4. Ms Ondine Sherwood

MS ONDINE SHERWOOD (affirmed).

Questions From Counsel to the Inquiry

Lady Hallett: Ms Sherwood, can I first of all apologise for the fact the timetabling has meant that we’ve had to hear from you this afternoon when Mr Metzer can’t be with us in person. I am so sorry.

The Witness: It’s okay.

Lady Hallett: I’ve apologised to him too, but as you can see, if you look on the screen, he is attending remotely, albeit I have no idea what time it is where he is. But as you know, but others may not, he had a long-standing –

The Witness: Early morning, I think.

Lady Hallett: – morning engagement that he had to fulfil. So I’m really sorry.

The Witness: That’s fine, thank you.

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

Ms Ondine Sherwood: Yes, my name is Ondine Sherwood.

Counsel Inquiry: Ms Sherwood, you are one of the founding members of a group called Long Covid SOS.

Ms Ondine Sherwood: Yes, I’m a founding member of Long Covid SOS. I’m here actually representing two other groups, Long Covid Kids and Long Covid Support. And we’d all like to offer our sincerest condolences to the bereaved families.

Counsel Inquiry: Thank you. As you say, I’ll come to the other two groups in a moment, but on behalf of Long Covid SOS you have provided the Inquiry with a statement.

Ms Ondine Sherwood: I have.

Counsel Inquiry: And I see it’s helpfully on screen, and at the end of that statement, I don’t ask for us to go there, but you have signed the statement stating that you believe the contents of it are true, with the date of 25 September –

Ms Ondine Sherwood: Absolutely.

Counsel Inquiry: – 2023.

Ms Ondine Sherwood: Yes.

Counsel Inquiry: As you’ve indicated, Long Covid SOS is the group that you are here to represent, it’s the group that you helped to found, but there two other Long Covid support groups that have core participant representation before the Inquiry, and witness statements have been filed on behalf of those two groups as well. Perhaps if we can just call them up briefly, the first is a statement from Natalie Rogers on behalf of an organisation called Long Covid Support, and I imagine you’re familiar with that statement?

Ms Ondine Sherwood: I am, yes.

Counsel Inquiry: Secondly, there is a statement from Sammie McFarland, on behalf of Long Covid Kids, and those are, are they not, the three groups that are represented before the Inquiry –

Ms Ondine Sherwood: Yes.

Counsel Inquiry: – on behalf of Long Covid, and no doubt there are many other support groups relating to Long Covid throughout the country?

Ms Ondine Sherwood: Yes, there will be.

Counsel Inquiry: Let’s focus, for the moment at least, Ms Sherwood, on your organisation, Long Covid SOS.

If we look at page 2 of your statement and paragraph 3, we see you say there that the group was established in June 2020. That date, of course, fits very much with the chronology we were just discussing with Professor Brightling and Dr Evans, and you say that you helped to found that organisation. I take it there were other people involved at the start as well?

Ms Ondine Sherwood: Yes.

Counsel Inquiry: You describe the organisation as a “volunteer-run patient advocacy and campaign group”. Can you tell us a little bit about how it started?

Ms Ondine Sherwood: Yes. I, having not recovered from Covid, which I developed at the end of March, I really couldn’t understand why I wasn’t recovering. It was very odd. And I initially thought it must be something wrong with me: why on earth was I not able to throw off this virus? Which – I hadn’t had a particularly severe infection.

But I came across an article written by a young woman in America in the New York Times where she described ongoing symptoms and that she had set up a support group. So I joined that support group and was quite astonished to see the messages going back and forth in that group. How many people were in there, the ages, the symptoms they were experiencing, and it was shocking. It really was. And it put it all into context for me. I realised I was not alone.

After a few weeks –

Counsel Inquiry: Just pause there, Ms Sherwood.

Ms Ondine Sherwood: Sorry?

Counsel Inquiry: Just tell us, it was shocking because you realised that other people were suffering the same as you, or because a lot of other people were suffering?

Ms Ondine Sherwood: It was shocking the extent of their suffering, because their – remember, at the time Covid was described as a mild illness unless you were very sick in hospital and that the prime symptoms were fever and a new continuous cough, yet the range of symptoms that these people were suffering was far wider, and many of the symptoms were frightening and debilitating and many of the people in that group were very young and had been very fit.

Lady Hallett: Could you slow down, please.

