Transcript of Module 2 Public Hearing on 07 November 2023
(10.00 am)
Lady Hallett: Mr Keith.
Mr Keith: Good morning, my Lady. The first witness today is Simon Ridley.
1. Mr Simon Ridley
MR SIMON RIDLEY (affirmed).
Questions From Lead Counsel to the Inquiry
Mr Keith: Could you commence your evidence, please, by giving us your full name.
Mr Simon Ridley: Simon Allan Ridley.
Lead Inquiry: Mr Ridley, thank you for attending this morning, and also for your provision of two statements, one INQ000252914, I think it runs for about 97 pages, you produce over 453 exhibits or at least you refer to them. You have also provided a corporate statement together with James Bowler, there we are, the second Permanent Secretary for the Cabinet Office, to do with matters concerning the Covid Taskforce.
My Lady, it may be worth saying that of course both those statements and all the documents and exhibits to which Mr Ridley refers will, of course, be put on to the website and considered, as with all the other documentary material before this Inquiry.
Mr Ridley, you joined the civil service in 1997; is that correct?
Mr Simon Ridley: Yes.
Lead Inquiry: And you were initially with then Her Majesty’s Treasury until 2010?
Mr Simon Ridley: Yes.
Lead Inquiry: I think you then moved to the Department for Communities and Local Government?
Mr Simon Ridley: Yes.
Lead Inquiry: In 2014, you were appointed chief executive of the Planning Inspectorate of England and Wales. You then moved back to the Department for Communities and Local Government.
Mr Simon Ridley: Yes.
Lead Inquiry: In 2019, you joined the Department for Exiting the EU, and then you moved into the Cabinet Office in January 2020.
Mr Simon Ridley: That is correct.
Lead Inquiry: In January 2020, you established, we understand, the Transition Taskforce, which prepared for the UK’s exit from the European Union. Formally the United Kingdom left the European Union of course at the end of January 2020; was that preparation and the taskforce concerned, therefore, with the end of the transition period which ended in December 2020?
Mr Simon Ridley: Exactly. The Department for Exiting the EU was closed down at the end of January 2020. There was a team under Lord Frost negotiating the new agreement. My role, alongside Jess Glover, a colleague in the Cabinet Office, set up the Transition Taskforce, which was to prepare, sort of, if you like, UK side for the exit following the agreement with the EU.
Lead Inquiry: And the exit culminated, did it not, in the signing of the Trade and Cooperation Agreement on 30 December 2020?
Mr Simon Ridley: Yes.
Lead Inquiry: Right.
Of direct relevance to this Inquiry, were you asked on 16 March of 2020 by the Cabinet Secretary to become secretary to what was then the newly established Healthcare Ministerial Implementation Group?
Mr Simon Ridley: I was.
Lead Inquiry: What was that?
Mr Simon Ridley: The – so on the 16th, I had a meeting that morning with Mark Sedwill. His proposition was to restructure and hugely increase the capacity of Cabinet Office to respond to the Covid pandemic, and wanted to set up four new decision-making groups, ministerial implementation groups, along the key four areas, one of which was healthcare, which was the one he asked me to be secretary for. Those four groups would then, if you like, feed up to a strategy meeting, that the PM would chair, which happened at 9.15 most days. The role of the health ministerial implementation group, or HMIG, was to take decisions on the government’s response across all the areas of health and social care. I mean, it was a decision – a Cabinet decision-making committee. My role as secretary was – it was the standard Cabinet Office role, in terms of preparing with the chair, who was the Secretary of State for Health, for the meetings, to make sure that there were papers for the meetings, to note and minute the meetings and the decisions that were taken.
Lead Inquiry: Were there in fact four MIGs, ministerial implementation groups, of which healthcare was only one? I think there was general public services, there was economic and business, and then finally international.
Mr Simon Ridley: That is correct. Each chaired by the separate Secretary of State.
Lead Inquiry: And each of these areas was meant to replicate the broad strategic areas of interest within central government, particularly within the Cabinet Office, in order to be able to put a structure for the governance and the strategic and operational decision-making for the response to Covid into place?
Mr Simon Ridley: Yes. I mean, it was clear this was a whole of system crisis, and we needed to be able to respond across all of those lines of operation.
Lead Inquiry: All right.
Just to look for a moment at the areas that your MIG, Healthcare MIG, addressed, it addressed matters such as NHS capacity, shielding, social care capacity, the public health elements of the response to the Covid crisis, and it was both a strategic and operational body, so it strategised and it advanced proposals for operational matters?
Mr Simon Ridley: Yes. That is correct.
Lead Inquiry: All right.
I think your statement shows that you in fact – if we can have paragraph 11 of INQ000252914, you co-ordinated wider advice on healthcare issues across the Cabinet Office and you attended a large number of strategy meetings chaired by the Prime Minister. You obviously attended meetings of HMIG and, throughout the course of the remainder of the year, or at least until the HMIG system ended in May, you were exclusively concerned with being the secretary to that particular organisation?
Mr Simon Ridley: Yes, that’s correct. I mean, the point to note is an awful lot of the healthcare response was obviously central to the work that was being done in that period between March and May, and so a lot of issues went to the 9.15 meeting rather than HMIG when they would things the Prime Minister was particularly focused on.
Lead Inquiry: All right.
Now, I want to start by looking at one particular aspect of the work done by the Healthcare Ministerial Implementation Group, which was the shielding programme.
Was there an early and particular focus on shielding around the time of the decision to impose that first national lockdown? So mid-March.
Mr Simon Ridley: Yes, I mean, when I came into the Covid response as secretary to HMIG on 16 March, alongside just setting the committee up, agreeing the terms of reference with the chair, the first and main substantive item I was focused on was shielding.
Lead Inquiry: Give us an understanding of the scope of the problem or the crisis faced by the government in terms of making arrangements for those persons who were required to be shielded. How many people were assessed to be medically vulnerable and therefore primarily in need of shielding support?
Mr Simon Ridley: So, I mean, I think it’s … firstly, I think we didn’t know with any great certainty. I mean, in the sort of low millions, that sort of – that sort of order. And there was a question which was indeed a question for much of the period about how large a group of people the shielding programme should apply to. And as we went through the period, there was a group of the sort of so-called clinically extremely vulnerable, but there was a much wider group of people with increased risk, but where the balance was slightly different.
Lead Inquiry: So there was a constant debate about the need not just to address the needs of those who were clinically extremely vulnerable, but those who were socially vulnerable, those who generally needed support, those who may or may not have made themselves known to GPs and to hospitals, and therefore a real need to try to identify who you should be addressing your support structures –
Mr Simon Ridley: Yes.
Lead Inquiry: – towards?
Mr Simon Ridley: Correct.
Lead Inquiry: All right.
Were you in contact with the devolved administrations in relation to shielding, or was this an England-only issue as far as HMIG was concerned?
Mr Simon Ridley: So we were setting up the shielding programme in England, because public health and those issues are devolved across the UK, but we were in touch with the devolved administrations. I certainly had calls with official colleagues, and I think they joined a number of the calls we had in those first couple of weeks as we set it up.
Lead Inquiry: Could we have INQ000197987 on the screen, please. This is a document dated 17 March.
It’s a note of an “Update meeting with [the Secretary of State]: the offer on vulnerability”. I just want us to get an understanding of the complexity of the issues. If you could just scroll back out, we can see that there are references to the core principles and eligibility, which of course had to be decided, Mr Ridley?
Mr Simon Ridley: Yeah.
Lead Inquiry: The operating model, how it was going to work in principle, what the role of the NHS would be, how it would work vis-à-vis GPs, how the voluntary community sector would work, DEFRA, and military planning and so on.
So it was an extraordinarily complex exercise?
Mr Simon Ridley: Yes, and I think, I mean, my role in it was to bring senior colleagues from across government together. This was a programme that needed significant infrastructure and capability built by a number of departments, so the – there was – DWP I think set up the call centre, MHCLG, the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government, were working very closely with local authorities in terms of a lot of the practicalities of setting up the system. DEFRA needed – were working with supermarkets to – how to get food deliveries to people who were shielding, because the whole point was they couldn’t get out to do their shopping.
NHS were very involved, and indeed wrote to all the individuals on the shielding list, enormous sort of printing and letter runs. And we had – through the week of the 16th we were establishing that programme, those different lines of work, and keeping everybody together in order to wrap that up, so that it could be announced as we went into – and then in the week of the first national lockdown.
Lead Inquiry: What was the genesis of the shielding programme, Mr Ridley? The decision to impose a mandatory stay-at-home order wasn’t, of course, made until 23 March, but it’s clear from the paperwork that the programme for shielding scaled up at pace from the week before. So the week of the 16th you’re engaged in trying to put the programme into place. What led to the programme being commenced in that way? Was it a reflection of the fact that social distancing measures had been put into place on 16 March or was it a reflection of the fact that there was an understanding on the part of government that a lockdown was inevitable and therefore necessary preparations had to be made?
Mr Simon Ridley: So I can’t, I don’t think, speak with authority about the genesis of it, because I think the genesis of shielding was prior to the week of the 16th, in fact. When I joined there were people in departments thinking about aspects of the programme. I mean, it came from a realisation, as I recall, that as social activity was reduced there would be, you know, a cohort of vulnerable people who would need particular support, with higher risk factors who would need to – need to stay at home much more, and what was the support structure around that cohort.
Lead Inquiry: Right.
Could we have INQ000197984. This is an email dated 17 March. It gives some indication of the number of bodies who were concerned in this programme. It’s an email from the Cabinet Office on behalf of yourself, Mr Ridley, and it sets out a list of actions and a list of agreed products for a COBR meeting. Those actions are due by the close of play, that particular day, 17 March. So the process was moving at pace, as I say, at full speed early on.
We can see the list of actions at the bottom, involving the DHSC to confirm public health policy, a breakdown of 1.4 million people, to confirm a critical path for preparing and sending letters. And then, over the page, actions for the DHSC, for the Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government, DCMS, DEFRA, DWP, BEIS, the Home Office, the MoD, and HMRC. So a lot to be done.
Mr Simon Ridley: Yes, I mean, this was very much a whole-of-government programme.
Lead Inquiry: We can get some idea of the numbers and the scope of the programme from INQ000198016. This is a shielding offer comparison. Was this a reflection of the category of people who may need to be engaged in the shielding programme, who may need support of some sort, as well as the numbers of persons across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland who could potentially be engaged?
Mr Simon Ridley: Yes. Yes, it is.
Lead Inquiry: Right. So a massive undertaking?
Mr Simon Ridley: Yes. And in addition to this, as we opened up the website where people could refer into it, the numbers grew because then lots of people identified – self-identified beyond the lists that we had originally.
Lead Inquiry: And there were a couple of major issues, were there not? Firstly, having initially identified those who were clinically extremely vulnerable, it rapidly became apparent that there were other people who needed support, and that was obviously a cohort, a large number of people in addition, and also that there were a number of people who had self-registered rather than being put onto the list of persons who required shielding by their GPs or by other local authorities or government bodies, so you had to work out what to do with them?
Mr Simon Ridley: Yes, we had a very – we had a kind of comprehensive, inclusive approach to this which enabled people to, as I say, self-identify, GPs to put people forward, as well as the original lists we had, and that grew the numbers substantially.
Lead Inquiry: Again, in reflection of the speed at which you worked, a call centre went live on 25 March, and by 29 March you had been able to work up plans not just for those who were clinically extremely vulnerable, but also for non-shielded vulnerable people as well, so the programme expanded as well as moving very fast?
Mr Simon Ridley: Yes, that’s correct.
Lead Inquiry: All right.
There were a number of other areas that the Healthcare Ministerial Implementation Group addressed. Did they include NHS capacity, so was an important part of your work maintaining oversight on what the NHS capacity was and how it would be able to respond to the demands placed upon it?
Mr Simon Ridley: Yes, that is correct. I mean, at this period, with the level of infection growing very fast and the numbers of people going into hospital fast, the ability of the NHS to have the beds and the ventilators for that was a kind of critical focus at the time. That was in the terms of reference for the HMIG. Quite a lot of those discussions also happened at the 9.15 meetings with the Prime Minister.
Lead Inquiry: Number 10 Downing Street was constantly seeking, was it not, from HMIG data about hospital capacity, how many hospitals were at risk of being overrun, what the progress capacity was of the Nightingale hospital scheme and so on and so forth, so there was a constant imperative, if you like, to keep Number 10 up to date and informed as to what the state of play was?
Mr Simon Ridley: Yes, I mean, I think at the beginning of the period there was an enormous need, I mean, for the Prime Minister, for the Cabinet Office, for government as a whole, to have clear, consistent data of the position on a whole range of things, including hospital capacity. I mean, what we did in – I mean, just in terms of the health ministerial implementation group, we took at the beginning of those meetings the dashboard, as it was at the time, on the same basis that it went to the strategy meetings in the morning, we tried to use those – some of the actions from those meetings were to improve that data as we went through.
Lead Inquiry: It was made clear, wasn’t it, that the Prime Minister was particularly concerned with the need to obtain and get access to or procure a large number of ventilators, that was a constant theme, was it not, throughout the middle of March and the beginning of April?
Mr Simon Ridley: Yes, it was.
Lead Inquiry: And was a lot of HMIG’s time spent procuring ventilators, conducting meetings and calls in order to accelerate domestic production, obtain ventilators from abroad and so on?
Mr Simon Ridley: So, I mean, not precisely. I mean, so the health MIG itself was a meeting, so a sort of ministerial decision-making meeting chaired by the Health Secretary, and could look on issues at, you know, the – how do we – the purpose of it was to drive forward decision-making to make progress against these areas in concert with the other MIGs and with the PM’s meeting.
My team supported that – that committee and made sure that the work across Whitehall was done to provide the papers and the decisions for ministers to enable that to happen. Procurement of ventilators was not something that either my – that my team did. There was a lot of work between the commercial teams in the NHS and, I think, DH and the commercial teams in the Cabinet Office to work with industry and to try to drive the capacity in the country to increase the ventilators that we …
Lead Inquiry: So you were in charge of the strategy and you were driving the process from the central government end of things, from the Cabinet Office?
