2. Professor David Halpern

PROFESSOR DAVID HALPERN (affirmed).

Questions From Counsel to the Inquiry

Mr Keating: Thank you. Could you give us your full name, please?

Professor David Halpern: Yes, I’m David Halpern, Professor David Halpern of the Behavioural Insights Team.

Counsel Inquiry: Thank you.

Firstly, thank you so much for attending today and assisting the Inquiry with its investigations.

A few things by way of preliminary matters. If we can both keep our voices up, secondly speak slowly so that your evidence can be captured and my questions can be captured. If we can avoid, if we can, overspeaking, because it doesn’t assist with the transcript.

You’ve helpfully provided a witness statement dated 19 May of this year. We can see it in front of us. In relation to that, it runs to 65 pages and you’ve signed that at page 63, and you’ve had a chance to refresh your memory in relation to that, and can you confirm that that is true to the best of your knowledge and belief?

Professor David Halpern: Yes, I can, thank you.

Counsel Inquiry: As you indicated, you are here on behalf of the Behavioural Insights Team. You’re now the president. When you drafted this statement you were the chief executive officer and you’re here to provide an overview of the role you played on behalf of that organisation during the Covid pandemic.

It’s an extensive statement. We can see at the top right-hand corner 105 exhibits and even those are quite substantial in themselves. It traverses many issues. We’re not going to cover them all today. The first point, of course, is that your statement and those exhibits go into evidence; so we have that and that assists the Inquiry.

But I want to focus upon four areas: one main area and three secondary areas. The first area is really touching upon your background, which we will in a moment, and what the Behavioural Insights Team is.

Secondly, at the heart of your evidence, focusing upon your involvement particularly in February and March 2020, assisting and advising those at the heart of government.

Thirdly, understanding and compliance of social distancing from a behavioural perspective, bearing in mind your expertise in that field.

Lastly, we’ll conclude and touch – and I emphasise touch upon – what you describe as “Covid missteps” when we look at lessons learned.

Is that okay?

Professor David Halpern: Yes.

Counsel Inquiry: Professional background.

And again forgive me for perhaps dominating the strike in speaking so much at the beginning, but I can perhaps deal with this quite shortly.

We see it at page 2 – forgive me, at paragraph 4. We see your background initially that you, as we know from your title as a professor, you’re an academic with a lifetime tenure at the University of Cambridge and you’ve held posts at Oxford and Harvard.

We can touch upon when you first worked in government. From 2001 to 2007 – it’s at paragraph 3 of your statement – you, on loan from Cambridge, is that right, that you assisted the former Prime Minister Tony Blair as the chief analyst in the Prime Minister’s strategy unit?

So you were there for roughly six years, and from there you became the founding director and research director of the respected independent think tank, the Institute for Government; is that right?

Professor David Halpern: That’s correct.

Counsel Inquiry: And we’re familiar with the organisation and we’ve had a number of reports referred to. Indeed, we’ve had evidence from Alex Thomas already during this Inquiry.

Thereafter, once you finished at the IFG, you became a director of Behavioural Insights Team in 2010-2014. Did you set it up?

Professor David Halpern: Yeah. So I went back – it’s quite unusual, perhaps – to Downing Street in 2010 to do a range of things which the then Prime Minister David Cameron was interested in. That included behavioural science – actually, it also included things like his interest in wellbeing or other aspects of public service reform.

Counsel Inquiry: Yes. So you’ve had experience with Tony Blair, David Cameron and, before we turn to Behavioural Insights Team, you also mention your experience in What Works group. Perhaps you could briefly explain what that was.

Professor David Halpern: So What Works, and one of the things that may come through today, is the idea it’s a simple question: what does work in government and policy and practice? And so it was to try and drive a more empirical, if you like, evidence-based approach to government. So I took up this role a day a week, essentially at the request of the then Cabinet Secretary, Jeremy Heywood, as the UK’s What Works national adviser, which I did for ten years pretty much.

Counsel Inquiry: So for perhaps a number of decades, in fact, you’ve had access to and advised Number 10 in relation to these matters?

Professor David Halpern: Yes.

Counsel Inquiry: Let’s turn to the Behavioural Insights Team, also known as the Nudge Unit, formed 2010 as part of the Cabinet Office, and what was its purpose?

Professor David Halpern: So in the words of the coalition agreement, it was to support people to make better choices for themselves. In more everyday speak, most government policy issues concern human behaviour, be it public health, trying to live more healthfully, paying taxes, getting people back to work. When you look at it, most public policy issues concern human behaviour and the strange thing is there wasn’t much expertise in government about that.

So it was set up as an experimental team, very small, seven people, to try and introduce that kind of expertise into government, we actually set it up with a two-year sunset clause on the basis of if it didn’t work, then it probably wouldn’t work, then it would automatically be shut down.

Counsel Inquiry: And the sunset clause wasn’t exercised because it continued within Cabinet Office until 2014, and then it was positioned outside Cabinet Office, is that correct, and then in due course it became independent, a completely independent entity?

Professor David Halpern: That’s correct, which is what it is today. Essentially, because it was seeming very effective, we were receiving requests from many other governments and other parts of government to help. It’s quite complicated to receive money from another government as part of Downing Street and so it was felt it was better to set it up in the semi-independent and then, eventually, fully independent form.

Counsel Inquiry: Yes, and during Covid you were at that semi-independent stage?

Professor David Halpern: That’s correct. We were co-owned formally by the Cabinet Office and I also did a day a week directly as national adviser.

Counsel Inquiry: In relation to the work the Behavioural Insights Team did, it was advisory, it had no decision-making power. And you said that – I’ll summarise what you say in your statement in relation to this – it received inputs from multiple government departments and you would supply notes, run experiments to help predict behavioural responses to policy options and take part in policy or analytical discussions.

Moving on to our second topic, and again the main part of your evidence that I want to draw out today is how you became directly involved in the response.

We see at paragraph 18 of your statement that you became formally involved on 14 February, Valentine’s Day. That’s when you were called upon. Chris Wormald, the permanent secretary at the Department of Health and Social Care, called upon you. And is this a fair summary, that over the next month that you were drawn into more and more meetings closer to the heart of government?

Professor David Halpern: Yes, I think broadly it is. The request came, as you say, directly from Chris Wormald, the perm sec at DHSC, but inevitably, even in order to our core work, we needed to understand what was the transmission mechanisms as it was understood, what were the other policy issues. And so we were therefore pulled into other meetings, including in Downing Street and Cabinet Office.

Counsel Inquiry: Rather adopting your phraseology of “what works”, the picture from the statements is that you were asking multiple questions of multiple people trying to find out what the problem is and how to find a solution?

Professor David Halpern: Yes. When we’d originally built the Behavioural Insights Team, we also built it on the back of what had been the strategy unit. In order to affect someone’s behaviour, you need to figure out what is going on, what’s the cause of the behaviour, but also, in the case of Covid, what’s the transmission mechanism? So how is it being spread, if it’s on hands or if you’re coughing?

So it leads to quite practical questions around what exactly is going on in order to be able to answer it and, of course, this ranges from every aspect from first line of defence when you’ve only got public health issues like, you know, washing hands through to when you move into you want people to take a test. Well, will they turn up, you know? Will they stay at home if you ask them? And even when you have a vaccine later on, a vaccine, of course, is not a vaccination until someone physically turns up and says, “Yes, you can stick it in my arm”.

Counsel Inquiry: So pausing there, because there’s a huge amount of work that you did –

Professor David Halpern: Of course.

Counsel Inquiry: – and you’ve summarised that, that you ran 57 online experiments, four field experiments, and you provided 41 policy notes and were involved in eight longer projects; so a substantial body of work that you were involved with over this period of time.

In relation to the work you were doing, was it on a UK basis, was it England, was there any consideration of the boundaries between England and the devolved administrations?

Professor David Halpern: So a bit. Our commissions mainly – and, in fact, you can see the main headlines just summarised there because of those bodies of work, they’re studies –

Counsel Inquiry: Yes.

