Transcript of Module 2 Public Hearing on 13 October 2023

(10.00 am)

(Proceedings delayed)

(10.04 am)

Lady Hallett: Mr Keith.

Mr Keith: Good morning, my Lady. May I please call Alex Thomas.

1. Mr Alex Thomas

MR ALEX THOMAS (affirmed).

Questions From Lead Counsel to the Inquiry

Mr Keith: Could you give the Inquiry, please, your full name.

Mr Alex Thomas: Alex Thomas.

Lead Inquiry: Mr Thomas, thank you for the assistance that you have already provided to the Inquiry by way of the provision of an expert report, largely focused upon the core political and administrative decision-making which is the focus of this module.

You prepared that report in advance, of course, of Module 2. Did you, as we can see there, provide a statement at the bottom of the first page confirming it’s your own work and that the facts are within your knowledge and of course acknowledging your duty to provide independent evidence?

Mr Alex Thomas: Yes, I did.

Lead Inquiry: You are, as it happens, a programme director at a non-partisan think tank called the Institute for Government?

Mr Alex Thomas: I am.

Lead Inquiry: What is the Institute for Government, please?

Mr Alex Thomas: The Institute for Government, as you say, is a non-partisan think tank founded about 15 years ago with the objective of making government more effective.

Lead Inquiry: You are a programme director there. Do you still do the heavy lifting, or are you in a senior management responsibility role?

Mr Alex Thomas: I lead our work on the civil service and policy making. That involves leading a small team of six or seven people, of researchers. They do a lot of the heavy lifting but I do do research and analysis myself.

Lead Inquiry: Whilst you give evidence, Mr Thomas, could I please remind you to keep your answers as slow as you humanly can.

Mr Alex Thomas: I will do my best.

Lead Inquiry: Is, therefore, your report the product solely of your own research, opinions, conclusions and views, or have you drawn upon work and research done by members of your IFG team?

Mr Alex Thomas: The report is a collection of the most relevant research that we, as a IFG team, have done. Some of it is my own work, my team’s work, but it does reflect contributions and analysis from colleagues, but all of which I would stand by based on my own judgement and experience.

Lead Inquiry: The Institute for Government has already published, has it not, during the course of the pandemic, a number of articles, reports and pieces of learning in relation to aspects of the government’s response?

Mr Alex Thomas: Yes.

Lead Inquiry: From March 2020 through in fact to December 2021, have you either contributed to or published yourself a number of reports looking at the government and civil service, touching upon issues such as the government’s initial response, the Prime Minister’s management style, coronavirus announcements, confusion over lockdowns and the imposition of tier restrictions, governance, the relaxation of rules, and so on? So really across the wide, broad breadth of the government’s response.

Mr Alex Thomas: That’s correct. The way we produce work at the IFG is a mix of reflective research reports, of which I’ve authored or been a co-author of some directly focused on the pandemic, others that touch on aspects of the pandemic, but also more short-term, reactive, what we call comment pieces, which are, you know, 800 to 1000 words responding to events as they emerged over the course of the pandemic, but also across the whole of government business.

Lead Inquiry: In the interests of transparency, do you confirm that in fact you were previously a civil servant from 2003 to the end of 2019, and during that time, part of that time, from 2011 to 2019, were you a senior civil servant?

Mr Alex Thomas: That’s correct.

Lead Inquiry: In the course of your job as a senior civil servant and before that a civil servant, did you work in a number of government departments, including what was then Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the Cabinet Office, the Department of Health and Social Care, the Cabinet Office again, and ultimately I think you concluded your career in the civil service in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs?

Mr Alex Thomas: That’s correct.

Lead Inquiry: All right.

Does your report focus on the “how” of government? That is to say how it works, how efficient it is, and its capacity, its ability to do things, as opposed to the policies that it may produce from time to time?

Mr Alex Thomas: It does. The remit of the Institute for Government as a whole is more about the “how” of government than the policy “what” of government. We tend to take the government’s objectives as stated and then work on the administration of them and how to make them more effective. That’s reflected in the evidence I’ve provided.

Lead Inquiry: Do you tell the government what specifically it should do, or do you comment on the capacity and capability of the things that it has done?

Mr Alex Thomas: We do both. So we will analyse what government has done, while making recommendations about how to improve the processes of government.

Lead Inquiry: To improve the processes of government or to take specific decisions differently in the future?

Mr Alex Thomas: I think there is inevitably something of a blurred line between the policy objectives of government and the processes in which they administer those policy decisions, but our core work and my core work would be taking the government’s objectives as stated and then how best to translate them.

Sometimes, take for example work on an unrelated policy like net zero, the work of the Institute for Government takes as an assumption that successive governments have wanted to take action on reducing carbon emissions in the UK. We might then make recommendations about how best to do that.

Lead Inquiry: I’d like to commence the substantive part of your evidence by examining one after the other the various government entities or departments or bodies that played the greatest role in the government’s response to the pandemic. So we’re going to start, if I may, with the Cabinet Office.

Could we have, please, back up on the screen from Module 1 INQ000204014, our much beloved spaghetti-gram.

You will see at the top of the page, Mr Thomas, the Prime Minister, underneath whom there is the Cabinet, and then under that the Cabinet Office, and the Cabinet secretariat. I needn’t trouble you for the moment with COBR, we’ll be coming back to that, and obviously SAGE as well in yellow, again to which we’ll be returning to in due course.

The Cabinet Office sits at the very heart of government, does it not?

Mr Alex Thomas: Yes, it does.

Lead Inquiry: Is it indeed a multi-headed hydra, because it has a large number of moving parts within it, a collection of secretariats and the like?

Mr Alex Thomas: Yes, it has for a very long, perhaps forever, been almost impossible to draw an organogram, organisation chart of the Cabinet Office, because by its nature it is fluid and the way I put it in my evidence is that it responds to the power structures of the day.

Lead Inquiry: Could you elaborate on that? Is that a reference to, I suppose, the Cabinet Office’s role in responding to the various directions which may be placed upon it by the Prime Minister, other government departments, or external crises?

Mr Alex Thomas: I think that’s correct. I suppose when I describe it like that, I was thinking more about the internal dynamic in the Cabinet Office, which is principally focused on the Prime Minister, and on the political side, and the Cabinet Secretary and head of the civil service on the administrative civil service side. Those are the two core nodes around which the Cabinet Office operates, but there is, you know, a changing – over the course of years and decades there has been a changing cast of characters around a national security adviser, a permanent secretary in the Cabinet Office, a chief operating officer or chief executive, a minister for the Cabinet Office, a chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. I won’t go on, but each of these individuals tends to have a particular place and authority in the system to which the Cabinet Office institutionally, I found in my time there, will respond.

Lead Inquiry: So would it be fair to say that administratively and politically the Cabinet Office is a very fluid organism, it needs to change the direction in which it faces depending on who is in the seat of power within the Cabinet Office and who outside the Cabinet Office is making demands of it?

Mr Alex Thomas: Yes. I think there are certain core functions that continue, and have more or less organisational stability, a secretariat function, a civil contingencies function, to which we will no doubt return, you know, the sort of administrative and corporate headquarters of the civil service, if you like. But the actual way those are manifested has tended to change with time, which is reflected in, at times, dramatic reductions in the number of civil servants in the Cabinet Office, and, over recent years, dramatic increases in the numbers of civil servants in the Cabinet Office.

Lead Inquiry: And may the Cabinet Office be usefully divided into two broad parts? You’ve got those parts of the Cabinet Office by way of the secretariats which produce policy and take decisions, for example the National Security Secretariat, which you’ve mentioned, the domestic or economic secretariats, the Civil Contingencies Secretariat, formerly part of the CCS, but it’s now been changed, and then, by contrast, the more functional side of the Cabinet Office, so dealing with things like procurement, project management, human resources, digital resources and so on; is that a fair distinction?

Mr Alex Thomas: That’s correct, and the former grouping would tend to tilt itself towards the Prime Minister and the collective Cabinet responsibility, although principally the Prime Minister, the latter towards one of the ministers in the Cabinet Office, whoever had the responsibility for those functions.

There is a third, even more amorphous grouping of policy teams in the Cabinet Office. For example, there’s a minister for veterans’ affairs at the moment. They will have a support team that sits in the Cabinet Office. There is now, since 2010, a constitutional capability in the Cabinet Office. So there are core teams that are more like line departments, if you like, but happen to be located, for various reasons, in the Cabinet Office.

Lead Inquiry: In general terms, where does much of the United Kingdom Government crisis machinery sit?

Mr Alex Thomas: The co-ordinated response sits in the Cabinet Office and in the Civil Contingencies Secretariat.

Lead Inquiry: Does it therefore follow that in a crisis, for example a viral pandemic, that the Cabinet Office plays a primary – I deliberately say a primary – role in responding to the crisis?

Mr Alex Thomas: That’s correct.

Lead Inquiry: How important in a crisis is the role of the Cabinet Secretary, the body or the person, the role or the person to whom you made reference a few moments ago?

Mr Alex Thomas: Very important, partly because they are the principal adviser to the Prime Minister, and reflect, if you like, the sharp end of civil service advice to the Prime Minister; partly because, more often than not in recent times, they are the head of the civil service, and so the person who is ultimately responsible for mobilising civil service and administrative capacity. Partly also, with relevance to Covid, because the Cabinet Secretary was also the National Security Adviser, who has particular responsibilities around the national security response in a crisis.

Lead Inquiry: So the Cabinet Secretary, in truth, performs a number of different, perhaps not altogether consistent, roles?

Mr Alex Thomas: I think they can be consistent. Whether the ability to do them can be held in one person, however talented, is up for debate. A personal reflection on the Cabinet Secretary is that there – it is in one sense very important for the Cabinet Secretary and the head of the civil service to be the same person, embodying the best advice to the Prime Minister and the best administrative response of the state, but those jobs require quite different capabilities and skills. So there’s ongoing debate about whether those roles should be merged or not.

Lead Inquiry: It may be self-evident, Mr Thomas, but because the Cabinet Secretary, Janus-faced, has to face towards the Prime Minister and the civil service, for which he or she is responsible, as well as the national security infrastructure, not only is that a difficult role to perform, but it requires a distinct ability to be able to bring together all those various disparate parts, synthesise the information that they are providing and bring it together for the Prime Minister?