Mr Simon Ridley: Exactly, but I did not have responsibility for procurement of some of those practicalities.
Lead Inquiry: In relation to the issue of discharge to social care, were the practical arrangements for the discharge of patients from hospital to the care sector made by central government, Cabinet Office, or the DHSC?
Mr Simon Ridley: So that was very much work, I mean, in the health system between the NHS, local authorities and the care sector. In central government, that’s the responsibility for DHSC, working very much with the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, given their responsibilities across local authorities.
Again, our job in the Cabinet Office was to convene, bring people together, understand the position in the round and then use the HMIG as a means for government to make cross-government decisions where it needed to.
Lead Inquiry: And was that where the decision was made or advice was given as to the decision to be made about the discharge of patients from hospital to the care sector?
Mr Simon Ridley: So, I mean, I think the need – so discharge from hospitals to the care sector is something that happens as a matter of course outside the pandemic, of course. It was particularly important in that period that people who were ready to leave hospital and NHS beds were able to be discharged, so in a sense that was – that’s part of the operation of the health system. I think the importance of it was discussed in HMIG, it was also an important part of meetings with the – with the Prime Minister at the strategy meetings, and I think the aim – I can’t remember the precise time period, I’m afraid, but the aim was that – my recollection is there were – an aim to get 15,000 people discharged from the NHS into social care over that period at the end of March and beginning of April.
Lead Inquiry: And this presumably was one of the many areas of focus for HMIG, this was discussed repeatedly at meetings throughout March and April?
Mr Simon Ridley: Yes, certainly, in March and the first part of April HMIG focused on the progress being made towards that end and the issues around it in terms of the preparation in the care sector for receiving people.
Lead Inquiry: This is obviously something for closer attention in a later module, but I just want to set out the chronology and the broad structure.
Was there an HMIG meeting on 22 March 2020 where social care was considered? INQ000055942.
Mr Simon Ridley: Yes.
Lead Inquiry: We can see at the top “Covid-19 – Health Ministerial Implementation Group”, Sunday 22 March 10 am, a number of ministers present, chaired by the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care.
Over the page, we can see your name, second name down, and then if we go through, please, to page 3, we can see the bottom indent, the last paragraph on the page:
“… the following points were made …
“- to support capacity in community care advice to care homes should be updated – current guidance suggests they should accept patients who are asymptomatic even if they have not received a COVID test.”
So as at that date, 22 March, it was generally recognised, and there was guidance to this effect, that patients would be accepted if they were asymptomatic but had not received a Covid test in fact?
Mr Simon Ridley: Yes, I mean, at this – at this time there was a lot of work going on in terms – in the – amongst the scientists and the medical community about asymptomatic transmission. I think SAGE were discussing these issues, I think I point that out in my statement. In HMIG, as I say, the purpose of these meetings was the progress on discharge and the issues around it, and that included, as this note says, the capacity in community care and the issues around receiving people from hospitals, which included testing at that – at that point.
Lead Inquiry: The two most important features of this policy or the guidance, Mr Ridley, were: firstly, that no assurance had ever been given that patients would be moved only following a negative test, that’s simply not what the guidance and the position reflected; and, secondly, that there was a constant debate as to whether or not there was a need for testing and whether or not the system practically allowed for the sheer number of tests that would be required in order to test patients coming out of hospital?
Mr Simon Ridley: Yes, I think that is – that is correct, there was a balance of different issues and different needs and we did face some capacity constraints at that point, which the NHS, the care sector and DH were grappling with.
Lead Inquiry: Could we have INQ000198032.
This is an email on 3 April from an official in Number 10, Alexandra Burns. She addresses it to “Team”, and from the fact, Mr Ridley, that you responded at the top of the page, we’ll come to it in a moment, you must have been part – you must have been amongst the recipients.
“I know that social care is front and centre of a range of conversations that are happening on eg PPE or testing (though of course is always second to NHS) – but do we know whether there is a coherent overall strategy for care homes? In either DHSC or in MHCLG or between them? It feels like maybe we need one in the way that we have one for the NHS.”
Then she refers to the resources for supporting NHS and capacity, but in relation to social care, what is said in relation to the policy approach appeared to her to be perhaps deficient:
“… Enhancing adult social care resilience by … maintaining and increasing workforce … maintaining … capacity … extra funding … capacity tracking – but I wonder if this really covers it.”
And she says this:
“Just looking at some of the stuff coming out of the rest of Europe and it feels like something we need to be properly ahead of … given that once someone gets it in one of these place many die …
“… I’m wondering whether we’ve considered more extreme measures or guidance – on staff rotations for example …”
Then over the page:
“I’m checking with you guys because I’m aware that it might just be something that’s happening which I haven’t seen – eg is the healthcare IMG looking at it properly?”
So that’s your MIG, I think she meant to say, ministerial implementation group.
Was there a realisation at this time, the beginning of April, that, perhaps by contrast to the approach to the NHS, which of course had been first and foremost in the government’s consideration in terms of the need to protect it, there had been perhaps an absence comparably of focus on the care sector?
Mr Simon Ridley: Well, I think that we were certainly, in Cabinet Office and in Number 10, as Alex’s email shows, at the end of March and April concerned to understand the position in care homes, and we’ve just – we’ve just discussed the Healthcare MIG discussion of it on 22 March. I think it is true those concerns were growing as we went into April. The data and the information around care homes was less good, because the nature of the sector, a very large number of care homes, many very, very small – and, as Alex’s email says, you know, really keen to make sure and assure ourselves there was a broad and coherent plan across the piece for care homes, because through those MIG meetings, you know, the very significant issues weren’t coming – coming through, and we were wanting to test that.
Lead Inquiry: On 7 April, INQ000083072, there was another Health Ministerial Implementation Group meeting held at 12 pm. We can see a large number of ministers and Members of Parliament attending. Over the page, page 2, your name can be seen in the middle of the page, along with a number of other officials.
Then page 4, on the third and fourth paragraphs, there is a reference to the Minister of State for Care; was that Helen Whately MP?
Mr Simon Ridley: Yes, it was.
Lead Inquiry: I think your statement in fact refers to the Secretary of State at paragraph 71 but it was in fact the Minister of State for Care. She said:
“… ensuring parity in the approach between the NHS and social care for PPE and testing was important. PPE was being delivered to social care providers from national stocks … A new channel … was also being established to deliver PPE to social care providers.”
Then this:
“Social care workers were also to be tested alongside NHS staff where capacity permits in order to reduce staff absences.”
Just before you answer, if we can look at page 5, we can see the actions, and they include work on metrics for adult social care, the need to ensure data reporting compliance from care home providers, and then it says this:
“- work on discharges was welcome …”
That must be discharges from hospital:
“… and the number of patients with a hospital stay of over 21 days had halved …”
So concerns were being expressed, were they not, as to whether or not there was a problem with the movement of patients from hospital to the care sector, in terms of whether or not they were infected with Covid, and steps were being taken to ensure a proper understanding of the position and whether or not testing would be available in order to be able to address that problem?
Mr Simon Ridley: Yes, I mean, I think that is – that is correct. I mean, as these actions – other of these actions show, we were also concerned to make sure that the funding and support was there for care homes, which Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government was working on, working with local authorities in terms of managing, you know, financial resilience. The care sector, as you’ll go into in later modules, I’m sure, is very diverse and dispersed with some larger care homes but also some very small enterprises.
Lead Inquiry: Is it fair to say, Mr Ridley, though, that a number of people expressed quite serious concerns, though, about the fact that, firstly, patients were being discharged into the care sector without a negative test, without, of course, assurance that they weren’t infected with Covid, and, secondly, that there was an absence in essence of testing of workers in the care sector and also of patients already within the care sector?
Mr Simon Ridley: Yes, I think it is certainly correct that concerns were being raised on a number of – a number of issues around – around the care sector, and there certainly were constraints in terms of the testing that was available and used.
Lead Inquiry: Can we have INQ000198042.
On page 1 at the bottom of the page, a Cabinet Office official, Mary Jones, says:
“Chris, I’m just sending this to [Cabinet Office] colleagues because my knowledge of social care is very limited so others with more expertise should editorialise anything I say here.”
Then over the page, she refers to a number of concerns that she has in relation to the approach being adopted to the problem of testing, of patients within the care sector and residents in the care sector not being tested for Covid, and of course on the fact that many workers in the care sector had not themselves also been tested.
To what degree did HMIG appreciate that there was a very serious problem with, of course, the spread of the infections throughout the care sector?
Mr Simon Ridley: So I think the ministers and official colleagues at HMIG were concerned about the position in the care sector, concerned about the relative lack of data and information we had, and concerns around the risks of spread of infection, whether between patients or between workers and patients, and was seeking in various ways, as we’ve just discussed, to try to tackle those issues and put policy and operational guidance in place.
Lead Inquiry: Was there a concern expressed by some within your ministerial implementation group that the DHSC was not doing enough to help or that it was in a general sense behind the curve?
Mr Simon Ridley: I think in the centre we were, as some of these emails demonstrate, concerned about whether there was a comprehensive plan for how we – for how government would support and minimise the risks in the care sector. I think that work was being done in DHSC and elsewhere, and a strategy for care was produced in the middle of April, about which again there was some – there was some debate. But I think, yes, we were concerned that there were problems in the care sector that needed to be addressed extremely quickly.
Lead Inquiry: There was a general absence of planning within the DHSC to meet this problem and to meet this issue?
Mr Simon Ridley: I – I mean, I don’t think I can say with authority what planning there was and wasn’t in the DHSC on this issue. It was certainly – the team responsible for social care was, I mean, working incredibly hard, relatively, I think, stretched, and, as I say, we were pursuing these issues through HMIG and that strategy came forward in the middle of April.
Lead Inquiry: In terms of the practicalities, in terms of providing a sophisticated and comprehensive test system to ensure that patients were not discharged from hospital into care homes when they were infected and also to ensure that patients and workers did not move around within the care sector whilst infected, the Cabinet Office and Number 10 and the HMIG body had to push the DHSC to say: what is going on? What is being done about this? What can be done to solve these very grave problems?
Mr Simon Ridley: I think, yes, that is broadly correct.
Lead Inquiry: INQ000198046.
If we could start on page 3, this is an email from Dr Warner, right at the bottom of the page, 16.28, 13 April – thank you – and then over one page:
“Hi Imran [that’s Imran Shafi in Number 10] & Tom [Shinner in Number 10].
“I am becoming increasingly concerned about nosocomial infection rates in hospitals (ie an infection acquired in hospital).
“If there is a large scale infection in the hospitals, then we will have a number of problems.
“- Higher absences in the workforce and further stories about PPE and testing.
“- Problems with care homes, including not being able to discharge patients and potentially creating infections in care homes.
“…
“I don’t know where responsibility sits between DHSC, PHE, and NHS …”
And he goes on to refer to SAGE, and his concerns are raised by the splitting of responsibility between different organisations.
If we then go back to page 3 and the response to his email, Tom Shinner says:
“I don’t have anyone on this, and I think this is a good idea, yes.”
Then at the top of the page Imran Shafi copies you. And then if we go back one page to page 2:
“I have seen no data on this and we don’t have people looking at it at the moment. It is a good idea and we will pick it up.
“… could you ask the department NHS/PHE in the morning and find out who is looking at this …”
Then at the top of the page, there is a response email from a Mr Macnaught:
“The DHSC lead is William Vineall. I will give him a call …”
Then if we go back one page, finally, to page 1, Mr Macnaught says:
“I’ve spoke[n] to William Vineall.”
Is William Vineall in the DHSC?
Mr Simon Ridley: Yes, I think he – I think he is. Paul was one of my HMIG secretariat team. William will either have been in DHS – most likely in DHSC, possibly in the NHS.
Lead Inquiry: “His initial reaction was that this is not an issue of concern but I’ve asked him to work on a note tomorrow.”
Dr Warner then returns to the fray:
“A submission to SAGE suggests that around 20% of infections and 10% of deaths are due to infections acquired in hospitals. Given this and the fact that this could cause wide scale disruption across the government’s response … I think it might be worth pushing quite hard on why this isn’t an issue of concern.”
Then Mr Macnaught says:
“… we will dig around …”
So two questions, Mr Ridley. Firstly, as the secretary to HMIG and in charge of HMIG, were you surprised that this had not already been an issue of very grave concern to the DHSC, seemingly?
Mr Simon Ridley: Yeah, I mean, I think the – Paul’s report of that call was certainly surprising. I think there was concern about nosocomial infection, it was being discussed in SAGE, as Ben reports.
Lead Inquiry: Secondly, when you dug around or when HMIG dug around into seeing what the position was and why these apparent concerns were not being addressed, to what extent were you able to assure yourself that the DHSC was on top of this problem and was addressing it?
Mr Simon Ridley: So, I mean, I – this was an issue I think that ran and we continued to focus on for a number of weeks beyond this – these dates in the middle of – in the middle of April, because I think we were increasingly concerned about nosocomial infection within care homes, the level of infection, protection and control in care homes and the extent to which the sector could address these issues.
Lead Inquiry: In summary, and I say that because this is an issue which will be looked at in far greater detail in the later social care, care sector module, for weeks the issue rumbled on as to, firstly, how great an issue of concern this was, what was the extent of the problem, and, secondly, there was a dawning realisation or an appreciation that the testing system in practice simply couldn’t keep up with the policy decision-making as to who was going to be tested and who had to be tested; is that a fair summary?
Mr Simon Ridley: Yes, I think in – just to expand very slightly, I think in Cabinet Office and Number 10, we were not assured of the position in care homes and the extent to which there were plans in place to minimise the risks of infection. Testing was a part of that, we were aware of constraints in testing, but there were other mitigations that we were seeking to assure ourselves of, such as broader infection control.
Lead Inquiry: The Chief Medical Officer recommended, I think around 14 April, that asymptomatic people going into care homes from hospital had to be tested, and then there were – further guidance was produced as to the need to test both patients in the care sector and workers, to stop –
Mr Simon Ridley: Yeah.
Lead Inquiry: – the spread of Covid of course.
Was it the DHSC or was it the Cabinet Office and HMIG which drove the declaration of public policies as to who would be tested? Who was driving the declarations that the time had now come for patients from hospital to be tested or residents and workers in the care sector to be tested?