Professor David Halpern: – was mainly Department of Health, sometimes Cabinet Office because we still had a core contract with Cabinet Office. I don’t recall any direct commissions from the Scottish Government. We did do some work in Wales. We did sometimes get commissions from local government, Manchester or whatever. I don’t recall doing stuff in Northern Ireland. So mainly centre government in UK Westminster.

Counsel Inquiry: Thank you. And in relation to the scope of your initial instructions back in February 2020, and we can see that at paragraph 18 of your statement there, that initial meetings with the permanent secretary, and in due course Matt Hancock, but your scope really there was to assist with the behavioural aspect of how the public would engage with the government’s response to Covid and we see “provide advice on how the government would communicate Covid-related messaging so the public recognised the severity of the virus whilst avoiding public panic”. It sounds very easy when you read it out like that, but it’s actually quite a difficult balance to provide information but also not to commence public panic; is that fair?

Professor David Halpern: Yes, quite so. We had, of course, previously worked on some other crises in government, not least fuel crises, where some of you may remember – my Lady may remember – you had a minister who said, well, just fill up a jerrycan and of course that led to mass panic, everyone filling up their cars and the whole system crashing.

So, yes, on the one hand you want to inform the public, not least about what can they do to protect themselves and their family; on the other hand, of course, you want to avoid panic. Generally, you don’t have panic actually but you can see in this case, of course, a legitimate concern.

Counsel Inquiry: Yes. So one of the first public messaging programmes you were involved in was “No Regrets” – or no-regret public messaging was the type of messaging you were involved in?

Professor David Halpern: Yes. So our belief has always been if we’re asking the public to do something, people have many other things in their lives, let’s make sure that it’s authentic in the sense that it’s going to work, going to do some good for them, and early on when there is uncertainty particularly your attention is drawn to so-called no regret messages which you are pretty sure will be good things, generally are doing no harm almost for sure. So hand washing became very rapidly, even by the time we were engaged – had been highlighted as an obvious thing to try and slow transmission so yes that would be an example of a no regret it’s hard to think of examples of washing your hands doing much harm.

Counsel Inquiry: No, I can’t think of one. But in relation to that hand washing, that was a considerable amount of your work – when I say “your”, the organisation’s work – during those early days in February and into March; isn’t that correct?

Professor David Halpern: In those very early days, yes, that’s correct. And maybe it’s an illustration we can use for a minute about the nature of the work that we would do. It might seem an obvious thing. Many of you would have seen the posters, those green posters with the hand, they’re still up across Britain. So if you think about your challenge, someone is going to look at that for a few seconds, and the question is: how can you get as much information across as possible in that poster?

So, you know, you wouldn’t dwell on it but what we would do is we would literally test, and we did test, variations in posters, variations in messages, with thousands of people, and say: what – you see it for a few seconds, like in the real world, “What did it say? Can you remember?” If you can’t remember five seconds later, it’s not likely to be effective. “Would you intend to do that? Would you wash your hands?” You know?

So we would test that, and essentially by testing variations you can tune and improve it so that the final one that most people would have seen had gone through – in fact you can – you will see and you have in the evidence a number of iterations which would increase public comprehension. So it’s – even a trivial example, if you looked at it across – you would see the message gets simpler, the words get bigger, some of the confusion disappears. Do you need the NHS brand or government brand or is it just distracting you? That the image, the early images were quite a confusing image, it was – what was it? It was actually hands on a rail.

Counsel Inquiry: Just pausing there for a moment.

Professor David Halpern: Sorry.

Counsel Inquiry: I’m conscious that it’s a product of a huge amount of work you’ve done.

Professor David Halpern: Yeah.

Counsel Inquiry: And it’s an illustration, is it not –

Professor David Halpern: It is.

Counsel Inquiry: – that evidence-based decision-making takes time and a number of iterations to perfect the message?

Professor David Halpern: It does take time, although a key issue is not as much time as you think. I mean, those things were assembled with experiments with thousands of people over days, not weeks or months, and it’s a key question, in our view, about there are lots of these practical issues which are critical to effective policy or delivery which actually you need to handle in that empirical way.

Counsel Inquiry: In relation to your involvement we can put hand washing to one side, that work was still ongoing, but your involvement expanded and you were in touch with Professor Whitty on 18 February asking the questions you have alluded to already in relation to Covid transmission mechanism.

Again, very briefly, what was your understanding of Covid transmission at that stage, on 18 February?

Professor David Halpern: Sir Chris very generously helped us, and we had that early briefing, particularly to understand what was the transmission mechanism. So, again, it might seem trivial and everything but if you think, for example, it’s airborne, it may be different than if you think it’s so-called fomite, when you cough it’s on a surface –

Counsel Inquiry: Yes?

Professor David Halpern: – right? If you think it’s on a surface, then you’re going to spend a lot of time cleaning surfaces. If you think it’s in the air, it’s a different strategy.

So he took us through what was understood about the virus, his understanding of those transmission mechanisms and, therefore, to help us work out what were the points behaviourally that you might be able to introduce to reinforce support people to slow down the spread of the virus.

Counsel Inquiry: Moving on to 20 February, meeting at DHSC, and you were examining government publications, and we can see this at paragraph 23, in fact, of your statement. So another meeting, one of the many you attended at DHSC, was to go over a government publication online, and the issue was around the level of detail to include so that people can be warned about what’s going to happen and the range of possibility of what might happen.

The bottom of that paragraph I just want to focus upon is about this:

“The strong expectation in the room from the medical experts [on 20 February] was that the ‘wave’ would be unstoppable once community transmission occurred ie once the ‘contain’ phase was left.”

Is that right?

Professor David Halpern: That is correct. I mean, of course I think we know a lot about behaviour but we’re not medical experts and therefore we are very much relying on it, but that was very, very strongly the impression – well, graphs on the wall and so on.

Counsel Inquiry: So was the impression from your understanding that it was a matter of not if but when this virus was going to be – and its unstoppable once community transmission occurred?

Professor David Halpern: Yes, that conditionality being important but yes in that time I think people were still hoping, if not expecting, that it would be possible to contain the virus through the work of Public Health England and others, but yes, once it got out more generally that it would be pretty much unstoppable and therefore the implication was mitigating the negative effects rather than being able to contain it.

Counsel Inquiry: And at that stage, bearing in mind this meeting with the caveat, but were you content that the publications sufficiently represented the risk to the public as understood at that time?

Professor David Halpern: I would have to look back at it, but I think it was pretty straightforward that – the implication, if you read it, a lot of people were potentially going to die. And indeed there was specific discussion about the inclusion of the numbers of deaths in previous pandemics, not least so-called Spanish flu, which it kept – introduced a reference point about the seriousness of the situation, and there was discussion whether to include that, and our view was people need to be correctly calibrated about what the risk is. Not afraid but correctly calibrated. So it seemed a sensible thing to do.

Counsel Inquiry: I’m going to use a different phrase, not calibration, but did you have any concerns that this information was cutting through, that there was sufficient public awareness of the risks around that time?

Professor David Halpern: So this is late February –

Counsel Inquiry: We’re 20 February, this is before your meeting in due course on 25 February, just before Lombardy becomes more high profile.

Professor David Halpern: So I didn’t think it was way off, but in the days that follow it – I mean, as you know I was – talk about – I actually had to be away for work and, particularly returning in late February, I was pretty surprised that we were not seeing posters in profile.

But remember on the 20th you’re still talking about contain, and therefore it’s very small numbers. You’re really relying on PHE to try to do their job and everyone hoped that, like SARS or previous issues, it would be contained.

Counsel Inquiry: Let’s move on to a meeting you had with Dominic Cummings and Ben Warner on 25 February, we can see that at paragraph 25, Ben Warner being a data scientist who we are going to hear evidence from next week.

And it was a meeting on non-Covid matters, as it happened, but you say here:

“… we took the opportunity to compare notes and share concerns.”

So by this stage, the dreadful events in Lombardy were in our consciousness, we could see what was going on on the televisions and the dreadful loss of life which was beginning to emerge over the days in Italy.

What concerns, if any, were expressed to you by Ben Warner and Dominic Cummings at this meeting?