Ms Ondine Sherwood: Oh, I’m sorry, am I talking too fast?

Lady Hallett: Don’t worry, I speak too quickly as well.

Ms Ondine Sherwood: Okay, I will slow down.

Yes, that was what was shocking: the symptoms, the people experiencing the symptoms, the number of people, all over the world, a lot of them were in America. And the most shocking of all was the fact they weren’t getting any help. They were all saying, “No one can help me”, and that was – it was extraordinary. It really was. And that really motivated me to answer a call from one of my co-founders to march on Parliament, because I felt something had to be done.

Mr O’Connor: So those were the circumstances in which you set up, with others –

Ms Ondine Sherwood: Yes.

Counsel Inquiry: – this group.

I want to go back to something you said, you yourself, as you’ve explained, had continuing symptoms of Covid?

Ms Ondine Sherwood: Yes.

Counsel Inquiry: Do you in fact continue to suffer –

Ms Ondine Sherwood: I still – I’m much, much better, but I think I have a vulnerability in that if I overdo things I will have what we term a relapse, and I can have a day or few days of feeling unwell. And that will happen if, you know, I’ve exerted myself too much or particularly if there has been a lot of stress. So I think that is something residual that I may always have, but fortunately, unlike many, I have managed to get my life back.

Counsel Inquiry: Coming back to the group, you were starting to tell us, and it’s a core theme of your statement, that the group was formed for the purpose of what we’ve seen described as patient advocacy.

Ms Ondine Sherwood: Mm-hm.

Counsel Inquiry: Was that because you and others felt you weren’t being properly supported at the time?

Ms Ondine Sherwood: Yes, we were being – we felt abandoned. The film we made in those early days was called Message in a Bottle, and that was really to illustrate how many people felt that they were really on their own, that they had been abandoned by the government, they weren’t getting any healthcare, doctors didn’t understand their condition.

In fact, when I was in the acute phase, it struck me that with all the emphasis on hospitalisations and deaths, but nobody was really examining the people in the community, no one was looking at us, no one was researching us, you know, suffering at home.

Counsel Inquiry: Just pause there for a moment. If you can try and keep –

Ms Ondine Sherwood: Oh –

Counsel Inquiry: I’m sorry to –

Ms Ondine Sherwood: Slower, sorry.

Counsel Inquiry: – come back to it, but if you can try and keep your –

Ms Ondine Sherwood: Yes.

Counsel Inquiry: – keep it slower, that would be much appreciated.

Ms Ondine Sherwood: Okay.

Counsel Inquiry: You were suffering at home, and what you’ve said picks up another one of the themes of your statement, which is that you and others perhaps were misunderstood. I just want to quote one of the accounts that you give in your witness statement, not from you but from one of the people involved in your group. What was said is:

“… my ongoing symptoms were often met with scepticism and a degree of ‘gaslighting’.”

Ms Ondine Sherwood: Yes.

Counsel Inquiry: Was that a common experience?

Ms Ondine Sherwood: Very common. It was very common because the doctors didn’t seem prepared for this, even though post-viral – post-viral syndromes were known, but they weren’t prepared for this, they probably weren’t prepared for the extent of it. Some of the symptoms they interpreted as anxiety, and many patients were told they were anxious and sent home, including people whose children were presenting with symptoms, where they were told their children were being influenced by their parents and that these symptoms were fabricated.

So there was a huge amount of gaslighting, I’m afraid that is a word that was used a lot in the support group, and people really felt that.

And I have to add that it has been said by many people that the trauma of not being believed was one of the worst aspects of their experience.

Counsel Inquiry: Yes. The steps that you took as an organisation, as you describe in your witness statement, became largely engaging with, attempting to lobby and advocate with the government.

Ms Ondine Sherwood: Mm-hm.

Counsel Inquiry: Perhaps we can turn to page 6 of your statement, paragraph 23, which starts at the bottom, and you say that:

“While our advocacy initially focused on the need for formal recognition for and treatment of Long Covid, we soon discovered that we also had to work hard to put pressure on key decision makers so that important issues such as counting cases of Long Covid were addressed.”

You refer also to the impact of decisions around easing restrictions, distribution of vaccines and so on.

Ms Ondine Sherwood: Yeah.

Counsel Inquiry: You then list what I think are the sort of key topics or the key aims of your advocacy over that period –

Ms Ondine Sherwood: Yes.