Mr Simon Ridley: So responsibility for developing the advice in these areas lay with DHSC, resting on clinical and medical advice. Those were decisions, therefore, that rested with the Secretary of State for Health, though this was an area, as there were with many in the pandemic, where there were trade-offs between different groups when there was a general constraint on testing, so other public sector groups were interested in testing – we had debates about prisons, we had debates about other areas – and so those discussions often came to either HMIG or the PM’s meeting for the sort of broader perspective, but – so we were driving it from HMIG, if you like, to make sure there was a clear position. Actually I think similar discussions were had in GPS MIG and elsewhere about other groups. The advice came through DHSC, if that is clear.
Lead Inquiry: And lastly on this topic, again because we’re concerned in this module with central government and the highest level of decision-making, is it fair to say that the Cabinet Office, Number 10 and the Prime Minister personally became extremely concerned about the position within the care sector and whether or not policies were being promulgated and publicly announced to the effect that certain people would be tested, when there just wasn’t in practice the tests available to make good on those policies?
Mr Simon Ridley: So, yes, there was great concern from the Prime Minister, colleagues in Number 10, the Cabinet Office about the position in care homes and what could be done to mitigate it. That wasn’t just about testing.
Lead Inquiry: No, but my question was. There was concern generally about the sector and, of course, the vulnerability of the persons within it –
Mr Simon Ridley: Yes.
Lead Inquiry: – as well as the discharge policy from hospital to the care sector?
Mr Simon Ridley: Yes, there was – there was concern about the implications of that, but I think everyone was agreed that we needed to discharge people from the NHS given the rise in Covid infections and hospitalisations and the need to have space and capacity for them.
Lead Inquiry: The imperative of freeing up space in the NHS by way of bed capacity took primacy over the care sector, the destination of where those patients went?
Mr Simon Ridley: So that is precisely what we were – what the government was balancing. And, yes, in – it was the case that it was a priority for discharge to happen, and as we – as the HMIG discussions were about, what the support and mitigations for care home and the care sector were, there were some limitations to that in terms of testing capacity.
Lead Inquiry: But it wasn’t a balance, was it?
Mr Simon Ridley: Well –
Lead Inquiry: The prime – excuse me.
Mr Simon Ridley: Sorry.
Lead Inquiry: The primary obligation was to free up space in the NHS, and that was done, but without, because of the exigencies of time and capacity, a full understanding of what the impact would be on the care sector in relation to which there was, firstly, no policy of testing and, secondly, no practical means of ensuring testing across the board?
Mr Simon Ridley: Yeah, we were using the HMIG discussions to flush out those issues.
Lead Inquiry: We come now, then, to – if we can move forward, please, to May 2020. The Inquiry has heard evidence about how, at the heart of government, there was an understanding that there was a need to change these ministerial official bodies, the MIG structure, and to put into place a new structure that could cope with the ever changing and no doubt increasing demands of the Covid crisis.
You were appointed director general for policy and strategy on the Covid Taskforce in May 2020, were you not?
Mr Simon Ridley: Yes, I was.
Lead Inquiry: In summary, what were the reasons for the change from the MIG structure to the Covid Taskforce structure, as you saw them to be, in May 2020?
Mr Simon Ridley: I set some of this out in my statement, and you have heard evidence previous to me about the ways of working in the Cabinet Office and Number 10 through some of this period. I think that a number of things happened through the second half of March and April that led to the need for change. I mean, the first was that it became increasingly clear that the combination of the four ministerial implementation groups and the 9.15 meeting create – kind of created a number of overlaps. So, I mean, we talked about shielding, a lot of those issues were in the health ministerial implementation group, but some of the issues around wider support were in the GPS MIG. To take an issue like PPE, we were concerned in the HMIG about stocks. Actually there was a big international set of issues about this because of the procurement from abroad and there were issues in the GPS MIG about PPE for prison officers, schools, et cetera.
And then secondly, because of the number of issues that ended up being discussed at the 9.15 meeting there wasn’t a sort of tidy funnel if you like, from four MIGs to a sort of central strategy. So it became a kind of noisy structure over time.
Equally, that meant for key colleagues in Number 10 and the Prime Minister and indeed other secretaries of state and departments, it wasn’t clear who was responsible for what a lot of the time. That was exacerbated by the fact that a number of us, in terms of the leadership in the Cabinet Office, got Covid through that period, so we were also – you know, as we went through March and April, different colleagues were off for two, sometimes more weeks at a time, so we were then filling in for each other, which sort of further confused the – the picture, and it became, to improve the efficiency with which we worked and the effectiveness with which we worked, a need to sort of bring all of that much more together and, crucially, to be clear who was responsible for what.
The second part of it – that’s inside the Cabinet Office.
The second part of it was that there was a significant degree of duplication between what we were doing in the Cabinet Office and some of the work being done in Number 10 through Tom Shinner and his team, and I worked closely with Tom in March and April on the relevant things, but we were parts of different – different units, and there was a need to bring that together. And in part because of all of this and because of some of the challenges of the working environment, there was a need for a bit of a reset, and that led – that meant ending the arrangements that ran to the end of May and moving to what became the taskforce.
Lead Inquiry: You’ve referred to overlapping boundaries, a lack of direction, a lack of clarity as to who was leading in what area, and were there prosaically just too many meetings, too much time spent on trying to work out what discussions should take place at which meetings?
Mr Simon Ridley: Yes. I mean, I think that is true inside the Cabinet Office. I think it was also confusing for colleagues in other departments because they might – if you have to go to a – most Cabinet committee meetings are preceded by an officials’ meeting chaired by the secretary or a member of the secretariat team. If you’re in the Department of Health and Social Care, incredibly busy across all of this, and you’re trying to feed people for an HMIG officials’ meeting and a GPS MIG officials’ meeting and an International MIG officials’ meeting, then there was too much activity.
Lead Inquiry: A profusion of officialdom?
Mr Simon Ridley: Yes, if you like.
Lead Inquiry: All right.
The Inquiry’s heard evidence, Mr Ridley, of a paper prepared by Sir Mark Sedwill, as he then was, to the Prime Minister, also of a paper prepared by Helen MacNamara, who then became subsequently the Deputy Cabinet Secretary, called How we Govern, and I think there was a paper from Martin Reynolds and Helen MacNamara on working practices.
Were they the genesis for the establishment of the Covid Taskforce or was the genesis to be found elsewhere?
Mr Simon Ridley: I think they were an important part of it. I think a number of conversations were happening and a number of things were happening coming from, you know, a lot of the same places, and there was, as we went through, I think probably the end of April, certainly into early May, pretty much a consensus that we needed to shift the way we were –
Lead Inquiry: All right.
Mr Simon Ridley: – we were working.
Lead Inquiry: The Covid Taskforce is described by you in your statement as a “whole of government” effort and you describe how it led official advice in the centre of government, so the advice to the Prime Minister, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, to ministers, and that it brought together all the policy and key issues required to respond to the Covid crisis; is that a fair summary of the width of the Covid Taskforce?
Mr Simon Ridley: Yes, I think so.
Lead Inquiry: All right.
Could we have a look at INQ000248852, which is your statement, at page 10, paragraph 2.21. We can see from this paragraph right at the bottom of the page:
“The Taskforce had a number of focused teams working with other departments on a range of areas … While responsibility for delivery … lay with departments and other relevant bodies (such as NHS Test and Trace), the … teams in the Taskforce contributed to policy development and helped ensure that collectively … policies were delivered effectively.”
So the Covid Taskforce was the body at the centre, within the Cabinet Office of course, which liaised with and worked closely with all the line departments and other bodies that were producing, procuring equipment, delivering, I suppose you would call it, the policies, but the CTF brought it all together in the centre?
Mr Simon Ridley: Yes, and I think I would – the Covid Taskforce was different from the MIG secretariat teams, in that the MIG secretariat teams effectively were the secretary to the committee and didn’t do a huge amount other than bring information together, seek to push key priority issues, assure the centre and provide information and advice in to the Prime Minister.
The Covid Taskforce had a broader remit, we did have a team that was the secretary to the Covid Operations Committee and the Covid Strategy Committee throughout the period, but we were a much broader team, also responsible for developing and getting agreed the overall strategy of the response and some key policy areas. The delivery was absolutely with line departments.
Lead Inquiry: All right.
Page 8 on this document, paragraph 2.14, we can see something of the links between the Covid Taskforce to other bodies and other entities in government. You liaise with analysts across government, with SAGE, the subgroups, the CMO, the Government Chief Scientific Adviser, Public Health England, ONS, Treasury, as you would expect, BEIS, and the Behavioural Insights unit.
You, I think, were responsible for three of the six groups or teams within the Covid Taskforce, so you were responsible for vulnerable and shielding, strategy and roadmap, and policy.
Do you think that the CTF worked well as an overarching body designed to replace the HMIG system and designed to improve what was then becoming apparent was an underperforming structure?
Mr Simon Ridley: I mean, in summary, yes, I do, I think from the very beginning reducing to a single team with a clear lead, which initially was Simon Case, as the permanent secretary to Number 10, bringing myself and Tom Shinner and a number of colleagues into the same team, so we had a single team at the centre, did work.
I mean, from May, you know, we had to build the team up, and we had to develop the capability and capacity over a period of time, but it was a structure that endured from the end of May 2020 all the way through to spring 2022.
Lead Inquiry: So it passed the test of time, it carried on?
Mr Simon Ridley: It passed the test of time, and I think we got more effective as we went on.
Lead Inquiry: It obviously liaised very closely with the Prime Minister, Number 10 staff, with central government. Did it also set up deep dive meetings for various entities and personnel in government to look at particular areas in real detail?
Mr Simon Ridley: Yes.
Lead Inquiry: Did it also – was it also responsible for providing dashboard briefings in Number 10, so the provision of data across the Covid response?
Mr Simon Ridley: Yes. I mean, the dashboard started earlier in the spring, it was run by the Civil Contingencies Secretariat. We continued to develop that dashboard in the Cabinet Office. The dashboard passed to the taskforce I think in June, and from that period on our data and analysis team presented that dashboard to Number 10 and colleagues most mornings for the rest of the pandemic.
Lead Inquiry: You’ve mentioned the Cabinet committees Covid-S and Covid-O. The Covid Taskforce, as you say, was the secretariat for those meetings. Presumably it provided the agendas, it commissioned the paperwork, it organised the meetings?
Mr Simon Ridley: Yes.
Lead Inquiry: Give us some idea of the scale of the exercise. I mean, how many Covid-O ministerial meetings did the CTF arrange?
Mr Simon Ridley: So there were a few over 200 Covid operations committees between May/June 2020 and 2022. It was the core ministerial forum throughout the pandemic in terms of taking advice for ministers to make decisions. It was – it met through 2020, I would say, you know, most days. It often met late. If we had to respond very quickly to issues it often met at the weekend. We held an official meeting before Covid-O to make sure departments knew – were involved in the development of the papers. A lot of papers were produced by departments. We didn’t produce all the papers from the Cabinet Office, but there were some issues in which we did.
So it was an absolutely critical part of the decision-making structure that was put in place.
Lead Inquiry: And presumably there were thousands of actions ordered to be done as a result of the Covid-O meetings?
Mr Simon Ridley: Yes.
Lead Inquiry: Was the CTF responsible for those?
Mr Simon Ridley: Yes, we were responsible for getting those actions out. We tracked those actions through the period, and we worked incredibly closely with Number 10, the Treasury, other departments as necessary. A lot of meetings led to agreement on policy and there was a sort of subsequent announcement and the press notices or the guidance changes or everything else that went around that, and we were the people at the centre assuring ourselves that all of that happened as the government intended.
Lead Inquiry: You referred to policy. Could you just give us an understanding of the division of responsibility between the various bodies as to the formulation of policy as to non-pharmaceutical interventions in the second half of 2020? So who or which entity provided the Prime Minister and Covid-O and ministers with advice as to what should be done in terms of interventions? Was it something that was exclusively the domain of the Covid Taskforce? Was it a matter for the CMO and the Government Chief Scientific Adviser to communicate to the Prime Minister? Or did responsibility lie elsewhere?
Mr Simon Ridley: So, I mean, in terms of advice to the Prime Minister, official advice from the civil service to the Prime Minister on non-pharmaceutical interventions came from the taskforce, in – we developed that working closely with the Chief Scientific Adviser and the Chief Medical Officer, with in particular the Department of Health and the Treasury, often a wide range of other departments.
Particular issues that came to Covid-O would sometimes come from other departments, particularly the Department for Health, so I think we will come on to this, but some of the papers on tiering came from the Department of Health, for example, at the – at points in the autumn, and then there were clearly discussions of some of these issues in other – other meetings between secretaries of state, and secretaries of state, the Health Secretary or the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, provided at key points in the year their own input to the Prime Minister.
Lead Inquiry: Were there meetings of Covid-O to which the CMO or the CSA, for example, contributed in the absence of the Covid Taskforce, or were there meetings with the Prime Minister where the Prime Minister received advice from the CMO and the CSA in the absence of the Covid Taskforce? There appears to be a conduit by which information was provided to the Prime Minister, in particular from SAGE, through the funnel, the conduit of the CMO and the CSA. Was that a conduit to which the Covid Taskforce was always party?
Mr Simon Ridley: So there’s quite a lot there. The answer to your question at the end is: no, there was definitely a conduit of information from – the Chief Scientific Adviser and the Chief Medical Officer gave advice to the Prime Minister via electronic or personal means without the taskforce.
Covid-O, as a Cabinet committee, was always secretariated by the taskforce. The CMO and Chief Scientific Adviser were at most of those, and inputted into those. We developed papers with them, but they would give their own views in the committee when asked or moved to do so. In other meetings with the Prime Minister there were some which involved the taskforce and both the CMO and Chief Scientific Adviser, and there were some I am sure, but I wouldn’t know, which involved them but not us.
Lead Inquiry: My last question on this topic: was the Covid Taskforce concerned, therefore, that there were regular meetings or regular opportunities whereby the Prime Minister asked the CMO and the CSA and his closest advisers, perhaps, on what should be done, what practical steps should be taken to address the spread of the virus in – particularly in the autumn of 2020, in your absence, in the absence of the CTF, the body strategically and operationally concerned with providing advice to the centre of government concerning the proper response to the virus?
