part of your statement, the long statement, you cover various particularly vulnerable groups, and describe some of the particular impacts which you became aware of as an organisation that they were suffering during the pandemic, and steps you took to try and address those issues.

So can we go, first of all, please, to page 78 of your statement. I may have the numbers slightly wrong. I’m looking for paragraph – yes, sorry, can we go to the page before, please. Yes, so paragraph 258.

At paragraph 258 you list a series of reports that the TUC produced during the pandemic relating to the impact of the pandemic on BME workers, and we can see there, I won’t read them out, that the dates cover the period of the pandemic.

I’m just going to ask you a few questions about the second of those reports, Dying on the Job - Racism and risk at work, which was published by the TUC in July 2020.

For those purposes, can we go, please, to paragraph 265 of the witness statement, a page or two on.

You describe there, Ms Bell, a call for evidence in June 2020; is that right?

Ms Kate Bell: That’s right.

Counsel Inquiry: Which was responded to, you say, by 1,200 or more workers. What were the key conclusions drawn, the key pieces of evidence given in that report which are set out there?

Ms Kate Bell: Well, I think this was clearly showing the disproportionate impact on BME workers. So this was a call for evidence, so it was self-reported, but one in five of those responded said they had been treated unfairly at work because of their ethnicity during the pandemic. Around one in six said they’d been put at more risk of exposure to coronavirus because of their ethnic background. And they described things like being forced to do frontline work that white colleagues had refused to do. They also talked about being denied access to proper personal protective equipment, refused risk assessments, and singled out to do high-risk work. And I do have an example from one particular worker which I could share with you, if that’s appropriate.

Counsel Inquiry: Yes, do, please.

Ms Kate Bell: So this was a member of the bakers union, and she says she’s black British, she’s a middle-aged mother of one, and had worked for her employer for almost seven years. Her husband had very sadly passed away from Covid. And then she was asked to – she says:

“I was informed by my employer that I would be responsible for the lateral flow Covid testing of contractors and visitors to our busy site. I refused, I expressed my fear, grief and safety concerns to my line manager. I was informed it was a reasonable request.”

And she says:

“My grief, trauma, ethnicity, age and multiple Covid Infections did not trigger any reviews, specific assessments or compassion from my employer.”

And she goes on to describe how she then caught Covid multiple times and suffered as a result of that.

Counsel Inquiry: Let’s move on, Ms Bell, to another one of the areas of concern that you describe in your statement, and that’s pregnant women and mothers.

So I’m now looking at paragraph 271 of the statement. In fact, if we can – that’s the start of that section – go on, please, to paragraph 275, because it’s there that you refer to a report published by the TUC in June 2020 entitled Pregnant and precarious: new and expectants mums’ experiences. This again the results of a survey, this time 3,400 people, pregnant women and mothers, responded. But if we can just draw out a bit and see the bullet points, do we see that the report highlighted that one in four pregnant women and new mothers had experienced unfair treatment or discrimination at work, including, for example, being singled out for redundancy or furlough, their rights being routinely disregarded, feeling unsafe at work, and so on? Also suggestions that they had been forced to stop work; they were the first in a workforce to be told to leave because of – when there were issues around reducing the workforce because of Covid. Those were the types of issues, were they, that pregnant women and mothers reported experiencing to you?

Ms Kate Bell: That’s right, and the Royal College of Midwives, who is one of our affiliates, were repeatedly reporting concerns from May 2020 onwards about a lack of clear guidance for keeping pregnant women safe.

Counsel Inquiry: Yes. Sticking with women generally, I’d like to go on, please, to paragraph 280 of your statement. You list there some very striking statistics about women in the workforce during the pandemic, which are worth noting. You say:

“Of the 3,200,000 workers at highest risk of exposure to COVID-19, 77% are women.”

77% of healthcare workers were women, 83% of the social care workforce, and 70% of those working in education.