Counsel Inquiry: – of the pandemic:

Campaigning for formal recognition of Long Covid; advocacy for the incorporation of Long Covid in government decision-making; counting Long Covid, advocacy for improved treatment; and other matters.

I want to go, if I may, to a letter that you wrote right at the start of your campaigning. You refer to it, in fact, I think lower down on that page, but if we could call the letter itself up on the screen, please, it’s INQ000238582, and so we can see, Ms Sherwood, it’s dated 3 July, so within a month or so of your organisation coming together?

Ms Ondine Sherwood: Yes.

Counsel Inquiry: We see that it’s addressed to a series of people, the Prime Minister, the Health Secretary, Chris Whitty, Patrick Vallance, and then the chief executive of NHS England, and also the chief executives of health authorities in the devolved nations, and also the chief executive of Public Health England.

Could I just ask you about the devolved nations, something that this Inquiry takes an interest in. Was your group, is your group one that spans all of the UK or is it an English group?

Ms Ondine Sherwood: Our focus has become England mainly because our – the core members, the core volunteers, all live in England and we’ve – also because, as I may tell you later, we work quite closely with NHS England, so that became our focus.

The other two groups who form the Long Covid groups both have organisations or suborganisations who work with the devolved nations, and so they do more work with Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland than we do, because we’ve really worked hard with NHS England and that’s been our focus. But we did write to the devolved health authorities and we did get replies from two of them.

Counsel Inquiry: Yes. Unlike some of the people in this country that you wrote to?

Ms Ondine Sherwood: Yes.

Counsel Inquiry: Well, we’ll come back to that. I don’t want to – we won’t go line by line through this letter, but I just want to pick up on a few of the points that are made in it.

First of all, the first substantive paragraph, you talk about representing thousands of forgotten victims of Covid-19, and you describe them as struggling to get help from the medical community for their continuing disease and feeling “abandoned” by the government.

That’s quite a strong term, but was that how you felt at the time?

Ms Ondine Sherwood: Yes, I think that encapsulates the feelings of most people who weren’t able to get any help, and of course the thousands was an estimate.

Counsel Inquiry: It was, but perhaps I should have asked you this earlier, I was going to, in terms of the reach of your organisation, I think it’s right to say it’s not a sort of old-fashioned membership organisation, where people sort of join and have a membership card, you’re a – largely based on a – as a sort of social networking site –

Ms Ondine Sherwood: Yes.

Counsel Inquiry: – and so on. But you do give some details in your statement about how many people you have following your –

Ms Ondine Sherwood: Yes.

Counsel Inquiry: – feeds and so on.

Ms Ondine Sherwood: Yes.

Counsel Inquiry: Is it right to say that you, as an organisation, now anyway, you reach tens of thousands of people?

Ms Ondine Sherwood: Definitely, yes. Yes.

Counsel Inquiry: At the start how many people were involved –

Ms Ondine Sherwood: Well, we didn’t have – we weren’t running a support group, so we didn’t have people signing up to a support group, we were running as a campaigning organisation. But our social media accounts grew fairly quickly, as did – the website attracted quite a lot of people signing up as well, and at the beginning it was difficult to know how many people we were representing. We knew that, for instance, Long Covid Support had a Facebook group, which at the time I think was – I may be wrong, but I think it was at the beginning – round about this time it was about 3,000, 5,000 people. So we knew that there were a lot of people involved, but nobody really knew how many.

Counsel Inquiry: Yes. Just going back to the letter, if we can go down a bit further down the page, about halfway down the next paragraph, you refer to the fact that people had been told that they only had mild symptoms, they were told to go home, they had to struggle on on their own, and that there was, as it were, a dissonance between, on the one hand, all the public health messaging saying, “It’s a mild condition, don’t worry about it”, and on the other hand, these alarming ongoing symptoms that people were suffering?

Ms Ondine Sherwood: Yes. Certainly, you know, many, many people who probably should have been in hospital, but they weren’t able to go to hospital because their symptoms weren’t considered quite bad enough by 111, but even if they weren’t eligible for hospital or they weren’t as bad as that, they were quite ill, and this use of the word mild is very misleading, because for most people it wasn’t mild.

Counsel Inquiry: I suppose we have to bear in mind or remember quite what it was like during 2020, still the early months of the pandemic, and a great concern, perhaps, about going to hospitals if one didn’t feel one really needed to be there?