Mr Simon Ridley: No, I don’t think – well, I was not concerned about that, and I don’t think as the Covid Taskforce we were concerned about that. We worked very closely with the Chief Medical Officer and the Chief Scientific Adviser throughout the period, they were very generous with their time and advice for us, and it was not our role to provide scientific or medical advice to the Prime Minister. That was their role. It was our role to provide policy advice to the Prime Minister about the actions he could or should take in response to that advice and, indeed, input from other government departments on a range of other issues.
The Prime Minister certainly contacted Chris and Patrick to get their advice, but I … there was no point in the period where I felt we weren’t either able to discuss with colleagues in Number 10 the nature of the discussion, or to discuss with the Chief Medical Officer and Chief Scientific Adviser what they were saying. We attended SAGE, we read the papers, we had the minutes, that was all very much in the open, obviously.
Mr Keith: That’s a very convenient point.
Lady Hallett: I think you were warned that we take breaks, Mr Ridley. We will break now and I shall return at 11.30.
(11.14 am)
(A short break)
(11.30 am)
Lady Hallett: Mr Keith.
Mr Keith: Mr Ridley, the data provided by the Covid Taskforce, in your statement, paragraph 2.12 and 2.13, you say that the analytical capability of the taskforce “comprised thematic teams covering health, science, economics, behavioural insights, social policy and public services, plus long range foresight and at that time functions”.
So was the taskforce able to bring together data and information across the whole breadth of all the areas engaged by the Covid pandemic? So you weren’t just providing scientific advice, for example, you were providing data and insights from across the range of these areas?
Mr Simon Ridley: Yes, that is – that is correct. Through the dashboard and through the broader work that we did. It’s a capability we built through the summer and early autumn of 2020, but by the – sort of October- ish 2020 it was probably about – a team of about hundred strong doing that, doing that work.
Lead Inquiry: Do we take it from that answer, Mr Ridley, that until the early autumn, or rather in the months before the early autumn, the provision of data and information gradually increased –
Mr Simon Ridley: Yes.
Lead Inquiry: – until such a point where you were confident that your policy work and your strategy was fully informed by as much data and information as you could reasonably gather?
Mr Simon Ridley: Yes. I think that is correct. We were using – we were using data and analysis as we went through the period, but the sources of data grew as time went by and our ability to bring it together increased.
Lead Inquiry: So by way of an example, when advising in the autumn on non-pharmaceutical interventions or what interventions generally the government could consider imposing, was the advice that the taskforce gave as informed by economic considerations and social considerations as well as by the health and scientific ramifications of whatever it was you were advising?
Mr Simon Ridley: Yes. I mean, to take a slightly – at each of the steps of the 11 May 2020 roadmap, we provided advice to the Prime Minister and others about opening up through the summer of 2020, that advice was informed by an assessment of the five tests in that May document, but which also added to that advice sections on the economic impacts and implications and the social impacts and implications as well as the health issues.
Similarly, as we got into the autumn, we were providing the information and the analysis we had on the economy and society as well as on the NHS and the direct Covid impacts.
Lead Inquiry: An important part of the overall data and analytical capability identified in your statement was the ICJU, the International Comparators Joint Unit. What was that?
Mr Simon Ridley: So the ICJU was a partnership between the Joint Intelligence Organisation in the Cabinet Office and the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. It was a team that was brought together essentially to do a bit – what it says on the tin, to provide international comparisons of different issues. It was incredibly important from the beginning that we had an international perspective and understood, you know, what was happening in other countries and what the impact of different policies different countries were putting in place was. So the – when Rob Harrison joined as our director general for analysis in October 2020 he’d been doing that work in the Cabinet Office and we brought the ICJU sort of much more alongside the taskforce. They produced a number of really helpful pieces of work. There was a recurring piece about NPIs and social distancing, looking at what different countries were doing, the kind of different stringency levels that different countries had in place, as well as producing reports on different specific issues as they came up.
Lead Inquiry: So do you consider that the UK Government was well sighted on how other countries were responding to the common threat of the virus and on the detail of the various strategies, policies and plans that they put into place?
Mr Simon Ridley: Yes, and the – I mean, the ICJU wasn’t the only source of that. Through the dashboard we drew on other, you know, datasets about the growth of the virus, for example, or the path of the virus in other countries, so we were demonstrating where we were in terms of prevalence alongside other European countries and other countries at kind of all parts of the pandemic. We worked closely on key issues with ambassadors in various countries and working with the FCDO where there were specific issues that we wanted to dive into. So we had various means of bringing international comparisons to bear.
Lead Inquiry: All right.
Now I want to turn, please, to the position that confronted the government in the late summer, so late June and throughout July and August. As a result of the first national lockdown, if we may call it that, the prevalence of the virus was low, wasn’t it?
Mr Simon Ridley: Yes.
Lead Inquiry: How quickly did it become apparent that the prevalence of the virus was ticking up, that infections were rising?
Mr Simon Ridley: So … I mean, it was – I mean, as with all these things – so it became clear in August, if you – well, no. The key data we had at this – at this point was the ONS infection survey which had started up and which was an invaluable source of information as we went into the later part of the summer and into the autumn, that had not been there in the – in the spring.
The ONS survey started to show a – you know, flattening off and then a small rise as we got into August, a small rise from low levels, and that came through the dashboard, I also had specific discussions with, you know, Ian Diamond at the ONS and with Chris Whitty and Patrick Vallance, and there was a lot of discussion about the risk of opening up exacerbating that rise.
I think on the data itself, I mean, there was uncertainty about the rate at which it would – it would rise until we kind of – as we get into later August and September, it’s sort of more clearly on an upward path.
Lead Inquiry: There was a perennial risk or a permanent risk, continuing risk, wasn’t there, that as soon as the country opened up, the virus would reappear? So prevalence and whether or not the infections were beginning to tick up was of huge importance, wasn’t it? You had to keep a very close eye on the way in which the virus developed thereafter?
Mr Simon Ridley: Yes. That – and we did. I’ve just said something about the national level. We also, through the work that was happening in what was the JBC and Department of Health, we were seeing local outbreaks –
Lead Inquiry: Just pause there.
Mr Simon Ridley: – if you want to come back to that –
Lead Inquiry: When you say, correctly, JBC, do you mean –
Mr Simon Ridley: Joint Biosecurity Centre.
Lead Inquiry: Right.
Mr Simon Ridley: But the information – we got improved information via DHSC on local outbreaks, so as well as the national picture we were very closely monitoring, for the reasons we say, and it was actually – I mean, as far back as June, that there was the outbreak in Leicester –
Lead Inquiry: I’m going to pause you there, because we’re going to come back to the detail in due course.
Mr Simon Ridley: Okay.
Lead Inquiry: I just want to establish the level of concern in the late summer as to the re-emergence of the virus. Was it generally understood that viruses come in waves –
Mr Simon Ridley: Yes.
Lead Inquiry: – and that as soon as the prevalence began to rise, and the infections re-emerged, that there would likely be a second wave?
Mr Simon Ridley: Yeah, so – yes, it was understood they came in waves, and there was without question an understanding of a risk of the second wave.
Lead Inquiry: The whole debate in March, or at least late February, early March, had been how to deal with the first wave in a way that ensured that the virus didn’t recoil like an uncoiled spring into a devastating second wave. So the whole idea of a second wave came as no surprise to anybody, did it?
Mr Simon Ridley: No.
Lead Inquiry: Throughout that late summer and into the early autumn there was, therefore, this constant tension between the scientific and medical understanding that if you open up the country, the virus would likely re-emerge with great force, and the need to ensure that economically and societally the country could be returned back to something approaching normal as quickly as possible. That tension never went away, did it?
Mr Simon Ridley: No. There was – I mean, the only thing – there was throughout a need to balance the requirement to suppress the transmission of Covid, because of the direct health impacts of that, and the economic, social and, indeed, broader health consequences of lockdown or very stringent non-pharmaceutical interventions, and that was the case throughout the two-year period.
Lead Inquiry: Could we look at an email from Tom Shinner dated 21 June, INQ000174752. Not an email, I’m sorry, a document.
Tom Shinner was part of the Covid Taskforce, was he not?
Mr Simon Ridley: He was at this point, yes.
Lead Inquiry: At this point. This is addressed to Simon Case, who, with you, was effectively in charge of the Covid Taskforce at this time in June:
“14 weeks to prepare for winter.”
Page 1, paragraph 3:
“What follows is a ‘straw man’ for your consideration and refinement; … [these] are the biggest current barriers and suggest pursuing five operational and five organisational actions with immediate effect …
“i. Develop a contingency playbook …
“ii. Replenish … stockpiles …
“iii. Enhance the senior scrutiny … on winter operational planning work …
“iv. Prepare a concerted behavioural influence campaign …
“v. Re-task the JIO …”
If we could just scroll back out, in paragraph 2 we can see Mr Shinner says:
“I think we are more vulnerable to a second wave of COVID than is apparent …”
Was it generally understood in June that we were vulnerable to a second wave of Covid and perhaps more so than was appreciated by some?
Mr Simon Ridley: So I think we knew and it was clear that we were vulnerable to a second wave of Covid. I think there was a question about the extent to which there was hope or optimism bias against that, but I think the risk of it was known.
Lead Inquiry: In that paragraph 3, and also in the following paragraph, paragraph 4, we can see Mr Shinner makes a number of recommendations. In relation to the organisations he suggests rehabilitating and reforming Public Health England, restaffing key leadership roles, defining clear responsibilities across government, developing a central analytical function, redesigning the Covid Taskforce.
To what extent were any of these practical suggestions adopted, do you recall?
Mr Simon Ridley: So we – I mean, do you mean specifically paragraph 4 –
Lead Inquiry: Yes.
Mr Simon Ridley: – or do you mean the note more broadly?
So they – a number of these in paragraph 4 were adopted. The organisation of the various new structures in DHSC, ie Test and Trace and the Joint Biosecurity Centre and PHE, were ultimately brought together. There – I mean, I can’t talk with authority about staffing across all of government, but there was – there were a number of places where senior staffing was strengthened, including in the Covid Taskforce, where we recruited Kate Josephs as a delivery director general succeeding Tom, and then Rob Harrison, as I’ve said, to – as a director general responsible for analysis.
I mean, we worked very closely from the Covid Taskforce across Whitehall. I chaired very regular meetings with directors general across departments, and indeed there was a regular Cabinet Secretary-led meeting for 2020.
We – we didn’t bring other departmental leads physically into the same team, we maintained the taskforce as structured in the Cabinet Office, as I’ve talked about. Number 4 was – was done.
We didn’t restructure the Covid Taskforce precisely as Tom describes here, but we did reorganise it as we went through the summer after Kate arrived and we brought more capability in. I can talk in more detail if that would be helpful.
Lead Inquiry: That would tend to suggest that the Covid Taskforce was on top of its game, it was aware of the need to perfect the position, perfect the system in order to prepare for the inevitable second wave?
Mr Simon Ridley: So we certainly – I mean, I wouldn’t want to overstate in terms of perfection, but we had learnt a lot in the spring, we wanted the Covid Taskforce to be in as strong a position in the centre of government as possible and we wanted to be working with Whitehall departments and with others to be prepared, and we were doing a lot of work through the summer to that end in terms of work on NPIs and how we could develop them in terms of scenario planning and some sessions that we had with Number 10 colleagues and the Prime Minister and others through the summer.
Lead Inquiry: All right.
INQ000265766, please, at page 3. This is a communication, a WhatsApp, between yourself and Simon Case. We can see at 21.22:
“Simon Ridley: Spoke to CMO/[Patrick Vallance] about next steps. They caution against doing much at all beyond outdoor sports/arts this month before seeing impact of the weekend changes. Their other big worry is keeping headroom to reopen schools safely come September.”
So the scientific and medical advice, if you like, from that quarter was very much towards making sure that the country didn’t open up too much too rapidly, that there was a constant risk that if things were opened up too much it would allow an opportunity for the virus to re-emerge faster than would otherwise be the case. That was the debate?
Mr Simon Ridley: Yes. I mean, I think – absolutely. I think the other point that this is a very brief summary of was that seeing the impact of changes took time, and they were – they were cautioning against putting change upon change before knowing where we were.
Lead Inquiry: In general terms, in the summer, was the policy and the course adopted by the government in line with the CTF’s own views as to what should be done cautiously, safely, and in such a way as not to allow the virus to re-emerge?
Mr Simon Ridley: I mean, so we were bringing this view together. There was also, in a number of departments around Whitehall, a desire to get sectors re-opened. There was a significant economic and social cost to the length of time different sectors had been closed.
So in the taskforce we were trying to understand that and the implications of that and develop, you know, guidance around being Covid-secure, for example, to enable opening up, to mitigate these risks that the Chief Medical Officer and the Scientific Adviser were articulating.
Lead Inquiry: We appreciate the CTF was trying to understand the significant economic and social costs and work out the balance between the costs of intervention –
Mr Simon Ridley: Yeah.
Lead Inquiry: – and the costs on society at large of those interventions. But in a general sense, was what the CTF was recommending in terms of the general strategy of the government, the general course, that which the government actually adopted?
Mr Simon Ridley: So we were – we were governed through the summer by the five tests in the May 2020 document, which were about the capacity of the NHS, about our readiness on – kind of operationally on issues like PPE, about the direction of the virus, and we were couching our advice through that.
We were – we were certainly, in our advice, seeking to minimise the risks of a significant second wave, but we were balancing that against various other issues and in general advising a course consistent with …
Lead Inquiry: So in the CTF’s role as bringing together in one body the policy and strategy for responding to Covid and for liaising with and synthesising all the data and the approaches from the line departments, what was the CTF’s view on the Eat Out to Help Out scheme?
Mr Simon Ridley: The Eat Out to Help Out scheme didn’t come through me or the taskforce, it was decided by the Prime Minister and the Chancellor as far as I am aware.
