Transcript of Module 2 Public Hearing on 31 October 2023.
(10.00 am)
Lady Hallett: Mr O’Connor.
Mr O’Connor: My Lady, our first witness this morning is Lee Cain.
1. Mr Lee Cain
MR LEE CAIN (affirmed).
Questions From Counsel to the Inquiry
Mr O’Connor: Could you give us your full name, please.
Mr Lee Cain: Yes. Lee Edward Cain.
Counsel Inquiry: Mr Cain, you have kindly prepared a witness statement for the Inquiry, which is up on screen. I know that you are familiar with the contents of that statement, and we don’t need to go to it, but on the last page of the statement there is a statement of truth, stating that you believe that the contents of the witness statement are true, and you’ve signed your name underneath that statement, haven’t you?
Mr Lee Cain: Correct.
Counsel Inquiry: And you did that on 25 August 2023.
Mr Lee Cain: Correct.
Counsel Inquiry: Thank you.
Mr Cain, it’s right, isn’t it, that you began your career as a journalist, but subsequently you’ve worked in communications and public relations?
Mr Lee Cain: Yes, that’s correct.
Counsel Inquiry: In 2016, you worked in that field for the Leave campaign in the Brexit referendum?
Mr Lee Cain: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: You, I think, were the communications head for the Leave campaign?
Mr Lee Cain: Head of broadcast.
Counsel Inquiry: Thank you. And after the referendum, you worked in various – in communications roles in various different government departments, including working for Boris Johnson when he was the Foreign Secretary between 2016 and 2018?
Mr Lee Cain: It was the latter half of his time as Foreign Secretary, so from – you know, for the final year I think he was there, not the entire time.
Counsel Inquiry: So 2018 at least?
Mr Lee Cain: Yes, yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: When Mr Johnson became Prime Minister in 2019, following Theresa May’s resignation, you were appointed as his director of communications at Number 10?
Mr Lee Cain: Yes, and I’d worked as well with him while he was on the backbenches during that sort of period in between –
Counsel Inquiry: Between 2018 and 2019?
Mr Lee Cain: Yeah, yeah, yeah, before he went back into Number 10 after he left the Foreign Office, into Number 10.
Counsel Inquiry: From July 2019, you held that post of director of communications until you resigned in November 2020, so 18 months or so?
Mr Lee Cain: Yeah, just a bit short of that, correct.
Counsel Inquiry: If we look at your statement on that first page that’s on the screen at the moment, Mr Cain, at paragraph 3 you refer to your position as director of communications and you say that you were “one of the Prime Minister’s most senior advisers”.
As director of communications, tell us in a few sentences, what was your responsibility? Did you in fact have responsibility for communications across government or was it something less than that?
Mr Lee Cain: No, I think it’s – your broad role and remit is to provide political advice to the Prime Minister within the sphere of communications, and it’s quite nebulous to some degree what control and authority you have over the wider government machine. There is an executive director, when I was there, it’s a gentleman called Alex Aiken, who is – who oversees the GCS, which is the Government Communication Service, so that is all of the departments and the ALBs and the budget and the marketing, all that side of things, and the civil servants would normally report in to Alex, and we would work together on, you know, various issues, but as a sort of – it’s quite unclear who is in control of certain elements, but mine would be more the political but also more of a sort of counsellor to the Prime Minister as well.
Counsel Inquiry: You use the word “political” and, as we will see, your role was certainly not limited to, shall we say, presentational matters. You were advising him on what his strategy should be, not just how it should be presented?
Mr Lee Cain: That was broadly correct.
Counsel Inquiry: Give us a sense, Mr Cain, of your personal relationship with Mr Johnson in 2020. You say you’d worked with him for some years by then. Was he a friend of yours?
Mr Lee Cain: I think – he was my boss, so, you know, friend is – you know, would be presumptuous for me to say, but I think we were – we were close, we would speak pretty much every day, and I think I had a good understanding of him. I think part of what I brought to the Downing Street operation, having worked with him for quite a long time, was just a good understanding of how he would react to information and, you know, you get a sort of simpatico, almost, relationship between a special adviser and a – and a principal.
Counsel Inquiry: I want, Mr Cain, to take you through some of the events in 2020 in a reasonably chronological way. If we can look, please, at paragraph 4 of your statement, starting at paragraph 16, you make the point here that although as you say:
“There was an awareness of … Covid-19 … early in January [of that year] … It was only one of many issues discussed inside Downing Street …”
And you say it was a “low priority” at that point.
Then if we can look at the next paragraph, paragraph 17, you talk about various other issues that had some prominence in January and into February: Brexit, 5G, a reshuffle of the Cabinet, HS2 and so on.
So can you give us a sense, then, of where Covid fitted into the hierarchy of concern in January and February of 2020?
Mr Lee Cain: I think it was – it started off from a pretty low base, I would say. You know, in Number 10 there is always a … there is always decisions to be made over, you know, what will be the priority issues. As you can imagine, only the most difficult issues are dealt with in Number 10, because if they were soluble they would be solved at a departmental level. So there is that constant balance of what do we need to focus on at any one time. You can see from the issues that I’ve outlined here, these are all pretty taxing and difficult, you know, issues that deserve the Prime Minister’s and Number 10’s attention. But I think at first Covid, you know, we were informed was – you know, we were obviously having conversations with the Department of Health, the view was the UK was incredibly well prepared, there had been a decade of pre-preparedness, and we were, you know, amongst the best in the world to deal with a pandemic, and it was being monitored closely by, you know, officials in the Department of Health.
So I think it was quite rational at that point to assume it would be a departmental lead, and they would continue to inform us as and when was required, when it needed more attention. I think – and you can see it goes up the sort of agenda in Number 10 as we move through January and into February.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes.
Mr Lee Cain: Clearly, you know, we got that assessment wrong, but I think you can probably see why we made the judgments that we did at the time.
Counsel Inquiry: If we can just look at the next paragraph, please, and pick up on one or two of the things you’ve just said, Mr Cain.
Lady Hallett: Could you try and go a little slower, Mr Cain, please.
Mr Lee Cain: Sorry.
Mr O’Connor: We see there, as I think you’ve explained, Covid, at that stage at any rate, wasn’t even, you say, in the “top five” of concerns, but you go on to say, as I think you’ve just indicated, that officials at the DHSC were confident of the strength of the UK’s pandemic preparations and the general view was that it was something that could be dealt with at departmental level.
Does it follow that, at least at that stage, January/February, you weren’t worried about the priority that was or rather wasn’t being given to Covid?
Mr Lee Cain: I think in January, particularly early January, it felt like, you know, we were getting the balance right at the time. I think as we moved into late January and early February, I think, you know, it’d become clear that we didn’t particularly have that balance. But then I think it becomes – you know, the focus, from what I saw yesterday, was quite a lot on individuals but I think the actual institutions, the organisations within the Cabinet Office and, you know, in the Department of Health, the feedback was, you know: we are well prepared to deal with this and things are in hand.
The question of whether Number 10 should have been kicking the tyres more and checking those issues, if they were in place, I think is a valid one but I think, you know, we were probably complacent to the fact that the work was being done elsewhere, when, you know, obviously, it was not.
Counsel Inquiry: You’ve mentioned a couple of times, and you refer here to officials at the Department of Health providing that assurance, talking about the plans, and so on. Was it just officials or was it the Secretary of State, Matt Hancock, as well?
Mr Lee Cain: The Secretary of State as well was confident on the pre-preparedness. I think in defence of the Secretary of State as well, he did raise the issue early in January, he did speak about it, you know, at a frequent basis, so it’s not like it wasn’t being raised, but there was an assurance that, you know, we were well set to deal with, you know, whatever come our way.
Counsel Inquiry: He raised it but he followed that by assuring those he was talking to –
Mr Lee Cain: Correct.
Counsel Inquiry: – that the plans were in place and that the UK was well placed to address the threat?
Mr Lee Cain: And that, of course, was still the sort of – I say “official” but, you know, it was still the government position even when the action plan was launched in, I think, early March that, you know, we were well prepared to deal with Covid and, you know, we’d had this decade of preparedness, that was language from the action plan. So rolling into March, that was still the government view.
Counsel Inquiry: We’ll come to the action plan in a moment.
Can we look forward, please, on to the next page of your statement and look at paragraph 22. You refer here, Mr Cain, to I think perhaps a conversation, or a contact, anyway, that you had with a senior adviser to Matt Hancock, I think it must have been 31 January, who, according to this at any rate, suggested that perhaps the plans weren’t as well prepared as the assurances that were being given.
Can you tell us a little more about that exchange you had?
Mr Lee Cain: Yes. That was the first time for me somebody had raised questions about pre-preparedness at that point. You know, they mentioned that while the no-deal preparations had helped support some of the government’s planning, they were just concerned about supply chain issues and other such things and were not sure we were in as good a place as potentially was being represented. It wasn’t a sort of panic, it was just someone flagging that maybe this needs a bit more attention.
Counsel Inquiry: As you’ve just said, and as we will see, the mood of confidence lasted long beyond 31 January –
Mr Lee Cain: Correct.
Counsel Inquiry: – so did you do something about this warning that you had been given or not?
Mr Lee Cain: So at that point, and I can’t quite remember the beginning dates, I started to host a sort of cross-Whitehall meeting with the communication professionals, which we would invite departmental heads and arm’s length body heads, like the NHS, to come into Number 10, and just raise the sort of issues that they were getting, because I think part of the problem the communicators were feeding in to me was: we’re being asked a lot of questions by the media and we don’t really have any answers to many of these questions. So we tried to begin then a sort of central hub where at least I was getting the information from source, so to speak, and then we’d try and shake the tyres a little bit – kick the tyres, sorry – in Number 10. I think soon after Mr Cummings as well started a senior team sort of meeting in Number 10, focusing on Covid. I think this was more sort of mid-February, I would – I would suspect.
Counsel Inquiry: All right.
Let me ask you, Mr Cain, about the Prime Minister, about Boris Johnson’s approach at this time.
At paragraph 21 of your statement, you refer to the fact, of course, we know, that he did not attend or in fact chair a whole series of early COBR meetings. You say that he was “focusing his time on the issues outlined” – I think you mean those other priorities that –
Mr Lee Cain: Yes, correct.
Counsel Inquiry: – were just mentioned, don’t you? And he took a two-week holiday. But you go on to say that you don’t now, I think, criticise the Prime Minister for using his time in that way during that period because this was a reflection of the prioritisation that we’ve discussed; is that right?
Mr Lee Cain: Correct. I think also, you know, in defence of the Prime Minister, and there are certainly things that the Prime Minister got wrong, but I think in this early stage he is receiving assurances that, you know, everything actually is being well prepared and we are in a good situation to handle things, and nobody’s sort of setting up the warning flares to him or to the core team so, you know, his behaviour at this point isn’t, you know, irrational, to focus on some of the other issues that, you know, we shouldn’t forget were large-scale, significant issues at the time.