Ms Ondine Sherwood: Yes, I think there were a lot of people who would rather have stayed out of hospital, but those that were – who should have been admitted were – some of them, their loved ones were asked to keep an eye of them every hour in the night, in case something went wrong. So many people had a very traumatic acute Covid experience.

Counsel Inquiry: Yes. Let’s look over the page, if we can, and the sort of third paragraph down, in the middle of that paragraph we can see there is a sentence starting “Unfortunately”.

Ms Ondine Sherwood: Mm.

Counsel Inquiry: You describe people who have been infected with Covid-19 being told, it would seem rather dismissively, that they’re just suffering from anxiety, and in fact a range of other diagnoses, some sort of post-viral symptom, fatigue.

Is what you’re trying to capture there, going back to this point about just uncertainty amongst the group as to what it is that’s wrong with them?

Ms Ondine Sherwood: I think that amongst doctors – and this is kind of speculation, but it’s something we’ve discussed at length – the doctors didn’t understand the symptoms, and many don’t really like to express to their patients that they don’t know and they don’t understand, and so they fall back on something they do understand: “Well, this could be anxiety, you know, it’s an anxious time, we’re in a pandemic, and breathlessness, fatigue, can be symptoms of anxiety, so let’s hope that’s what it is.”

And post-viral fatigue, which was what I was told I had, I don’t think it captures the experience that people were having.

Counsel Inquiry: Yes.

If we just look at the next paragraph down, we see essentially the core complaint of the letter, which is, looking at the first sentence, there appears to be very little focus on the part of government on the ongoing very poor health of potentially hundreds of thousands of people, it’s imperative that the needs of this group are addressed. And that’s really what your group was trying to do at that stage?

Ms Ondine Sherwood: Yes.

Counsel Inquiry: Bring it to the attention of the government?

Ms Ondine Sherwood: Yes, because it seemed almost – it was almost impossible to understand how so many people could be so sick and nobody was talking about it. It wasn’t present in any conversation. It was only starting to be – it was in certain news articles from maybe May, but very few, and it simply was not mentioned by government or by public health messaging. It just wasn’t there.

Counsel Inquiry: Yes.

I’m just … yes, if we can call up, go back to your witness statement, please, it’s the bottom of page 7, it’s paragraph 27 at the bottom of that page where you describe the letter we’ve just been looking at in detail, but if we pick it up at the end of the penultimate line, you say:

“We did not receive any response from the UK Government [to that letter] …”

Ms Ondine Sherwood: No, no one from government replied.

Counsel Inquiry: I’m not going to call it back up, but you wrote to the Prime Minister, to Matt Hancock, to Chris Whitty, to Patrick Vallance?

Ms Ondine Sherwood: We had replies from the devolved health authorities, we had a reply eventually from Professor Stephen Powis, from NHS England, we had a response from Public Health England suggesting we contact the Department of Health and Social Care, and we had – I copied it to all the MPs, so we had responses from some MPs supporting us, mostly Opposition MPs, as far as I remember, but no, we didn’t get anything back from government.

Counsel Inquiry: Now, we’ve heard from Professor Brightling and Dr Evans a little bit about what happened later, for the second half of that year, and there were various developments, for example the roundtable meetings at the Department of Health and the setting up of the Long Covid taskforce, to name two. I think it’s right to say that your groups or groups like it were involved in those various initiatives?

Ms Ondine Sherwood: That’s right, yeah, we were.

Counsel Inquiry: Were you personally involved in either at the roundtable meetings –

Ms Ondine Sherwood: Yes.

Counsel Inquiry: – or in the taskforce?

Ms Ondine Sherwood: Yes, because we worked with – by the time the taskforce was set up, we were having regular meetings with NHS England, and in fact we encouraged them to publicise something, that announcement they made in October about the five-point plan, because we were getting so many people saying, “What’s happening? What’s happening? Why aren’t we getting any help? What are we going to do?” And we were working with NHS England and we said, “Well, what are we supposed to say? Is anything happening?”

So that’s why you will see that there is a quote from our organisation on that press release, and we were part of the taskforce and invited to sit on the roundtable.

Counsel Inquiry: In a few sentences, what was your impression of those initiatives? Did you feel that they were effective? Perhaps, over time your view changed on them, but tell us what your views were.