Mr Alex Thomas: That’s correct. I should also add the Cabinet Secretary is also, clearly, the secretary to the Cabinet, so has a Cabinet-facing role as well.

Lead Inquiry: Indeed.

Mr Alex Thomas: Which, you know, is important both constitutionally and practically. But yes, being at the pinnacle of all of those different aspects of civil service in the state is, you know, a vital and very difficult role.

Lead Inquiry: You have obviously been given access to – and we’ll come to this in a moment – the WhatsApps produced by Mr Cummings and the entries into Sir Patrick Vallance’s evening notes, as well as, in fact, the dairies of others and text messages from other people. At a very high level, they show the remarkable difficulty of the job of Cabinet Secretary, and in particular the way in which the Cabinet Secretary is obliged to try to operate institutional levers of power to try to make the system work, to try to bring it all together to enable the government to best respond in a crisis.

How important is the ability to exercise those institutional levers of power?

Mr Alex Thomas: It is very important. And like so many things in the British system, it is more amorphous and sometimes unclear exactly what authority the Cabinet Secretary has. There is a parallel between the Prime Minister’s primus inter pares, first amongst equals, role with his or her Cabinet, and the Cabinet Secretary’s role with his – always has been a his – permanent secretary colleagues and colleagues within the Cabinet Office.

One of the things I would argue that hinders the Cabinet Secretary’s ability to respond in normal times as well as in crises is a lack of clarity over exactly what authority the Cabinet Secretary has over the other levers of government, all of which have their own permanent secretaries, all of whose primary responsibility is to their Secretaries of State. That is, to some extent, a function of the constitutional set-up of the United Kingdom, but also creates, I would argue, administrative weaknesses.

That said, in a crisis, there is a “rally round the Cabinet Secretary” effect, but as time goes on clearly policy and administrative differences and difficulties can make it hard – you know, even harder for the Cabinet Secretary to organise and assert themselves.

Lead Inquiry: Does the lack of a structural clarity, that is to say a lack of any written policy or protocol or constitutional arrangement, which sets out the limits of the Cabinet Secretary’s role and his or her powers, mean that an even greater premium is placed upon the personal authority of that Cabinet Secretary, whoever he or she may be?

Mr Alex Thomas: Yes, because, as I say, the lack of formal powers, I don’t think those can make up for personal authority and status, but I think where, you know, a Cabinet Secretary might have come in, you know, new to the job or there might be some questions over their authority – I mean, Simon Case himself has acknowledged that there’s no job description for a Cabinet Secretary, and so to that extent they will be making it up as they go along and reliant on their own status with their colleagues and – in the civil service. And, critically, with the Prime Minister.

Lead Inquiry: Just to be clear, you’ve referred to Simon Case. Is Mr Case the current incumbent Cabinet Secretary, was he appointed in fact Cabinet Secretary in the autumn of 2020, following Mark Sedwill, now Lord Sedwill?

Mr Alex Thomas: That’s correct.

Lead Inquiry: In general terms, the material, the WhatsApp, the diary material, the text messages, show a distinct degree of dysfunction, unhappiness or loss of confidence surrounding the role of the Cabinet Secretary, in particular during the first few months of the crisis. To what extent, in your opinion, did the loss of confidence in the Cabinet Secretary have an impact upon the government’s ability to respond efficiently, properly and in good time to the various specific crises and decisions that it had to make?

Mr Alex Thomas: So, I mean, from the material I’ve seen, I agree with you that they demonstrate a loss of confidence in the Cabinet Secretary in two particular individuals. I would only say from what I’ve seen two, but they are two very important individuals: the Prime Minister and his most senior adviser, Dominic Cummings. So I can’t speak to a wider systemic loss of confidence in the Cabinet Secretary, but I would say that if, you know, if it is correct that the Prime Minister in particular did not have confidence in the performance and abilities of his most senior civil servant and principal civil service adviser, that would make it very difficult for the Cabinet Secretary to do their job effectively, which would obvious have knock-on consequences for the coherence, organisation and responsiveness of the system.

Lead Inquiry: Who has ultimate, indeed sole responsibility for the appointment of his or her Cabinet Secretary?

Mr Alex Thomas: Well, therein lies a tale. The simple answer to your question is the Prime Minister. And it’s for the reason that I said, which is that any Cabinet Secretary who loses the confidence of their Prime Minister won’t last very long, and ultimately it’s the Prime Minister who selects a Cabinet Secretary when they’re appointed.

Some Cabinet Secretaries have been appointed through more or less open appointment processes, so there is an aspect of kind of the usual, if elevated, civil service appointment process, involving the First Civil Service Commissioner, and so on, but it would be fair to say that’s an opaque process that ultimately lands on the Prime Minister’s desk.

Lead Inquiry: We’re going to look in due course at some of the – more specifically some of the decision-making, particularly in the first few months of the pandemic. But by way of preface, Mr Thomas, in general terms, in those first few months, so particularly February, March, April, May, how would you rate the structural performance of the Cabinet Office in its ability to be able to deal with the emerging and then the actual crisis?

Mr Alex Thomas: So from what I’ve seen it appears to me to be chaotic. Some – many – talented individuals working extremely hard, extremely long hours, but not in a decision-making structure that was good either at responding quickly and authoritatively to rapidly developing external events or synthesising complex material that was coming in from scientists, economic advisers, other government departments. We may well, I’m sure, get on to some of the specifics, but the responsiveness and the ability to synthesise seem to me to be somewhat lacking.

Lead Inquiry: In your report, you make the point that it is vital that the Cabinet Office and Number 10 act in lockstep. Very evidently, that ability to work together is a reflection in part of the way in which you’ve described that the Cabinet Office works towards and works with various multiple parts of government, and of course the Cabinet Secretary is the appointee of the Prime Minister, and the Cabinet Secretary is the secretary to the Cabinet, so that requires Number 10 and the Cabinet Office to work closely together.

The Prime Minister is in Number 10, his chief adviser, Mr Cummings, was in Number 10, not the Cabinet Office. To what extent in general terms did the Cabinet Office and No 10 continue to act in lockstep from March 2020 through to the early autumn, the late summer of 2020?

Mr Alex Thomas: Of course it’s – you know, Number 10 is part of the Cabinet Office, so they are, in some respects, the same organisation, but as you imply there is a very distinct culture, rightly, in Number 10 that is focused around the Prime Minister, and there is a link door that you need a special pass to access and once you go through that link door the environment is very different. So that’s by way of preface to agreeing with you that the two are, you know, the same but separate.

It does seem to me from the material I’ve seen, we made the point in some of our research, based on publicly available or media reporting, but also from some of the material available to the Inquiry, that because of the perceived loss of confidence by very senior people, political people in Number 10, there was a loss of confidence in the Cabinet Office that led to an unhelpful divergence which put excessive strain on individuals working in Number 10 – Number 10 is absolutely not equipped to deal with a whole-of-government crisis in this way – and pushed out those in the Cabinet Office whose job would otherwise have been to perform the functions I said earlier about rapid response and synthesis of evidence.

Lead Inquiry: You say Number 10 is absolutely not equipped to deal with a whole-of-government crisis in this way; is that for two reasons: firstly, the crisis machinery rests largely in the Cabinet Office, and therefore it’s not Number 10 which has to deal with crises, but also that the absolute number of staff, employees, personnel in Number 10 is not built for a whole-of-government response?

Mr Alex Thomas: Yes. Number 10 has grown somewhat, I understand, in recent years, but total numbers of staff are, you know, 200, 300. Most of those are support staff, operational staff. There are a handful of private secretaries. There’s a small policy unit. Those functions are about, yes, giving some personal advice to the Prime Minister, but also transmitting information and advice from the rest of government to the Prime Minister, and then transmitting the Prime Minister’s decisions out to the rest of government. They are not, in any means, a crisis response machine, and you can’t run a crisis response from Number 10 for those reasons.

Lead Inquiry: Could we have, please, on the screen, INQ000048313, at page 22.

This, Mr Thomas, is a WhatsApp message from Mr Cummings to Mr Johnson, and it’s attached to a letter which Mr Cummings wrote to the Inquiry. The top WhatsApp is dated 12 March. I’m not going to read it all out, it’s self-evident and the theme and the tone and the manner of it is very clear.

In general terms, it is extremely damning of the state, the function, the ability of the Cabinet Office to operate.

With an appropriate nod to the intemperate language that Mr Cummings habitually appears to deploy, and to the manner of his language, does it matter – or rather, to what extent does it matter that the chief adviser then to the Prime Minister has such views of the Cabinet Office?

Mr Alex Thomas: It does matter. And of course, you know, implicit in your question is this is, you know, one person’s view as expressed. It does matter, because it goes to both, I mean, obviously the content of that message goes to the authority of the Cabinet Secretary and the confidence in which the political team has in him, and precisely that point about the divergence between Number 10 and the Cabinet Office that means the principal political adviser to the Prime Minister does not have confidence in the civil contingencies architecture that is there to synthesise and advise on an emerging breaking crisis.

Lead Inquiry: It’s important, isn’t it, that you note that Mr Cummings’ views are, of course, only his own views. The reference to Mark is to Mark Sedwill, the then Cabinet Secretary, but that of course is only Mr Cummings’ view.

So your point is, isn’t it, that regardless of whether or not Mr Cummings’ personal view of the Cabinet Secretary was right or wrong, the very fact that the Prime Minister’s chief adviser is expressing these views has of itself a damaging effect and may also be reflective of a pre-existing and extremely unfortunate structural problem at the heart of Number 10 and the Cabinet Office?

Mr Alex Thomas: I think that is a fair conclusion. I would make just a couple of points of context. One is I think Mr Cummings has expressed forceful views in many places, and also government is a stressful and difficult environment. It is not that unusual for someone privately to express forceful views behind somebody else’s back about their performance, and for that not really to reflect their true views. So I think there is a question there about exactly the consistency and completeness of Mr Cummings’ view.

Secondly, there is an incentive sometimes culturally, a very poor incentive, to be critical about others in front of the principal, as civil servants and advisers might call them. So to go into a minister’s office or to send the Prime Minister a message saying, you know, “Isn’t so-and-so terrible”, because that is part of the sometimes court-like, courtier-like environment that can operate detrimentally in senior places in the top of government.