Counsel Inquiry: If we could look back, please, at paragraph 18 of your statement, the last sentence or so, you refer to the fact that the Prime Minister at this stage was stressing the importance of not overreacting in the response, something he said often resulted in greater damage than the initial threat, and that he linked or likened Covid to past viruses, such as swine flu.
Is that something that he said more than once during that period?
Mr Lee Cain: It was. I think he was alive to the fact that previous health issues that had sort of taken hold, you know, in years gone by had proved to be sort of not as first anticipated, and I think he was worried about the government being swept up in a sort of media hysteria, and overreacting and causing more harm than it would otherwise. And again I think that, you know, he has a certain colourful phrase of language sometimes, but I think it was right and proper that we were looking to provide challenge to, you know, what potential options were at that point.
Counsel Inquiry: Now, this is January or so. As we will see, it’s right, isn’t it, that, in fact, Mr Johnson carried on stating that he didn’t want to overreact to Covid for some considerable time after that, even when perhaps other indicators were that this challenge was going to be more serious?
Mr Lee Cain: Yes, that’s correct.
Counsel Inquiry: Let’s just look, if we can, at INQ00048313, please, it’s a lengthy document, page 49 of that. This is, let’s say, a month on, it’s the end of February, and it’s a message from you to a number of people within Number 10, including Boris Johnson, and we see towards the bottom of your message you’re saying:
“Pm should … chair a COBR every Monday with Hancock and officials doing the rest of the week …”
Can we take it then that some time has passed and you are now saying: things are more serious, we’ve got to move up through the gears?
Mr Lee Cain: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: We can see Mr Johnson’s response, suggesting that he’s keen to fall in with that plan?
Mr Lee Cain: Yes, that’s correct.
Counsel Inquiry: We know that in fact the first time that Mr Johnson chaired a COBR was a day or two after this, on, I think, 2 March.
If we can then move on, please, to page 68 of this document, and zoom in on the bottom, the green message at the bottom, please, here is a message from Dominic Cummings to you on 3 March, so the day after Mr Johnson chaired his first COBR, a month after that January period that we were just discussing, where the message seems to be that Mr Johnson still:
“… doesn’t think it’s a big deal … he doesn’t think anything can be done … his focus is elsewhere, he thinks it will be like swine flu and he thinks his main danger is talking the economy into a slump.”
Now, you very fairly said a moment ago that in January you didn’t criticise the Prime Minister for thinking more about 5G, HS2, and so on. What about in early March?
Mr Lee Cain: I think the Prime Minister was not alone in not doing as much as we should by early March, given the scale and the evidence that was all over our TV screens at the time. So, yes, the Prime Minister should have done more, but I think also, you know, the team around him and across Whitehall should have done more.
Counsel Inquiry: What about you, did you think by early March it was a big deal or not?
Mr Lee Cain: I think so. I think we all thought it was a significant challenge and something that was going to be, you know, the only thing that we were focusing on for an awful long time. I think it was more of, you know, how and what should we be doing at that point. I don’t think there was any clarity of purpose, any really serious outlined plan to deal with Covid at that particular point, and I think that was the core failure, was, you know, what were we supposed to do. You know, I’m not an epidemiologist, you know, that’s not the expertise I would bring. I think, you know, there was the lack of clarity of what we should be doing at that point, really.
Counsel Inquiry: Well, let’s come on to that, Mr Cain, because of course that message was sent on 3 March, and that was the same day, in fact, as the Covid action plan that you’ve already mentioned was published.
You refer to this at paragraph 30 of your statement, on page 7. I think it’s fair to say you’re quite dismissive of this plan in your statement, Mr Cain. You refer to, we can see, about four or five lines down, as:
“… a swiftly prepared document, published to provide some context to the options we had and the thinking behind our covid response.”
But then a few lines further down you said:
“… many in government – including senior officials and politicians – repeatedly referred to the action plan as the actual government plan to manage the pandemic. This was surprising, as the document had little detail and was clearly only useful as a communications device.”
Now, you, of course, were the director of communications. At the time, in early March 2020, did you see it as just a piece of PR, or did you think that it was actually the plan?
Mr Lee Cain: I mean, anyone who reads the document, you know, will see that it’s not a – it’s not a plan to deal with Covid, if you – you know, the – it is a very thin overview of how we may manage the virus if, you know, if it progresses.
I mean, the first element of it was contain, and even by that point I think contain was really off the table. So, you know, it just felt a strange document for people to be referring to as an actual government plan at that particular time, and I think that was an area when, you know, quite a few people in Number 10 were starting to get concerned because if this is the plan, then we clearly don’t have a plan.
Counsel Inquiry: Did you take a part in drafting that plan, or the document?
Mr Lee Cain: I’m sure I would have been involved in – you know, in discussions with it. I can’t quite remember the depth of my involvement.
Counsel Inquiry: Did you have the concerns that you’re expressing now at that time?
Mr Lee Cain: I think I had concerns that we didn’t have – I mean, the document itself was not – that – it wasn’t the issue. The document itself is fine. The purpose for the document was a concern, and I think that’s when there was, you know, challenges, the challenge made of: okay, well, what is our actual plan at this point?
Counsel Inquiry: We can see the last sentence of that paragraph there, you say:
“The fact that many senior figures kept referring to the document as ‘the plan’ [this document that you’ve described as being very thin] shows that in reality the government had no plan to deal with a pandemic.”
Is that something that you felt at the time?
Mr Lee Cain: Yes, it was. I mean, there was – you know, as I say, we talk about flattening the curve, and, you know, there was – there was a strategy, but there wasn’t a plan, which I think is – you know, the detail of how you’re going to do these things was somewhat absent.
Counsel Inquiry: Did you raise concerns about it then?
Mr Lee Cain: I honestly can’t remember the details of the concerns I raised at this point. I think I would have – I would have spoke to, you know, people about – you know, because I think the challenge for us is we were getting information from the media, it would be like, “Okay, what are the fundamental details around that?” And I remember at the time we were not able to provide a lot of that, you know, colour and detail underneath it. So I’d have raised that from a media perspective, but I wouldn’t have been challenging the sort of scientific assumptions, no.
Counsel Inquiry: It was at around this time, and we may hear more detail later today, that Dominic Cummings was demanding to see the plans, calling particularly for the Department of Health to provide these pandemic plans that everyone had spoken so much of. Were you aware that he was making those enquiries, requests, demands?
Mr Lee Cain: Yes, yes, I was. I think at that particular time there was probably only Dominic who was really forcefully being agitated and sort of, you know, kicking – as I say, kicking the tyres quite robustly. I don’t think he got a great deal of information back, if I recall.
Counsel Inquiry: Now, we know that the week that followed the publication of the action plan, the week starting on Monday 9 March, leading up to the 13th, was an action-packed week, there were at least two COBR meetings, and we’ll come on to mention the discussions at the end of that week and the weekend that followed.
First, I’d like to go back to the earlier INQ00048313 document, please, and look at page 22.
Yes, thank you.
So this is a text or a WhatsApp sent by Dominic Cummings to Boris Johnson on 12 March, so the Thursday of that week, where he says:
“We got big problems coming. CABOFF [Cabinet Office] is terrifyingly shit, no plans, totally behind pace, me and Warners and lee/slacky are having to drive and direct.”
I take it that the Lee there is a reference to you?
Mr Lee Cain: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: Okay.
I don’t think you received that WhatsApp, but do you remember during that week being one of those group of political advisers who were somehow having to drive and direct the government machine? Is that something you would normally expect to have to do?
Mr Lee Cain: I think that the communications side drove a huge amount of the government machine during my entire time. Often, actually, in terms of looking at areas of policy, it’s often comms colleagues that can find the holes and see where the problems are, because you get an understanding of where journalists will look and where things might unravel, so you’re often kicking the tyres.
I felt, in Covid more than anything, actually there were periods when a lot of the policy was having to be drafted by or certainly shaped by communications professionals because there wasn’t really anybody else doing it to any great level, which was a surprising thing to have to be dealing with from my side.
Counsel Inquiry: I want to press you a little bit, Mr Cain, about the extent to which you endorse what Mr Cummings was saying here. He is clearly saying, isn’t he, that the reason that you and others are driving and directing is because those who should be doing it, that is the Cabinet Office, are not. I mean, to use his words, they are “terrifyingly shit”. I mean, do you agree with that?
Mr Lee Cain: I might not quite use the same language but, you know, generally, yes.
Counsel Inquiry: Can you give us a bit more detail then? I mean, who was it, individuals or sections within the Cabinet Office that were failing at that crucial moment?
Mr Lee Cain: I think the point – the point really was nobody quite knew, you know, who was the point person, who was in charge, who should be driving this machine, who is meant to be in charge of co-ordinating of all the policy. If you ask me now who was supposed to be doing that in those early weeks and months, I couldn’t tell you, there was nobody holding their hands up taking responsibility. It would move around and it fundamentally, like all problems, comes into Number 10 and a small group of people who have to make the best of things.
Counsel Inquiry: Just finally on this, presumably the Cabinet Secretary would usually be someone who would take a lead in responding to a developing crisis. Mr Cummings makes no bones about his views about Mark Sedwill’s conduct at this stage. He says he’s:
“… out to lunch – hasn’t a scooby whats going on and his own officials know [that].”
What do you say to that?
Mr Lee Cain: You know, I always had a good relationship with Lord Sedwill and I think he’s, you know, an incredibly talented official. I, you know – I wouldn’t have known where the responsibility came for – who should be doing X in the Cabinet Office, I would be looking probably at a lower level, DG level, maybe someone to lead that. So, you know, I couldn’t really comment on that.
Counsel Inquiry: But overall, is this fair, you may not use those words, you perhaps didn’t have as much to do with Lord Sedwill, as he is now, as Dominic Cummings, but the general theme of lack of leadership, chaos, if you like, is one that you agree with?
Mr Lee Cain: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: Let’s move on. I want to ask you about the discussions around the first lockdown decision. If we can start by going to page 8 of your witness statement, we see there the heading “Amended strategy – nationwide lockdown”. That’s the description, isn’t it, of the change from the mitigation strategy to the lockdown, suppression strategy that we’ve heard a great deal about in the last few weeks?
We’ve also heard from other witnesses, and we will hear from others, about that series of meetings that took place on Friday the 13th and then into the weekend, where that decision crystallised. Is that fair?
Mr Lee Cain: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: I just want to ask you really about two issues relating to that sequence of events, and the first, if we look at paragraph 33, you describe there, as part of the reason for this change of tack, what you describe as new modelling overseen by Marc and Ben Warner, showed that unless the government urgently changed course the NHS would be overwhelmed within weeks.