Ms Ondine Sherwood: Well, the taskforce was much more focused on the NHS and on care, and it was obviously very encouraging when that was set up, and it was very good to be in a forum with scientists and doctors and talking about this condition, and having the condition taken seriously and discussed in the serious manner. It did seem – it became obvious after a while that decisions weren’t going to be made at that taskforce, it was a forum for discussion and that anything that happened would take place in between meetings. The subgroups that were set up – actually also it was our initiative to set up subgroups in the taskforce – they were very good because we could have much more focused discussions.

So after a while we did begin to wonder, you know, where is it leading us, because we were still having trouble getting any treatments established for Long Covid and people were complaining about the clinics and so on, so there was some frustration there.

As far as the roundtable goes, that was also a very exciting moment, that we were going to be having meetings with the government minister, and certainly the government ministers, which as well as Lord Bethell, included Matt Hancock and Sajid Javid, when taking part in these meetings were very receptive, were very interested and were very willing to listen and to sympathise.

Counsel Inquiry: Yes.

Ms Ondine Sherwood: However, we felt that it tended to stop there. We couldn’t get these – and the need that we felt for changes in policy, even though we were sitting with ministers, it didn’t seem – it didn’t happen. And that was very frustrating.

Counsel Inquiry: Right.

I want to move on, perhaps finally, and ask you just about a sort of series of events later on in the pandemic, six months or so later. For these purposes, perhaps we can go to page 13 of your witness statement, please, and it’s paragraphs 50 to 51.

So we’re now in January 2021, and then I’m going to move later into 2021 in a moment, but in summary, Ms Sherwood, we’ll all remember that it was around that time that the vaccine roll-out started, and although it was clearly going to take a while, as you say in your statement, there started to be discussion about lifting restrictions once people had been properly vaccinated. This was something that gave your group some concern, was it not? Explain perhaps in a few sentences, and if you can try to keep the pace down, that would be appreciated.

Ms Ondine Sherwood: Sorry.

Counsel Inquiry: Please explain what – the slightly different set of concerns you had about that prospect.

Ms Ondine Sherwood: Yes, okay. When the vaccine roll-out was first announced, it was made clear that the vulnerable groups and the elderly would be vaccinated first. So those were the people who get severe acute Covid. So that made sense, but it didn’t take into account the fact that Long Covid can affect anybody. So we had already heard announcements by Boris Johnson that, “Once we’ve vaccinated the vulnerable and the elderly we’ll be able to open up the country”, and of course that concerned us greatly, because then the country would be completely opened up and all the younger people would be mixing in large numbers and would get Covid, and they may not go to hospital or end up dead, but they would be liable to get Long Covid. And they weren’t vaccinated. We can see that there seems to be lesser incidence of Long Covid in vaccinated adults, but these people weren’t vaccinated. And of course the children weren’t vaccinated – there were no plans to vaccinate the children at all.

Counsel Inquiry: So, in summary, was your concern that the focus was very much on the acute Covid and the prospect that the vaccine programme would reduce the risk of acute Covid and, on that principle, allow more opening up –

Ms Ondine Sherwood: Yes.

Counsel Inquiry: – but that rather different analysis applied to Long Covid –

Ms Ondine Sherwood: Yes.

Counsel Inquiry: – and that that might risk infecting people, which would see a rise in Long Covid?

Ms Ondine Sherwood: Well, infecting a lot of people. And as it happened, of course, this was the time when we’d just come out Alpha, Delta was on its way, and there was the potential for large numbers of people to get infected because we would be without restrictions.

And it was clear that the thought processes of government were just not considering Long Covid as being anything – as being something that needed to be considered. Certainly from our point of view we didn’t see any evidence that Long Covid was a consideration.

Counsel Inquiry: Yes. In the passage of your witness statement that we’re looking at now, you refer to a letter there that you wrote about these concerns in January 2021, and then further down the page you refer to the fact that you then wrote on very much the same theme, in the last paragraph, on 6 July –

Ms Ondine Sherwood: Yes.

Counsel Inquiry: – the January letter warning of this problem and July saying it’s still there?

Ms Ondine Sherwood: It’s happening, yes.

Counsel Inquiry: And we may all remember, I think it was the 20-somethingth of July 2021 that was badged as sort of “freedom day” –

Ms Ondine Sherwood: Yes.