Lead Inquiry: I’m going to put that proposition back to you, please, Mr Thomas, rephrased. So are you saying that in the high octane and febrile atmosphere of high government, high political government, everybody slagging each other off is not uncommon?

Mr Alex Thomas: It is more common than it should be.

Lead Inquiry: My Lady, these WhatsApps of course reflect other no less important but different substantive issues, for example, in relation to the government’s response in terms of the imposition of social restrictions and the operation of COBR, to which we’ll come back to, through other witnesses. Included in that observation there is this reference at the bottom of the page to the DAs. I’ll come back to you on that in due course.

Page 7, please, of this document.

This is dated 14 March, in another WhatsApp string, group, thread. Mr Cummings says:

“Talked to Sedwill [that’s Lord Sedwill, the Cabinet Secretary] and he is still miles off pace.”

Then this:

“… the problem is CabOff [Cabinet Office] and DHSC haven’t listen and absorbed what the models truly mean.”

Lady Hallett: Sorry, just before you go on, Mr Keith, who sent the messages at the top, “We need to draw lessons”, who sent …? Because there’s a copied – further down, it’s where you copy the message to respond to it. So who send the “Talked to Sedwill and he is still miles off pace”?

Mr Keith: Mr Thomas, are you able to say whether or not the first white WhatsApp comes from a different origin than the second one?

Mr Alex Thomas: I mean, those two – based on my understanding of WhatsApp, those two look like they come from the same person, and that person is down as – I assume this is Mr Cummings’ mobile phone – down as Johnson Boris, who I assume is Boris Johnson.

Lead Inquiry: So “Yup. Nothing like it since at least 1918 and maybe much longer” is a response from Mr Cummings?

Mr Alex Thomas: If this is Mr Cummings’ – a screenshot from Mr Cummings’ phone, yes.

Lead Inquiry: Then, at the bottom of the page, Mr Cummings again:

“This is what the Warners, [that’s Ben and Marc Warner] have been screaming at me. Patrick has been ‘the policy machine is off the pace’ – but YOU [so he is speaking to Mr Johnson there] need to tell Sedwill this.”

And the degree of intemperate language and aggression, volatility, is of itself unfortunate.

Mr Alex Thomas: I agree.

Lead Inquiry: Page 56, 57, this is an extract from a letter that Mr Cummings wrote to the Inquiry. He has cut and pasted an older historic, historical email dated 13 July 2020, into his letter. He says it’s:

“An email I sent on the problems of the No 10/CabOff set up that is relevant to the Inquiry, 13 [July] (it was copied to [the Prime Minister] but he never engaged seriously).”

And the email, if we go over the page, please, of 13 July contains at the second paragraph on that page, these words:

“Current CABOFF doesn’t work for anyone – it’s high friction, low trust, and [obviously] many good parts but overall low performance. From [permanent secretaries] to lower ranks, nobody I’ve spoken to across Whitehall thinks it works well. And covid shone an unforgiving light on parts including CCS …”

Is CCS the Civil Contingencies Secretariat, the secretariat within the Cabinet Office primarily concerned with crisis response?

Mr Alex Thomas: I assume so, yes, that would make all the sense in the world.

Lead Inquiry: If Mr Cummings is to be – if his words are to be accepted in this regard, and if he is to be believed in this regard, that would tend to suggest that the dysfunctionality of the Cabinet Office was not just a view held by him, but it was held across Whitehall.

Mr Alex Thomas: It would, and that would also be consistent, you know, in the interests of sort of full disclosure to the Inquiry, with conversations that I and others had around that time.

I find this note a much more kind of – a less intemperate and more convincing critique of the machinery of government as it was operating than some of the previous messages, which lack context, and as I – you know, for the reasons I’ve said previously.

Lead Inquiry: Sir Patrick Vallance’s evening notes also contain a multitude of references to chaos in Number 10, to infighting, factionality in Number 10. He says that according to the Cabinet Secretary himself – this is in November 2020, so that would be Simon Case:

“… No 10 [was] at war with itself – a Carrie faction (with Gove) & another with SPADs …”

So that presumably would include Mr Cummings and perhaps some others.

“PM caught in the middle. He has spoken to all his predecessors as [Cabinet Secretary] & no one has seen anything like it.”

That diary entry is from November later in the year, six months later. It would seem, again, and due caution of course must be applied to the accuracy of WhatsApps, which lack nuance and can be intemperate, and also diary entries which may not accurately reflect the reality of the position day by day and may indeed even have been drafted for a different audience, but if we accept the factionality and infighting was still taking place in November, is that not rather incredible that the two departments at the heart of the government, which were obligated to respond to this crisis, Number 10 and Cabinet Office, were still fighting, at least in part, six months later?

Mr Alex Thomas: I think many things about that period were incredible and concerning. On this particular point, though, my assessment would be that something slightly different was going on, which was that in the early period of the response to the pandemic, February, March, April 2020, there was an anxious and chaotic and sometimes divided situation between the Cabinet Office and Number 10. Then over the course of the summer, we may come on to this, the Covid Taskforce was established, and relationships, while not being perfect, seemed to me to be – very far from perfect – seemed to me to be improved because of the more effective crisis response and synthesis of advice.

My reading of the Sir Patrick Vallance diary referred to – which, as you say, was November 2020, I was unsurprised by that, because that was when there was a very, very public falling out between Dominic Cummings and Lee Cain and the Prime Minister, leading to Mr Cummings and Mr Cain departing Downing Street shortly afterwards.

I would also suggest that that was – that seemed to me, from the outside, to be an internal Number 10 falling out rather than a structural disagreement between the Cabinet Office and Number 10, related strongly to the approaches, personalities and relationships between the Prime Minister and some of his closest political advisers.

Lead Inquiry: May, therefore, the position be summarised in this way: that in the early part of the pandemic, in those early months, the dysfunctionality, if that is what my Lady finds there to be, was reflective of the system, the structures that were then in place, latterly the dysfunctionality lay more in the personalities and their working relationships and indeed the people who were in government?

Mr Alex Thomas: Clearly in a complicated and, you know, extraordinary situation, that is something of a simplification, but it’s a simplification I would be happy to endorse.

Lead Inquiry: I’m very pleased to hear you say that.

COBR. If we go back, please, to the chart at INQ0002041014, page 4, a certain amount of evidence, quite a lot of evidence, was received in Module 1, Mr Thomas, on COBR and its position in the government structure and on its functions, but we’ll remind ourselves of where it is. We can see it’s the yellow box towards the top of this page, the Cabinet Office Briefing Rooms, hence COBR. And there have been plenty of references to COBRA with an A, was that because once upon a time one of those Cabinet Office briefing rooms was called room A, so it became COBRA?

Mr Alex Thomas: It is partly that. I think it is probably more because of the resonance of the acronym that it sustains.

Lead Inquiry: It is COBR that is the machinery for dealing with crises in the first instance. Is it a ministerial decision-making body, or is it a body that brings together ministers, officials, public servants and the like in order to be able to respond to a crisis?

Mr Alex Thomas: It’s the latter, it is primarily a co-ordination body.

Lead Inquiry: Does the Civil Contingencies Secretariat act, as it suggests it does, as the secretariat for whatever COBR meeting has been convened?

Mr Alex Thomas: It does.

Lead Inquiry: Who may chair a COBR meeting?

Mr Alex Thomas: Any minister or a senior official. The starting point for who would chair it would be the Prime Minister, but it is entirely reasonable, and often happens, for the Prime Minister to delegate that to another minister whose remit and responsibility and seniority would depend on the nature of the crisis. It is also sometimes possible for a senior official to chair COBR.

Lead Inquiry: COBR is not engaged, is it, for all crises, the crisis or the emergency has to meet a certain level of seriousness, a certain threshold, in fact it has to be a level 2 or a level 3 emergency before COBR is generally convened?

Mr Alex Thomas: Generally. I would take slight issue with the “it has to be”, because there certainly have been examples – Gordon Brown, you know, famously had quite a low bar for triggering a COBR crisis. There is obviously a political and presentational benefit sometimes to convening a meeting. So the bar for convening a COBR has fluctuated depending on the personal preferences of the Prime Minister. But, yes, if you want an administrative “What is the test for calling a COBR meeting?” it’s that level 2 response.

Lead Inquiry: The first COBR meeting concerning the response to Covid was held on 24 January, was it not?

Mr Alex Thomas: That’s my understanding, yes.

Lead Inquiry: The material shows that Matt Hancock MP, who was then secretary of state of the lead government department, the Department of Health and Social Care, chaired the COBRs on 24 January, 29 January, 4 February,

Mr Alex Thomas: That’s my understanding, so I –

Lead Inquiry: There was no COBR convened between 18 February and 2 March, it’s an issue we’ll be reverting to in due course, and the Prime Minister, the then Prime Minister, Mr Johnson, convened or chaired his first COBR on Monday, 2 March.

You have explained how there is no administrative obligation on the Prime Minister to chair a COBR, but there may be a presentational advantage in so doing. Is it your view that presentationally that was an opportunity missed by the Prime Minister, given the state of the crisis in late February?

Mr Alex Thomas: There is a presentational benefit to the Prime Minister in chairing COBR. There is also, I perhaps should have said, an operational benefit inside government for particular types of crises to the Prime Minister chairing COBR.

I suppose I have a – you know, given what we subsequently know, I would have a, you know, moderate view that presentationally it would have been beneficial for the Prime Minister to chair an earlier COBR. I would have a stronger view, given what we now know, that the signal it would have sent, that this required a whole-government response, the Prime Minister was February and 18 February; is that correct? personally engaged in that, and that all departments needed to give their maximum possible attention to this crisis, that is actually the reason I think, rather than presentation, why it would have been beneficial for the Prime Minister to chair COBR sooner.

Lead Inquiry: Have you been able to ascertain what the position was in relation to representatives of the devolved administrations in relation to their attendance at COBR?

Mr Alex Thomas: My understanding, again, and I thank the Inquiry for brief advance notice of that particular question, is that when Matt Hancock MP was chairing the COBRs, the invitations went to the devolved administration Health Secretary equivalents, and so they attended COBR until the Prime Minister chaired the 2 March COBR when invitations, to my mind perfectly naturally, then were sent to the First and in Northern Ireland First and deputy First Ministers to attend those COBR meetings. I understand from the Inquiry, but not my own research, that Mark Drakeford, the First Minister of Wales, did participate in one earlier COBR meeting.