If we just zoom out, again we can see that you make a similar point again at paragraph 34(B), we don’t need to go to it, but you refer to the “new modelling”, which I take it you mean the modelling you describe in paragraph 33.
Mr Lee Cain: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: Was your impression, then, that at around this time, towards the end of that week, something had changed in the modelling or the numbers which was telling you something about the threat to the NHS which hadn’t been known before?
Mr Lee Cain: So our assumptions at this particular time, and what we’d been told in the weeks prior, that a suppression strategy wouldn’t work, people could only sort of undergo sort of 12 weeks of this kind of, you know, hard measures. So I think it’s important to understand this, so suppression wouldn’t work. And if we did suppress, as soon as we unlocked we would then see a second spike, NHS overwhelmed. So I think it’s important initially to say that the reason we didn’t even consider or discuss a suppression strategy at that point is because the information was it was just – it wouldn’t work.
Now, on – at this point we’re obviously on the mitigation sort of strategy, which the core of that was a long – you know, the flatten the sombrero, wherever we were –
Counsel Inquiry: Squash the sombrero?
Mr Lee Cain: Yeah, that’s the one – which was a sort of long, elongated sort of peak that would, you know, stay underneath the capacity levels for the NHS and ensure that, you know, when we did alleviate those message – alleviate those measures there would be a certain amount of herd immunity within the system. Important again to reinforce that herd immunity wasn’t a goal, we were told that herd immunity was an inevitability, therefore, you know – but how would we manage that. So that was the plan.
I think what this – I say “new modelling”, I was first aware of – Mr Cummings grabbed me on the Friday and said that, you know, he – I wasn’t in the actual core meeting, I think, that happened that day, I was dealing with something else. He’d grabbed me and said, you know, Ben and Marc had gone off and crunched the numbers and – whether it’s new modelling, whether it’s – they got through, and actually our current plan means that we’re, you know, going to not just go through the NHS capacity level, we’re going to absolutely smash through the NHS capacity level and, you know, we’re going to be looking at, you know, thousands of additional beds that we don’t have and ventilators and all these sort of things, so tens of thousands of people are going to die on this particular plan and the NHS is going to be totally overwhelmed and it’s going to be worse than the scenes that people have seen in Lombardy and elsewhere.
So at that point, you know, the only course was an urgent change of plan, so on the Saturday, you know, he said to me, “We’re going to speak to the Prime Minister, with a very select core team, talking through the issues of the three scenarios I’ve seen”, and …
Counsel Inquiry: I’m going to come to that meeting in a moment, but I want to come back, if I may, to this point about the NHS being overwhelmed, Mr Cain, and I think you’ve explained it very well, which is that you had previously understood that the mitigation strategy, as well as being one that was necessary because suppression wouldn’t work, as you’ve said, but the mitigation strategy could be achieved without overwhelming the NHS, and that this was something new that you were being told in these few days –
Mr Lee Cain: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: – that actually that’s not right, that the NHS is going to be overwhelmed; is that fair?
Mr Lee Cain: Correct. And I think the lack of data that we had at that point is absolutely staggering in terms of – you know, in most – very early on there was no dashboard, there was no live information flow, no understanding of – you know, we would basically have a meeting where Dominic would ask certain people like Simon Stevens on, you know, how much bed capacity there was and it would be jotted down on a whiteboard. You know, there was no use of serious technology and data to try to get a live sort of minute-by-minute update. So we were very much behind the curve on all those sorts of areas.
Counsel Inquiry: Just sticking with this point about the NHS, Mr Cain, because the evidence the Inquiry has heard is that other people, in particular, for example, on SAGE, the scientists there, it had been apparent to them for some time, for example Professor Medley said that, in his words, “throughout February … it became increasingly clear that NHS capacity in the UK would be overwhelmed”, and that’s under the mitigation strategy –
Mr Lee Cain: Mm.
Counsel Inquiry: – and others gave evidence to a similar effect.
But if that is what they were thinking, and they tell us it was, it seems that wasn’t a message that was getting through to you at the heart of Downing Street?
Mr Lee Cain: No. I mean, obviously SAGE is a very broad church, and, you know, with a lot of different views and different counterpoints, and we would rely a great deal on, you know, Chris Whitty and Patrick Vallance to – which I think both did an exceptionally good job of broadly giving a sort of coalesced view of that broad church. So we would often, you know, take the steers from them, which I think was the right approach.
Counsel Inquiry: Short point, 13 March, or thereabouts, the Warners say, “Look, under mitigation the NHS is going to be overwhelmed”, that was news to you? That was not something that you had heard before?
Mr Lee Cain: Yes, that was news to me at that point.
Counsel Inquiry: The second point I want to take you to, that takes us back to the meeting on Saturday the 14th, which you referred to a moment ago, I think there was a late night discussion between advisers on the Friday and then a meeting with the Prime Minister and others, I think probably more than one meeting, the next day, on the Saturday.
Mr Lee Cain: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: If we can look, please, at paragraph 35, it’s on the screen, you refer to that meeting. We’ve heard from others about it, and we’ll hear from more people still, but if we look five or six lines down, you say there:
“The collective agreement in the room was that a full lockdown was the only strategy which could suppress the spread of Covid-19, save the NHS from collapse, and ultimately buy the Government more time … ‘flattening the curve’ could only really work as an interim measure until full lockdown could be achieved.”
So is it fair to say, Mr Cain, that there wasn’t a sort of a decision made at that meeting to impose a lockdown, but, as you put it, there was a collective agreement that really that was inevitable?
Mr Lee Cain: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: As we know, that lockdown was indeed announced but not for over a week. It was on Monday the 23rd, so ten days later, that it was in fact announced.
Looking back, was that a longer period than you would have anticipated as of the Saturday 14 March?
Mr Lee Cain: Yes, but I think you also have to consider, it’s quite a big undertaking to lock down the entire country. You know, there needs to be provisions, there’s got to be guidance drafted, there has to be legislation penned, you have to be able to take people with you, the Cabinet have to have agreement. So there’s an awful lot that does have to happen in that space – all the communications we had to plan. So while it was longer than we would like, I think there is justifiable reason as to why it has taken that time.
Counsel Inquiry: There’s a lot to do, and I’m going to bring you to these points in a moment, you’ve described many of the things that had to be considered and the wheels of government perhaps don’t necessarily turn as fast as you would like, but also it’s important to say that this was a very grave decision to take, and so the damaging effects of lockdown had to be considered as well –
Mr Lee Cain: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: – is that fair?
Let’s look, please, at paragraph 40 of your statement on page 10. You do say in the first sentence there:
“The implementation of the policy …”
And that’s the lockdown policy, isn’t it?
Mr Lee Cain: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: “The implementation of the policy was delayed …”
Then you go on in the rest of that paragraph to make very much the point that you’ve already made about the wheels of government turning and all the things that had to be put in place to achieve that decision.
I want to ask you about what is perhaps another theme, though, of your statement, which is that another cause of that delay, if we want to call it that, was indecision on the part of the Prime Minister. If we go to paragraph 42, please, so it’s –
Mr Lee Cain: Yep.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes, we already have it. You say:
“Another challenge was that the Prime Minister would occasionally oscillate between lockdown and other potential policy options (a recurring theme during the critical decision points of Covid and, to some degree, understandable given the gravity of the decisions).”
You say he worried about the impact on the economy, we’ve already seen that, and then you say this in the next paragraph:
“The system works at its best when there is clear direction from No 10 and the Prime Minister, and these moments of indecision significantly impacted the pace and clarity of decision making across government.”
What were the Prime Minister’s concerns around this time, Mr Cain?
Mr Lee Cain: I think they were similar to the ones we’ve raised earlier on, you know: is the government overreacting and will the cure be worse – worse than the disease?
I would say that it’s pretty easy for advisers like myself to say the Prime Minister should have done X, the Prime Minister should have done Y. I do think that, you know, this was probably one of the biggest peacetime decisions, you know, in recent years a Prime Minister’s had to undertake, and it clearly weighed incredibly heavy on him and, you know, I think it’s him and him alone who has to take that decision. So it is understandable that he wrestled with it. I think – so I have few real concerns over this period of time. I think – well, I’m sure we’ll come later to the summer and the second lockdown, where I think it’s slightly more difficult to defend.
Counsel Inquiry: It’s of course right that such a profound decision as locking down, with all of the damaging consequences that would follow, has to be carefully thought through, but it’s right also, isn’t it, that if one adds to that factor, your word, “oscillation”, a degree of inability to take a decision, that can be a damaging thing, can’t it?
Mr Lee Cain: Yes. I mean, indecision can sometimes be worse than the wrong decision in certain circumstances, and I think indecision probably was the theme of Covid that people did struggle with inside Number 10.
Counsel Inquiry: I would like to ask you about a WhatsApp exchange between you and Lee Cain (sic), that took place during this period, the week between Friday the 13th and –
Mr Lee Cain: Sorry, between myself and?
Counsel Inquiry: Dominic Cummings.
So it’s INQ000267920, please.
Lady Hallett: Whilst Mr O’Connor is getting that document up, Mr Cain, do I understand from what you said earlier that you would defend the ten-day gap between the decision taken that there had to be a national lockdown and actually implementing that decision? Because I find that curious.
Mr Lee Cain: As I said, I think it is longer than you would like, but I think it’s important just to emphasise the amount of things that had to be done and the amount of people we had to take with us to deliver a nationwide lockdown. It’s a huge, huge undertaking. And to be honest, my understanding of government, that is government moving at a tremendous speed, which maybe says more about government than other things, but, you know, the machinery did feel like it moved quick for the machinery. But it’s long. You know, it’s definitely longer than you would hope.
Mr O’Connor: Thank you.
Let’s look here, Mr Cain, let’s not worry about the very top message, but the second one down. There is a series of four messages from Dominic Cummings to you, and I think it’s apparent that Mr Cummings is in a meeting with Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak, and he says, first of all:
“Get in here he’s melting down.”
Before I go on, let’s just note the date. So it’s 19 March, so the Thursday of the week after that Saturday meeting that we were just discussing.
Then he says:
“Rishi saying bond markets may not fund our debt etc. He’s back to Jaws mode wank.”
What does he mean by that?
Mr Lee Cain: The PM at the time would refer to the mayor of Jaws, from the film, who wanted to keep the beaches open. I think he had a routine from previous in his career where he would use that as a joke from one of his sort of after dinner speeches, but he’d sort of said, you know, there’s more harm coming – the mayor was right all along to keep the beaches open because it would have been a long-term harm to the community. So it’s a sort of reference to that.
Counsel Inquiry: Then Mr Cummings says:
“I’ve literally said same thing ten fucking times and he still won’t absorb it. I’m exhausted just talking to him and stopping the trolley.
“I’ve had to sit here for 2 hours just to stop him saying stupid shit.”