Professor David Halpern: So I don’t think Dominic Cummings was at that meeting. I think it was only Ben, from memory.

Counsel Inquiry: Forgive me.

Professor David Halpern: It was a meeting, I mean, as indicated there, primarily looking out – remember Ben had been brought in to try to increase the kind of quantitative, mathematical data science capability in Downing Street, so we were – a lot of it we were talking about that in general terms, is actually my memory, but I’m sure we were starting to talk in this period about, what are the data flows, what is the modelling, is it good enough, and so on.

I actually remember Ben Warner at that stage, you can ask him directly, was quite upbeat about the modelling and its quality, which was a sort of a good comfort. But yeah –

Counsel Inquiry: So a touch base?

Professor David Halpern: Yeah.

Counsel Inquiry: Alive to the – what was going on in the wider world, but no significant concerns at this stage?

Professor David Halpern: Well, remember, a lot of normal government was still carrying on at this period.

Counsel Inquiry: Yes.

Professor David Halpern: And we look back and we can see the whole story, but at that point it hadn’t really hit in force, certainly in the centre of government.

Counsel Inquiry: What we’re interested in is your perspective and your experience as you had interaction with central government.

On 26 February, the next day, this isn’t a government interaction, this is when you attended a Royal Society seminar, and we’ve heard evidence from the president of the Royal Society, and this was a seminar to discuss quarantine as it related to the current Covid outbreak. You recall attending that meeting, that seminar. What impact, if any, did that have on you?

Professor David Halpern: Well, of course, this is – the work on Covid was starting to really take over my life and many others, but it was particularly – we were really still trying to understand the transmission mechanisms in detail. You know, we were very interested in the detail because we’re trying to, you know, guide people, you want to guide to what’s effective. So, I mean, a simple example would be – I touched on this issue about surfaces, and the guidance was being assembled – well, do you need everybody in schools to be cleaning every floor or not? Like, is that relevant, is it not?

There was particular work – so James Rubin, who I know you’ve spoken to, had done an absolutely excellent review on quarantine, looking at the evidence, and the extent to which people would sustain quarantining behaviour over long periods, to which his general conclusion was yes.

So we were very much in sort of sponge learning mode still, what can we learn about, you know, these mechanisms, previous analogous behaviour. Also, on the medical side, what is your best understanding on these transmission mechanisms?

So the last thing we want to be doing is telling people in campaigns to do XYZ but it’s not going to be effective.

Counsel Inquiry: Yes.

Professor David Halpern: We want to direct attention, it’s a precious thing, to things that would actually make a difference to help people protect themselves and their families.

Counsel Inquiry: And this work and this information finding is in a context when there is discussion, in broad terms, regarding quarantine and testing and obtaining better data; is that right?

Professor David Halpern: Yes. You know, we were very interested in testing and data, and we can talk about that later if you want, but yeah every aspect of it. But even – you mentioned testing. Let me just introduce why, behaviourally, we would also be interested in it, of course you want to know about how a disease is moving through a population or not and – and build up where’s your best place to put your testing if you’ve got limited capacity, but you also want to look at its behavioural capacity, so if I’m going to say, “You need to quarantine now, Mr Keating, for the next two weeks, will you do it?” are you more likely to do it if we said, “You need to take this test, and it looks like you’ve got Covid”, well, you can imagine what the answer is, but it’s an empirical question. Or even, “It may be too soon to say, we want you to quarantine for two weeks, by the weekend we will test you”, and then that will confirm – see what I mean?

Counsel Inquiry: Just pause there.

Professor David Halpern: So these behavioural consequences.

Counsel Inquiry: Thank you. I’m –

Lady Hallett: Are you continuing with that subject?

Mr Keating: I can pause there, because I’m conscious we’ve been going a long time.

Lady Hallett: Well, I’ve just had a message.

Mr Keating: Yes.

Lady Hallett: If that’s okay, right. I shall return in 15 minutes.

Mr Keating: Thank you.

(3.10 pm)

(A short break)

(3.25 pm)

Lady Hallett: Mr Keating.

Mr Keating: Thank you, my Lady.

Professor Halpern, we were going to deal with the topic of SAGE and how it came about that you were at a number of SAGE meetings.

In the timeline, the 27th meeting, you were at Number 10 in a meeting in the Cabinet Room which was chaired by Matt Hancock, dealing with a number of the issues and pinch points.

As a result of that and your dealings with Patrick Vallance at that time, you were asked by him to join SAGE; is that correct?

Professor David Halpern: That is correct, yes, in the wake of that meeting.

Counsel Inquiry: What was the rationale for you being asked to join SAGE?

Professor David Halpern: Well, of course, you can ask Sir Patrick Vallance. It seemed there were two main issues, I think. One is, we’d – and I’d mentioned to him about some modelling work we thought was very good, particularly linked to Hannah Fry, the mathematician, the simulation of a spreading of a coronavirus, which we thought had some very powerful insights in it. We were also very interested in details of the transmission, as I explained earlier, including the extent to which which behaviours would protect both individuals and populations.

So Sir Patrick was very keen that there be one voice, one view on this, and so he encouraged – in fact asked me to join SAGE meetings accordingly.

Counsel Inquiry: And we know that you, from 3 March to 23 March, were at six meetings, the first being on 3 March. Then on 5 March, the second meeting you attended, your summary of this, which I’m going to read very briefly, is that it considered how to communicate in a way that would be effective and which would not panic people, that theme continuing.

10 March your view of that meeting as summarised in your statement:

“At this stage there appeared to be a view within SAGE that Covid was an unstoppable wave and containment of the virus would not be a viable option.”

13 March, the next meeting you attended, and this is the one where your concerns crystallised and you describe how the penny dropped, and we’ll refer to that shortly.

Then there is two more meetings you attended on the 18th and 23rd. But after the 23rd your invitations to SAGE ceased. Any particular reason why that was?

Professor David Halpern: I actually don’t know. I did ask Patrick once, but SAGE – its membership can change, and it’s for the government, you know, Chief Scientific Adviser to decide. It – essentially when it went online rather than in person, I don’t know, I didn’t seem to get the invites any more, but we were pretty busy doing other work, so –

Counsel Inquiry: Of course, which you’ve set out in your statement.

Professor David Halpern: – it’s for sir Patrick to decide.

Counsel Inquiry: The next subtopic is herd immunity.

Professor David Halpern: Yes.

Counsel Inquiry: We’ve heard a lot about it. You have had some involvement in this and I want to touch upon your understanding of that strategy from your contacts –

Professor David Halpern: Yes.

Counsel Inquiry: – with those at the heart of government. You had contact with Neil Ferguson on 20 February, and you had obviously contact with both the Chief Scientific Adviser and the Chief Medical Officer. And what was that understanding in the late February of the strategy?

Professor David Halpern: So of course it had been – was then expressed in the published document on 3 March, essentially it was contain if you could and then you mitigate, and that was it. As you say, I am not uniquely – was getting increasingly troubled about that, I suppose, because we felt there were viable ways of doing sophisticated suppression, but essential by the presumption was, I mean, on all quarters it felt, from a convergence of different medical views, the modelling, the position on vaccines, the practical experience of the CMO himself, was that once essentially community transmission had started it would be some version of an unstoppable wave, yes.

Counsel Inquiry: In relation to the term herd immunity, you yourself utilised that phrase, you used that in a BBC interview on 10 March which you set out in your statements. This had followed on from the 3 March SAGE meeting where it was unstoppable, and you refer to that interview where you made a comment about the potential need to cocoon elderly and the most vulnerable in the weeks to come, and you referred to the phrase herd immunity.

At that stage, why did you refer to the need to cocoon the elderly and vulnerable?

Professor David Halpern: So I should explain the interview was primarily actually talking about the science behind – you know, we talked about a moment ago –

Counsel Inquiry: Hand washing?

Professor David Halpern: Hand washing, but more generally how you’d apply it.