Lead Inquiry: So, to be absolutely clear, the health ministers from the devolved administrations, so that would be Vaughan Gething from the Welsh Government, Robin Swann from the Northern Ireland Executive, and Jeane Freeman, the Scottish Cabinet Secretary for Health, they all attended from 24 January. Mr Drakeford first attended on 18 February, but Nicola Sturgeon, Arlene Foster and Michelle O’Neill attended, respectively, for the first time from 2 March.

Mr Alex Thomas: I understand that to be the case. As I say, given the Prime Minister did not chair COBR until 2 March, that pattern of invitations doesn’t surprise me. I don’t know why Mr Drakeford attended the earlier meeting. It could have been – you know, my view would be that that was either because he was particularly concerned about the emergence of the crisis, or for a far more simple administrative reason that Vaughan Gething perhaps couldn’t attend or Mr Drakeford happened to be in London or, you know, something else. These things often happen.

Lead Inquiry: My Lady, that I hope answers the question that you posed yesterday in the course of the hearing as to the first dates of attendance.

Could you please have a look at INQ000273841, paragraph 43. I’m afraid I don’t have a page number.

(Pause)

Lead Inquiry: It will probably be around the late teens. There we are, thank you very much.

Helen MacNamara was a senior civil servant, at one stage in fact Deputy Cabinet Secretary. This is an extract from her statement. She says this in paragraph 43:

“One of the things we should have done earlier is move away from the COBR decision making structure. Mr Johnson had never warmed to COBR – it did not suit his working style to come through to the basement of the Cabinet Office, away from his study and his political team. Unusually in my experience of Prime Ministers, he clearly felt it was not his territory. As the Covid-19 situation became more immediate it was not working and definitely would not work as the crisis worsened.”

So the COBR room is in the basement, is it not, of the Cabinet Office? It’s not actually in No 10 Downing Street?

Mr Alex Thomas: That’s correct.

Lead Inquiry: In the material that you have seen, have you seen any material which is reflective of Mr Johnson’s view, in February, of the degree of seriousness of the crisis which appeared to be emerging?

Mr Alex Thomas: I suppose – I mean, thinking about the material that I’ve seen – you know, judged by his actions and his decisions about the early COBR meetings and others, but also as or more relevantly, I think, the publicly available information about things he said in early press conferences and so on, my assumption is that he thought that this was a containable and not – a containable situation and not a situation that demonstrated the seriousness which, you know, very rapidly became evident.

Lead Inquiry: COBR, as we can see, continued to sit through March, in fact it carried on sitting, convening until May. But where in the middle of March and late March were those singular and momentous decisions that affected the whole country actually being taken? So, example, by way of example, decisions to close schools or to impose social restrictions, ultimately of course the imposition of the national lockdown from 23 March with legal effect from the 26th, where were those decisions taken? Were they taken in COBR or were they taken elsewhere?

Mr Alex Thomas: From the material I’ve seen, it seems that most of those were taken elsewhere, in meetings in Number 10 or in other, you know, Cabinet committees or ad hoc fora. I think there is, we may come on to this, plenty to criticise about how that decision-making structure might have worked. I don’t think inherently it was wrong not to take them in COBR, because, as we discussed earlier, COBR is primarily a co-ordination and immediate crisis response function. It functions well if, for example, there was a – you know, could always be improved, but if there was a terrorist incident or a major environmental incident that principally required operational co-ordination.

COBR, in my experience and view, is not a policy decision-making forum. So one of the institutional gaps that it seems to me existed at this time was an authoritative and coherent policy making forum that was well advised by synthesised advice from across government.

Lead Inquiry: Putting it another way, Mr Thomas, what was the point of having COBR convened and to continue to be convened through March if, in reality, the momentous decisions of which I’ve spoken were being taken in a study in Number 10 by the Prime Minister on the advice of his closest advisers? Because whatever COBR decided, or whatever COBR informed the Prime Minister, any decisions taken by COBR were liable to be undone, changed or corrected by the Prime Minister.

Mr Alex Thomas: Well, COBR could provide a forum particularly, as Helen MacNamara makes the point there, that the devolved administrations were part of the COBR meeting, to discuss possible approaches – well, to first receive information from what was happening on the ground and then discuss possible approaches that could legitimately inform a Prime Ministerial decision in whatever forum. That obviously leaves certain lacuna, the most obvious being the devolved administrations’ actual involvement in those decisions.

So again, this architecture – so you asked about the value of it, you know, it is not uncommon in government for meetings or institutional architecture to outlive its usefulness. There’s a path dependency to that. So, as Ms MacNamara says there, you know, I’m not surprised by her view that they should have moved away from it earlier, but in and of itself, if COBR was providing a useful input to Prime Ministerial decision-making, it’s not inherently illegitimate for it to continue to exist.

That was a little convoluted, I apologise, but I hope you get my drift.

Lead Inquiry: But if COBR, although a useful contributor, was not the primary decision-making forum, as it is meant to be in a crisis, and if, at least to some extent, it became something of a Potemkin village, it became an opportunity for the devolved administrations to be seen to be part of the process but then the decisions were actually being taken elsewhere, then it wasn’t really fulfilling the terms of its instructions?

Mr Alex Thomas: I agree, but I would also return to the point – and I would return to the point that COBR is not designed to be a policy-deciding forum. It is a forum that, if you like, applies policies that already exist to the operation of the situation on the ground, and allows ministers to input to control that and to influence that situation. But I would – you know, I agree with your principal point, which was that it would appear that there was a meeting happening that was steadily losing whatever value it had, and it outlasted its usefulness.

Lead Inquiry: The civil service, and in particular the Cabinet Secretary, Mark Sedwill, appreciated that there had to be change, and around 17 March did Lord Sedwill, then I think Sir Mark Sedwill, recommend the establishment of what were known as ministerial implementation groups to deal with four areas, four key areas: health, public services, economic response and international aspects, each group chaired by a different senior minister?

Mr Alex Thomas: That’s correct, as I understand it.

Lead Inquiry: Around the same time, did the core decision-making, particularly insofar as it revolved around the Prime Minister, start to take place at a meeting or meetings held at 9.15 every morning in Number 10?

Mr Alex Thomas: That’s my understanding.

Lead Inquiry: Could we have, please, INQ000182338. This is the Cabinet Secretary’s note recommending the changes to what are called machinery of government. “Covid-19: next phase”, it’s dated 13 March:

“1. We need to step up a gear … A pandemic of this scale is no longer solely a health crisis …

“2. In times like this people need to know that the Government has their back and is competent, compassionate and calm.”

He tells the Prime Minister in paragraph 3:

“You have brilliantly managed public messaging and decision-making in this first phase.”

But nevertheless he proceeds to say that the structure of government requires significant reform, and if we go over the page to page 2, he proposes the ministerial implementation groups and the daily smaller meeting. It says:

“This would be your 9.00 meeting with a small group of Ministers and key advisers … We will hold a pre-meet … at 8.15”, and so on.

But in fact it became a 9.15 meeting. The 8.15 meeting did take place and was generally attended by officials and advisers; is that right?

Mr Alex Thomas: That’s my understanding. And this is a familiar rhythm from the time of David Cameron onwards to organise a Prime Minister’s day, obviously not in this context, but, you know, an 8 o’clock-ish meeting with special advisers and private secretaries, and others in Number 10, and then a 9 o’clock or, in this case, 9.15 meeting with the Prime Minister. It seems to me they adapted that kind of quite well established rhythm of prime ministerial meetings from previous generations of prime ministers to reflect the situation as it was at the time.

Lead Inquiry: Did this new structure stand the test of time?

Mr Alex Thomas: It did not.

Lead Inquiry: When or rather how long did it last for?

Mr Alex Thomas: I would have to check with the dates, but I think it lasted for about two months, six weeks, something like that.

Lead Inquiry: Because in May the civil service and again the Cabinet Secretary returned to this issue of whether or not structurally the Cabinet Office and Number 10 and the decision-making process at the heart of the government was actually performing effectively?

Mr Alex Thomas: Yes.

Lead Inquiry: Do you know why, in general terms, the MIG system, the four ministerial implementation group system, was replaced so relatively soon after its commencement?

Mr Alex Thomas: I believe that there were two principal reasons. One, from the documents I’ve seen as part of the Inquiry and elsewhere, was that it quite rapidly became clear that there were overlapping remits, that the co-ordination between these four MIG structures was not working well, they were trespassing on each others’ policy and operational functions, and that decision-making through those MIGs was proving difficult.

The second reason, that I haven’t seen through the Inquiry papers but I feel – it’s my fairly strong view about how the Cabinet Office and Cabinet committees work best, is that a number of them were chaired by the relevant Secretary of State. So the Foreign Secretary was chairing the foreign policy committee, the Chancellor the economic and business committee. I think in general, a Cabinet committee or similar group works better if it is chaired by a senior minister who is able to hold departments to account from outside the department rather than inside.

So I have a personal view, which is that one of the problems with these MIGs was that they were owned and held accountable by the relevant secretaries of state rather than by the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, probably, in this instance, holding those departments to account.

The exception was, I believe, the Public Services Committee, which was chaired by Michael Gove.

Lead Inquiry: So these important departments of – government departments of state, in this committee structure, to some extent marked their own homework?

Mr Alex Thomas: Correct.

Lead Inquiry: The 9.15 meeting, formally, was that meeting therefore an ad hoc informal meeting, or was it, as a result of this change of government – or, was it a result of the way in which the change of government machinery was used to institute the 9.15 meeting mean that it was more formal, for example a type of Cabinet subcommittee?

Mr Alex Thomas: I don’t get the impression it was in any way akin to a Cabinet subcommittee. I would say from what I know that it was more formal than a sort of chew the fat Prime Ministerial meeting, you know, “What’s in the headlines today? What have we got on?” type David Cameron-style morning meeting, in that over time data and dashboards were considered by that meeting and other evidence and advice.

Both in terms of cast list and agenda, it does not appear to me to be anything like as formal as a normal decision-making Cabinet committee.

Lead Inquiry: At paragraph 70 of your report, you say both the C-19 daily meetings, by which you mean the 9.15 meetings, and the MIGs, as Cabinet committees, could take decisions themselves, so not everything was reported upwards from the MIGs to the C-19 meeting or from the C-19 meeting to Cabinet.