And you say:
“I’m exhausted with him.”
There is then a gap for an hour and it may be that there was then a press conference, because you then forward a tweet about someone who perhaps was watching that press conference, saying that they were confused by what Boris Johnson has said at it, and you say as your message:
“No words.”
And then Mr Cummings says:
“what did I say – it’s only a matter of time before his babbling exposes the fact he doesn’t know what to say.”
Now, the first thing to ask you, Mr Cain – I mean, I think it’s apparent from what you’ve already said that Dominic Cummings was someone you’d worked with for some time, you clearly had a close relationship with him. Was this just chatter, was this just banter, if you like, were you just agreeing with him because he was your friend? Or did you actually mean that you were exhausted with the Prime Minister and that you were despairing, if you like, of what he was doing and saying?
Mr Lee Cain: I think anyone that’s worked with the Prime Minister for a period of time will become exhausted with him sometimes. He can be quite a challenging character to work with, just because he will oscillate, he will take a decision from the last person in the room. I think, you know, that’s pretty well documented in terms of his style of operating, and it is rather exhausting from time to time.
Counsel Inquiry: You made the point in your statement, and you’ve made it again today, Mr Cain, that if one is in the position of the Prime Minister and considering such a profound decision as ordering a lockdown, it’s perfectly appropriate to weigh that decision carefully and to think about all of the negative consequences that will follow. But that’s not what you’re describing here. What we’re seeing here, in that critical period, is someone who simply can’t make up their mind and with whom two of his closest advisers are exhausted.
Mr Lee Cain: I mean, so I think there’s a – that’s correct. I think there is a difference between weighing up the evidence and, you know, looking for challenge on policy issues and being sure that we are making the right decision. I think issues like the – if I remember correctly, the tweet there from Steve Swinford was regarding the press conference where I think he announced that we were going to turn the tide within 12 weeks, which we were frustrated by, because I think the whole point of the suppression strategy, Chris and Patrick had been very clear that the suppression strategy would be a long-term endeavour. We were looking at, you know, probably a year where we were going to have to do pretty hard measures, alleviate them a little bit, go back into hard measures again to keep control of the virus until, you know, we were in a situation where a vaccine or another method came online, testing, that would allow us a route out.
But we all knew it was a long-term challenge. And I think from a communications point of view, the Prime Minister indicating that, you know, basically we could be finished with Covid in 12 weeks was unhelpful because it set a very unrealistic – a very unrealistic sort of expectation of where the nation needed to be, because it’s all about compliance at this point and being honest and transparent with the public about what to expect and how to expect it.
Counsel Inquiry: Mr Cain, you say it was unhelpful. One might think that was quite a well-chosen word from the communications world. Mr Cummings is clearly expressing the view to you at the time, in the context of that, that he doesn’t think the Prime Minister is up to the job. Did you agree with that?
Mr Lee Cain: I think at that point – and that’s quite a strong thing to say. I think what will probably be clear in Covid, it was the wrong crisis for this Prime Minister’s skillset. Which is different, I think, from not potentially being up to the job of being Prime Minister.
Counsel Inquiry: What do you mean by the “wrong crisis for this Prime Minister’s skillset”, Mr Cain?
Lady Hallett: Could we use just straightforward English, Mr Cain, please?
Mr Lee Cain: So I think he’s somebody who would often delay making decisions, would often seek counsel from multiple sources and change his mind on issues. Sometimes in politics that can be a great strength. I think if you look at how he navigated Brexit, he allowed others to make decisions and, you know, jumped in at the last minute, can take political advantage.
If you look at something like Covid, you need quick decisions and you need people to hold the course and, you know, have that strength of mind to do that over a sustained period of time and not constantly unpick things, because that’s, you know, where the problems lie. So I felt it was the wrong challenge for him, mostly.
Mr O’Connor: All right.
Let me move on, Mr Cain, I want to ask you a few questions about the various communications strategies during the pandemic.
Lady Hallett: Just before you do, Mr O’Connor, the meeting on 14 March, everybody at the meeting – and the Prime Minister at the time was there, so Boris Johnson was there?
Mr Lee Cain: The Saturday meeting I think was quite inner team, so I can’t remember if the CMO and CSA were there, but it was more the private office, political advisers. The following day was a wider cast list, if I recall, for a subsequent meeting on it.
Lady Hallett: But it was agreed that we would have to go into national lockdown?
Mr Lee Cain: Broadly. I mean, it was agreed that we needed to suppress and we need to suppress urgently, and then it was a case of how we do that, yes.
Lady Hallett: What I want to know is: did the message then go out to all go government departments: basically we’re in war mode, you’re going to have to start working out how we’re going to cope with a national lockdown, how we get it into place. Was that the message that went out or was there still oscillation in the days that followed as to whether we were going into a national lockdown? Had the decision been taken that weekend or not?
Mr Lee Cain: The decision can only be taken by Cabinet, so I think it had to go through Cabinet processes before that could move forwards. But I still think there was a certain degree of uncertainty of exactly what it would look like.
Lady Hallett: Presumably a Cabinet meeting could be called very quickly, in times of emergency?
Mr Lee Cain: Yeah, I think it could, yes.
Lady Hallett: Was it?
Mr Lee Cain: I can’t remember when – I think it was in days, but I can’t remember how quickly.
Lady Hallett: Sorry to interrupt, Mr O’Connor.
Mr O’Connor: No, my Lady.
As I say, Mr Cain, I want to move on and ask you about some of the communications exercises during the pandemic, and I think if we can turn, please, to page 22 of your statement, you describe there – you talk about the “Stay Home, Protect the NHS, Save Lives” campaign, which I’m sure probably everyone in this room will remember.
If we look at paragraph 98 of your statement, you refer to that campaign having been conceived by what you describe as a small group of political advisers, including you, and some – one or two people from a digital creative agency, who, between you, put that campaign together.
Then at the next paragraph, paragraph 99, you refer to the fact that it has been well – it was well regarded at the time and people have praised that campaign subsequently.
I mean, do you personally hold the view that that was a successful and effective campaign?
Mr Lee Cain: Yes, I think the only critique we got that it was too successful, which – and, you know, subsequently people – some behaviours were, you know, hard to remove people out of. But I would push back on that really and say, you know, it was – it did what we needed it to do.
Counsel Inquiry: I want to ask you a little bit about the middle section of the campaign slogan, the “Protect the NHS”.
Mr Lee Cain: Mm.
Counsel Inquiry: We know of course, we were discussing it a few minutes ago, that the need to stop the NHS being overwhelmed was one of the triggers for the lockdown, but it’s also right, isn’t it, that, even at that very early stage of the pandemic, it was known that certain groups within society – elderly people, the disabled, people in care homes, and so on – were at a heightened risk from Covid? Wouldn’t it have been better to, instead of saying “Protect the NHS”, come up with some language to encourage people to protect those people who were at the greatest risk from Covid?
Mr Lee Cain: Erm, no, I think – in all due respect, you know, I don’t think so. I think that this was about ensuring we had maximum compliance. It was about ensuring that, you know, we were stopping the spread of the virus. That is the best way to protect everybody. The NHS has a very sort of special place and significance in sort of, you know, in British culture, it’s very powerful, and I think, you know, the slogan, as it stands – you know, as I say, you know we had sort of – we were looking at numbers of 94% of the public understood it and taking part and the compliance rates show that it was very successful.
As with anything there’s always things you can do better but I think, as a campaign, as a call to action, delivering what we needed to do, I genuinely don’t think it could have been much better.
Counsel Inquiry: Given that you decided to use the reference to the NHS in the slogan, did you consult with the leadership of the NHS about how they should be referred to and the fact they were going to be included in this slogan?
Mr Lee Cain: I didn’t directly have conversations with leaders of the NHS. The government machine will obviously keep everybody informed as to what the plans are and, you know, what we are communicating, that it will always go through, and no concerns were raised to me at any time.
Counsel Inquiry: Are you aware that subsequently, and I think during the pandemic, the NHS leadership did criticise this campaign, in particular because the concept of protecting the NHS created a risk that people would delay seeking medical treatment that they needed for other urgent non-Covid-related health problems, such as sort of heart problems or cancer or those sorts of matters.
Did you know that that was a concern that the NHS had and, frankly, I think that their view was that they weren’t consulted on using that term?
Mr Lee Cain: Only after, you know, I’d left government, I think that had been brought to my attention. I would – again, I would strongly stand by the campaign. I think, you know, our overarching goal was to protect and save as many lives as possible, and we believed that this was messaging and a campaign that did that. I think if we look at why people weren’t going to hospital at the time, it’s because they were looking at what the scenes were in Lombardy and elsewhere and were frightened. I think there’s a false perception that the messaging caused fears in people, but if you actually look at the metrics of where fear spikes, fear spikes when the virus spikes. People are very rational, they can see when they’re most at risk, and they look to protect themselves in, you know, very sensible ways.
Counsel Inquiry: Mr Cain, one of the reasons people weren’t going to hospitals is because your campaign was telling them to not use the NHS at that time because it was needed for the Covid pandemic; isn’t that right?
Mr Lee Cain: No. And, you know, I don’t think that is what the campaign is telling people to do, and I think we were – we were clear throughout Covid, in interviews and other forms of messaging, that obviously people with serious health concerns should seek help and go to – you know, to – whether it’s emergency care or wherever it is, as they would previously do so.
What we were highlighting – that, you know, there was a broader need for people to break contact. That was in order to, you know, provide care for those who needed it and that would fundamentally save lives. And I’m very proud of what the team achieved during that period.
Counsel Inquiry: We have evidence that, in fact, the NHS were so concerned about the impact of this messaging that they had to develop their own communications campaign, as it were, encouraging people themselves to come back to hospitals with non-Covid-related issues. Were you aware of that? It was called the “Help us help you” campaign.
Mr Lee Cain: So, we would have regular meetings with senior communicators from NHS England and from Department of Health. Never was this issue raised at any time with myself directly. And, as I say, we would have these calls every week, if not multiple times a week. And I would also say that it’s of course right and rational that the NHS should look to do sort of micro-targeted campaigns to those who may be at greater risk. That’s of course very wise.
But our approach, you know, in Number 10, is to try and have the maximum benefit as possible and save as many lives as possible. So, you know, if you’re looking to move into more nuanced spaces, you know, it obviously breaks down the overarching message and you could have wider negative contexts of, you know, if we had lower compliance, the negative outcomes overall would be worse. So it’s sometimes, you know, not making the perfect the enemy of the good.
Counsel Inquiry: I’m going to move on just to a related subject, Mr Cain. We have heard evidence about the SPI-B committee. The Inquiry heard evidence from Professor Rubin, who was one of the co-chairs of that committee, and we’ve also seen their terms of reference when they were set up by SAGE, which emphasised the importance of public messaging, and one of, if not the most important part of, their role was to provide the government with behavioural science advice, including in relating to public messaging.