The interviewer, Mark Easton, at the end, asked a question. I responded, probably shouldn’t have done, around essentially the vulnerable, and I’d said – partly because of course it was in all the meetings, it was in the media. Self-evidently there was 5000-fold at least in the age-infected fatality rate, and so it was pretty inevitable, it seemed – to discuss in SAGE too of course – that we would want to protect the most vulnerable. I use the phrase “cocooning” because it’s the one used in the literature. And I think Mark Easton asked me the question about three times, which should have been a warning sign, but – and on the third time I said we obviously need toll cocoon protect and people until –

Counsel Inquiry: Yes.

Professor David Halpern: – you know, in general population, herd immunity or whatever had been received, so –

Counsel Inquiry: Sentiment, to use your phrase, was an authentic one, the need to cocoon?

Professor David Halpern: Yes, exactly. You are going to need to protect the most vulnerable –

Counsel Inquiry: Yes.

Professor David Halpern: – because it will scream from 10,000 feet. And the phrase “herd immunity” was being used very widely and it was probably a mistake on my part to have used it in that interview, is the truth of it.

Counsel Inquiry: But you were contacted by Number 10’s communications, not Lee Cain, somebody else in that office.

Professor David Halpern: Yeah.

Counsel Inquiry: And you summarise how there was no issue with the use of the term “herd immunity” but you were pulled up about using “cocoon”; is that correct? Cocooning?

Professor David Halpern: Yes, it was specifically Jack Doyle I remember, for a hairdryer treatment. They were very angry about it, but they were particularly angry about the word “cocoon”. My memory of it was because the word hadn’t been used in public particularly and they didn’t really want to get into that issue because it hadn’t been talked about publicly as a policy issue. If you remember there was issues around if you had – you know, if you’ve got symptoms, that you might be asked to self-isolate, but none of the stuff around what later became shielding –

Counsel Inquiry: Yes.

Professor David Halpern: – had in fact been discussed in, I think, in the public policy debate.

Counsel Inquiry: 10 March, unhappiness that you were dealing with cocooning/what became shielding?

Professor David Halpern: Yeah.

Counsel Inquiry: But herd immunity okay?

Professor David Halpern: Yes, I mean, it was just very widely used in all the internal discussions as a shorthand for not government policy, as often discussed, but that it would likely arise over time.

Counsel Inquiry: Yes.

I want to move on to our next topic, subtopic, behavioural fatigue. We have heard a lot about it and it’s been in the public domain?

Professor David Halpern: Yes.

Counsel Inquiry: We should see this at paragraph 64. In fairness to you we need to address this. So on two occasions the Chief Medical Officer, Professor Whitty, deals with this, 9 March and 12 March. And it really talks about sustainability and how people will understandably get fatigued and it will be difficult to sustain this over a period of time. And we can see the other reference about it, (inaudible) and at a certain point starts to flag on 12 March, and he will give evidence in relation to that.

But the first point is this, it’s been suggested in the past that you and your organisation were, in the shadows, the source of this advice is that correct –

Professor David Halpern: So glad to get this clear. We were not. It’s not a phrase we had used. Not only was it not from us, but also, as you will know privately from the emails, we were pushing pretty hard to move forward on social distancing measures by that point.

Chris Whitty, I think, I’ve read his statement, he’s pretty clear about where it comes from and describes it as a mistake on his part. But, yeah, it was unfortunate.

Counsel Inquiry: Did you relay to him at the time that it wasn’t the right phrase from a behavioural scientist perspective?

Professor David Halpern: I don’t know if I did. He had lots of other things. I did send him a paper a few days later, which I think is in the evidence –

Counsel Inquiry: This is about the Spanish flu?

Professor David Halpern: Yeah, which was essentially to look at some work insofar as it had occurred during Spanish flu. The main point about the paper was that even in those very difficult circumstances you did not see this so-called fatigue, this is particularly in America it was studied, American cities. Only by the time you got to the second and particularly third times you had lockdown did you see anything akin to people really starting to give up on it. So –

Counsel Inquiry: We could go to that document if you wish, but is this a fair summary, is that it gives that information?

Professor David Halpern: Yeah.

Counsel Inquiry: It’s a discussion point but it’s a little bit ambivalent in terms of providing express advice that it was the wrong thing to say, “behavioural fatigue”?

Professor David Halpern: Yes, and – but James Rubin, others in SPI-B, as you will know, there was an avalanche coming towards Chris to say, “What are you talking about?”

It’s particularly me the context of novel behaviour, and when everybody is moving together our strong view, you mentioned the quarantine work also, was that people would comply to a high degree and so it was – you know, was misleading to imply that that behavioural science was saying that, and indeed, as again Chris Whitty has spoken about in his statement, he unfortunately gave the impression that that was a reason for delay, which was not his intent, I think. And of course from the SAGE minutes you’ll know was not what was being said in private.

Counsel Inquiry: Next topic, change in strategy, and your experience of this. Timeline, we’ve dealt with 10 March, that there was a view about Covid being unstoppable, and containment was no longer viable. You have mentioned already, just a moment ago, that you had raised concerns on 12 March specifically, you raised concerns regarding the limitations of SAGE modelling in an email to Chris Wormald, Patrick Vallance, Chris Whitty, Jonathan Van-Tam, and you say this:

“We are at the limits of what modelling can tell us.”

Then we see a pivotal meeting, my words, not yours, on 13 March, “SAGE meeting”. My terminology, but would you agree that was a significant meeting, 13 March?

Professor David Halpern: It felt to me that it was. I felt both the content of the discussion and the emotional tone in the room was there was this realisation that something was amiss and policy had to shift.

Counsel Inquiry: Well, let’s explore this realisation that something was amiss. So key SAGE meeting, you recall there was a graph of an infection wave over time, with a red line to represent an NHS capacity with the objective, the key objective, to keep the wave under the red line in line with the mitigate, delay messaging. You say that there was different understandings of capacity, the red line, number of beds, number of ventilators. Is that right?

Professor David Halpern: Yes.

Counsel Inquiry: Is it the case that during the meeting that Stephen Powis, who was an NHS director, and Patrick Vallance questioned the modellers on why they were so sure that suppression of the virus in line with what was being done in China and South Korea was not viable? That’s your paragraph 73, so I’m reading out your evidence. Is that what the position was?

Professor David Halpern: Yes. So my memory is Steve Powis specifically raised it. My memory is very much following on from what you just said, which is that there seemed to be confusion over what was the capacity in that red line, the difference between ICU versus serious cases – you know, three-fold differential, et cetera – and that this wasn’t a small problem, it was a big problem and the implication was the numbers and models you’ve been using it will be overwhelmed.

So that, I think, prompted Steve Powis to say, “So why are you so sure that doing stronger measures or lockdown would necessarily rebound? Why is it a bad thing to do?” And Patrick Vallance picked up on it and said, “Yes, that is a really good question and pressed the modellers to answer”.

Counsel Inquiry: And the modellers here are Professor Medley and Professor Edmunds, SPI-M, and what was their response to that pressing or probing as you described it?

Professor David Halpern: So they were very definite. You know, they are modelling experts. But what struck me again in this moment was they said, Graham particularly, absolutely sure 100%, 100%, and one of the things I would teach at Cambridge was statistics and you just think you don’t – nothing is 100%, certainly in the uncertainty of models. And it troubled me really deeply, because I felt that, you know, 99%? But 100%?

And it was – it encapsulated for me in a moment this overconfidence in aspects of the models.

Counsel Inquiry: And in relation to that overconfidence in the modelling, you mention in your statements this confusion regarding NHS capacity and other issues, such as the low level of testing capacity, and ambition – I presume the low level of ambition. What did you mean by that when you refer to “ambition” in your statement?

Professor David Halpern: So as many things were gone through in that meeting, another one as you say was testing capacity. I remember I think my notepad had recorded as they said they had a thousand tests a month on serology, a thousand a month, and I think I’d scribbled, “Why so few?” You know, a thousand a week, a thousand a day. We’re so far off the pace.

So now you’ve three major concerns piling up in this meeting –

Counsel Inquiry: Just pause there, thank you. All these concerns, great concern you described it, overconfidence, and you referred to your notebook and you were making a number of notes but what you did write was that “WE ARE NOT READY”; is that correct?