Lead Inquiry: So the Covid Taskforce, by August, had been in place, had been formally announced in June but you had been operational since May. You were the single body tasked with synthesising the policy and strategy for responding to the virus and giving advice to government on how it should be responded to, but you did not advise on, you did not comment on, you weren’t even asked to consider the merits of the Eat Out to Help Out scheme?
Mr Simon Ridley: That is correct.
Lead Inquiry: When you first discovered that that was what was being proposed by HMT, what did you do?
Mr Simon Ridley: Erm … I mean, I think – I can’t recall exactly the – you know, the first things that we did. I mean, I think to be – in terms of my – my role, internalise that as government policy, and what that meant alongside the other decisions that we were – we were taking, I don’t recall that there was, at that point, a prediction, if you like, of the impacts of it over the next few weeks, but it obviously factored into future advice.
Lead Inquiry: Mr Ridley, you were or you were shortly to become the leader of the CTF. I think you and Mr Bowler and Mr Case were the driving forces behind the CTF. You were in charge of the body which was convened, designed, operated to bring together at the heart of government all the policy and the strategy relating to the response to the virus. You must have been extraordinarily concerned that a major plank of the government’s strategy, a positive scheme to financially support people to eat out across those midweek days in August, had not been brought to you for your views?
Mr Simon Ridley: I mean, I … things – things happen that surprise – I mean, we were – we were focused on the advice we could – we could give in the context of the steps of the May 2020 – 20 – document. You know, there was – this was announced as government policy. I didn’t spend time worrying particularly about the whys and wherefores of that.
Lead Inquiry: Because you were effectively completely blindsided by the Treasury and there was nothing you could do?
Mr Simon Ridley: Correct.
Lead Inquiry: All right.
The Covid-19 recovery strategy was published on 24 July 2020. Could we have INQ000137239, page 1, and then page 5, I think, for the index:
“Suppressing the Virus
“Opening up Society …
“Continuing our Plan to Rebuild.”
On page 13, at the third paragraph, there is a reference to:
“The Government is undertaking preparations to make sure that we are as ready as possible for the risk of a resurgence in the virus between November and March.”
Did the CTF have a hand in the preparation of this document?
Mr Simon Ridley: Yes, we would have been – well, we were, sorry, the lead drafters of this document.
Lead Inquiry: What preparations was the government undertaking? What in practice, what in reality were those preparations? Can you give us some idea.
Mr Simon Ridley: Yeah. So the government was continuing to build the infrastructure and capacity of the test, trace and isolate system, led by Dido Harding, Department of Health and Social Care. We were doing lots of work on local interventions, again led in large part through DHSC, but we were bringing that together with other government departments. We did a lot of work under the banner of smarter NPIs to try to explore different ways in which it might be possible to reduce social contact and suppress the virus with less economic or social impact, and support other things besides. I mean, there was tonnes of work on the vaccine going on, for example, although we were not expecting that by November, we were hopeful we would have, as indeed we did, a vaccine in place by March.
Lead Inquiry: Putting aside the vaccines, which obviously are a huge topic on their own, and putting aside the test and trace, which of course was led – the NHS Test and Trace by that stage was led by Baroness Harding. What preparations in practice were being made in terms of, as you say, exploring different ways in which it might be possible to reduce social contact and suppress the virus? Do you mean papers or policy documents were drawn up saying, “Well, there is this tension between suppressing the virus and continuing to damage the economy”? Or do you mean there were policy documents identifying particular NPIs or restrictions which could be contemplated in the future? What –
Mr Simon Ridley: Yeah.
Lead Inquiry: – did that policy consist of?
Mr Simon Ridley: So that’s what we had been looking at through June and July, very much in the context of the very significant social and economic harms of the national – of a national lockdown, and wanting to be as prepared as possible as we went into the autumn for how we could mitigate a second wave without having to do a subsequent national lockdown.
We – I mean, in terms of the practical things we were doing, we ran a piece of work, I mean, as I say, under the title of “smarter NPIs”, to explore what the possibilities were. That involved colleagues from across government, particularly Health, the Treasury and others. We were looking at ways in which, for example, you know, we can encourage safer behaviours from people, we were looking at enforcement and compliance with regulations, we were looking at the possibilities of and how we could use local interventions rather than national interventions. We did a big piece of work on – it was called segmentation, which is essentially a sort of, if you like, a kind of harder and broader form of shielding is one way to think of it. So is there a way of protecting and, if you like, restricting the movement of more vulnerable portions of society and letting those less likely to suffer severe consequences of Covid to go about their lives more normally.
Lead Inquiry: Just on this subject of segmentation, so in essence part of what had hitherto in February/March been the mitigation strategy, which was trying to see whether or not there were parts of the population who could be segmented, safely contained in a way that would protect them in the event of a re-emergence of a second wave?
Mr Simon Ridley: Yes, and through a second wave.
Lead Inquiry: Your statement makes plain that there were two occasions when the government dug down into the issue of segmentation after the first wave, firstly in September 2020 and then at the end of 2021 with the Omicron wave. Why in September 2020 was it decided that measures for segmentation were impractical and, therefore, not to be pursued?
Mr Simon Ridley: So we did a detailed – well, we did this very much jointly with – in fact I think Treasury seconded a colleague into the taskforce to support us to do this work, very much a joint piece of work. I mean, the reason why a so sort of – if you like, a kind of hard form of this we didn’t think could work, was a combination of practical reasons, just keeping people away and isolated from the virus for a long period of time is ultimately sort of just practically too difficult. Part –
Lead Inquiry: Just pause there –
Mr Simon Ridley: Oh, sorry.
Lead Inquiry: – before we come to the second part. Was not the idea of segmentation merely a revised or recalibrated form of shielding? In the early part of the year the government had been able to put into place a practice whereby – you described it as low millions, but low millions of people in the population were effectively and well shielded, so wasn’t segmentation just a variant of that?
Mr Simon Ridley: So, so in a way – in a way, yes, but it was broader and deeper, and the purpose of it was to allow, if you like, life for others to go on broadly as normal. Whereas we were preparing the shielding to protect people, you know, including through a lockdown where there was much less social contact. So the prevalence was going – going down. The idea of segmentation was to enable people to be away from a virus when it was running rife potentially for much longer, because those people who were not segmented, if you like, were going about their normal business and you would expect a very high level of transmission of the disease between those people.
Lead Inquiry: How seriously was segmentation considered? You’re aware, of course, of the debate surrounding the second lockdown, as to whether or not a lockdown was avoidable, inevitable, whether or not there was an alternative path that could have been adopted whereby a segment of the population were segmented?
Mr Simon Ridley: Yeah.
Lead Inquiry: In this work in September, to what extent did you seriously consider segmentation and satisfactorily resolve that it wasn’t possible?
Mr Simon Ridley: So, I mean, I think we did the detailed work in – from August. We did a – we did a, I think, substantial piece of work through that summer. I recall I put a detailed piece of advice up to the Prime Minister, I think in September. There were various products as a result of that work that came about from talking to, you know, colleagues across Whitehall from – to the Chief Medical Officer and his deputy – his deputies, to the Chief Scientific Adviser.
We were learning from shielding, and indeed it was clear by that point that there were some benefits to shielding but there were also some real downsides to shielding and from being isolated for a long period of time without access to people. So we took all of that into account and we thought about what would happen – how do you come out of – how would you come out of segmentation and how realistically can you kind of get to that point.
So it was a detailed piece of work, and I think we were – we were confident at the end of it that that being a strategy through the wave would be unlikely to succeed on its own terms.
Lead Inquiry: Just help us more with the reason why it didn’t or couldn’t work. Are you, by reference to the issue of the real downsides to shielding and from being isolated for a long period and what would happen, referring there to the practicalities, how do you physically segment 1.5, 2 million or more people, mindful of course that you had successfully shielded a very large number of people in the spring, or are you referring to the more conceptual issue of, well, is it feasible to make people segment themselves and to be segmented for such a lengthy period of time, that is to say the period of time required to be segmented whilst a second wave washes through?
Mr Simon Ridley: So I think both of those. I mean, to take – take a practical example, I mean, there are an awful lot of mixed generation households in the country or households where there is one person who is clinically extremely vulnerable. If you’ve got a household where one or two people are – if you like, need to be segmented, others are going to work or going to school or going shopping, to the cinema, et cetera, they come back home, if that home has only got one bathroom … there are all manner of just prac – the idea that the virus could – there could be a barrier between one half of society and the other half of society which this virus is going to very rarely cross, we could not see a way in which you could practically manage that sufficiently.
Lead Inquiry: There was never going to be a hermetic seal, there could never be a hermetic seal, that barrier would always be permeable. But in the spring, the government had been able in practice to provide a measure of protection to those persons who were shielding, because they had food delivered, they had medicine delivered, they had services provided, because they were, in practice, being segmented. Why couldn’t that have been done again? With the requisite political will, why couldn’t that have been done in practice?
Mr Simon Ridley: We were doing that in March through a period of a national lockdown, while prevalence was coming down and people were not going to restaurants, pubs, shops, et cetera. The premise of shielding was that we wouldn’t have to cause that social and economic harm because the rest of society would be left open, and therefore you would have very high levels of prevalence while you were trying to maintain the safety and separation of the segmented population. So I totally agree, we didn’t put up a straw man of a hermetically sealed border, if you like, or boundary, but the context this was being thought of was not the same as the context of shielding in March and how do we give people that extra safety at a time when we’re trying to manage the virus down.
Lead Inquiry: But the persons who were shielded in the spring were of course physically and mentally isolated by virtue of the national lockdown –
Mr Simon Ridley: Yes.
Lead Inquiry: – and of course by the necessary isolation brought by the need to be shielded. In the autumn, it would have been possible or it could have been possible to put into place a revised system of shielding, of segmentation, because you had the practical measures in place, but was it thought that because of the general prevalence of the virus in society, even that degree of shielding, being segmented, would be insufficient to protect those individuals because the virus was rampant in society, that it just wouldn’t work in terms of protecting them? Is that the thinking behind the decision?
Mr Simon Ridley: Yes, essentially. I mean, we did use advice to the clinically extremely vulnerable, and indeed there was clinical advice about who the right groups of people were through the autumn and indeed into 2021. We did use shielding. The point was we didn’t think that was a way to avoid other NPIs and enable the rest of society and economy to go on as – as normal.
Lead Inquiry: But if the level of prevalence, if the degree of infection in society had been able to be brought down somewhat, from the highest possible level, perhaps by tiers, perhaps by regional firebreakers, or whatever it is, why couldn’t, with a slightly lower or a significantly lower prevalence, segmentation not have been introduced in the autumn in order to avoid the consequences of a full national lockdown?
Mr Simon Ridley: So, I mean, I – as I say, the conclusion of the work we did was that we did not think it would be possible to manage the virus and the pressures on the NHS through segmentation as our primary strategy. We did use shielding alongside other NPIs, tiers, et cetera, that is – and local restrictions. That is where we’d got to, as we got to September, October, November.
Lead Inquiry: On 16 September, there was a meeting with the Prime Minister attended by the Chief Medical Officer and the Government Chief Scientific Adviser. I don’t think I have available the notes of the actual meeting, but from a read-out note prepared by Imran Shafi, it does seem that there was a considerable debate about the reasonable worst-case scenario and that, with no action, the United Kingdom could again see deaths running at 200 to 500 deaths a day. Were you present at that strategy meeting on 16 September?
Mr Simon Ridley: Yes, I think I was, if it’s the meeting in the afternoon of that day. I think that was a meeting which was an opportunity for the Chief Medical Adviser and the Chief Scientific Adviser to gave their views on where we were to the Prime Minister.
Lead Inquiry: They were obviously setting out the basic position in terms of what might happen if no action was taken. Was there any debate, though, about specific policies or measures which might be contemplated, for example circuit breakers or regional firebreaks or however you might want to call them?
Mr Simon Ridley: I mean, I don’t recall in detail, it wasn’t a meeting that we put propositions to or – sorry, to – the papers to. It was mostly to discuss the context and where –
Lead Inquiry: Where you were heading?
Mr Simon Ridley: Where we were heading and – where we were and where we were heading and where this might get to over the coming weeks. I’m sure there will have been discussions of particular measures, but it was not a meeting to decide those – those sorts of things.
Lead Inquiry: It seems from Mr Shafi’s notes that the Prime Minister asked to explore “a range of views from different scientists”. Do you recall the Prime Minister asking to hear a range of what might be described as alternative views from other scientists?
Mr Simon Ridley: Yes, I think I – I think I do, I think it came out of that meeting.
Lead Inquiry: Did you ask or did you ponder why he was seeking those views when he had, of course, the benefit of advice from SAGE, communicated through the CMO and CSA, and all the work, the policy and strategy and data from the Covid Taskforce?
Mr Simon Ridley: I mean, not beyond thinking it was – you know, why not bring a wide range of views in? It was important to understand perspectives. If the Prime Minister wanted different voices then he should just put that in place.
Lead Inquiry: But there was no area of data, policy or strategy which hadn’t been considered by you, the Covid Taskforce, and the combination of the CMO and CSA, was there?
Mr Simon Ridley: No, but there was a more contested debate about the right approach in terms of government action to suppress the virus, there was a greater variation of approaches by different countries in October than there had been in March, and the – you know, we were at a point in time where there was a kind of increasing, you know, risk of a second national lockdown, which the government wanted to avoid as much as possible.
So understanding the broadest range of views – I mean, we provided a wide range of advice in – from the Covid Taskforce, drawing on a number of different people, but I would – I wouldn’t say we captured absolutely every point of view and were able to present that –
Lead Inquiry: The scientists whom the Prime Minister ultimately met included Professor Gupta, Professor Heneghan, and the general proposal which was put before him subsequently in fact at a meeting on 20 September with them and Mr Tegnell of Sweden, the epidemiologist, was that it would be possible or it was possible to have a structure whereby a large part or a proportion of the population was indeed segmented and that this was a proper and useful way to avoid the calamitous consequences of a lockdown, and that approach became known in part – or a variant thereof became known as the Great Barrington approach.
At that meeting on 16 September did the Prime Minister call for a range of different views because the notion of segmentation had already been essentially turned down by the Covid Taskforce at that time? You had advised on 7 September that you didn’t think it would work. Was this call by the Prime Minister a reflection of his frustration at the fact that segmentation had been practically excluded by the Covid Taskforce?