So by that do you mean the MIGs were formal Cabinet subcommittees, the C-19 morning meeting was not, but over time that 9.15 meeting took on the ability or the power to make decisions which had a degree of formality to them which meant that effectively Cabinet was bypassed?

Mr Alex Thomas: My understanding is that that is a fair summary. I should add that this is, you know, this is quite hazy, which is, you know, a point to reflect on in itself. I do not have a clear sense in my own mind of how, when and whether those C-19 meetings took on a different form. I think that would usefully be something that the Inquiry could ask those who were part of those meetings.

Lead Inquiry: The MIGs came to an end in the summer. The C-19 9.15 meetings continued. But in early June, did Lord Sedwill propose the establishment of two new formal committees, Covid-O, Covid operation – or operational, and Covid-S, Covid strategy, chaired by ministers to provide the ministerial building block for committee meetings going forward to deal with Covid-19 and the pandemic?

Mr Alex Thomas: That’s correct, I think.

Lead Inquiry: And the Covid-S was chaired by the Prime Minister, Covid-O was chaired by the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Michael Gove MP.

Lady Hallett: Are we going to a slightly different subject?

Mr Keith: Yes, we are.

Lady Hallett: 11.30, please.

(11.15 am)

(A short break)

(11.30 am)

Lady Hallett: Sorry, I caught everyone by surprise again.

Mr Keith: Mr Thomas, Covid-O and Covid-S, could we have, please, INQ000137215.

This was a paper prepared for the Prime Minister by Simon Case and Helen MacNamara. If we just go to the last page, if we may, I think we should see the names of the authors.

It’s about four pages in, I’m afraid, I’m sorry to do that to you. The last page, actually, the last few pages, are an annex. So maybe page 3. And then one further on. There we are, thank you.

Helen MacNamara and Simon Case. So two very senior civil servants, Simon Case was not by then yet Cabinet Secretary.

Page 3 of this document, please, at paragraph 6. There is a reference there to the fact that the devolved administrations had been involved in decision-making through the ministerial implementation groups and in COBR, and that there had to be a mechanism to discuss and agree on a four nation approach. So if the MIGs were being abolished, which is what this paper proposed, to be replaced by Covid-S and Covid-O, the authors of the paper recognised, did they not, that if, in addition, COBR would stop meeting, there needed to be an additional structure for policy matters at which the DAs could be engaged?

Mr Alex Thomas: Clearly, yes.

Lead Inquiry: In fact they suggested to the Prime Minister that that JMC route, the Joint Ministerial Committee route, be used to manage conversations with the DAs?

Mr Alex Thomas: Yes.

Lead Inquiry: My Lady has heard evidence that the Joint Ministerial Committee did not, in fact, meet, or if it did it met very rarely, but the devolved administrations were engaged, were they not, in particular through Covid-O; is that correct?

Mr Alex Thomas: Correct, as I understand it.

Lead Inquiry: All right. And Covid-O was a ministerial committee, it was a formal subcommittee of Cabinet, because it was part of this change of government procedure, and it was an important ministerial committee which the devolved administrations could take part in?

Mr Alex Thomas: Yes, although, as I understand it, it was by invitation rather than as standing members.

Lead Inquiry: Did they nevertheless attend?

Mr Alex Thomas: I would need to check to be sure of that.

Lead Inquiry: All right.

The benefit of Covid-O was that it was a committee, was it not, at which ministers and officials and experts could convene and debate, in Covid-O’s case, the operational matters which were required to be decided?

Mr Alex Thomas: Yes.

Lead Inquiry: So what view do you have on the efficacy of that committee and its replacement of the MIG system?

Mr Alex Thomas: I think it was more effective for – because it addressed the two problems that I identified previously, the coherence of the different policy and departmental remits, and the fact that Michael Gove, as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, was chairing rather than departmental secretaries of state.

Lead Inquiry: But it was a system that wasn’t put into place until June 2020?

Mr Alex Thomas: Correct.

Lead Inquiry: At the same time, the government brought together or instituted the Covid-19 Taskforce. Could you just describe for us, please, how that differed from the Covid-S and Covid-O ministerial committee structure? To what extent was it a secretariat or an operational body?

Mr Alex Thomas: So my understanding is that the Covid Taskforce was a grouping that sat within the Cabinet Office, that acted both as a sort of formal day-to-day secretariat for the Covid strategy and operations meetings in terms of preparing papers, setting agendas, and taking minutes; but also in a – you know, a not uncommon approach within the civil service was a policy and operation synthesis unit, so it included policy specialists, analysts, those from across government, to be able to provide the Covid Cabinet committees, subcommittees, with analysis in order to take the decisions that they needed to take.

Lady Hallett: It seems an awful lot of groups.

Mr Alex Thomas: I think the advantage, my Lady, of the taskforce is that it reduced the number of groups that had previously existed. It is coherent, in my mind, to have a Covid strategy meeting, a small strategy direction setting meeting chaired by the Prime Minister, an operations committee chaired by Michael Gove, and then a supporting structure for those two committees. I think it’s important not to think of the taskforce as a different group with its own, you know, policy leadership structure. There were no extra committees on top of the taskforce. I imagine the senior civil servants within the taskforce had their own, you know, executive team to talk about pay and rations and so on. But the advantage of the taskforce was that it was a single group in the Cabinet Office servicing these two committees, and inextricably, in that sense, linked to those two committees.

So that is more coherent than having four separate groups, or not even those groups, each of which had its own secretariat, and without the single synthesising function that then began over time to exist within the taskforce.

Lady Hallett: And you approve of separating strategy from operations?

Mr Alex Thomas: I do. I think it both suited the personal style of the Prime Minister at the time, so that he could chair and engage with the big picture questions, and that it then created a forum whereby Michael Gove could convene the people – you know, the experts, who knew their subject and operational remits, to actually hash things out and get things done.

It was modelled on the Brexit strategy and operations committees. I – you know, for the record of the Inquiry, I occasionally sat on the Brexit-O Cabinet subcommittee. That – while much of the work was, you know, painful and frustrating, dealing with no-deal Brexit planning – was a functional Cabinet committee. And I think it was wise of those officials and ultimately the Prime Minister to adopt that model that worked.

Lady Hallett: Thank you.

Mr Keith: Evidence has been received already, Mr Thomas, to the effect that SAGE, the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, as it says on the tin, provided advice on the scientific plane, but that there was no equivalent committee which brought together expert advice in the economic and societal fields.

Moreover, there doesn’t appear to have been a body, an overarching body, that brought together all the areas of information, scientific, economic, societal, pandemic management, clinical, public health considerations, whatever it might be. But to what extent did, by the time it got going, the Covid Taskforce, together with its ministerial committees above it, fulfil that function?

Mr Alex Thomas: I think over time it began to fulfil that function. I think it took some time, months and possibly more, to get fully operational, but I think inside the government, inside the Cabinet Office, the taskforce began to build the expertise and the authority to do that synthesis.

What it didn’t do, and we may come on to this, stop me if we will, is rectify the gap in distinct expert analysis in the economic sphere in particular, and the public attention and distorting consequences of an extreme focus on SAGE giving scientific advice as opposed to other experts giving advice in those other fields.

Lead Inquiry: We’ll come back to that, indeed.

You’ve read the Rule 9 witness statements from a number of civil servants, including Simon Ridley, who was the head of the Covid Taskforce, as well as that of Helen MacNamara, who was the Deputy Cabinet Secretary, and also you’ve read the letter from Mr Cummings to the Inquiry.

Mr Alex Thomas: Sorry to interrupt, I haven’t actually seen Helen MacNamara’s or Mr Cummings’ evidence, I have seen Simon Ridley’s.

Lead Inquiry: Yes, you’ve seen Mr Cummings’ letter, you haven’t seen his statement, because that’s not something that we have yet either.

Mr Alex Thomas: I’m not sure I have seen the letter.

Lead Inquiry: All right.

Mr Alex Thomas: Anyway, just to be open.

Lead Inquiry: All right. It’s a document which the core participants have received.

Ms MacNamara’s statement and Mr Cummings’ letter make plain that one of the consequences of the institution of the Covid Taskforce is that it pushed decisions through without going through Cabinet collective decision-making processes.

What is Cabinet collective decision-making?

Mr Alex Thomas: So it is the supreme form of decision-making in the United Kingdom Government –

Lead Inquiry: Who says it’s the supreme form of government decision –

Mr Alex Thomas: Our uncodified constitution says that.

At its pinnacle it involves the Prime Minister and his or her Cabinet agreeing, either in a meeting or by written correspondence on a particular policy decision or indeed on anything else.

Cabinet authority can and very often is delegated to a subcommittee of Cabinet which is able to exercise the same authority as would the whole Cabinet sitting together.

Lead Inquiry: So pausing there and picking up some of the threads, of course you’ve already told us that there was a Covid-O and a Covid-S formal Cabinet subcommittee, so were they able, therefore, to discharge the constitutionally vital role of Cabinet through those two subcommittees?

Mr Alex Thomas: Yes.

Lead Inquiry: Nevertheless, have you been able to reach a view as to the extent to which the decision-making that was taking place in the CTF was passed through Cabinet or its subcommittees for, as you’ve described it, their supreme imprimatur?

Mr Alex Thomas: From what I have seen, the policy and operational decisions were, you know, appropriately passed through the Covid-S or Covid-O subcommittees. I don’t know about Cabinet as a whole, but, as I say, that’s entirely proper.

Two caveats to that. One, I suppose, I don’t know what I don’t know. I don’t know every decision that may or may not have been taken in other fora. The second, just to explore the nature of your question for a moment, is I think it’s wrong to think of the Covid Taskforce as a decision-making thing. It only makes decisions that are made – well, decisions are already made, that are made by Covid-S or Covid-O. The taskforce itself could take some very, very low level, sort of administrative almost, decisions, but anything of any policy import would need to go through those Cabinet committees, otherwise it wouldn’t exist as a decision, if you see what I mean. There wasn’t a separate authority that the Covid Taskforce would have to make those decisions.

Lead Inquiry: Why then do you think, and we’ll obviously hear from them directly, that Ms MacNamara observes that the CTF was able to make decisions without going through Cabinet collective decision-making and Mr Cummings observes that the CTF becomes much more important than either Cabinet or Cabinet committees in essentially monitoring the crisis and advising the Prime Minister?