“Mothers are more likely to be key workers than fathers or non-parents, 39% of working mothers were key workers before this crisis began, compared to 27% of the working population as a whole.”

As I say, striking statistics. Were those issues that the TUC campaigned on during the pandemic?

Ms Kate Bell: That’s right. The overrepresentation of women in many key worker sectors was something we were raising, and therefore the disproportionate risk on them. And also pulling out issues like the lack of suitable PPE for women, so Prospect members, for example, reporting that even before the Covid Inquiry that women were being – sorry, the Covid pandemic, the lockdown, reporting that women were being overlooked when it came to appropriate PPE.

Counsel Inquiry: Ms Bell, thank you.

I want now, as I said I would, to go – this is the last series of questions I’m going to ask you – I want to go back to your second statement.

You have read a passage from it, we had a passage from it in the summary I read before you gave evidence, but I want to now just look at a different part of it, which records the experiences of a worker in the care sector. I’m going to read it through and then ask you just a few questions.

So for those who want to follow, it’s paragraph 4 of this statement. It starts on page 2.

Lady Hallett: You’re not going to read the whole of the paragraph?

Mr O’Connor: I’m sorry?

Lady Hallett: Are you going to read the whole of the paragraph?

Mr O’Connor: Well, I was going to just read it through, madam, but perhaps I can take it more shortly.

Let me do it this way, Ms Bell, because I know you’re familiar with this passage. It refers to a worker in the care sector, the experience of having to work in the early days or in the autumn of 2020, experiencing a sense of isolation in the care home, dealing with patients dying of Covid, how that relates to the experience of then having to go home, concern for the family and so on.

Those sorts of experiences, were they something that you found reported to you during the pandemic?

Ms Kate Bell: Yes, I think so, and I think you can see that throughout this statement, and I think you can see kind of the terrible emotional toll for many of these workers of working in a pandemic, whether that was the awful impact of, as this worker, watching somebody die in a care home without their family, whether it was the consistent worry of perhaps taking the virus home to your family, or whether it was the uncertainty which, you know, caused by some of the issues we’ve talked about previously, of not knowing what support you were meant to have in the workplace, not having clear guidance in place, and therefore sort of feeling like you were at the whim of an uncertain system and some managerial discretion.

Counsel Inquiry: One other theme that comes through from this passage and also from some others in your statement is a feeling amongst care workers and NHS workers of something close to resentment at the public clapping during the pandemic. Can you tell us a little about that?

Ms Kate Bell: I think it does come through, and I think “resentment” is not quite the right word –

Counsel Inquiry: Tell me –

Ms Kate Bell: – but perhaps a feeling that it didn’t – that people could not understand the scale of what they were experiencing.

Lady Hallett: They were underappreciated.

Ms Kate Bell: That they were underappreciated, underappreciated the scale of what they were experiencing, the lack of clarity or guidance that they needed in order to do their jobs, and of course their long-running concerns before the pandemic, which we have talked about, about their pay and conditions not being – claps, you know, claps don’t pay the bills, as many workers have been chanting this year.

Mr O’Connor: Yes.

Yes, thank you very much, Ms Bell. As I’ve said, we’re very grateful for those two statements you’ve provided. We’ve got them in writing, and it’s been very useful to hear you touch on some of the points today.

The Witness: Thank you.

Mr O’Connor: My Lady, those are all the questions I had for Ms Bell. I don’t believe there are any –

Lady Hallett: I don’t believe there are any –

Mr O’Connor: – questions from core participants.

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

The Witness: Thank you.

(The witness withdrew)

Mr O’Connor: My Lady, we’re going to move straight on to the next witness, who is Mr Adeyemi.

Lady Hallett: I gather you’ve flown in this morning?

The Witness: Yes, my Lady.

Lady Hallett: Thank you very much. I hope you’re not too bleary eyed.

The Witness: No, no, I’m looking forward to this actually, thank you very much.