Mr Simon Ridley: I don’t – I mean, I don’t – I think you’d have to ask the Prime Minister. I don’t think I can answer – I can answer that. But it was certainly the case that we were – you know, that the Prime Minister and other secretaries of state were seeking ways of managing the virus short of a national lockdown and that we were operating in a – in a context where we were looking for ways through short of that, in terms of restrictions, for sure.
Lead Inquiry: On 19 September, the Covid Taskforce submitted an advice, the winter strategy advice, to the Prime Minister.
Could we have, please, INQ000137293.
It’s a document from you dated 19 September. Paragraph 1 recognises:
“The infection is spreading rapidly. The 7-day average of confirmed cases has risen from 1,077 in mid-August to [3,600-odd] today and is on a sharply upward trajectory.”
Hospitalisations are increasing.
“SPI-M-O’s view is that, if no further measures are implemented, ‘such a high level of hospital admissions has the potential to overwhelm the NHS in around six weeks’.”
So six weeks from the date of this document, 17 September, is essentially the end of October. Is that correct?
Mr Simon Ridley: Yep.
Lead Inquiry: The Prime Minister was presented with a number of options. If we look at page 2, paragraph 4:
“You could decide to take minimal action now, with a plan to intervene a couple of weeks hence if the numbers continue to deteriorate. But any intervention is likely to take two or three weeks to have an effect … infections will continue to grow.”
During that time.
If we look at page 3, we can see “Package A: Double down for winter”, which had – these were the least stringent measures, were they not: national address, publication warning, guidance to work at home if people can, more enforcement, hospitality table service only, tweaks to the rule of six.
I think the rule of six had been introduced on Monday 14 September, had it not?
Mr Simon Ridley: It had.
Lead Inquiry: But, paragraph 7, the view of the CMO and the Chief Scientific Adviser was that “unless it prompts a significant behavioural response, Package A is very unlikely to drive R below 1”.
Package A, the use of those words “very unlikely to drive R below 1”, was therefore never really very likely to work. Was it sensibly pursued? Was it advanced sensibly as a practical option?
Mr Simon Ridley: So on, I think – the meeting that discussed this note was the morning of the 20th, and we were – we discussed the trajectory and we discussed actions that could be taken, very much in the context that to drive R below 1 we would need to go further than package A.
Lead Inquiry: The whole point of this meeting was to debate what could be done to reverse the exponential or potential exponential growth of the virus.
Mr Simon Ridley: Yeah.
Lead Inquiry: Why was package A even contemplated if it was very unlikely to drive R below 1?
Mr Simon Ridley: So, I mean, the first thing to say is there’s sort of – there’s obviously a huge amount of uncertainty in what we were trying to do, which is ultimately to prompt a significant behavioural response. So over the course of the summer, you know, we’d been opening up, people were starting to do more, and the question was – and we had in place a load of measures not covered here in terms of the local restrictions in areas of the greatest outbreaks, and the overall strategy the government was pursuing was still focused on local outbreaks, addressing local outbreaks, testing, tracing and isolating, and prompting compliance.
The question was: what level of further national action could prompt a behavioural response that shifts people back towards avoiding more social contact?
Absolutely, the – so package A was here as, if you like, an absolutely minimal amount of stuff that needs to be done and minimal amount of measures that need to be taken for the next few weeks, but you’re probably going to have to go further.
Lead Inquiry: So it was a makeweight?
Mr Simon Ridley: If you like.
Lead Inquiry: Do you have any views, perhaps with hindsight, on the propriety of advancing a makeweight package –
Lady Hallett: I’m not sure that’s a fair question, Mr Keith.
Mr Keith: All right.
Page 5, paragraphs 11 and 12, in the context of package B:
“This package would be more significant than steps taken in France and Spain … both countries are recording around 10,000 new cases a day. Deaths are rising.”
And 12:
“In addition to this package, the Government should develop a proposal for a much more severe enforcement policy.”
That package B is set out at paragraph 14 on page 5, I believe, “measures for the duration of winter”: reduce household mixing, reduce the number of exceptions to the rule of six, close hospitality 10 pm to 5 am.
And then, page 6, paragraphs 16 to 18, impact on the hospitality sector, more stringent than other European countries. But at 18:
“There is a risk that even a combination of … A and B would fail to bend the curve, leaving R above 1.”
So without answering, I’m just setting out the framework, package C on page 6, 19 to 20, “harder, temporary measures”: ban all contact between households in all settings except for work, advise against travel, closure of leisure and personal care sectors.
Was that the circuit breaker?
Mr Simon Ridley: Essentially, yes.
Lead Inquiry: Right. So the CTF suggested A, a package which was very unlikely to work if the aim was to reduce the R below 1, packages B and C in relation to which you were recommending that a combination of B and C would probably have to be imposed – have to be imposed in order for the aim, the strategic aim to work; is that correct?
Mr Simon Ridley: Yes, we were laying out the trajectory that we were on and different ways of changing it.
Lead Inquiry: There was no suggestion in this paper of the tier approach, was there?
Mr Simon Ridley: Erm … no, not explicitly.
Lead Inquiry: Right.
Mr Simon Ridley: That debate was –
Lead Inquiry: In October?
Mr Simon Ridley: Well, it was – we would – tiers were being debated in September, because we already had multiple local restrictions in place across the country and there was a need to regularise that.
Lead Inquiry: In October, a system of tiers was introduced, was it not? It was debated, promulgated, announced: effectively regional lockdown measures. And it’s obvious that that was a step short of a lockdown.
Why wasn’t a tier package suggested as part of packages A, B and C and therefore advanced as a way of introducing another form of relatively stringent intervention but short of a lockdown that might have helped to reduce the incidence levels of the virus?
Mr Simon Ridley: So, I mean, I think the end of this note mentions regional circuit breakers. We – we were debating how to regularise the local restrictions in place at this – at this point. I mean, this, this note was mostly focused on taking a degree of further national action following the introduction of the rule of six, as you say, a week or so earlier, to, you know – to increase the suppression of the virus at a national level alongside the local restrictions that were in place.
Lead Inquiry: Mr Ridley, standing back, in September these packages are proposed, around about the middle of September there is a rule of six imposed; following this meeting the Prime Minister goes for a mixture of B and C.
Mr Simon Ridley: A and B.
Lead Inquiry: Sorry, you’re quite right, A and B. So he doesn’t – he goes in part for a package which has been described as very unlikely on its own to reduce the R below 1, and he takes part of package B, he takes no part of package C. And that is what is announced: essentially curfew at 10 o’clock and some other aspects to do with enforcement and publication and communication and advice.
It doesn’t work, and in October the government introduces a tier system, which we’ll come on to in a moment, and that doesn’t work and we end up in an initial national lockdown.
Why wasn’t that tier system, which might be thought to be short of a national circuit breaker but is undoubtedly more stringent than curfew and restrictions in hospitality, considered in September as a result of all the policy work that the CTF has done, considered and debated upon, so as to give rise to the possibility that, had something more stringent than this been considered in September and imposed, there may not ultimately have been a need for the lockdown that was ultimately imposed?
Mr Simon Ridley: So, I mean, I … I don’t recall why we haven’t discussed tiering as such in this note, other than the work on local lockdowns was, if you like, already agreed and in the sort of baseline of what we were doing. We were having a discussion about how to regularise that into tiers so there wasn’t the plethora of different arrangements in – in different parts of the country. This note was focused on – on further national action in the main that could be taken, because while the growth of the virus and the outbreaks were still largely at a kind of local and regional level, you know, there was concern that in areas with lower prevalence it would grow over – it would grow over time.
Lead Inquiry: But the tier system, whilst having an impact regionally, because obviously it worked by way of putting every region into one or more – one tier or another, Tiers 1, 2 or 3, was a national system, it applied across the whole of England?
Mr Simon Ridley: Yes.
Lead Inquiry: So –
Mr Simon Ridley: But at different – Tier 1 was considerably lower than a mixture of – than some of the things in package A and B.
Lead Inquiry: Yes, but your answer was: this note was focused on national action in the main that could be taken. The tier system was a form of national action, was it not?
Mr Simon Ridley: Yes, I mean, it was a national system.
Lead Inquiry: Right.
On 20 September the Covid Taskforce supplemented this advice by presenting the Prime Minister with hypothetical scenarios of what ministers might be faced with in October if the virus was not brought under control; correct?
Mr Simon Ridley: Yes.
Lead Inquiry: Could we have INQ000146611.
So we can see from the top right-hand corner the action:
“Submission to [Prime Minister] on 14 October.”
This was – and the document emphasises it’s “Hypothetical thought-experiment not government policy”. This was a hypothetical scenario put before the Prime Minister in effect to tell him, “If you don’t take certain steps then by 14 October these are the sorts of problems or crises that you may have to confront”; correct?
Mr Simon Ridley: Yes.
Lead Inquiry: Why was it necessary to put that in front of the Prime Minister and, bluntly, scare him or hypothesise as to what terrible dilemmas he might have to face in the future if he didn’t take a decision in September the way that the Covid Taskforce believed he ought?
Mr Simon Ridley: So we were trying to find ways to make sure we were having a debate about the policy decisions needed today to impact where we would be in several weeks’ time. There was a – there was an enormous amount going on every day, and there was uncertainty in trajectories and all these sorts of things, and the purpose of this meeting was to try and kind of create the space to say essentially, “If we don’t act now, this is the conversation we might find ourselves having a few weeks’ hence and the sorts of decisions that would come about”.
Lead Inquiry: But he’s the Prime Minister, you had given him a strategy document in September saying: these are the packages which we want you to consider, which one do you want? Why do you need to hypothesise as to future, yet to be – future eventualities which have yet to come to pass?
Mr Simon Ridley: I mean, what we would – we were trying to find, as I say, different ways to have the debate with the Prime Minister and others about the uncertainties, about the possible positions we could be in, and about – in order to inform decisions about action today. And we found at different points in July, August and September that doing meetings in some slightly different ways, that providing information in different ways, helped to stimulate that debate, and that’s what this was about.
Lady Hallett: Or prompt action?
Mr Simon Ridley: And prompt action.
Mr Keith: If you’ll allow me to say so, quite so.
You had – the CTF took a view, did it not, as to the merits of the various packages being presented to the Prime Minister and attempted to have, to use your word, that debate with the Prime Minister in a way that accorded with your, the CTF’s, approach? You hypothesised a worst-case scenario in order to affect, influence his decision-making; is that fair?
Mr Simon Ridley: Well, in order to make sure we were providing advice in the best way that we possibly could. I think, I mean, we – there is a meeting on 7 October where we recommend, essentially, regional circuit breakers. I don’t know whether we will come to that –
Lead Inquiry: We will.
Mr Simon Ridley: – or not. We could see, you know, the path of the growth of the virus and we were trying to make sure that the implications of that were part of the decision-making process. There were things weighed against this, which are – about, you know, the economic, social costs of more stringent NPIs.
Lead Inquiry: The Prime Minister met with Professor Gupta, Professor Heneghan, Anders Tegnell of Sweden and Professors Edmund and McLean on 20 September, on the Sunday. Were you aware or were you made aware, as the head – I think very soon to be – of the CTF, of the outcome of that meeting?
Mr Simon Ridley: Yes, I listened to that meeting.
Lead Inquiry: Meaning you were there?
Mr Simon Ridley: I can’t – I can’t honestly remember if I was in the room or on the end of a phone. There was a train delay that day and I … But I listened to the meeting.
Lead Inquiry: Following the meeting the Prime Minister’s conclusion was to pursue all package A nationally and some measures, as you’ve said, from package B, including the national curfew from 10 pm, options to tighten face mask policy and a call for tighter local restrictions.
If the scientific advice and the advice from the CTF is package A would be very unlikely to reduce R below 1, and if the government was following the science, why did the Prime Minister not adopt a combination of B and C or C or B, as opposed to pursuing all of package A and only some measures from package B?
Lady Hallett: I think that’s a question for the former Prime Minister, Mr Keith.
Mr Simon Ridley: So I think that is a question – thank you, my Lady – for the former Prime Minister, but, you know, it was clear from all the discussions I was in that he, and indeed his colleagues, were balancing a series of different harms and a series of different risks in the measures that they sought to put in place through that autumn.
Mr Keith: But your earlier evidence was to the effect that one of the primary roles of the CTF was to bring together all those other considerations, the economic, the social, the health, and so on and so forth.
Mr Simon Ridley: Yes, and that is what we sought to do, but all we can do as the Covid Taskforce is give advice.
Lead Inquiry: All right.
So you did indeed give advice to the Prime Minister, further advice, on 7 October.
We will have INQ000198158.
“Policy package
“…
“We recommend that the package should be applied to … the North West … North East … Yorkshire and Derbyshire [in part] …
“2. This proposition is summarised in Annex A.”
For four weeks. The prohibition of social mixing indoors and private gardens, closure of hospitality, closure of indoor leisure, closure of personal care services. Weddings, standalone ceremonies not permitted.
Were these the regional lockdown measures?
Mr Simon Ridley: Yeah, this is effectively a – in the parlance of the time, a regional circuit breaker.
Lead Inquiry: Page 2:
“There is a choice on whether to tighten social restrictions further …”
(a), (b), (c) and (d).
“We recommend Option A, against any tightening …”
Then I think there was a – was there a map?
Mr Simon Ridley: Yes.
Lead Inquiry: An annex which showed those parts of the country which would be subject to these regional lockdown measures.
If we go back to the first page, was this a document that came from the CTF?
Mr Simon Ridley: Yes, there was this document, there was a map, as you say, and I think there was a third document that described the process we could go through to put this in place in about a week.
Lead Inquiry: There was a meeting on 8 October shortly thereafter –
INQ000146616.
And after the meeting, at which the Prime Minister had met the Chancellor, the CMO, the CSA and the NHS CEO to discuss Covid and NHS preparedness, this read-out refers to, well, the general course of the debate in that meeting.
What was the general tenor of the advice being given to the Prime Minister, epidemiologically? Was it made clear to him, or was it said to him, “The NHS is going to be overrun, the second wave is coming, unless these steps are taken there will be no prospect of avoiding the NHS being overrun”? How was it pitched?