To what extent did you, as the director of communications during this period, utilise the expertise of SPI-B when formulating government messaging?
Mr Lee Cain: I think the broad view was slightly questionable of some of the insights of SPI-B. So I didn’t have a huge amount of dealings with them at that particular point, and the sort of dealings I did, I didn’t find particularly helpful. We had a fast research loop that we would do via focus groups, via polling, things that we’d seen – you know, we’d used pretty readily in political campaigning that was incredibly effective. Often they would be slightly different places to where SPI-B, you know, were, and I would trust the judgement of the campaigners and the messaging people we used, which were some of the best in the world, if not in Western Europe, in terms of, you know, building the sort of messaging that we needed.
Counsel Inquiry: The evidence that the Inquiry has received from Professor Yardley was that SPI-B was not consulted about the “Stay Home, Protect the NHS, Save Lives” campaign, nor about its successor, “Stay Alert, Control the Virus, Save Lives”, nor about “Eat Out to Help Out”, nor about the “freedom day” slogan.
So is it, in fact, the case that you simply didn’t take their advice on any of these major campaigns during the pandemic?
Mr Lee Cain: I think some of those slogans were ones that, you know, I myself didn’t agree with and weren’t particularly consulted on, so it’s slightly different, but I think on the main government messaging we – as I say, I’ve seen the critiques of the “Stay Home” messaging, the critiques that we shouldn’t use, you know, some of the fear messaging, and they were at odds with the feedback we were getting from our own research, which, you know, I think the evidence of compliance and other things would suggest were correct.
Counsel Inquiry: Mr Cain, one of the functions of this Inquiry is to think about future pandemics. We know that SPI-B or a similar committee had existed in, I think it was, the 2009 swine flu epidemic. It was – SAGE thought it was a useful body to reconstitute in 2020, as I’ve said, with messaging being one of its most important focuses.
I mean, is your evidence to the Inquiry that when the next pandemic takes place, we shouldn’t bother with seeking advice from behavioural scientists about – at least about public communications and messaging, we should just rely on focus groups and experts in the communications field?
Mr Lee Cain: I think that we should seek – we should seek advice, wherever we can get it, but I think we should also say that, you know, the behavioural science isn’t always correct. I think, you know, there’s different kind of messaging challenges. I think I spoke regularly with Chris Whitty and Patrick Vallance throughout this period, I would inform them about, you know, a lot of the communications. They would provide feedback. At no point, you know, did they say, you know, we should be taking on board some of the SPI-B advice that was provided. And, as I say, the things that I did see I disagreed with.
Now, if I got them – those things wrong, then that’s my responsibility, but I fundamentally believe the messaging and the communications that we had were the right ones. I think the team who were part of those did an exceptionally good job and I think, you know, there is – you know, government has some absolutely incredibly talented communicators that I was proud to work alongside.
Counsel Inquiry: It’s still quite a striking thing though, Mr Cain, and you as director of communications had at your disposal a committee of scientists, of behavioural scientists set up to assist with messaging, and I think the evidence you’re giving is not that you engaged with them and had discussions with them and, in the end, perhaps disagreed with them but that you just cut them out of the loop?
Mr Lee Cain: I – you know, I think it’s wrong to say we cut them out. They – you know, I basically didn’t have the discussions with them, nobody approached me with advice or feedback. The feedback you’re saying, nobody came to me with that feedback at the time. I was hosting, you know, numerous messages, and the evidence that was presented to me, which was normally via email form or, you know, through – was at odds with the research that we were doing. And I think, you know, I would say to look at the outcomes, to look at the compliance, look at the evidence of the strength of the campaigns, and I would stand by those campaigns being incredibly effective. As I say, the “Stay Home” campaign, you know, was seen as one of the most powerful public health campaigns in modern memory, with 94% of people understanding and complying with the messages that it sent. And that framework it gave us, I think, went a long way to saving a significant number of lives, and I’m very proud to have been part of it.
Counsel Inquiry: Mr Cain, I’m going to move on to just a couple more issues around communications.
Firstly, I want to ask you about the extent to which you considered communications across the UK as opposed to England. Of course, we’re focusing on 2020, and the messaging during the pandemic. Did you regard it as your role to be thinking about communications across the UK, or communications in England? Or did you not really think about the difference between those two things?
Mr Lee Cain: I think we would, you would broadly look at, you know, across the UK and, you know, that is where I think part of the work with Alex Aiken, who focused a lot more on the paid advertising, for example, where I think that – you know, your paid media is slightly different from your earned media. The earned media we would have would focus predominantly more on the Prime Minister and England, where the paid media would be more of a UK-wide approach, which Alex would lead and push through.
The challenges I assume you’re moving to actually become more about politics than communications, quite often, and I think that’s where the challenges in this space really came.
Counsel Inquiry: Well, let’s look at a document, Mr Cain, it’s INQ000214168, please. I know you’re familiar with this document. The context is, is it not, that, as the first lockdown was being eased, at least in England, and the “Stay at Home” message that we were just discussing was being replaced in England by the “Stay Alert” message, there was push-back at least from Scotland and Nicola Sturgeon’s government to say they didn’t want that message to be used in Scotland because it didn’t, in fact, reflect their public health decisions that they were taking in Scotland; is that a fair summary?
Mr Lee Cain: Correct.
Counsel Inquiry: What we see here is an email responding, if you like, internally, so it’s from Alex Aiken, who you have mentioned, to Martin Reynolds, but we can see you’re copied in on the response just above it, describing this problem and, if we cut down to the headline, which is at point 9 in bold:
“Recommendation: …”
Brackets, for ourselves, despite the objections from Scotland:
“… Run the campaign nationwide and work with devolved administrations to deliver most affective campaign and deconflict if necessary.”
Was that what you understood –
Mr Lee Cain: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: – the policy to be?
Mr Lee Cain: So there’s different things. We’re talking about the messaging and the policy. This is fundamentally a question of politics and policy, in the sense of the devolved governments had been clear that they wanted the harder measures for a longer period of time, while, you know, the UK – sorry, the PM wants to lift measures and move into a slightly different stage. That is a very difficult conflict, I think, for communicators generally when there’s divergence in policy direction, that does make life more difficult. But the crux of it was about politics and about policy.
Counsel Inquiry: It’s not that difficult, is it? I mean, surely the answer is, if the Scottish Government, for example, wants to run one type of message and the English or the UK Government wants to run a different message in England, then you simply don’t buy the advertising space in Scottish newspapers and, if Mr Johnson is giving a press conference that’s going to be broadcast throughout the UK, he makes it clear that the message is only one for England. I mean, is that difficult?
Mr Lee Cain: I agree, and I think that sort of moves broadly into where we ended up with the sort of regional spaces but I think in terms of the – I think the PM at the time was concerned about the politics, as well, of the issue, with a lot of pressure coming from the media at that point, that, you know, the measures were too hard and they should be alleviated, and I think this was a starting point of some of that conversation. But, you know, Alex would have led on the paid campaign work in this sort of space, as you can see from the email.
Counsel Inquiry: The appearance from point 9 there, Mr Cain – and you were, as you’ve said, involved in the politics as well as the communications – the appearance is that the Scottish Government’s objections were going to be ignored and that the campaign was simply going to be run and that they would try and smooth around the edges after it had been run, which would seem to be disregarding the views of the Scottish Government in a sphere that they had responsibility for.
Mr Lee Cain: Well, yeah, that’s Alex’s advice on the piece, it’s not mine.
Counsel Inquiry: Is it advice that you agreed with?
Mr Lee Cain: To be honest, I can’t remember what position I took on that at the time.
Counsel Inquiry: Let me move on, Mr Cain.
Back to your statement, please, paragraph 78 on page 18. You refer here to the press conferences with the Prime Minister and, as we will all remember, a sort of varied cast of people who appeared on those press conferences, which, at least for a time, were daily events, and you are here – I think there’s a wrong word there:
“The popularity and impact of the press conferences should not be [underestimated].”
I think you mean. You were saying that they were very important –
Mr Lee Cain: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: – events in the communication cycle; is that fair?
Mr Lee Cain: Correct.
Counsel Inquiry: We have been told, Mr Cain, by Anne Longfield, who was the Children’s Commissioner of England at the time, that she, her words, “constantly asked” the PM and others to have some form of briefing or press conference “especially for children”.
It was something, she says, that they had done in many countries and her view was that it was very important for children to know that politicians were thinking of them.
Were you aware of that lobbying that she was doing, and do you know why a special children’s press conference or briefing was never held?
Mr Lee Cain: I was not aware. I think it’s a good idea. It’s probably something we should have done. I think there are many things we probably should have done. But in the heat of everything there are – you know, will always be gaps, but I think it’s a – it’s a good idea.
Counsel Inquiry: If she is right that she was constantly talking to the Prime Minister about it, isn’t it something he might have mentioned to you?
Mr Lee Cain: I mean, I don’t recall him mentioning it to me.
Mr O’Connor: All right.
My Lady, I’m about to move on to another topic, I wonder if this is a good moment to take a reasonably short break.
Lady Hallett: Yes, of course.
I hope you were warned, Mr Cain, that we take a break every so often, for everybody’s sake. I shall return at half past.
(11.13 am)
(A short break)
(11.30 am)
Lady Hallett: Mr O’Connor.
Mr O’Connor: My Lady.
Mr Cain, one more question, if I may, on communications before I move on.
The “Stay at Home” campaign that we were discussing before the break created, did it not, an obvious problem or a risk in the field of domestic abuse, in the sense that those who were victims of domestic abuse and who, for obvious reasons, would not want to stay at home, would feel that they were being instructed nonetheless to stay in an environment where they were suffering abuse?
Were you aware during the pandemic of suggestions that not enough was done by the government to speak to those victims and to make it clear that they were not expected to stay at home if they were suffering abuse?
Mr Lee Cain: I think if I recall there were questions raised by members of the media, and I think we tried to do a lot of the sort of microtargeting of messages in the daily press conferences. It was a time where the media was coming, aired their questions, and then we could talk directly to people in huge numbers in their own homes about specific issues. And that is broadly how, I think, we used to tackle a lot of those things. There would also be individual departments that would lead on those issues that again, as we saw earlier on with the Department of Health, that would target certain groups and certain sectors. They wouldn’t necessarily come to my desk on sort of those sort of scale communication issues, they’d often be held departmentally or we’d deal with them, as I say, by the press conferences.
Counsel Inquiry: You mention press conferences and I think one of the concerns at the time was that, although Priti Patel, Home Secretary, was vocal about this issue, it was something that the Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, either didn’t mention at all or certainly didn’t mention enough during his press conferences when he had the opportunity to send that message?