Mr Alex Thomas: I don’t know. As I said, I haven’t seen those –

Lead Inquiry: All right.

Mr Alex Thomas: – those documents. I think a secretariat can be of huge importance, because it sets the terms of the decision, it determines which evidence goes forward for decision, and provides the advice that informs the decision, so it can be powerful, but it would seem to me if there is evidence – which, as I say, I haven’t seen – that there were decisions, there were substantive policy decisions being made outside of Covid-S and Covid-O, that would be something that was not consistent with Cabinet collective responsibility.

Lead Inquiry: In general terms, have you been able to form a view as to the ability of the then Cabinet to be engaged in, to be part of the core decision-making process between March and September?

Mr Alex Thomas: It seems to me that, from the evidence in the media and elsewhere, from our research, but particularly from the evidence the Inquiry has received that I have seen, that there was no shortage of discussion in Cabinet. There was an amount of debate in Cabinet, clearly to some extent informed by the Chief Medical Officer and the Government Chief Scientific Adviser.

My strong sense, though, is that the actual decisions were made in Covid-S and Covid-O and often formulated, discussed and, you know, aerated, if you like, in those Prime Ministerial 9.15 and other meetings.

Lead Inquiry: When you say aerated, can you reach a view, have you been able to reach a view as to whether, by and large, the decision-making actually took place in the 9.15 meetings, with the Prime Minister and his closest advisers, or at Covid-S and Covid-O?

Mr Alex Thomas: I think this might get slightly to the point you were drawing out a moment ago. I would expect, and, you know, haven’t seen anything that suggests that formal policy decisions were made elsewhere than Covid-S and Covid-O. That does not mean that those were the fora where the decision was actually framed. It is quite common in government for pre-meetings, discussions, meetings at official level and ministerial level, and ultimately around the Prime Minister, to agree the desired outcome of a meeting that, you know, often will be the actual outcome of a meeting. That doesn’t mean then that a secretary of state or a minister at the formal set piece Cabinet committee or Cabinet subcommittee, can’t say, “Hang on a minute, I don’t like this, I’m going to raise it to debate”, and that might take the decision in a different direction or it might mean a decision isn’t made.

Lead Inquiry: Bluntly, the evidence appears to show that on Sunday, 22 March, on the eve of the lockdown on the Monday, the decision of whether or not to impose a national lockdown was debated in ferocious terms in front of the Prime Minister. He appears to have decided that there will be, there has to be a lockdown, but he demands, quite rightly, that the matter also go to COBR, which is sitting the following day, in order for that decision formally to be promulgated. Is that how it might work?

Mr Alex Thomas: Yes.

Lead Inquiry: Thank you.

Can we have, please, INQ000048313, it’s Mr Cummings’ letter, at page 54 of 69.

This is a WhatsApp taken from a WhatsApp group, “SimonC”, that’s Simon Case, by September on the cusp of becoming Cabinet Secretary but at that time I think a first or second permanent secretary in the Cabinet Office, “Caino”, Lee Cain, and “dom”, Dominic Cummings, 8 September:

“As always discussions with these ministers is moronic. They cannot understand priorities.

“They didn’t even understand what they were talking about for most this meeting.”

[Simon Case] “Quite.

“This is embarrassing.”

Then this:

“By weekend he’ll be saying ‘6 is untenable a total disaster we’ve got to get everybody back to work’.”

That appears to be an observation on the Prime Minister’s approach to the rule of group of six, which was under debate at that time.

[Lee Cain] “Yes.”

Then there is a trolley emoji:

“Full [trolley] mode.

“It didn’t take til weekend!”

[Simon Case] “Spectacular today – we want to open up the economy ASAP, forget the bloody virus.”

[Lee Cain] “I blame the messaging #CommsProblem.

“Hancock has got to go. Joker.”

And:

“Yup. And liar.”

The view expressed of ministers by government officials is, of itself, extremely regrettable, is it not?

Mr Alex Thomas: Yes. I should just also say, with reference to what I said earlier, if this is the Dominic Cummings letter, I have seen extracts of these previously, so just to clarify what I said, I haven’t seen a sort of formal letter, but I have seen these.

But yes.

Lead Inquiry: To what extent does it matter that ministers appear to have been held in such low regard by civil servants and political advisers?

Mr Alex Thomas: It’s regrettable, as I say. You know, I would note that the least temperate language there was from two special advisers rather than Simon Case. I think the –

Lead Inquiry: I think just pause there. Is that correct?

Simon Case, Simon says “Quite”, on the left-hand box, and is therefore presumed not to be the interlocutor beforehand, which is somebody else.

Mr Alex Thomas: So it seems to me to say that it’s Dominic Cummings saying:

“Full [trolley] mode.

“It didn’t take til weekend!”

Lee Cain saying:

“What’s his issue? Xmas cancelled stuff?”

And then Simon Case saying:

“Spectacular today – we want to open up …”

And I would read that as sort of semi-quoting the Prime Minister as saying, “We want to open up the economy”, et cetera, and then Lee Cain coming back in with what I assume is a joke about blaming the comms messaging, for which he was partly responsible, and the message about Matt Hancock.

So, regrettable. I think what it clearly speaks to is an environment amongst the Prime Minister’s closest and most senior advisers where they had, privately at least, entirely lost confidence in his ability to take consistent decisions. I think that’s the most regrettable thing, both their loss of confidence and presumably his failure to take those consistent decisions.

I think it is not uncommon, particularly for, you know, political advisers who might have a close relationship with their ministers, to be less formal than civil servants, but I think all of the language here is clearly, you know, unfortunate.

Lead Inquiry: Does it extend beyond that to a serious issue, the serious issue of the loss of confidence in ministers, because there is a direct and very personal attack on the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care there as well?

Mr Alex Thomas: Yes. And of course it is not … it is not unprecedented for advisers and civil servants in Number 10, in the Cabinet Office, elsewhere, to, you know, express concerns about ministers privately. The decisions about the competence and capability of ministers, though, are entirely in the Prime Minister’s sphere. It has to be the Prime Minister’s decision about the confidence and capability of his ministers. The extent to which those political advisers had, you know, influence over the Prime Minister, I guess, is the question that most relates to the government’s administration of Boris Johnson’s government at that time.

Lead Inquiry: So are there two levels here, Mr Thomas: firstly, the objective issue of ministers’ competence, are you able to say whether or not there was any basis, any proper or genuine basis for concern to be expressed about the general competence of ministers? Putting it another way, were these advisers and civil servants’ views entirely without justification or not?

Mr Alex Thomas: From the evidence I’ve seen there are, you know, many comments that one could make about what was happening over the course of that year in particular. It is, you know, pretty clear – well, it is clear to me that the consistency of decision-making was something that could legitimately be criticised and be a cause for concern, which is not at all to say that ministers or a Prime Minister should not change their mind. I think it’s healthy for ministers to be open to changing their mind. But I think that has to be on the basis of a changed situation or reasoned reflection rather than in the ad hoc way that they seem to be suggesting.

Lead Inquiry: I must commend you, if I may say so, perhaps on account of your previous civil service history, for some wonderful civil service phraseology there.

Mr Alex Thomas: Apologies.

Lead Inquiry: “… the consistency of decision-making was something that could legitimately be criticised and be a cause for concern …”

There was a basis for the civil servants’ and advisers’ view as to the lack of competence on occasion or perhaps more generally on the part of ministers?

Mr Alex Thomas: Yes. You can take the boy out of the civil service, you can’t always take the civil service out of the boy.

Lady Hallett: I think Mr Keith is being unduly harsh on you, Mr Thomas. I understood what you were saying, which is that consistency is not always a virtue if there is a change of circumstance.

Mr Alex Thomas: Yes.

Lady Hallett: But you have to make sure you’ve thought everything through properly and considered the material before you make a change of decision, because it impacts everybody.

Mr Alex Thomas: Yes, my Lady. And I think if there is a reason behind my – the circumspection in some of my language, to revert to Sir Humphrey, it’s because it is quite easy, looking at these messages, to have both an emotional and quite a stark personal reaction to them. They are not comfortable to read. And I can only imagine if you are a victim of or related to someone who suffered or died from Covid, this is appalling to read. What I’m trying to do through perhaps my caution is to assist the Inquiry in understanding that in the crucible of Number 10 and the Cabinet Office, this is perhaps not particularly unusual. It is regrettable, as we discussed earlier, but I – and it should be called out as regrettable, but the critical thing is the decisions that were made, the way that they were communicated and the relevance of these messages is about the context in which the decisions were made rather than the messages themselves, if that makes sense to you, my Lady.

Mr Keith: Mr Thomas, in the course of opening this module, I myself observed that a degree of caution has to be applied, naturally, when drawing conclusions from this sort of material.

But to revert to the point I put to you, whilst paying due deference to that point and applying a distinct level of caution as to what can be read into these messages, because of their intemperate nature, because of the crucible that was Number 10, because of the high octane and aggressive atmosphere which appears to have percolated through its veins, nevertheless the messages show that serious concerns were being expressed, between people who were in a position to know, as to the competence of ministers and in particular the competence of the Prime Minister.

Mr Alex Thomas: With that I completely agree.

Lead Inquiry: The second point is, who carries ultimate responsibility for changes in personnel, for selecting the correct team, with perhaps a higher degree of competence, when faced with evidence of lack of competence on the part of members of that team?

Mr Alex Thomas: Well, the leader of that team, in this case the Prime Minister.

Lead Inquiry: Lead government departments is another area that you’ve looked at in your report. The Department of Health and Social Care was the lead government department, and the Inquiry heard a great deal of evidence in Module 1 as to the significance of the lead government department, and you’re aware both from government-produced papers, a UK Government Resilience Framework of December 2022, which the Inquiry looked at in some detail through the evidence of Oliver Letwin in Module 1, and also a report called “Crisis capabilities review: responding to crises from the centre of government”, a report dated February 2022, that the lead government department model has its very distinct limitations?

Mr Alex Thomas: Yes.

Lead Inquiry: In the face of an immediate crisis, a health crisis, in the case of the DHSC, it plays a very important, perhaps a vital role. But in the face of a whole-country crisis, involving a multitude of government departments, does that model start to break down because it places too much weight on the lead government department and an expectation that it will be in the driving seat in terms of responding to that whole-government crisis?