Professor David Halpern: I did, and indeed wrote it in capital letters, it was so striking.

Counsel Inquiry: We see it there. A Number 10 colleague leaned over, crossed out your entry, which we see at the bottom of the page, and what was written instead of “WE ARE NOT READY”?

Professor David Halpern: “We are fucked!”

Counsel Inquiry: And that was written by your colleague, a Number 10 colleague; is that right?

Professor David Halpern: That’s right. Ben Warner.

Counsel Inquiry: Ben Warner?

Professor David Halpern: Yes, who I believe you’re talking to.

Counsel Inquiry: So in graphic terms, reflecting the meeting, concerns regarding overconfidence, did that reflect the concerns, readiness for the unstoppable wave that was about to come?

Professor David Halpern: Yes. I mean, remember, the one play that you had in the strategy as was expressed to us, I think, was that you can shape the wave, as referred to endlessly, you could flatten it, et cetera, and then you were trying to do it to stop the NHS being overwhelmed. But in this meeting you’re hearing evidence that on current trajectory it is going to be overwhelmed, that we don’t have the testing ready. You know, we’re – the models seem overconfident – there were a lot of grounds for concern and so hence I really felt quite shocked and depressed. I felt that, you know, it’s not our role to do all those things. We’re working on the behavioural aspects to –

Counsel Inquiry: Just pause there. It’s my fault. I think we’re both going to have to slow down a little bit.

Professor David Halpern: I’m sorry, yes. Apologies.

Counsel Inquiry: No, I speak fast at the best of times, so if we can try and slow down a little bit. And I’ve interrupted you, so forgive me. You said that you were feeling quite shocked and depressed, “it’s not our role to so all those things. We’re working on the behavioural aspects”.

Is there anything you wanted to add to that answer?

Professor David Halpern: Yes. So the overall sense was that, as in my notebook, we, the country, the policy world, is not ready for what is unfolding and I felt that, you know, on people’s faces in the room that that was – there was some realisation of it, a sort of cracking in the confidence.

Counsel Inquiry: “Cracking in the confidence”, “the penny has dropped” is how you describe it, and you say in your statement that others in the room, and you, felt that “we should have been pursuing suppression strategies”; is that right? Paragraph 74.

Professor David Halpern: Yes, that’s right. There’s a key question of what “suppression” means, but basically –

Counsel Inquiry: I think we’ve heard quite a lot about that.

Professor David Halpern: Yes.

Counsel Inquiry: So we’re okay.

Professor David Halpern: But yes.

Counsel Inquiry: So post meeting, going through this chronology, difficult meeting, you were in contact with Matt Hancock, who you had worked with alongside for a number of weeks to update him. And you describe how you felt, that – how you spoke to him and said that, “The penny has dropped, that we really need to do something about suppression and locking down”. And what was the response?

Professor David Halpern: So, yes. I had, I think, texted or WhatsApped Matt. He had called me back and I was surprised, I suppose. He said along the lines – said this is the “best news” he’d heard all week, “best news” in a very specific sense which is that there was this realisation that strategy might need to change, something more dramatic might have to be done in order to really stop, slow the spread.

So I was surprised by it, but of course I wasn’t in all the meetings he was, but –

Counsel Inquiry: No.

Professor David Halpern: Yeah.

Counsel Inquiry: Not the most natural response to a bad news message, but your impression was that he felt stronger and more immediate action was necessary, and we could not just wait for the unstoppable wave?

Professor David Halpern: My sense was for ministers such as Matt Hancock, others were much closer in their centre of Number 10, but they were dutifully following the science and were very uncomfortable with where it was going. So there was appetite to be stronger in the policy moves, but they were waiting for the signal to be told that’s what we need to do, and so that’s why he experienced it as a good thing that that realisation was coming through.

Counsel Inquiry: You say later in your statements that in particular for Matt Hancock, in your view, he was quite frustrated and was ready to act more decisively – is that right – at that time?

Professor David Halpern: That was my sense at that time, yeah.

Counsel Inquiry: So in relation to those concerns – we don’t need to turn to it – you set out in your statement how between 16 and 18 March you sent several emails to Mark Sedwill, Chris Wormald, Dominic Cummings, Jeremy Farrar, in advance of the next SAGE meeting, expressing your concern, and the need to consider a global lockdown to shut down the virus, and that was something that you were in correspondence with; isn’t that correct?

Professor David Halpern: Yes, that’s correct.

Counsel Inquiry: On 18 March we know that, as you set out in your statements, that you argued that – you argued for a lockdown in the meeting?

Professor David Halpern: Yes. Bear in mind that I had already, you know, before the 13th had written to say – in fact, literally wrote a list of what we would now call “lockdown style measures”, slightly softer, but, yes, at this point it was: why aren’t we going full-blown?

I was not at that time aware – I’d read Patrick Vallance’s statement that there were meetings that had clearly occurred in between those two meetings; so, in that sense, we were in our lane – maybe not seeing the whole picture. But, yes, I was really concerned that we needed a very decisive decision.

Counsel Inquiry: Yes. You put it very well: you’re “in your lane”. We’ve got other evidence which we have and that’s why I’m dealing with this quite succinctly.

There was one point that I wanted to draw out at paragraph 93. You describe on 23 March an email with Tim Leunig, who was at HMT, Her Majesty’s Treasury, as I understand it, and he – there was emails between you and you expressed a view that the modellers in SAGE seemed to have “a remarkable thin grip on the deaths caused by externalities”; in other words, from behavioural or system side effects such as people being too afraid to seek treatment for other conditions.

Professor David Halpern: Yes.

Counsel Inquiry: That’s something which you had identified at that stage and raised?

Professor David Halpern: That’s correct. I mean, we’d crawled over the models quite carefully and Neil Ferguson had been kind enough also to let one of my team go to Imperial, look, as it were, behind the curtain of the models.

Counsel Inquiry: Yes.

Professor David Halpern: So we were at this point maybe less confident, therefore, but this is one of a number of issues. The specific thing which comes in force later, you know, if people aren’t going in large numbers in to get medical treatment, then you get a lot of excess deaths or illness as a result of that. The person – I mean, Tim, I think, had written to me about some of his concerns – he was an adviser to the Chancellor – and I had put him in touch, if I remember, on that with the government’s actuary, who of course were experts in some of these questions.

Counsel Inquiry: Yes, thank you.

Our third penultimate area, and it’s a short one, is understanding and compliance with social distancing from a behavioural perspective. Again, a comprehensive statement. You deal with this. Impacts of senior officials’ breaches. I really want to touch upon this from your expertise as a behavioural scientist.

From the behavioural perspective, you describe the Dominic Cummings incident as “very unhelpful” at paragraph 140. Why was that? Why was it unhelpful, in your view, from an expert point of view, not an opinion point of view?

Professor David Halpern: Yes. So people are very influenced by what they see others doing. We all sit here quietly in this room, partly taking the cues from each other. In this case, in everyday speak, people are more influenced by what they see others doing than what the formal rules are. It’s what’s known as declarative norms. So littering would be a simple example: you are much more likely to litter in a room that already has litter. You can literally experimentally test it. So there you’ve got a high profile figure on the face of it pretty blatantly breaking the rules and justifying it, seeking to justify it.

So it, you know, was extremely less than ideal. If there was any – anything positive to be taken from it is that data generally suggested that most of the public were complying and continue to comply because what mattered more was those people around you, your neighbours, your fellow workers, your commuters were fortunately more important than what someone in Downing Street was doing.

Counsel Inquiry: Pausing there for a moment. So an issue, mitigated by other behavioural factors, which may affect an individual, but you describe it from a behavioural point of view as an almost textbook example, of what not to do; is that correct?

Professor David Halpern: Yeah, it was atrocious.

Counsel Inquiry: And later on in your statement you say it say sort of blew a hole, a huge hole, in a rule-based approach and undermined the credibility of Her Majesty’s Government in what it was asking or demanding of the public?

Professor David Halpern: Yes. So I don’t know how much detail you want to go in on this.