Mr Lee Cain: I think it would be unfair to criticise the PM on that particular issue. I mean, it would depend on if he’d been briefed, if there was something particularly we were trying to get across. There’s obviously a lot of other issues at all similar times, and again we’d expect it to be a – you know, more of a department-led issue. I think, you know, Priti Patel did press conferences from time to time herself, and again, you know, Chris and Patrick would also reinforce some of those messages at different times, as well as the, you know, microtargeting.
Counsel Inquiry: Looking back on it now, do you think more should have been said about this issue during the pandemic?
Mr Lee Cain: I think there’s a range of issues that we could have gone into in more detail and tried to be more targeted, but I think we did genuinely the best we could with a lot of those issues, I think, because there was a huge amount to communicate to so many groups, you know, it was a challenge to get your arms around it all from Number 10.
Counsel Inquiry: All right.
I’m going to move on, Mr Cain, although not too far in terms of themes, to talk about some of the parts of your statement where you refer to a lack of diversity amongst core decision-makers and some of the consequences of that.
So if we can go, please, to page 28 of your statement, at the top, it’s 121(d), the top paragraph, you refer there to your own initiative in pushing for the bubbles policy for families, to accommodate, if you like, families that had split and how they would deal with lockdown. Towards the end of that paragraph you say that:
“One of the challenges you face when you work on policy is the dynamic of the room, which in this case was white and middle aged. They were doing their best, but without diversity, some policy decisions slipped through the cracks.”
Do we take it that this particular one about split families was an issue that you felt was at least in danger of slipping through the cracks?
Mr Lee Cain: Yes, correct.
Counsel Inquiry: Let’s go back, please, to the page before, because you refer there to another policy, or issue, the free school meals issue, at the bottom. If we pick it up, the third line down, you say:
“[You] remember asking the Cabinet Room of 20 people, how many people had received free school meals. Nobody had – resulting in a policy and political blind spot.”
And you describe the government’s resistance to Marcus Rashford’s campaign as a “huge blunder”. Can you expand on that?
Mr Lee Cain: So I think, you know, firstly on the diversity point, I think, you know, it’s quite clear that there were challenges of gender diversity, socioeconomic diversity and ethnic minority diversity at the very top of the, you know, the PM’s top team, and I think, as I say, you know, this does have a challenge, because people have their own lens through which they view problems – through no fault of their own, you know, it’s just a world view or experiences that they’ve lived. But I think with the Marcus Rashford – you know, it was a fantastic campaign, it was one that was obviously gaining huge amount of media attention, but there was a view from the PM at the time that, you know, we were spending huge sums of money and, you know, we needed to have a bit more restraint on public finances.
Now, this was a – of course, you know, it was sensible of him to start looking at public finances and look at where we could, you know, develop slightly more rigid structures, but, you know, I said to him at the time, you know, I don’t think hungry children is the place to start, just from, you know, a moral or political standpoint. It was the wrong decision.
But I just think there was a lack of understanding of what families were potentially going through at that time because – and, you know, this is solely just because I think people don’t really – have never lived it, they don’t appreciate it and they don’t appreciate those challenges. So I think this was just one example, you know, of many where, if you had more diversity in the room, and again it’s a range of diversity, I think it would improve decision-making and improve policy making.
Counsel Inquiry: Can we look at a document on screen, please, INQ000273901, page 164. I know you’ve seen a copy of this, Mr Cain. This is a transcript of one of the notes that Patrick Vallance made during the pandemic. We can see it was in September 2020, and it relates to another issue that perhaps is in a similar category. It’s the issue of providing funding, financial support to those who were on low wages, in order to make it financially viable for them to isolate.
We can see Patrick Vallance’s record is “Cx”, that means Chancellor, doesn’t it?
Mr Lee Cain: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: “[Chancellor] blocking all notion of paying to get people to isolate, despite all the evidence that this will be needed.”
Let me ask you two questions. One is: were you aware of this resistance, perhaps a bit like the free school meals issue, to providing this function; and, secondly, is it, in your view, a similar point, where an issue fell through the cracks because of a lack of diversity in the room?
Mr Lee Cain: I think it’s difficult without knowing the full context of this, because it’s not something I can fully remember from the time to look at, you know, the reasons why the Chancellor may be blocking. It could well be very valid on asking for more, you know, evidence and data, you know, to the costings and all other such things you would expect from the Chancellor.
The Chancellor, who, I think we should also reflect, did bring in a furlough scheme that was, you know, incredibly generous and did provide, I think, for an awful lot of people. And of all the policies that we did at that time, the feedback I got more than anything else was of furlough and what a huge success that was. But on this particular issue, I don’t remember, you know, in isolation.
Counsel Inquiry: Okay.
Let me move on, then. In fact, sticking with this time period, if we can look at the bottom of page 25 of your statement, please we see the title “Coming out of lockdown”, and so we’re in the summer of 2020, and it’s at paragraph 116, you describe a tension between some advisers, officials and ministers who wanted to take a slow, cautious approach, and others who wanted to unlock much more quickly, and get back to how life had been before the pandemic had started.
This is a theme in this part of your statement, how those tensions worked out.
In the following paragraphs, I won’t take you to them, but you describe, is this right, that the more aggressive approach of unlocking quickly was one that was favoured by the right wing of the Conservative party and also in the printed media, The Telegraph is an example you give; is that right?
Mr Lee Cain: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: But you also say that your own research showed that the general public mood was actually more towards the cautious end of the spectrum, the opposite to the view held by, on your understanding, the Conservative Party, and this was all fed into that tension that you describe at the bottom of that page that we’re looking at; is that fair?
Mr Lee Cain: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: Was this one of the factors which underpinned the Prime Minister’s indecision later in 2020, September/October time, about whether or not to have a circuit break lockdown?
Mr Lee Cain: Yes, it was. I think the Prime Minister was torn in this issue. I think, if he would have been in his previous role as a journalist, he would probably have been writing articles saying we should open up the beaches and, you know, how we should, you know, get ahead with getting back, and I think he felt torn where the evidence on one side and public opinion – and scientific evidence was very much “Caution, slow, we’re almost certainly going to have to do another suppression measure, so we need to have that in mind”, to, you know, media opinion and the bulk – certainly a rump of the Tory party was pushing him hard in the other direction. So I think that was probably part of the reason for the oscillation, because, you know, the rigid measures were very much against the sort of what’s in his sort of political DNA, I guess.
Counsel Inquiry: In your statement you refer to two schemes, two policies, over the summer of that year, the back to work policy and the “Eat Out to Help Out” policy, which were both trying to send the, shall we say, “business as normal” message. You’re very critical of both of those policies now. Were you critical of them at the time?
Mr Lee Cain: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: Can you tell us what you said and who you said it to?
Mr Lee Cain: So, I think, you know, I and particularly the other communicators as well would just find it very, very difficult, because a huge part of what our role and responsibility is – at that point is: what are we signalling to the public?
There’s a huge amount of focus that goes on particularly in Westminster, which is, you know, what is being said as apart from, you know – sorry, how – how things are being said rather than what it is you’re trying to communicate. And at this point of developing policy, we are indicating to people that Covid’s over, go back out, get back to work, crowd yourself onto trains, go into restaurants and enjoy pizzas with friends and family, you know, really build up that social mixing.
Now, that is fine if you are intent on never having to do suppression measures again, but from all of the evidence we were receiving, from all of the advice that we were receiving, it was incredibly clear we were certainly going to have to do suppression next again. We knew that all the way through, that was the strategy from the start.
So to then move forward and say “Hey, we’re going to get back into work” when business wasn’t even asking for people to come back into work, in fact they were encouraging their employees to stay at home still, you know we developed all of these tools for remote working, but it was – government seemed to be on its own demanding people go to work when, you know, the research we had was saying people, you know, were still quite cautious. Businesses were feeding back they didn’t want to do it, the scientific opinion was people didn’t – you know, that we were going to have to have another lockdown. So to me it made absolutely no sense whatsoever why we were talking about getting everyone back to work. And that was the stories that ended up being on the front pages, which was a cause of great frustration.
Counsel Inquiry: We know that there were calls for a circuit breaker lockdown from September of that year. Were you a supporter of those calls at that time?
Mr Lee Cain: I was, yes.
Counsel Inquiry: We also know that that didn’t happen, at least not in the first place, and that instead there were rules around tiering throughout the country and the rule of six, and so on.
Can we look, please, at INQ000048313, page 54.
This is an exchange between you, Simon Case and Dominic Cummings, Mr Cain. It’s one the Inquiry has seen before. It starts with Mr Cummings talking about discussions with ministers being “moronic”, they don’t understand what they’re talking about. Mr Case agrees and you say “This is embarrassing”. Mr Cummings says:
“By weekend he’ll be saying ‘6 is untenable a total disaster we’ve got to get everyone back to work’.”
Was that a reference, do you think, to the rule of six or it’s not quite –
Mr Lee Cain: I think there was a discussion at the time we were going to do two households, a rule of six, there was a sort of broad policy conversation. So I assume it’s around those issues, yes.
Counsel Inquiry: Just reading down, we see references then to, in fact, Mr Johnson did change his mind again rather sooner than perhaps had been anticipated. You say:
“What’s his issue? Xmas cancelled stuff?”
Is this another emergence of the – I think your word was “oscillation”, but the indecision that we were discussing before the break?
Mr Lee Cain: Yes, and I think this point was – probably these sort of months was when it was at its most pronounced because he did not want to do any harder measures, he didn’t want to go back into suppression. But I think most of the advisory team knew that was an inevitability, and I think the crucial thing was – I think you can forgive some of the errors in the first lockdown because things were moving at incredible speed, we were, you know, sort of building the train tracks as the train was moving in that first period, which meant it was – you know, there was inevitably going to be mistakes but I think we tried to learn as best we could.
I think by the time we moved into this later period, I think the rump of Number 10 felt that, okay, we’ve learned all these lessons from the first period of lockdown, why are we now trying to ignore them again and repeat the exact same mistakes, which will be: too slow to act, a denial of the measures that are going to be necessary to control the virus, moving too late, and allowing the R to get, you know, out of control, too much virus, which means a longer lockdown in the end, more harmful to the economy, more harmful to health outcomes.
So I think, as you see in this, there’s a real frustration that we weren’t just gripping things and putting in the lessons that we’d learned.
Counsel Inquiry: Frustrations which here you’re sharing with Mr Cummings and Mr Case. Did you share them with the Prime Minister?
Mr Lee Cain: Frequently.
Counsel Inquiry: At the bottom of this page, Mr Cain, we see a reference that you make to Matt Hancock. You say:
“Hancock has got to go. Joker.”
And Mr Cummings says:
“Yep. And liar.”
It’s right, isn’t it, that there were discussions at around this time as to whether Mr Hancock and indeed other ministers should be losing their jobs?