Mr Alex Thomas: Yes, I agree with you that there are circumstances, many circumstances, in which the lead government department model can be effective. For example, not to labour it, but I was involved in a number of crises in DEFRA, the environment department, around animal diseases, animal diesel outbreaks, that were, in one sense whole-government, crises, many different government departments were involved, but were manageable through that model.

The thing I would add to your correct criticism about the lead department model breaking down in a whole-government crisis is that there’s a flaw in the preparation for the crisis as well. I think in theory the Department of Health and Social Care should have been holding, for example, the Department for Education to account for its preparedness for a pandemic of this kind. It is clear to me from what transpired that the Department for Education did not have plans for a pandemic of this kind or, if they did, they were superficial.

So I think the lead department model, while correctly assigning accountability, does not give enough authority to the lead department, or allows the lead department to side-step the whole-government aspects of preparedness for a crisis.

Lead Inquiry: And you’ve described, of course, the important role that the Cabinet Office plays at the heart of government in bringing the various departments together, in synthesising information, broking, if you like, the position between departments. It the lead government department is institutionally unable or unwilling to be able to act and the Cabinet Office, as you have described, lacks the institutional levers of power to be able to bring about a successful outcome, where does that leave government departments?

Mr Alex Thomas: It leaves a gap. And I think, to add to your Cabinet Office point, one of the points in our research we’ve made is that the Civil Contingencies Secretariat in particular put aside the architecture of the other secretariats and the policy synthesis in the run-up to the pandemic. CCS did not have the capacity or remit to fully interrogate the plans of lead and non-lead government departments. That, as I understand, is something that has been rectified, but that created a gap in the assurance process as well as the structural gap you identified in your question.

Lead Inquiry: Finally on this issue of lead government departments, in practice, and at a much more prosaic, perhaps personal level, have you seen signs or in your review of the material did you see signs of government meetings, whether they be 9.15 meetings or COBR meetings or Covid-S, Covid-O meetings, at which, on account of the DHSC being the lead government department, its secretary of state or officials kept too much within the DHSC, that is to say they resented encroachment upon what they saw as their turf, that they weren’t open enough with other government departments and with the centre, and they resented challenge?

Mr Alex Thomas: I think there is a natural and, in some senses, admirable tendency in government departments to want to present solutions as well as problems, but I think in a crisis like this that strength can become a weakness.

There is also an institutional – sometimes an institutional tendency to hoard information or to see Number 10 or the Cabinet Office as the enemy.

I think, from the material that I’ve seen, there were, you know, moments when certainly some of the actors in this system felt that DHSC was both not playing ball but also not sufficiently gripping the situation.

I would also add a sort of personal reflection that that is perhaps less about DHSC as a department or its leadership but about the somewhat inchoate structure around – I know you have looked at and will look at Public Health England, the relationship between DHSC and NHS England. DHSC, it has often seemed to me, is a department squeezed between Number 10, the Treasury, on the one hand, and NHS England on the other. So I think there’s a question of DHSC’s, you know, authority as lead government department in this crisis.

Lead Inquiry: And is there a link between that observation and some of the comments made by Mr Cummings in particular, but Number 10 officials more widely, to the effect that there was a tendency on the part of the DHSC to attend meetings and to pull what might be described as a DHSC rabbit out of the hat, or, to use Mr Cummings’ word, to make it up?

Mr Alex Thomas: I’m not sure I could comment on making it up. It does not surprise me at all that there were people in Number 10 and the Cabinet Office who were frustrated with DHSC. That can be quite common, for some of the reasons we’ve talked about. But I also think – we may or may not cover it, but the data flows and data analysis within government were not strong in the early part of the pandemic, and if there was a lack of solidity to data and information that was flowing in, that could be one source of frustration.

Lead Inquiry: Now, just a few questions on a handful, shortly, of disparate, separate points. In relation to the devolved administrations, you’ve told us about the participation of the devolved administrations in COBR and in Covid-O and Covid-S and the JMC structure.

Do you reach in your report the view that there were significant failings in the degree of co-ordination between the United Kingdom Government and the devolved administrations in terms of the latter’s input into the core decision-making?

Mr Alex Thomas: I think, yes, that is fair. I think it is entirely legitimate for the UK Government to take decisions on behalf of England and for the devolved administrations to take decisions on behalf of those nations. But I think in a – what, excluding Northern Ireland, we in DEFRA used to call a sort of single epidemiological area, and given the interlinkages between all the different parts of the country, consistency and co-ordination to the extent possible would have been good, and there were times when that communication and input seemed to break down.

Lead Inquiry: Were the working relationships and communication between the central government in the United Kingdom and regional and local government any more or less effective?

Mr Alex Thomas: I think, on that score, it probably got more effective as the pandemic went on, but clearly there were well publicised events where local and regional government leaders were not sufficiently involved. I think partly that was a problem of the national government’s own making as it got deeper into the tiering approach, that got ever more complicated and ever more difficult to untangle the different financial support, enforcement, and other aspects of the operation across the country.

Lead Inquiry: To what extent were those difficulties reflective of the structures and pre-existing systems for communication, as opposed to the personalities, of course, the personalities of the First Ministers and the Prime Minister, who ultimately drive that system of collaboration?

Mr Alex Thomas: I think ultimately it comes down to the latter, but that is not something really that we can legislate for, that depends on who is elected. So I think some of the – there were clearly deficiencies in the system, the Joint Ministerial Committee, for example, I would say, you know, could operate well on paper but rarely operated that well in practice and the government has made various reforms to that structure to hopefully improve it, with which I agree.

So there was a structural gap in how central government engaged with all these different tiers, because the architecture was not sufficiently clear and authoritative.

Lead Inquiry: SAGE. I can deal with this briefly, because this is an area which the participants in SAGE have themselves commented on, and they will continue to do so during the course of the evidence next week, but did you look at, structurally, the position of SAGE and the role that it played in the provision of advice to central government?

Mr Alex Thomas: Yes, and we as the IFG and in part I personally have looked at this. I think SAGE on its own terms did a good job. There are legitimate criticisms that I know the Inquiry has considered about diversity of input and experience, and something of a delay to the transparency, which I would, you know, commend Sir Patrick Vallance for pushing inside and outside government.

The main – I also think that – I’ve thought about this quite a lot – I think the model of a Chief Scientific Adviser and Chief Medical Officer is the right one. I know there is a view that ministers should have more direct and personal access to a range of experts, and I think something of an opening up of the SAGE experts would be beneficial, but I think ultimately channelling that through the CMO and the GCSA is the right model.

The main gap, and I won’t labour it because we’ve talked about it, is the other forms of evidence that were going into decision-making.

Lead Inquiry: Yes. So that, Mr Thomas, we can be assured that the Inquiry has focused its attention on the right aspects of SAGE, would you agree with this summary of your report, that these are the following areas in which you invite the Inquiry’s focus: firstly, the make-up of the committee, that it was largely epidemiologists, modellers and behavioural scientists. There is an issue about the lack of diversity of expertise, a requirement for experts in pandemic management, crisis management, social scientists and the like. So that’s the first area.

The second area concerns the – you describe it as the way in which, because the government commissioned work, it slowed down the decision-making, because SAGE was always responsive to specific requests.

Third, because it was designed to address questions put to it, there may have been a caution on its own part or a sense of caution that led it to be less proactive; it waited for commission as opposed to wanting to proactively recommend, in a precautionary way, specific recommendations.

Mr Alex Thomas: Yep.

Lead Inquiry: Fourthly, there is an issue, is there not, with the way in which minutes were compiled as reflective of the consensus position, and therefore may not have actually adequately reflected the hugely important nuances in the debate.

Fifthly, SAGE had no clear evidence of what the government’s objectives or direction was, and so felt themselves unable to be able to fill the void.

You’ve discussed already the requirement for a synthesis of not just scientific advisory evidence but public health, economic, societal and pandemic managements to be brought together.

And lastly, in relation to the government’s messaging, to what extent do you feel that the government’s message or mantra of “following the science” was a proper reflection of the boundaries between scientific advice and policy decision?

Mr Alex Thomas: It was not a proper reflection of the boundaries. I think “informed by the science” is a nuanced but important distinction.

Lead Inquiry: All right.

Economic analysis and modelling. Did you look in your report at the degree to which the Treasury in particular had provided differing levels of economic analysis and modelling in the course of the crisis?

Mr Alex Thomas: So there was a report that – well, in my report it does briefly cover that, with more detail, with other IFG material, yes.

Lead Inquiry: In general terms – well, are there two points that you make: firstly, in the early part of the pandemic, some of the best decision-making was in the economic sphere, because of the speed and the coherence with which the Treasury was able to produce the business support schemes at very rapid pace?

Mr Alex Thomas: Correct.

Lead Inquiry: But that, secondly, throughout the whole course of the pandemic, there were perhaps self-imposed constraints put into place by the Treasury which prevented it from properly sharing economic analysis and its thinking in its reports with the rest of government?

Mr Alex Thomas: Yes, one of the criticisms that I think is often fairly levelled at the Treasury is that they are hoarders of information and data, and I think that did not, and our research work would suggest that that did not always lead to the best cross-government decision-making.

Lead Inquiry: You’ve told us, and you’ve commented upon some of the WhatsApps and the informal methods of communication utilised by advisers and civil servants and politicians. It is self-evident that WhatsApps and text messages are a convenient and swift form of communication, but of course they lack nuance and they can’t possibly reflect the give and take of a particularly complex policy issue.

Is there in the field of political science and in the academic world concerning the efficacy of government, been a number of reports making recommendations about the use by ministers, advisers and officials of personal phones, WhatsApps and messaging devices?

Mr Alex Thomas: Yes, there have, including one from the Institute for Government that talked about the importance of recording and properly using WhatsApps, and also that they could be beneficial for informal communication but shouldn’t be used to take formal decisions.

One reflection I have where my view has changed a little, thanks to reviewing some of the documentation in the Inquiry, is that for all the extreme discomfort in looking at many of these informal WhatsApp messages, it is relatively hard to find a substantial policy decision in the material that I have seen that was actually made on WhatsApp. So my concern is now more about the context for the decision that the WhatsApps set, rather than the actual formality of the decision-making.