Counsel Inquiry: – and it was in advance of that that you wrote this other letter –

Ms Ondine Sherwood: Yes.

Counsel Inquiry: – Mr Javid by this stage being the Health Secretary, essentially renewing your –

Ms Ondine Sherwood: Yes.

Counsel Inquiry: – concerns on this basis.

Ms Ondine Sherwood: Can I just add that the other concern was not only was Long Covid not considered by government, it wasn’t being – there was no public messaging about Long Covid at all, so not only were people at risk of getting – developing Long Covid, they didn’t know about that risk, so they were unaware of the risk. “Freedom day” just sends a message that we can all just go out and party and it’s all over, which of course it wasn’t, but what it doesn’t express is that actually 5%, 10%, you know, it could be somewhere in between, of people don’t get better after two weeks, and some of them will be very, very unwell for a long time. But that information wasn’t out there and so how could the public assess their risk?

Counsel Inquiry: Of course those are the people who, some of them at any rate, were members of your group, and it was their experiences that you were very familiar with yourself?

Ms Ondine Sherwood: Yes.

Counsel Inquiry: Can I just, and just finally, Ms Sherwood, bring us forward. You describe these, the sort of campaigning actions that we’ve discussed already, and others, including on the point about messaging, in your statement. But can you bring us up to date? What are your sort of campaigning objectives at the moment?

Ms Ondine Sherwood: We felt at one point that we’d sort of lost the public health battle, that we weren’t going to be able to influence the government to take precautions in order to – or to encourage people to take more precautions to avoid getting Covid. At the moment we’re very concerned that there are no – there’s no mandates for precautions even in hospitals, which is very, very difficult for people who don’t want to catch Covid. If you go into any hospital now, most people who are working there are not wearing masks, and we’ve heard stories of that happening in wards with vulnerable patients.

So people with Long Covid, along with the clinically vulnerable, find it very difficult to go back into society really and to mix in the way that other people are. So, as well as using our voice to inform people about Long Covid, to inform people how to get help, we’re still very interested in changing policy in any way that we can in order to give this condition a little bit more publicity. Because there are many people in this country unfortunately who think Long Covid is made up, that it doesn’t exist, that people who have got it, oh, they must all be public servants because they just don’t want to work. I mean, there are some really nasty comments that we get on social media and – you know, there are some beliefs that go around, and maybe it’s worse on social media, which really stigmatise and denigrate the people who have this condition.

Counsel Inquiry: Yes.

Well, Ms Sherwood, I’m very grateful, and perhaps one can add that of course your involvement in this Inquiry and the involvement of the other groups is part of that campaigning function.

Ms Ondine Sherwood: Yes.

Mr O’Connor: And it’s one for which I’m sure we’re all very grateful.

But, as I’ve said, we have your statement, we also have the statement of Ms Rogers and Sammie McFarland, which we will adduce in full, and which we have for our work, and I’m very grateful for you coming along and sharing your experiences with us this afternoon.

Those are all the questions I have for you.

The Witness: Thank you very much for having me.

Lady Hallett: Thank you very much, Ms Sherwood, a very eloquent advocate. And do I hear in the breathing, is that –

The Witness: Well, it may not be related, but I am a bit chesty, yeah.

Lady Hallett: Well, I hope that the recovery does continue.

The Witness: Thank you very much indeed.

Lady Hallett: So thank you very much for your help indeed.

(The witness withdrew)

Mr O’Connor: My Lady, there’s one very brief practical matter I’ve been asked to raise with you.

You’ll appreciate that Ms Sherwood’s evidence brings us to the end of the impact evidence that we have heard. So may I invite you to order that, first of all, the questionnaire responses that have been summarised during the various tranches of evidence, and also the witness statements of Southall Black Sisters, Long Covid groups and the children’s organisations, that they are all published on the Inquiry website and adduced into evidence.

Lady Hallett: Most certainly.

Mr O’Connor: I’m grateful, my Lady. That’s everything.

Lady Hallett: That’s it? That’s it for this week.

Thank you all very much for attending online, and thank you, Mr Metzer, if you’re still there, for attending despite your long journey, and thank you to everybody here, and I will see everybody at 10.30 on Monday.

Mr O’Connor: Yes.

Lady Hallett: Thank you.

(3.15 pm)

(The hearing adjourned until 10.30 am on Monday, 16 October 2023)