Mr Simon Ridley: So I think there were two parts really to the meeting, as I recall it. The first part was focused on NHS capacity and the extent to which the NHS was either then or likely soon to be overwhelmed, which the NHS chief executive spoke to, as recorded here. I think that – my recollection is that nationally at that point the NHS was – was not overwhelmed but there were some very clear regional pressure points, particularly in the northwest as I recall, but it was getting – it was certainly getting more pressurised and there was no doubt that the prevalence of the virus was increasing, and the scientific advice that was without action now we were likely to need to take further action soon.
And then the second part of the meeting was more about the non-pharmaceutical interventions, which was a debate about the level of confidence we could have that they would have the suppression effect that we were saying they would.
Lead Inquiry: On that first part, we can see in the bottom third of the page:
“Simon Stevens argued that – stepping back – not everyone currently accepted there was a problem, people did not think measures were fair, they questioned whether they worked, and if they did work, they wanted financial support. Government response should take these factors into account.”
Was the position with the NHS being presented on the basis that it was as bad as it had been in March – that is to say, unless measures are taken rapidly it will be overrun – or was it presented on the basis that it’s going to be extremely difficult for the NHS, but it’s not as clear as it was in March that the system would break?
Mr Simon Ridley: So my recollection of – at this point was that the NHS was under enormous pressure. It had some more capacity than it had had in March. At a national level it was coping but there were some regional areas and some particular hospitals under enormous pressure.
More broadly, and I think the comment you have drawn attention to, the debate about severe restrictions, lockdowns, circuit breakers, was certainly much more contested in October than it had been in March, and there was a – you know, a strong view of – across, you know, different parts of the country of not wanting to have stronger measures than their part of the country in their view required.
Lead Inquiry: Putting aside the undoubted damage that would be done by a further lockdown, putting aside the economic arguments and the arguments about the societal harm that would flow directly from a lockdown, and of course the impact on particularly vulnerable parts of the population, in terms of the NHS, the position was not as acute as it had been in March, was it?
Mr Simon Ridley: No, my recollection is that it was not.
Lead Inquiry: And the Prime Minister therefore wasn’t presented, was he, with a unanimous call for measures, these regional circuit breakers, these tiers to be imposed in order to avoid a collapse of the NHS; that just wasn’t how it was framed?
Mr Simon Ridley: Er … so – so I think the meetings were – and not just this one, there were other meetings where the position in parts of the country was becoming acute and the advice was “would become at risk”. I recall Liverpool in particular at this point was at risk of being overwhelmed in due course. We were also doing – I mean, working very closely with colleagues in Number 10 to seek to understand, you know, where that – the sort of point of overwhelm, if I can put it, might be for the NHS and how close that was. That was inherently very uncertain.
Lead Inquiry: “The [Prime Minister] was grateful for the contributions of all, and said he would discuss further with [the Chancellor] before agreeing a final approach.”
Having been present at the meeting, were you given to understand why he wanted to discuss this with the Chancellor, what was essentially a national decision, a health, public health emergency decision? Did he say why he wanted to discuss it with the Chancellor?
Mr Simon Ridley: Ah, I mean I think some of that is captured a couple of paragraphs up. The – you know, the economic consequences were very much at the front of mind. I think there was also a discussion about the financial support to local areas at this period which the Prime Minister and the Chancellor, as a public spending measure, wanted to discuss.
Lead Inquiry: That debate with the Chancellor is in INQ000252865.
Lady Hallett: It doesn’t look as if we’re going to finish Mr Ridley before lunch –
Mr Keith: No.
Lady Hallett: – and there are some questions from the core participants.
Mr Ridley, are you all right to come back this afternoon?
The Witness: I don’t have anything else on, my Lady.
Lady Hallett: I take that as yes. Thank you very much.
I see what you mean. I have just worked out what your answer meant.
I will return, if you don’t mind, Mr Ridley, at 1.45.
The Witness: Of course.
(12.45 pm)
(The short adjournment)
(1.45 pm)
Lady Hallett: Mr Keith.
Mr Keith: So, Mr Ridley, after the Prime Minister had been presented with the advice on 7 October, Sir Patrick Vallance refers in his evening notes to a meeting in Number 10.
INQ000273901, page 216, thank you.
It’s dated 8 October:
“Very bad meeting in no 10 …
“[Prime Minister] talks of Medieval measures than ones being suggested.
“‘Perhaps we should look at another approach and apply different values.
“‘Surely this just sweeps through in waves like other natural phenomena and there is nothing we can do.’
“As Simon Ridley said final slide PM said ‘whiskey and a revolver’.
“He was all over the place. [Chancellor] using increasingly specific and spurious arguments against closing hospitality. Both of them clutching at straws.”
The Inquiry is very well aware of reading too much into WhatsApps and diary entries, but do you recall the tenor of that debate and the mood in the meeting?
Mr Simon Ridley: I mean, this is the meeting we looked at the note of just before lunch. I mean, it is definitely the case that the Prime Minister and the Chancellor didn’t want to, you know, put in place circuit breakers at that point, I don’t recall the specific phrase that Patrick notes, and the Chancellor certainly was arguing against closing hospitality, and there was a debate about the extent to which sector closures would have the suppression impact that we were stating it would.
Lead Inquiry: Sir Patrick Vallance identifies only three choices for high prevalence areas, ie those areas that would end up in the level 3 tier:
“Do a proper lockdown.”
And essentially level 3 tier was, as you say, a regional circuit breaker, it was a high-level intervention.
“Use military to enforce the rules.
“Do nothing and do a ‘Barrington Declaration’ and count the bodies …
“What will they decide.”
So, as you say, the Prime Minister and the Chancellor were resistant to – and the nature of the debate and the tension and the terrible choices they faced are absolutely apparent and known to the Inquiry, they were resistant to the tenor of the scientific and other advice being presented by the CTF?
Mr Simon Ridley: I mean, yeah. I mean, I don’t recall going through those three options in the way they’re articulated –
Lead Inquiry: No, no, no.
Mr Simon Ridley: As you say, these are just Patrick’s –
Lead Inquiry: Take on it?
Mr Simon Ridley: – evening notes. They definitely – the tenor of the debate was to not do one, if you like, as per this list, and to continue regional restrictions such as we were and increase enforcement and increase the use of test, trace and isolate.
Lead Inquiry: So curfews, restrictions on hospitality, enforce more but not impose what was effectively a regional circuit breaker, the level 3 tier?
Mr Simon Ridley: Exactly. And the decision following this meeting was to bring the tiers in and negotiate Tier 3 with regional areas, which we may be able to come to.
Lead Inquiry: As the CTF, epidemiologically was there really much option?
Mr Simon Ridley: So much option …?
Lead Inquiry: But to impose this regional tier circuit breaker system?
Mr Simon Ridley: I mean, our recommendation in this meeting was essentially a circuit breaker over a reasonably wide geographical area at that point in the northeast, the northwest and a large area of Yorkshire, as per the map you referred to earlier.
Lead Inquiry: Following the meeting, the meeting with the Chancellor on the 8th, the Prime Minister told the Cabinet Secretary that the government should seek to start negotiations with the local areas, because this was a regional system, there had to be negotiation with the local authorities, the local mayors, and in summary, is this right, negotiations began on 9 October. There was a Covid-O meeting on the 11th, a Cabinet call on the 11th. And, on the 12th the Prime Minister announced the three tier, Level 1, 2, 3 system of Covid alerts in England?
Greater Manchester went into Tier 3, Liverpool went into Tier 3, I think Liverpool went into Tier 3 first followed by Manchester about a week later, followed by South Yorkshire, Coventry, Slough and Stoke-on-Trent into Tier 2, so there was a change in the position, and various authorities moved up the tiers.
I don’t want to spend time debating the practical difficulties of the tier system, because in the event it failed to stop the incidence of the virus and we ended up in a lockdown. But you identify in your statement a number of real difficulties with the process.
Firstly, the regional areas, the mayors were of course opposed to any suggestion that their area be placed in a higher tier, of course; secondly, there were difficulties with negotiating with the regions, the nature of the restrictions and also what financial support could be provided to them; correct?
Mr Simon Ridley: Yes.
Lead Inquiry: There were requests for additional funding, and the negotiation took time and not every region was prepared to agree a package; correct?
Mr Simon Ridley: Yes, that is correct.
Lead Inquiry: And there was confusion to the public, you thought, because there were difficulties associated with how to communicate to the general public the difference measures, the different impacts of the different levels and of course which – whatever area was in which level. So it was a difficult process.
When did it become apparent to the CTF that the tier system was not doing enough to reduce the level of incidence?
Mr Simon Ridley: I think to answer that, if I may, Mr Keith, can I just described what happened a bit in the few days, because there were some different things –
Lead Inquiry: Yes, of course.
Mr Simon Ridley: – in there. And we had been discussing tiers with the Department of Health and other departments as a concept, in terms of regularising local restrictions prior to 7 and 8 October.
The – following that meeting on 8 October, as per the note, there was a subsequent – a subsequent discussion between the Prime Minister and the Chancellor, and on that Thursday evening the decision was made that we would start the negotiations with local areas. And as you say, we started those on the following day, the 9th, before – that is before the formal agreement to tiers which happened in Covid-O, I think on the 11th.
Lead Inquiry: The 11th.
Mr Simon Ridley: I mean, you’ve listed the reasons I put in my statement, I won’t repeat them, but we went into those negotiations incredibly quickly because of the urgency and, I mean, it was apparent very quickly that negotiating a tough enough Tier 3 with local areas was going to be difficult for all the reasons I described.
The meeting on the 11th then agreed the tiers, 1, 2 and a sort of baseline for 3, with an agreement that we would further negotiate the sort of tighter restrictions with areas from the 11th.
So the distinction, in response to your question, is it was not – it was not the case either sort of prior to the 11th that tiers in and of themselves wouldn’t work and that an approach locally to suppressing the virus differentially depending on prevalence wouldn’t work. The negotiations and that as a mean to get tough enough restrictions in Tier 3 areas, it was – it was clear pretty quickly we wouldn’t get there. Indeed, as you say, we got an agreement with Liverpool city region quite fast, over a couple of days, but the discussion with other local areas went on much longer, and I don’t, in fact, think we got there with Greater Manchester.
Lead Inquiry: Forgive me, I wasn’t suggesting that the government knew that they wouldn’t work on the cusp of trying to put the system into place and negotiate with the regional authorities. When, as October rolled through and the virus –
Mr Simon Ridley: Yeah.
Lead Inquiry: – began to spread, did it become apparent that the tier system, which obviously had involved some regions going into Tier 3 and some regions going into Tier 2, and perhaps the balance into Tier 1, I can’t recall, wasn’t going to reduce the level of incidence sufficiently fast?
Mr Simon Ridley: So I think – I think we – we knew as we were continuing to go through October. I mean, prevalence was continuing to rise. The general, the general movement was up the tiers, if you like. Tier 1 areas were becoming Tier 2 areas, Tier 2 areas were becoming Tier 3 areas. And it was, as I say in my statement, clear that we’d end up having to have negotiations with large numbers of councils. So as a way of pushing back the virus quickly, we could see, as we went through other meetings in – and discussions in October, that was unlikely to work. I think – I think retrospective work suggested Tier 3 at least was slowing things down, but we didn’t at that point have the time of all of that to play with.
Lead Inquiry: So here is the question in relation to the tier system. I was asking you earlier about why this formalised system of regional circuit breaker wasn’t put forward as a specific option in September.
Do you think that if this tier system, which was announced, as I’ve said, on 12 October, had been developed further, introduced and negotiated in September, when the levels of incidence were necessarily lower, it would have stood a greater chance of success?
Mr Simon Ridley: Yes, I think that is fair. I think the tiers themselves would have had to have been stringent enough, and we would have had to have applied them quickly enough in local areas and over a broad enough geography to have an impact, so they’re kind of – but in general, yes, that is a fair –
Lead Inquiry: And had they been imposed in September and the negotiations had taken place, there is, you would accept no doubt, a greater chance, although we will never know how great, that it would have worked and might have avoided the need for the subsequent national lockdown?
Mr Simon Ridley: Yeah, I mean, I think that is possible. I’m – as I say, when we kind of get to 2021 we decided against regional approaches for lots of reasons, reflecting back, and that, you know, opening back up in 2021 was best done nationally, but it’s … I mean, it’s uncertain. It’s certainly the case that if we’d acted more strongly earlier we’d have stood a fairer chance of avoiding a national lockdown.
Lead Inquiry: On 25 October there was a forward strategy meeting in Chequers, and it was apparent to everyone there, of course, that cases were continuing to rise. By 25 October it must have been apparent that the tier plan, the tier system was having an insufficient impact in terms of the rise in the virus spread.
INQ000252880 details a number of strategies for the months rolling forward. So November to December and then January to January, and then March to April. I suppose seasonal strategies, is that correct? The strategy meeting on 25 October was held in order to try to chart a course going forward as to the possibilities that might eventuate?
Mr Simon Ridley: Yeah, I think this was a sort of schematic sort of approach that was subsequent to the meeting. I don’t think this is what we discussed in the meeting on the 25th.
Lead Inquiry: All right.
INQ000136672 is a read-out from Imran Shafi in Number 10 in which he refers to:
“The PM [meeting] the team today on the forward COVID strategy …
“James Bowler [of the CTF] set out the overall potential course to spring, including rising numbers followed by a plateau. We needed to understand now what our strategy was to Christmas …”
In the bottom third of the page:
“[You] set out the strategic choices ahead. We would need to decide how to respond to LCR’s upcoming 28 day review.”
There was a debate about the general shift towards Tier 3. Is that the – what’s been described as the epidemiological levelling up –
Mr Simon Ridley: Yes.
Lead Inquiry: – the fact that areas went up towards Tier 3.
“… there was an option to bring some of this forward, as well as introduce tighter measures … within a tiers framework … or … a national circuit-breaker …
“The PM was keen to see the economic impact of the various scenarios.”
So was this a meeting at which not just the strategy course going forward was debated but also a warning that cases were rising, there might need to be a consideration of tighter measures in a tiers framework as well as or instead of a national circuit breaker?