Counsel Inquiry: I was just going to draw that out, unless there was anything else you wanted to say in relation to that that you considered to be key.

Professor David Halpern: Well, let me just put a marker down that rule-based, you know, frameworks on behaviour are brittle. You know, you follow the rule: if you don’t, you get punished. They’re different from a principle-based set of guidance, which are more flexible.

Having gone down the route pretty heavily of a rule-based approach, when you get a breach of it, you can’t wriggle and worm; you have to say “hands up”. So it’s quite a profound issue about how you set up your framework, your approach, and what that means, what you’re saying to the public in terms of affecting behaviour.

Counsel Inquiry: Yes. And it undermines public confidence?

Professor David Halpern: Yeah, well, it blows a hole in it if you just break the rule and think … then try and wriggle out of it.

Counsel Inquiry: Yes. The next topic relates to the work you did for the Department of Health and Social Care, a study between late spring and autumn 2020 into the public’s understanding with social distance guidelines.

You looked at local alert levels and whether people understood the level of alert in their area; ie, is that Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 3? And the outcome of that report, which may not come as a surprise, but what did that study reveal?

Professor David Halpern: The public were very confused. The rules were getting more complicated. They were struggling to remember what they were. They might not know which tier they’re in, and so we would test this. We were testing it periodically and many of the public didn’t really understand the rules, and this in some ways got worse and worse. It does similarly – it relates to this issue, actually, of rule versus principle.

So if you’re going down the rule-based approach, all kinds of questions about, well, can I go out? Can I meet people in the garden? Will that be okay? Can I share a car with someone? You know, a lot of rules to remember as opposed to some other countries had gone down a principle-based approach. So the Japanese would be an obvious example, the three Cs: avoid crowded areas, avoid – et cetera. So it gives you a general sense of what’s dangerous and it’s for you to interpret.

Counsel Inquiry: Just pause there, thank you.

Finally on this heading, you deal with a number of programmes in your statement and their behavioural effects. You talk about the stay alert programme and you say this:

“Arguably, the UK tried to have its cake and eat it, and sometimes ended up with neither. ‘Stay Alert’ was an example [of this].”

Why was the “Stay Alert” programme, very briefly, so bad in your view?

Professor David Halpern: It tells you to worry and doesn’t tell you what to do: the worst combination. Is that short enough?

Counsel Inquiry: That was very short.

Professor David Halpern: Very good.

Counsel Inquiry: Thank you. But no, it was very helpful, thank you.

Especially when we’re talking about communication, the next programme was Eat Out to Help Out, and again you’ve done work in relation to that in parallel, and is it the case that the work, the research you did, was that Covid-secure premises was a more evidence-based approach which would encourage behaviours. That probably is a very simple summary for a complex study?

Professor David Halpern: That is correct. From memory, I think we did the study for BEIS, again using this experimental approach; so maybe it’s helpful to explain it again. So we chose several thousand people and we’d ask them, you know, thinking of a restaurant you liked, would you go back there? But what we’re doing is we’re showing different people a different variation. So sometimes you’d see, this is your favourite restaurant, and there is a pretty – a picture of the waiter with nothing on their face, but other groups would see the waiter with a mask or with a Covid-secure – and we also asked them asked about if we paid you £10 or whatever, would that, you know …

So we’re setting up different conditions to try and work out how it would influence someone’s intention to go to the restaurant.

Counsel Inquiry: And again –

Professor David Halpern: A very clear result.

Counsel Inquiry: Yes?

Professor David Halpern: That people were very strongly influenced by anything what you might call Covid-secure, the mask, the safety, this is the rules for the restaurant – I think 20-odd points more likely, percentage points, to go to the restaurant.

In contrast, paying people was quite a small effect, I think six percentage points, so it was a very powerful result, we thought, because it tells you that if you get a Covid-secure system in place, not only are more people going to be confident to go out, it’s also reinforcing good practice of Covid-secure requirement. So you would pay a premium to go to a restaurant with your mother, maybe you do that anyway, but in this case, for Covid, whereas if you were a bunch of 21-year olds, you might not care so much and you would go, as it were, for a less secure environment.

Counsel Inquiry: Thank you.

So in relation to this, financially cheaper and with less risk of transmission if you went down the Covid-secure route?

Professor David Halpern: Yes.

Counsel Inquiry: Last points on this section is one of your looking ahead steps and we know that we shifted in the rules over this period of time, you say this:

“Don’t go for simple rigid rules if you think it’s likely you’re going to have to vary them or have limited ability or intention to enforce them.”

Professor David Halpern: That’s correct. So it builds on the earlier point –

Counsel Inquiry: Yes.

Professor David Halpern: – about rules. So the worst thing to do, say this is the rule and then you can see all around it’s being broken. I hesitate to say this in a room of lawyers, but the classic example is if you see a wall and it says “No ball games”, the first thing you might think is, “Well, that’s a pretty good wall”, and as soon as you start to break the rule – essentially you become a rule breaker.

So you really want to design rules that are generally followed, you want to enforce on egregious breaches but you don’t want to inadvertently signal lots of people are breaking the rule because it will make it even more likely that others will follow suit.

Counsel Inquiry: Thank you. A lot of information there and we’re dealing with it at a high level. It’s more detail in your statement, and again I’m conscious of not – wanting to do due justice to these important principles.

Let’s move on to the final area, which is lessons learned, Covid missteps.

In July 2020 you set out a number of opinions and criticisms on the initial response to the pandemic from a behavioural perspective in a document entitled Institutional Lessons from Covid. You’ve explained that was a hard copy letter initially sent in July to Helen MacNamara and Alex Chisholm in the Cabinet Office, and later is it the case that you were asked for that copy of the document again and you updated it and in September 2020.

Let’s have a quick look at that, so it’s INQ000129093.

What I summarised can be seen in the top right-hand corner, and it runs to 13 pages approximately. It’s a significant piece of work in itself, forms your evidence and warrants to be read and considered in its entirety, which it will be and has been on this side. So I’m not going to go through it sequentially, I just want to draw out two significant points, which is this: you describe the early misstep, and we can see it at paragraph 1:

“Overconfidence and anchoring in our expert medical community led to a presumption that covid would be like a flu-like wave, blinding it to the pursuit of near-suppression as a viable option and an expanded tracing system in particular. Our decision-making was vulnerable to systematic error.”

If we could go to page 2, please, where you expand – this is your executive summary, you expand upon this, and I’m just going to find the right reference, it’s the second last paragraph, you say how this was built into the … just pausing there for a second.

Next paragraph, thank you very much.

(Pause)

Counsel Inquiry: In fact it’s the third paragraph, “Arguably the most fundamental misstep” – forgive me, you say:

“This presumption was built into the Contain-Delay-Mitigate-Research strategy … It also underpinned the early (Chris Whitty) position on test and trace and the Vallance view on ‘herd immunity’ (later air-brushed).”

It would be remiss not to pick that up now. What do you mean by the last remark, “herd immunity (later air-brushed)” in that communication in July 2020?

Professor David Halpern: Well, you’ll be getting evidence from many people, I mean, Patrick’s been pretty clear on it, I think within government communications there was definitely a de-emphasis on the herd immunity language and the way in which the early strategy I think was expressed. I think others can argue there was continuity but it did feel there was a significant recalibration or description of it. Yeah.

Counsel Inquiry: After the media and public backlash around 13 and 14 March?

Professor David Halpern: Yes, and arguably, again possibly for you to determine rather than me, but a recalibration of the policy.

I mean, I might just say the key point actually was a slightly different – a subtle one, which even, of course, having now had the benefit of reading Sir Patrick’s own reflections, is he does talk about, even in his evidence, of course the best thing to do would have been to have a much better test and trace system and so on. But that is actually a part of sophisticated suppression. That is what the South Koreans did, that is what Singapore did, that’s what many other countries did. And we didn’t do it. We weren’t doing it in February, it wasn’t on the table, and it partly itself links to another issue in this document, which is the how. How would you do it? It’s the boring mechanics of how would you find out, have a better contact tracing system built at scale and so on.