Lead Inquiry: By that, do you mean it is extremely important to have a proper record-keeping system, a means by which those policy decisions are scrutinised and can be transparently examined subsequently, if they’re not, as you rightly say, set out clearly on the WhatsApp system?

Mr Alex Thomas: Yes. And the actual decision should be made through a proper, you know, sometimes rapid but reflective process in Cabinet committees.

Again, that said, we know more about what was in the minds of some of the key actors in this crisis through WhatsApps, so they are not without their use for the public record, but that depends on them being, you know, available and retained.

Lead Inquiry: But by and large that material tells us a great deal about the authors’ views on competence, reliability, integrity, the personal attributes, if you like, of the persons within government, rather than anything about the substantive policy making?

Mr Alex Thomas: Correct.

Lead Inquiry: Has this issue of “sofa government”, of momentous decisions being taken without being properly recorded and without being transparently made, long been an issue at the heart of government?

Mr Alex Thomas: Well, I make reference in my evidence to the Chilcot report into the circumstances around the decision to go to war in Iraq. Clearly one of the core critiques of that report was around informality of decision-making. I think – I think it comes back to the Prime Minister. I think prime ministers – this goes to the Helen MacNamara evidence you drew our attention to earlier about COBR. Prime ministers tend to make decisions in the fora and in the manner with which they are most comfortable. Those decisions – the process by which they make those decisions is not always conducive to a thorough consideration of the evidence and a proper reflection on the consequences of that decision.

Lead Inquiry: On the dawning of the pandemic, the Johnson government was, in your words, a relatively new and inexperienced one. It took over power in a system which had been placed under considerable strain by the demands and complexities of no-deal Brexit planning, and it was a system which had still not yet settled down, if you like, after the impact of the change of Prime Minister and the general election in 2019.

To what extent did those systemic issues impact upon the calibre of the individual decisions that this Inquiry is looking at?

Mr Alex Thomas: I think it is hard to see how they could have – how it could have been anything other than a great extent, on the calibre, both in terms of the individuals, particularly ministers and their experience, in terms of the resilience of the Cabinet Office in particular but all government departments, and in terms of the political context in which government had been – the top of government had been operating for the last three, four, five years.

Lead Inquiry: To what extent does proper crisis management depend on having the right people in the right position?

Mr Alex Thomas: Clearly to a huge extent, but also the right structures.

Lead Inquiry: How important is the identification of a clear strategy to proper crisis management and response?

Mr Alex Thomas: Very important. And I think – I saw the evidence from Lord O’Donnell, Gus O’Donnell, and I would entirely agree with some of his critique about the lack of a framework, a strategy that could then be applied into a framework that allowed ministers and senior officials to grapple with these extremely difficult decisions. There was not enough, let’s call it, complete decision-making.

Lead Inquiry: At what level should the Inquiry be examining the nature of those strategic decisions, or to what extent does the identification of strategy matter? Are you talking about the sort of overarching approach, the debate about suppression or mitigation, of whether there would be a first or second wave, of herd immunity, whether we allow the fatal consequences of the virus to spread or whether we crack down completely on the spread of the virus? Is that the sort of level of debate that you have in mind?

Mr Alex Thomas: Yes, it is. And clearly those are all issues for the Inquiry.

You know, in the field in which we have been discussing this morning, around the nature of decision-making at the heart of government, for me it’s the mechanism by which all different aspects of society were properly considered in the decisions that were made, from the economy through to education, through to health, and so on. I think – I entirely understand, for example, the reasons for the “protect the NHS” objective that was clearly central to the government’s approach, but that still seems to me to be limited as a strategic objective for government, and I think that is an important area for the Inquiry to consider.

Lead Inquiry: You’ve referred to the systems generally that were in place on the dawn of the pandemic, and you’ve described for us how the government systems evolved over time, but I want to show you, please, a document, INQ000136755, which was a document prepared by Helen MacNamara regarding how Number 10 and the Cabinet Office could better support the Prime Minister. It’s a document from, we believe, May 2020.

Just picking up some of the threads, please, Mr Thomas – if we could scroll in a little bit more on the top of the page so we can read it. Thank you.

Helen MacNamara spoke to over 45 people over three days in Number 10 and the Cabinet Office, did she not?

Mr Alex Thomas: Yes.

Lead Inquiry: And she identified what she describes as some universal themes: too many meetings, poorly structured and prepared, repetitious policy discussions, too many people in the room, the top two tiers of leadership spending all their time in the same meetings, fights over ownership, senior people negotiating with each other rather than doing stuff, bad behaviours from senior leaders tolerated, too much politics, explosions of new people causing chaos, Number 10 always at war with someone, lots of people mentioned junior women being talked over or ignored, “We need a modern culture of organised collaboration not superhero bunfight”. The Cabinet Office team has fallen out of shape, it has too many senior leaders, they can’t take decisions without consulting others. The Cabinet Office has lost its way in making the Whitehall machine work for Number 10. Superhero culture prevalent. No one had a clear picture of who was doing what and who is supposed to be doing what. The work isn’t good enough. It’s not clear who is calling out what. Everyone knows something is wrong and not true, but that’s not brought it to a head.

That is as damning an indictment of the system of government in Number 10 and the Cabinet Office as it is possible to imagine, is it not?

Mr Alex Thomas: Yes, and Helen MacNamara is an extremely experienced and also, as I think comes out from that, empathetic senior civil servant. I, you know, when I read this, it’s distressing and difficult to read, from somebody who knows many of the characters involved, though I can’t say that I was particularly surprised, from what I heard from people at the time.

Lead Inquiry: You’re obviously aware of the diary entries from Sir Patrick Vallance, in which he describes the general levels of chaos, of flip-flopping by the Prime Minister, of the way in which a decision would be taken or a strategy identified, only for him to go into reverse within hours or days and to reach a completely different outcome on seemingly the same material?

Mr Alex Thomas: Yes. And clearly that is one person’s perspective, but it’s an authoritative person’s perspective.

The British system, and this may well be a deep flaw in the British system, responds to clarity and direction setting from the Prime Minister. That is an overwhelming feature of how government works, and where that is not present, as we’ve seen from some of the material this morning, it clearly breaks down.

Lead Inquiry: Is it implicit in that answer that leadership and consistency of decision-making are absolutely vital in a crisis?

Mr Alex Thomas: Yes.

Lead Inquiry: Do you conclude that, in effect, Mr Johnson’s leadership engendered a chaotic government system, with competing power sources, unclear lines of responsibility and, ultimately, poor decision-making?

Mr Alex Thomas: I think that’s clear from the material we’ve seen, yes.

Lead Inquiry: You make a number of recommendations in your report. I’m not going to go through them all, because you’ve set them out plainly, but do you suggest, in broad terms, the following immediate or urgent or important changes:

One, that there is a supercharged overarching body above SAGE to bring together and synthesise all those issues, economic, societal, public health, pandemic management, matters which may all be relevant to a crisis, to make recommendations to politicians, ultimately the Prime Minister, for a better decision-making process?

Mr Alex Thomas: Yes, I can see the case for that, as long as it is flexible and responsive enough to deal with different crises as they emerge.

Lead Inquiry: A supercharged Covid-O, if you like, because it would comprise ministers and officials and experts?

Mr Alex Thomas: Yes, I think there is great value in ministers and officials and experts, as long as the right people are in the room to reflect the best possible discussion in being in the same place and hashing these things out.

Lead Inquiry: Do the structures around the Prime Minister need to be tightened up and formalised in order to ensure that he or she is given the best possible advice in a transparent and clear way to enable them to make the best possible decisions?

Mr Alex Thomas: Yes.

Lead Inquiry: Does there need to be a significant reduction in the churn, the rotation of ministers and advisers?

Mr Alex Thomas: And civil servants, yes.

Lead Inquiry: Does there need to be substantial training in civil contingency management for advisers, civil servants and ministers?

Mr Alex Thomas: Yes. I am mildly sceptical about how far that will gain purchase on ministers once they’re in office, but I think it is still worth doing. I also think that before ministers take office there is something that we should do to prepare them better for so doing.

Lead Inquiry: You mentioned earlier that the UK system is reliant, perhaps too reliant, in a crisis on the personal attributes of the sitting Prime Minister. It’s plain, Mr Thomas, that there is a limit upon which any Inquiry can make recommendations, given the deference that is paid to a Prime Minister under our unwritten constitution, on account of their absolute discretion to appoint Cabinet and set up committees and appoint advisers. But can the civil service structure around the Prime Minister be reformed in order to address, one hopes, some of the major concerns that you’ve expressed?

Mr Alex Thomas: For all the reasons and all the discussion that we’ve had this morning, I think yes. But I would agree with and emphasise your point about democracy and the need for governments, prime ministers and ministers to be accountable to Parliament. I think there is a danger, we feel it at the Institute for Government all the time, of sometimes taking a slightly sort of desiccated, institutional view of these things. It is healthy for there to be vigorous and rigorous debate, it is healthy for the population to have a chance to elect the governing party and, by extension, the Prime Minister of their choice, but I think it is also healthy for the ability to operate in government to be a full part of those considerations.

Lead Inquiry: Are you saying, on account of the fact that ministers are democratically accountable to the population through, of course, directly elected MPs, holding a majority in the House of Commons, and thereby forming government, there is a limit to what can be done in terms of improving the personal competence of ministers, but the systems around them are capable of significant reform?

Mr Alex Thomas: Correct.

Mr Keith: Thank you.

My Lady, I don’t believe we have any questions.

Lady Hallett: No, we don’t.

Thank you very much indeed, Mr Thomas. I’m very grateful, and I think you get also the gratitude from our stenographer for being a very well paced witness. So thank you very much indeed for all your help.

The Witness: Thank you, my Lady, and it is a privilege to be able to give evidence to this important endeavour.

Lady Hallett: Thank you.

(The witness withdrew)

Lady Hallett: I was asked to break, but I think every time I break it takes a bit of time and I can catch you all by surprise too, so I think unless anyone insists I have to break, we just need to get another chair.

Mr Keith: My Lady, I believe the witnesses are here, so by all means.

Lady Hallett: And you’re ready to proceed, Mr O’Connor?

(Pause)

Lady Hallett: Mr O’Connor, are you ready for the witnesses to be sworn?

Mr O’Connor: Yes, I am, thank you, my Lady.

Lady Hallett: Yes, please.