Mr Lee Cain: I think there was – there was probably more focus on the Health Secretary than others. There was a general view, I think probably most robustly pursued by Mr Cummings, which was that we weren’t getting all the accurate information from the Health Secretary in meetings, and that, again, was causing frustration.
Counsel Inquiry: Let me ask you to look at another document, please.
If we could have up on screen INQ000283369, page 38.
Now, it’s a reasonably lengthy exchange, although I hope to ask you about it fairly quickly, Mr Cain. It’s an exchange between you and Mr Cummings and Mr Johnson on 23 August, so a week or two before that WhatsApp that we were just looking at. We can see it starting with Mr Cummings saying he doesn’t think it’s “sustainable for GW”. Who would that be?
Mr Lee Cain: Gavin Williamson, I would assume, it –
Counsel Inquiry: So, it’s “not sustainable” for Mr Williamson to stay at the Department for Education.
“Think lee needs to brief reshuffle after SR …”
Is “SR” summer recess?
Mr Lee Cain: Spending review, I imagine.
Counsel Inquiry: “… ASAP. Will get people in line. Focus minds …”
And so on, talking about a reshuffle.
He then repeats another message, saying it’s going to be turbulent but “We need a path through” it.
Then a message from Boris Johnson saying he agrees but it’s fatal – it will be fatal to brief the Cabinet about the upcoming reshuffle.
Then a longer message from Dominic Cummings emphasising the position, and perhaps – I’m going to ask you about this – giving us some clue as to the state of the government at the time. He says:
“… [it’s] a big mistake … not sustainable – if you don’t get the [Cabinet] back into line you will have months more of the mayhem briefing and leaking – this has seriously damaged your authority – you need to get this back, you need to read the riot act to [the Cabinet] and SW1 shd know there’s a reshuffle coming between [the spending review] and Xmas. At the moment the bubble thinks you’ve taken your eye off ball, you’re happy to have useless fuckpigs in charge, and they think that a vast amount of the chaotic news on the front pages is coming from no10 when in fact it’s coming from the Cabinet who are [feral]”, and so on.
And then the last paragraph:
“I also must stress I think leaving Hancock in post is a big mistake – he is a proven liar who nobody believes or shd believe on anything, and we face going into autumn crisis with the cunt still in charge of the NHS still – therefore we’ll be back around that cabinet table with him and stevens bullshitting again in [September]. Hideous prospect.”
I’m going to come back to that but let me just go to one or two other of these messages.
Just going on, there is a series of responses from Mr Johnson talking about whether sacking people really solves things, quite what the timing of this reshuffle should be.
Then if, we can look at the top of page 40, please, you contribute, you say:
“Problem leakers – Hancock, Grant, Wallace, truss. There are other second order ones but these four have caused real problems this year.”
Then you say that you agree with domestic policy agenda:
“We do need to up the fire power in key areas … Whenever we do a reshuffle it should be bold and filled with those you are convinced will deliver for you …”
So two questions, Mr Cain.
The impression created is of a number of key Cabinet ministers, whether because they’re leakers or because Mr Cummings has expressed such strong views about them, who weren’t trusted as part of the government. Choose your adjective: is it chaos? Is it dysfunction? Help us understand whether things were really as bad as are painted in these messages.
Mr Lee Cain: I think, you know, it’s obviously a time of significant stress and, you know, the challenges that we were dealing with are greater probably than any since, you know, 1945, which – you know, it’s important to highlight that context.
I think government has a huge problem with leaking, I think, and it was really pronounced during Covid. You know, you’re having conversations, you know, daily on potential options and you would read about them in the next day in – you know, in various newspapers. And that, I think from a messaging point of view on public health, caused huge problems because people then want answers, “Okay, what does this mean for me, my family, my lives?” And you’re then trying – you haven’t got a policy developed and you’re trying to sort of mop that up, all – and that was all the time. We couldn’t have a single conversation. And I think that’s because the sort of politics and the sort of knockabout view of sort of almost like politics as entertainment is now so entrenched in the relationship between the media and with the government it’s hard to stop it.
And I think, you know, it’s something you deal with as part of politics during normal – normal days. I think in a crisis like this it was one of the most difficult issues we faced, was the constant leaking of stories.
Counsel Inquiry: Second question: reading through it, one – of course these are private exchanges, we must remember that, but the language that is used repeatedly about colleagues is rude, it is dismissive, it is aggressive. We will hear evidence of a so-called macho culture in Downing Street at the time. Is this a fair reflection of the culture?
Mr Lee Cain: So, firstly, I would like to point out it’s not, you know, not my language or what I would have used. I would say that, as I mentioned earlier, there is a problem in – within Mr Johnson’s sort of senior team that there was a lack of diversity and that was, as I say, in gender, in socioeconomic and in ethnic minority, and I think if you – if you lack that diversity within a team you create problems in decision-making, policy development and culture. So I think that’s all part of the equation, but I think fundamentally any Number 10 is a direct reflection of the principal, and I think that’s probably the case here.
Counsel Inquiry: Right.
Finally, Mr Cain, I want to just ask you one or two questions back on the question of the circuit breaker lockdown, and you describe in your statement – I won’t take you to it – the meeting that happened on 20 September where Professor Heneghan, Professor Gupta and others were brought in – brought in virtually – to Downing Street to discuss, and you in your statement make it clear that you regarded, at that stage, it as essential that a lockdown should take place, but that the Prime Minister disagreed, and emphasised the economic arguments.
At around this time, a few weeks later – I want to take you to INQ000267902, please.
This is a text or a WhatsApp between you and – sorry, between you and the Prime Minister, on, we will see, 15 October. He says:
“I must say I have been slightly rocked by some of the data on covid fatalities. The median age is 82-81 for men 85 for women. That is above life expectancy. So get COVID and live longer.
“Hardly anyone under 60 goes into hospital …
“… I no longer buy all this nhs overwhelmed stuff. Folks, I think we may need to recalibrate.”
You say:
“All understood – but how does this change the policy? Still not politically viable … to change course …”
He says:
“It shows we don’t go for nation wide lockdown.”
Previously we’ve talked about the economic arguments against lockdown. This seems to be introducing a slightly different theme, and I want to show you very briefly some other entries in Patrick Vallance’s dairies from around this time. So could we look at them sequentially, please.
First of all it’s INQ000273901, first of all, page 50. So this was a little bit earlier, in August, where Patrick Vallance has recorded that the “PM WhatsApp group kicks off because [the] PM” had read about the infection fatality rate. And it says this.
“He is obsessed with older people accepting their fate and letting the young get on with life and the economy going. Quite a bonkers set of exchanges.”
If we can look at page 308, please. On a similar theme, picking it up a couple of lines down:
“[PM] says his party ‘thinks the whole thing is pathetic and Covid is just Nature’s way of dealing with old people – and I am not entirely sure I disagree with them. A lot of moderate people think it is a bit too much’.”
Lastly, please, page 312. By this time we’re in December. We see:
“… Chief whip says, ‘I think we should let the old people get it & protect others’. PM says ‘a lot of my backbenchers think that & I must say I agree with them’ …”
Now, the theme in those notes is similar, is it not, to that WhatsApp we looked at between you and the Prime Minister? It’s not saying that the economy is the main argument, it’s related, but it’s different. It’s saying: look, it’s only old people who get this disease, why don’t we just let them get it so the young people can live their lives?
Is that something which you think influenced the Prime Minister during this period?
Mr Lee Cain: I think, you know, you could see from the evidence that he was, you know, look, I think he was concerned about the damage on society as a whole, and he was trying to view it through that lens. I think some of the language is obviously not what I would have used, but for me the core argument was always the same, which was: your choice is that we lock down and control the virus and we do so as quick as possible to minimise the cost to health and cost to the economy at the same time.
The only reason you could start having any of these conversations is if you have no intention of bringing in further suppression measures, which for me was always morally and politically, you know, a non-starter. It was never something any responsible government or any responsible Prime Minister could or would undertake. So I felt a lot of this was just noise and distraction, and when reality became clearer, as it would, he would, you know – and did actually take out the measures responsible. I think some of it is important to focus on. I think he acted too late on some of the – particularly the later lockdowns, but he did actually do what I believed to be the moral and responsible course of action, it was just later than it should have been.
Mr O’Connor: Mr Cain, thank you very much. Those are all my questions.
My Lady, there are, as you know, two sets of questions from core participants.
Lady Hallett: There are.
Mr Metzer.
Questions From Mr Metzer KC
Mr Metzer: Thank you, my Lady.
Mr Cain, I ask questions on behalf of the Long Covid groups.
I don’t think we need to go to it, but if you need to let me know. There is an email to the CSA and the CMO’s office dated 25 June 2020 in which DHSC reported that the Cabinet Office had asked DHSC to look at communications around the recovery of patients following Covid-19 infection.
Were you aware of this request for information about the recovery of patients following Covid-19?
Mr Lee Cain: I was not, no.
Mr Metzer KC: You say you weren’t?
Mr Lee Cain: No.
Mr Metzer KC: Can you help as to whether there was any discussion in Number 10 about communicating publicly the risk of long-term health impacts of Covid-19 at the time?
Mr Lee Cain: I think initially the understanding around Long Covid was minimal in Number 10. I think we were still, you know, gathering evidence for much of my time, which, you know, obviously I left in the November of 2020, so during my time I think we were still quite unclear on some of it, but it was becoming more pronounced. But I don’t recall any specific campaigns to it at that point. I think, again, it would have been the sort of press conferences where we’d have discussed it, but I think at the time I was there the evidence maybe wasn’t as advanced as it, you know, later became.
Mr Metzer KC: That’s right through until November 2020, you say?
Mr Lee Cain: Yes.
Mr Metzer KC: I see. I might come back to that in a moment.
Can we put up INQ000283370, please. On 5 July 2020, NHS England announced Your Covid Recovery service, online rehabilitation service, and Sir Simon Stevens said the service would benefit, in quotes, and it’s there, “tens of thousands of people who are suffering long-term effects of coronavirus”.
You’ve said today that you met with the NHS regularly, even many times a week. In any of those regular meetings was this announcement ever discussed?
Mr Lee Cain: Not that I recall, but, you know, you’ll appreciate there was a huge number of meetings and, you know, issues raised. But I don’t recall that, no.
Mr Metzer KC: Okay. You’ve spoken today about individual responsibility, saying that people look to protect themselves in very sensible ways. Would you agree, Mr Cain, that communications about the risks of the long-term effects of Covid-19 was important for the public to know, so that they could protect themselves from this risk?
Mr Lee Cain: I think certainly once we understood what those dangers were, yes.
Mr Metzer KC: Do you agree that you were aware of that many months before you left office?