Counsel Inquiry: So in relation to the how point, which is – operationally, one of the points you make is that there needs to be thought as to how to deliver strategy and follow up and explore the questions and really examine under the bonnet what needs to be done?

Professor David Halpern: Yes, exactly, it’s the very practical detail.

Counsel Inquiry: Yes.

Professor David Halpern: If you say it in a model we want to reduce social contact, a host of questions immediately follow: how? Who? What? How would we do the detail of it?

Counsel Inquiry: Yes. So it’s two points I want to draw out. You were invited into SAGE, you were at a number of meetings, you were watching and expressing concerns from the margins and then from the centre regarding what was happening and asking questions.

Professor David Halpern: Yeah.

Counsel Inquiry: You say in your statements that your view is that yourself and others were quietly dismissed as not understanding the science. Is that correct?

Professor David Halpern: Erm –

Counsel Inquiry: By some perhaps?

Professor David Halpern: Some, not all, but yes.

Counsel Inquiry: And your phrase “anchoring” was mentioned at the outset, anchoring, groupthink, the similar phrase used, but you mention that this was at the heart of one of the missteps in that early response; is that right?

Professor David Halpern: Yes. And on a number of issues. “Anchoring” essentially means you have a strong prior, and you find it hard to move from it. So humans in general, so behavioural effect, tend to seek confirming evidence for their priors. We’re not as good at seeking what’s the counter evidence. And particularly, in this case, saying: what experiment, what piece of evidence would answer the question?

You know, so that’s why earlier on I mentioned you can do experiments very fast. So if you’ve got a question, does it work, does it not, the puzzle becomes how fast can I answer that question.

Counsel Inquiry: Second point I want to raise, and the final point, is this: the negative impact of overconfidence is something you mention in this report, and you refer to previous detailed work you’ve done on decision-making in government and the headline is “beware over-confidence”?

Professor David Halpern: Mm-hm.

Counsel Inquiry: And you say this, perhaps if we could bring this up, this is page 3, please, second last paragraph, I think. We’ll just leave it there for a moment and I’ll just make sure I have it. Yes, second last paragraph, third line from the bottom:

“Ironically the pride in our science and our capabilities [that being the UK] slowed our ability to learn lessons from other countries. Under cover of variations of ‘it is very different there’, there was an arrogance that we knew better, and would do better.”

That’s your words which you set out in this report and sent to government. Is that right?

Professor David Halpern: Yes, I did feel that was true. So the report, behavioural government, looks at this, it shows, for example, generally, as people become more senior their overconfidence generally gets bigger rather than less. I did feel it characterised a lot of what was happening from early on, so those very early comparisons to other countries, Japan, Germany, and it made us slower to look really carefully at what they did and learn the lessons from them.

It also had many other manifestations. I mean, masks would be an example. We felt that the evidence became very compelling certainly by late March, early April, for masks, and there was a strong anchoring in and scepticism in many of the medical community.

Counsel Inquiry: And linked to what you say in your report, and the final point from me, is you say in your statements that there was a touch of hubris, that at paragraph 167.

Professor David Halpern: Yeah.

Counsel Inquiry: We perhaps don’t need – “a touch of hubris that we knew better, and would do better, alongside criticisms of how badly other countries … were doing”. That’s a view that you formed at the time. Is that the position?

Professor David Halpern: That is so, from even February. I should be clear, of course, this note was written privately. It didn’t – the last thing we wanted to do was undermine key figures, on the other hand, to learn the lessons. So yes, there was a sense, I’m sure it’s heard elsewhere, that we were lucky almost to have the best team in our senior figures and there’s no doubt they’re extremely talented and brilliant people, but that can also bring a lacuna with it of overconfidence, and particularly maybe less openness to other aspects, which is the engineering, the how, the detail, of course the behavioural too. So yes.

And we could be wrong, of course, we could be totally wrong, that even if we’d gone for it, really gone for it in February, could we have built a South Korean or Singapore system? Would the public or ministers have wanted to do it, because of some of the intrusiveness it would have implied? But we feel we didn’t deliver on that, and there were really a lot of examples of the slowness of the system which was then manifested with really great consequence.

Mr Keating: Thank you, Professor Halpern, they’re all my questions. I’m grateful for your patience.

My Lady, there are two core participants you have granted permission.

Lady Hallett: Mr Menon.

Questions From Mr Menon KC

Mr Menon: Good afternoon, Dr Halpern, I ask questions on behalf of a number of children’s rights organisations, and I just have a few questions for you on a discrete topic.

At paragraph 126 of your witness statement, you mentioned that in the summer of 2020 the Behavioural Insights Team was formally commissioned to participate in a Cabinet Office-led social distancing review alongside Patrick Vallance, Chris Whitty and others. Is that right?

Professor David Halpern: Yes.

Mr Menon KC: And that review was a substantial piece of work, was it not?

Professor David Halpern: Fairly substantial, yes.

Mr Menon KC: In the sense at least that its report was published by the government a year later, in July 2021?

Professor David Halpern: (Witness nods)

Mr Menon KC: Yes?

Professor David Halpern: Yes.

Mr Menon KC: My Lady, that report, as far as I’m aware, is not on the Relativity system, but is available on the government’s website.

Dr Halpern, that report, published in July 2021, does not make any distinction, does it, between the differing aspects – impacts, excuse me, differing impacts of social distancing rules on adults and children? Can you assist as to why?

Professor David Halpern: I can’t recall the detail of it. It was – of course the main point of the report was to look at whether you could, for example, relax the 2-metre rule, replace it with – you know, substitute other equivalent issues. But you’re right, of course, there would be particular issues for children, playgrounds, et cetera, other activity. So I – forgive me, I’m happy to look in more detail, but I don’t recall the extent to which children were discussed. I don’t remember it as a major theme, but I’m sure you know better than me.

Mr Menon KC: Just on that, I suppose there are a number of possibilities, I mean, it could be an issue in relation to the terms of reference and the scope that government had set, or it could have been because of how the team, the Behavioural Insights Team, chose to prioritise the issue of social distancing rules. I mean, I don’t know, if you can’t help on that, please say so, but that’s really what I’m trying to get at.

Professor David Halpern: I’m not sure I can add much more on the specifics but you’re right, I mean, there are many groups, segments, one needs to consider, including children.

Mr Menon KC: You mentioned the 2-metre rule. Were you aware, for example, that at approximately the same time that this review was being commissioned, in July 2020, Scotland, as an example, exempted children under 12 from the social distancing rules whereas England did not? Were you aware of that?

Professor David Halpern: I can’t remember the timing, but again you clearly are on top of the detail.

Mr Menon KC: Well, again you may not be able to help on this either, but can you assist as to why this review, which, as I said, you know, took a year to complete, did not explore this, I suggest, significant difference of approach vis-à-vis children under the age of 12 between Scotland and England?

Professor David Halpern: I could be wrong, but I think it didn’t – the work was done much more – in a much more compressed way than had a year. It may have been a year before it was published but my memory is it was done on a relatively short period of time, in the context that there were real concerns, for example, on the economic impact, many of the impacts on people’s lifestyle, of especially the 2-metre rule, and that – the language is often used is could you identify for example a 1 metre plus or an equivalent way of achieving the same reduction in transmission that would be less harmful to people’s lives, to the economy and so on. So that was the, I think, the primary objective of it. It was – my memory of it was done on quite a compressed time period, to be honest, so that the impacts were done –

Mr Menon KC: Very well.

Professor David Halpern: Yeah.

Mr Menon KC: What you’ve described was the priority as opposed to, for example, the fact that adults and children behave differently and social distancing rules obviously impact differently on adults as opposed to children; is that right?

Professor David Halpern: Yes, yeah, I don’t doubt that.

Mr Menon: Thank you.

Lady Hallett: Thank you, Mr Menon.

Mr Jacobs.

Questions From Mr Jacobs

Mr Jacobs: Dr Halpern, I ask some questions on behalf of the Trades Union Congress. Do feel free to continue to look forward if it’s uncomfortable.