Mr Lee Cain: I was aware of, you know, conversations developing on Long Covid and what it meant, but it was not – it was not a primary focus for, you know, my – my work, which was slightly different and more sort of political messaging space. This would – this kind of – this is the sort of thing that would have been led departmentally or by the NHS, I mean by that.
Mr Metzer KC: Yes. But following those meetings with the NHS, are you aware as to whether there were any discussions in Number 10 about raising awareness of the long-term effects of Covid-19 at the time of this announcement in July 2020?
Mr Lee Cain: I was not, but, again, it would have been something that I’d expect to be led departmentally or by the ALB.
Mr Metzer KC: But you agree by that time you were aware of the long-term effects, risks?
Mr Lee Cain: To be honest, I can’t remember the timings of when I would have been, you know, up to speed with what the long-term risks of Long Covid were.
Mr Metzer KC: Or at the very least, would you agree you would certainly have been aware after the DHSC announcement on Long Covid in October 2020?
Mr Lee Cain: Probably, but again, there was a huge amount taking place at that point, so again, as I say, it’s not an area of focus that I particularly recall in any great detail, which I apologise for.
Mr Metzer KC: At paragraph 89, page 20, of your witness statement, you said:
“At the beginning of the Covid response … Vital public health messages were distributed via a mixture of the Department of Health, Department of Transport or the Cabinet Office digital channels. Did the fact that different government departments were distributing public health advice result in inconsistent messaging?
Mr Lee Cain: It’s a good question. I think there is a general practice that a lot of government departments act as sort of communication fiefdoms in their own right, and that can sometimes make all sorts of messaging challenges, which is – one of the things that we did in Covid was to create a central campaigning body that reported directly in Number 10 to try to pull together a coherency within our political campaigning so we didn’t have that sort of fighting, and I think it’s something that’s continued, thankfully, since I left.
Mr Metzer KC: But the existence of those fiefdoms, as you put it, would you agree did have a genuine risk of inconsistent messaging?
Mr Lee Cain: Well, I think we fixed that particular problem, I think. You know, that was something I was acutely aware of in part of the changes I wanted to make to the government communication system. So we did try to fix that with, you know, sort of command and control Cabinet Office centre that oversaw the campaigns as opposed to pushing them through but that, you know, obviously came in sort of in the summer I think more than – in the sort of summer of 2020.
Mr Metzer KC: And what was that central campaigning body?
Mr Lee Cain: It’s a group that’s within the Cabinet Office that will consist of highly trained campaigning professionals who understand a lot of the sort of newer media techniques, and the general thesis would be that departments themselves would have to pitch into that sort of central body to have, you know, campaigns they wanted to do green lighted, because the government spends hundreds of millions on campaigns, and 162 a year when I was there, most of which people don’t notice, metrics for measuring them are pretty poor, so we just wanted to professionalise that particular area.
Mr Metzer KC: So do you say through that central body there are attempts to co-ordinate public health messages communicated by different departments?
Mr Lee Cain: Correct.
Mr Metzer KC: How were public campaigns on Covid-19 updated by the government as information became available?
Mr Lee Cain: I think, you know, as policies change we would try to, you know, make those amendments into, into our public communications.
Mr Metzer KC: I’m not sure you’ve answered the question. How were the campaigns updated?
Mr Lee Cain: Well, policy – the policies – you know, changes would be fed into the communications, team, we would then look at, you know, certain research, best ways to communicate them, and then make changes to, you know, public announcements, so campaigns, wherever they were, as appropriate.
Mr Metzer KC: So who, if anyone, was ultimately responsible for communicating through government messaging that there was a risk of Long Covid?
Mr Lee Cain: I think it’s – it would fall in between, you know, the Department of Health and Alex Aiken within the Cabinet Office would – or indeed the NHS. So there’s a – you know, the different areas would pick up different responsibilities. I’m not sure where the full responsibility would lie with that, it depends on the severity and how – you know, I assume it would be in the Cabinet Office.
Mr Metzer KC: Sorry, do I read between that there’s a danger that it would fall between and not be dealt with by anyone?
Mr Lee Cain: I think, you know, in the size and scale of government that is indeed possible.
Mr Metzer KC: The last question I want to ask you, Mr Cain, is: in the absence of a clear co-ordinated communications plan on Long Covid, do you agree that Number 10 and the Cabinet Office failed to alert the public sufficiently about the long-term effects of Covid-19?
Mr Lee Cain: I can only really comment during my own time, and I think part of the problem was just, you know, developing the evidence stream, I think at the time, and the focus was on the live issue of dealing with the – you know, the immediate response during my time.
I think – you know, I’m not sure how that subsequently changed as, you know, I departed and the pandemic itself changed and our understanding changed.
Mr Metzer KC: Certainly would you agree, then, by the time – until you left in November 2020, as you’ve said, you would agree that there was a sufficient – insufficient – failure to alert the public about the long-term effects?
Mr Lee Cain: Again, from the evidence that we knew and had, I think we probably acted responsibly, but I think, you know, you can’t communicate what you’re unaware of, and I think in a lot of those early stages we weren’t overly aware of, you know, the dangers. But I think we did discuss them, we did talk about them, they were raised within the press conferences. I think it was something that, you know – and those press conferences alone, you know, we’re looking at 10 million people watching every single evening, huge numbers, so these were issues that were raised.
Mr Metzer: All right. Thank you, Mr Cain. Thank you, my Lady?
Lady Hallett: Thank you, Mr Metzer.
Mr Weatherby.
Questions From Mr Weatherby KC
Mr Weatherby: Mr Cain, I’m going to ask you just about a couple of topics on behalf of the Covid Bereaved Families for Justice UK, which represents many bereaved families from across the UK.
Both of the topics had been touched on by Mr O’Connor, so I’ll cut to the chase, if I may.
At paragraph 118 of your statement, you write this:
“At this time [and you’re talking about six or seven weeks into lockdown] the Prime Minister was becoming increasingly concerned about the impact of lockdowns on the economy and the political impact it was having on the right wing of the Conservative Party and the coverage of the right-leaning media. For example, on May 8th 2020 the Daily Telegraph – a newspaper that had been robustly anti-lockdown – printed its front page on a favourable interview with the Leader of the Opposition. The Prime Minister called me that evening and expressed significant concern, stating our policies were causing us to lose the backing of generally supportive elements of the media and he felt they may well be right …”
Then you add in brackets:
“… (a position that conflicted with all the evidence available).”
Yes?
Mr Lee Cain: Yes.
Mr Weatherby KC: So, just for clarity, what you are expressing there is a frustration at Mr Johnson’s prioritisation of media views, he was prioritising that over the actual evidence, over the views of advisers such as yourself and over public opinion at that time; is that right?
Mr Lee Cain: So I think it’s slightly more complex in the sense that he, I think, was unsure about the policy that we were taking forward, so I think it was people reinforcing some of his own concerns. You know, I think he probably would have, as I’ve said before, been writing these sorts of leaders in The Telegraph himself. This isn’t a criticism of The Telegraph, which was, you know, shining a light of on where they thought the issues were, but I think, you know, the Prime Minister himself, this was part of his sort of oscillation and concerns over –
Mr Weatherby KC: Yes.
Mr Lee Cain: – policy development.
Mr Weatherby KC: The point I’m trying to get you to clarify really is the point in the brackets that you seem to need to make clear, that it conflicted with all of the evidence. So he is preferring the views of the right wing of his party and The Daily Telegraph over the actual evidence and his advice. That’s what you’re conveying, isn’t it?
Mr Lee Cain: That’s correct.
Mr Weatherby KC: The second topic, again it’s been touched upon so I’ll be brief, and it’s about diversity. Mr O’Connor took you to deal with the lack of focus or consideration at all of split families and the Marcus Rashford issues, but you say in your statement, and again I’m not going to put it up, but it’s at paragraph 121(d) that some policy decisions slipped through the cracks due to this lack of diversity, and you’ve already said – you’ve already referred to middle aged and white people only in the room, and that’s the problem.
What other, apart from the ones you’ve already mentioned, policy decisions slipped through the cracks because of this lack of diversity?
Mr Lee Cain: Erm … I think part of the problem is – and I can’t really sort of recall the specifics off the top of my head, but I think part of the problem is just very much having a situation where people’s own lived experience isn’t in the room. So, you know, if you have predominantly middle-aged, white men you’re going to miss out on a whole load of different areas of expertise and lived experience that will, you know – so again, like the Marcus Rashford was obviously a huge part of that. You know, some of the bubble sections they’d be the sort of things that I’d highlight.
Mr Weatherby KC: Okay, so for example, the disproportionate effects of the pandemic on people from ethnic minorities, that’s something that slipped through the cracks?
Mr Lee Cain: I think that was something that was discussed. I think this – I think it’s part of the challenge, I think these issues will be discussed but are they given the weight necessary without some of the lived experience? And that’s – I don’t know the answer to some of that. It felt to me that sometimes we missed things or didn’t give enough attention that we could have done. You know, I – but I genuinely don’t know if, you know, how much that would have impacted.
Mr Weatherby KC: What steps, if any, were taken to address this diversity gap, which presumably was obvious at the time?
Mr Lee Cain: So, you know, it’s not, unfortunately, for me to pick the Prime Minister’s senior team. I think, you know, I can only control the elements of – you know, the remit which I control, and I think we had a very diverse, particularly gender diverse, but we had a very diverse team within the Number 10 press office and, you know, they were incredible individuals to work with and –
Mr Weatherby KC: Bearing in mind that diversity, and the lack of diversity you’ve pointed up at paragraph 121(d), did you advise the Prime Minister or anybody else that this was a problem that needed to be addressed?
Mr Lee Cain: I think it was something that was frequently raised, I think, you know, particularly by many female members of Number 10 who, I think – it really sort of shone a light, because within – within Covid what tends to happen is there was a small core room, often in the Cabinet Room, where the individuals would be round the table.
Now, in non-Covid times there would be a lot more people in that room so it would sort of mask some of these issues. During Covid, the sort of secondary cast, if you will, would be outside watching on a Zoom, and what became very clear is it was predominantly women in the building who were outside watching on a Zoom and predominantly white, middle-aged men around the table.
Mr Weatherby KC: Yes.
Mr Lee Cain: So I would receive messages from members of my team sort of, you know, highlighting this gender disparity and the fact that we needed to change –
Mr Weatherby KC: You advised about it, but did anything change? That was my question.
Mr Lee Cain: No, nothing – nothing did change.
Mr Weatherby: Thank you, my Lady.
Lady Hallett: Thank you.
Thank you very much, Mr Cain, thank you for your help.
(The witness withdrew)
Lady Hallett: Just so people understand, we will probably have a shortened lunch because I think we have overrun a little with Mr Cain.
Mr Keith: Thank you, my Lady, that would be very helpful.
(Pause)
Mr Keith: So, my Lady, the next witness is Dominic Cummings.