Could I start with page 30 of your statement and in particular paragraph 132. I think it can be brought up on screen. What you say, under the heading of “Financial incentives”, is:

“We thought there was a strong case for using some financial incentives to support people to self-isolate when identified as having Covid or having been in contact with a case. A specific concern was that low income, and less securely employed individuals were being put off testing and isolating given the impact on their financial situation.”

Firstly, Dr Halpern, why was it thought by you and the Behavioural Insights Team that there was a strong case for financial incentives?

Professor David Halpern: So, as we touched on earlier, we were looking a lot at not just comprehension but compliance, whether people were able to follow the rules, self-isolating and so on, and we would then look at certain groups who were saying they weren’t going to comply and ask them why, and one factor was of course financial.

In fact, I wrote a detailed note to Dido Harding – it’s mentioned at the end of the evidence statement, I think – at early June suggesting one of a number of things, I think it was 2 on the list, was we strongly recommended producing more financial support to those who couldn’t afford it. I mean, for reasons that will be plain: you know, if you’re an Uber Economy, you know, driver and you’re going to lose your income, that’s a pretty big deal and difficult for you. So how are we going to support that person?

Mr Jacobs: Would it be right to say in basic terms that that’s not just an absence of an incentive, there’s actually a powerful disincentive for compliance which needs to be addressed?

Professor David Halpern: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Mr Jacobs: The correspondence on this issue which you describe in these paragraphs of your statement relates to the latter part of July 2020. Had you been aware, in the period sort of mid-March when self-isolation comes to the fore as an NPI and the end of July, of any determined sort of focus and thinking about this issue of incentives for self-isolation?

Professor David Halpern: So, yes, we had raised it, of course. There was further work, I think there’s one of the bits of evidence is with Gila Sacks was asked to do further work on it, and of course others such as on SPI-B had raised the issue too. In fact we were concerned not only that financial support be given, but the way in which it was given too.

Mr Jacobs: You describe raising it; was there a receptive audience?

Professor David Halpern: My memory, and I think it’s in some of the evidence, was that our sense was the Treasury were resistant. That is the Treasury’s job, to be resistant to spending money, but we found it – our sense was they were not going to – they weren’t easily persuaded for a more generous funding package, although of course one was put together by, I think, September? You may know.

Mr Jacobs: Yes.

Professor David Halpern: Yeah.

Mr Jacobs: Well, let’s perhaps look at some of the evidence on that. Could we have up on screen INQ000129090.

So we have an email from you of 28 July 2020 addressed to some officials in DHSC and also the Cabinet Office, and the second sentence is:

“We’re also looking at the financial incentives issue for Simon Case right now, to see if we can move CX …”

Is that Chancellor?

Professor David Halpern: Yes.

Mr Jacobs: “… [whose] starting position is quite sceptical.”

Pausing there, so had there been conversations between you and Mr Case about this financial incentives issue, about the Chancellor being sceptical?

Professor David Halpern: I don’t recall talking to Simon about it. I definitely did not talk directly with the Chancellor, but there were many officials. Also I think – I’m trying to see. Clare Lombardelli, for example, was on the social distancing review, a senior Treasury official, so –

Mr Jacobs: Yes.

Professor David Halpern: Yeah.

Mr Jacobs: Your email continues:

“Risk is that the national campaign – if in doubt, get a test…’ – due for Thurs could be dogged by this lack of support, [especially] in key target groups.”

Just briefly, what in general terms are the key target groups you’re referring to?

Professor David Halpern: So those individuals where we saw – or groups – much lower compliance or likelihood to come forward for a test. So, that particularly. We did a lot of segmentation to identify risk. That might be someone who was, for example, in an occupation which was in a lot of contact with other people – a classic example was a taxi driver – but whose income was very insecure. And so they were quite –

Mr Jacobs: Mr Halpern, would it be correct to say that in broad terms you’re thinking about groups where compliance may be low?

Professor David Halpern: Yes, particularly, yeah.

Mr Jacobs: But perhaps also transmission may be high, or higher risk?

Professor David Halpern: Yeah, thank you.

Mr Jacobs: Okay.

At the end of that email, or the last paragraph, you say:

“Lots of questions remain … about which form of incentive/support would be maximally effective … My gut feeling is that HMT will be hard to move to Statutory sick pay change, but could be persuaded to go for an Australian style ‘hardship fund’ administered by [local authorities].”

Was there a particular reason for your gut feeling that HMT would be hard to move on statutory sick pay change?

Professor David Halpern: So, from memory only, it would be because it would have a lot of, an economic term, deadweight costs, so it would be very expensive, you would be paying a lot of people for whom – they probably would have complied anyway; whereas something which was more akin to a discretionary hardship fund, especially – we’d suggested – built into the test and tracing system, so when you were saying to someone, you know, “It looks like you need to isolate, do you need support?” and then be able to offer it straightaway.

Mr Jacobs: Were you aware, or did your team do any sort of extensive work on the relative benefits of using the statutory sick pay system as against a hardship fund?

Professor David Halpern: I don’t recall detail. We did, in the gap before this, try and design – as you’ll gather, one of our ways of working was to figure out: how would you answer that question? Literally to run an experiment, for example, in a local area. We didn’t win that argument but we did, as mentioned in this email, identify, as it were, a natural experiment which – in care homes, which we felt was quite compelling evidence to reinforce the case that for low income but very important workers it was important to offer that financial support.

Mr Jacobs: A few moments ago you referenced the fact that a scheme of sorts was brought in – it was obviously more or less along the lines of the hardship fund administered by local authorities – at the end of September. Was your team asked to do any work about the effectiveness of that scheme, for example reviewing whether it was effective?

Professor David Halpern: I don’t believe we were asked to do so. We did write some work on it, particularly again around compliance issues. My memory, a lot of – we can dig that up for you. A particular issue was not only about the scale of the money but how difficult it is to get it.

So if you are someone on a low income and we say “You need to self-isolate. By the way, here’s a load of paperwork, you have to go to someone else, hopefully it will get sorted out”, that’s not great. Much more important to be able to say “Do you need support? We’ll give you that support right away” –

Mr Jacobs: Just pausing there, Mr Halpern. Those are clearly important issues generally which go to the effectiveness of the scheme.

Professor David Halpern: Yeah.

Mr Jacobs: Is your evidence that work wasn’t done, at least by your team, as to whether those sort of concerns were adequately addressed in the scheme as it was introduced?

Professor David Halpern: I don’t recall if we did experimental work on it. I do recall we wrote notes about the issues, flagging them, suggesting further work.

Mr Jacobs: Final question: you have given evidence about your observation of 13 March that “We are not ready” or other chosen expletive. Do you think it’s a symptom of being not ready that it’s not until late September that a scheme is introduced addressing something as important as incentivising self-isolation?

Professor David Halpern: I do, and I realise we’re at time, my Lady, but perhaps I could use that to make the more general point.

So, yes, it was way too late. We’d raised it much earlier; not the only ones. But it was part of a pattern, in a sense. Lots of good people trying to do the right thing, but your good intention in policy or the scientific evidence, you have to translate it into practical systems approaches. You know, will the money work, how difficult it will be? The app was similarly – we thought the app was absolutely key. We were very concerned from day one of the first lockdown as: was the government ready for the end of lockdown with the kind of tracking systems, et cetera? The app was due, we were promised, in two to three weeks. It was six months. Six months.

Mr Jacobs: Dr Halpern, could it be put this way, at least in relation to the self-isolation support: it’s all very well and good having the idea of self-isolation, but if one doesn’t think carefully through the practicalities of how to make it work effective, then it’s not much use?

Professor David Halpern: Yes.

Mr Jacobs: Those are my questions, thank you.

Lady Hallett: Thank you very much indeed, Mr Jacobs.

That completes the evidence for today, Mr Keating?

Mr Keating: It does, my Lady, thank you.

Lady Hallett: Well, I hope you won’t deny me my free will, Professor Halpern. So, on that note, thank you very much for your assistance.

We shall resume at 10 o’clock tomorrow morning.

The Witness: Thank you.

Mr Keating: Thank you.

(The witness withdrew)

(4.25 pm)

(The hearing adjourned until 10 am on Thursday, 2 November 2023)