Mr Simon Ridley: I mean, yes, essentially. This is sort of the next in a sequence of meetings we had through September and October and it was reason – reasonably clear we would need to take further action because of the tiers, people – the country moving up the tiers as well as the regional firebreaks, as they’re described here, which we talked about before we talked about a national circuit breaker.
Lead Inquiry: INQ000252878 is an email to you, I think, from an official in the Cabinet Office after that Sunday meeting. It says “Sunday meeting follow up”:
“Simon …”
Is that Simon Ridley, you?
Mr Simon Ridley: Yes.
Lead Inquiry: “… Emma [Emma Payne],
“In the end I thought that did what it needed to.”
What did the meeting do what it needed to?
Mr Simon Ridley: So I think the meeting – I wasn’t party to the setting up, but the purpose of the meeting was to try to stand back a bit from – again, from the sort of day-to-day sort of rush of meetings we’d been having, and again to set out where we were, the trajectories, how the policy was working on the ground and to sort of debate what the options were without the meeting seeking to kind of come to a kind of – a decision – it wasn’t a decision-making meeting, it was a –
Lead Inquiry: Strategy?
Mr Simon Ridley: – let’s get the evidence out and sort of understand where we are and offer options meeting.
And I – Ollie was one of the key members of the taskforce. He and Emma were the leads on the – a lot of the strategy work and I think what he is saying here is we sort of successfully got the issues on the table and discussed the need for further action.
Lead Inquiry: “The conclusion – it’s bad, but we aren’t stampeding into lockdown, we push on tiers, and we prepare for the big decision [the conclusion, that is] – was broadly as we would have anticipated.”
What do you understand by Mr Ilott’s reference to “it’s bad”? Was that a reference, did you understand it, to the – was it a reflection of the general state of the country in terms of the spread of the virus and the terrible decisions which may then be necessary to take, or bad as in bad, the Prime Minister’s reaction?
Mr Simon Ridley: No, I – my recollection of the time is that this was a description of where we were in terms of the condition of the – and prevalence of the virus in the – in the country, and the need to suppress it.
Lead Inquiry: In his note, Sir Patrick Vallance refers to a meeting with you, INQ000273901, page 597, “Ridley meeting”.
Was there a meeting with – did you have a meeting with Sir Patrick Vallance separately from that meeting at Chequers on the 25th?
Mr Simon Ridley: I expect I had a call with Patrick, possibly others, ahead of – ahead of that meeting to explain what I thought it was about and what we as the taskforce were intending to put into it.
Lead Inquiry: “… positioned PM meeting …”
That may be a reference to the forward strategy meeting.
“… as ‘a chance to step back / but avoid making a whole load of decisions that then get undone by [the Chancellor]’
“I asked what PM thinks objectives are
“‘what he wants to achieve is a series of mutually incompatible options’.”
Did you say that?
Mr Simon Ridley: I – I mean, I don’t recall exactly what I – what I said, but it’s perfectly plausible because we were, you know, wrestling the need to suppress the virus with the consequences of a – of a lockdown, and we were at the point where we were going to have to do one or the other.
Lead Inquiry: In blunt terms, was the purpose of the forward strategy meeting to try to put the Prime Minister in a position of being able to make a decision, perhaps including a national lockdown, in a way that wouldn’t result in him changing his mind or being “undone by the Chancellor”?
Mr Simon Ridley: I mean, yeah, I think we were – we were seeking to debate the options without forcing, forcing a decision that wouldn’t stick so that we could – we had the space to explain the – where we were, the likely future path and the implications of that.
Lead Inquiry: The reference to the Prime Minister being positioned, or rather the meeting being positioned, and to the strategic aim of trying to avoid decisions that would then get undone, and to the possibility that the Prime Minister was regarded as wanting to achieve mutually incompatible options, smacks of the Covid Taskforce trying to usurp, perhaps, the discretion of the Prime Minister, to try to push him towards an outcome, to achieve an end; would you agree?
Mr Simon Ridley: Certainly not trying to usurp the position of the Prime Minister. It was our job, as we’ve described, to pull information/evidence together and to give advice and make recommendations. We’d made recommendations on 7 October where we had thought that a – essentially regional circuit breakers was necessary. By the 25th we thought further action was necessary and we were – I mean, the meeting was not my proposal or – I don’t exactly know where the meeting – recall where the meeting came from, but it was a chance to try to explain, you know, in, with more space, the issues. I think at this point it was my and our view we needed to take further action. The negotiations with local areas were not leading to strong enough measures quickly enough. But I don’t think we were doing anything other than trying to give advice.
Lead Inquiry: On 28 October, the Covid Taskforce prepared a further advice, I think in the name of James Bowler, your colleague – INQ000146617 – in which – and the handwriting is that of the Prime Minister. The note provided an update of the Covid strategy following the discussion on Sunday.
“It is for information, not for decision.”
In essence the note told the Prime Minister that the situation had continued to deteriorate. It said:
“… we do not expect the current approach to tiers to be sufficient to bring R below 1, although the data is not yet conclusive. We are … working on options to go further.”
And then in the “State of Play”, at the bottom of that page, there are the grave figures given about the spread of the infection.
We’ll just scroll quickly through the document. Page 2, paragraph 6, there is a reference to national interventions being deployed in France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, and Wales. The Prime Minister’s put a question mark – exclamation mark next to it.
Paragraph 7, you don’t expect that the tiers will work because “most of England will move quickly through the current tiers policy”. That’s the epidemiological levelling up.
Page 3, paragraph 10:
“We are considering a range of options, should you choose to act in November …”
The Prime Minister says:
“Why not put everyone into level 3.”
Then he provides his handwritten comments on pages 7 and 8, and I’ve taken the hint from my Lady, I’m not going to put to you what you think of his comments, they’re a matter for the Prime Minister. But essentially he expresses his terrible frustration at the conundrum in which he is being placed.
Paragraph 4:
“What do we really ACHIEVE by smashing up the economy if we have no idea how many times we’re going to have to do it?”
Paragraph 5, the long-term costs to health and wellbeing from the lockdown strategy.
Paragraph 6, he fulminates on the average Covid mortality ages.
11 to 15:
“What HAPPENED to mass testing? What about the Moonshot?
“12. How can we get people to self-isolate? Is NHS [Test and Trace] actually achieving ANYTHING?”
It might be worth just reflecting on paragraph 22 or point 22. He raises the issue of whether or not there can be an analysis of quality adjusted life years, and he asks for serious economic analysis, finishing with the words:
“… We are causing such long-term poverty that we need to …”
Consider jacking in, essentially, this strategy.
Why wasn’t all this information in that note from the Covid Taskforce put into the advice document for the strategy meeting in Chequers? Why did the Covid Taskforce, having attended the strategy meeting on that Sunday, 25 October, return to the fray with a further detailed advice just three days later promoting the need, advocating the need for further options, but which plainly meant a national lockdown?
Mr Simon Ridley: So, I mean, the note on the – this note came about in terms of trying to take forward some of the issues that came out of the meeting on the 25th. I mean, I should say that the decisions here are incredibly difficult. I mean, I don’t demur from that at any point, I have every – you know, the Prime Minister was in a position where he was having to make exceptionally tough decisions that were going to have, you know, significant negative impacts on a number of people whichever way he went. He already had and he was – he was going to have to. I think the plan that we had worked very hard with colleagues across government to put in place around local restrictions, test and trace and isolate, and all these issues we had been doing for the last few months, and a number of these questions are in other notes and other discussions and other bits of advice, but we were at a point at this point in time where it was our judgement that, you know, where we had got to, we were at a point where to suppress the virus sufficiently we were now going to need to take further action.
We went back, I think, to the – I mean, I think the Prime Minister’s direct notes here got formally put to us through his private office, I suspect it was in an email from Imran, and we sought to go back on those issues, but at this – at this point we were, I think, heading towards needing to take further restrictive action to reduce social contact.
Lead Inquiry: The Prime Minister did not, as a result of this advice dated 28 October, order a national lockdown, did he?
Mr Simon Ridley: No, we continued implementing what we had been since 9 October.
Lead Inquiry: Yes. Two days later the Covid Taskforce sent another advice to the Prime Minister, did it not?
Mr Simon Ridley: I think we did, we did a paper for, a further paper for a discussion on the 30th, yes.
Lead Inquiry: Two days later the Covid Taskforce again sought to promote a debate about a national lockdown, because – INQ000146710 – you presented a paper to Covid-O.
Was that strategy for Covid-O or for the Prime Minister?
Mr Simon Ridley: It was a discussion that the Prime Minister had, I think, with the Health Secretary, the Chancellor and CDL – sorry, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, which was a Covid-O discussion that agreed what became the second lockdown.
Lead Inquiry: Why, putting aside the issue of why you returned yet again with another piece of advice in short order, in quick succession, why was this advice addressed to Covid-O and not to the Prime Minister directly?
Mr Simon Ridley: I … I suspect there was a discussion with – there may well have been a discussion with the Prime Minister before we got to the Covid-O meeting that day. I can’t remember the precise sequence I’m afraid.
Lead Inquiry: It’s a relatively short note. If we can just scroll through, it’s only two pages, and it essentially says: the epidemiological position is that we must have a national lockdown. And it recognises, of course, the significant impact on jobs and the economy in paragraph 9.
Why wasn’t that call to the Prime Minister for a national lockdown put into the paper or the meeting or the debate two days earlier, on the 28th?
Mr Simon Ridley: So I – I mean, to be honest, I can’t recall exactly over these few days why we – the sequence of the – of the papers. I think it was reasonably clear we would need to take further action and the direction of that, we set out that for information for the Prime Minister, as you’ve said, on the 28th, and that led to this meeting on the 30th that made the decision.
Lead Inquiry: The suggestion I put to you, Mr Ridley, is that the Covid Taskforce, obviously for credible and proper reasons, was seeking to manage the Prime Minister, it was advocating a national lockdown and, when the Prime Minister essentially resisted in the strategy meeting and two days later, ordering such a lockdown, the Covid Taskforce returned to the issue again to say to the Prime Minister, “Our recommendation is a national lockdown”. You repeatedly tried to secure that end. Is that a fair summary?
Mr Simon Ridley: I don’t think so, if you go back. I mean, on the – I mean, just going back to 7 October, we were recommending strong regional circuit-breakers in line with the overall approach the government was taking of not wanting to act through a national lockdown, but we were saying that to suppress the virus in the highest prevalence places we needed to take stronger action than we were currently taking.
That became negotiations, which we then worked extremely hard with colleagues across government to put in place immediately, from the next day, with lots and lots of councils across the northwest, northeast and Yorkshire. We ran those concurrently over a number of days. That proved – through those discussions we did not get to agreement with lots of areas for stringent enough measures, so we were not making the – the virus was continuing to spread and spread rapidly, because – and the pressures that was putting in – on the health system and elsewhere. We then therefore came back to the discussion of the action we should take, and explored the issues with the Prime Minister on the 25th, sent him further information in the wake of that on the 28th, and then made the recommendation for the national lockdown only on the 30th.
Lead Inquiry: Was the decision taken by Covid-O, the Prime Minister or Cabinet?
Mr Simon Ridley: The decision was taken by Covid-O, which I think on that occasion was attended by the Prime Minister, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, the Health Secretary and the Chancellor.
Lead Inquiry: Given what you’ve said about the possibility of the tier system being proposed and implemented in September and whether or not that gave rise to a possibility that a lockdown may not have been necessary, do you consider that the national lockdown, the second one, was avoidable in any way?
Mr Simon Ridley: I mean, I honestly don’t think I know, I’m afraid. I think that the second – I mean, it – as I think we were – said earlier, we would have had a better chance of avoiding the second lockdown if we had taken stronger action regionally sooner, successfully established isolation through the period, successfully got broader compliance with regulations and with other guidance, which is what the government was pursuing. We didn’t, and we ended up there.
I think there are – I think there are difficulties with a regional approach generally, because of movement. We do not have – the way the governance of the country works, implementing regional measures on a broad enough geography is quite difficult. So I – so I don’t know.
Lead Inquiry: On the alternative premise that a national lockdown was inevitable and the right decision to take, do you consider that it should have been imposed earlier?
Mr Simon Ridley: I mean, as I think I’ve said, I certainly think we should have taken stronger action earlier. In hindsight, if you like, the regional approach didn’t work and therefore earlier national action may well have been – have been better. But that, as we – as we know, comes with other consequences.
Lead Inquiry: Two final questions, please.
I have asked you questions about data. Did the CTF create a small team to examine data on disproportionately impacted groups in the summer of 2020?
Mr Simon Ridley: Yes, we did – I mean, actually to do more than examine data: to look at the data that was there, understand it, and to develop a set of propositions for what we should do to address the substantive issues.
Lead Inquiry: Secondly, did the CTF take part in the process of trying to draw up or rather directing the drawing up of regulations, the regulations which govern us all, in reflection of the policy decisions that were being taken or was that a matter for the Department of Health?
Mr Simon Ridley: So we had a team in the taskforce that essentially drew together the policy decisions and essentially the instructions for regulations. The regulations were drawn up by the legal team at the Department of Health and Social Care and signed by the Secretary of State for Health.
Mr Keith: Thank you very much.
My Lady, those are all the questions that I have. I know there are a number of questions from the core participants, but I don’t know what time constraints have been placed on them.
Lady Hallett: Mr Thomas, you can’t deceive me by moving places with Mr Weatherby.
Questions From Professor Thomas KC
Professor Thomas: Good afternoon, Mr Ridley. My name is Leslie Thomas and I act on behalf of the Federation of Ethnic Minority Healthcare Organisations, and I have a small handful of questions for you.
In your statement you describe a number of meetings in 2020 regarding NHS capacity. So, for instance, at paragraph 49 of your statement you say:
“NHS capacity was the paramount immediate and urgent concern at the outset of the pandemic as prevalence grew and hospitalisations rose quickly.”
Question: did safety of NHS staff feed into those discussions?
Mr Simon Ridley: Yes, I – they – they did, and they were certainly a consideration of the NHS leadership.
Professor Thomas KC: Okay.
To what extent, if any, was there discussion about vulnerability of NHS staff?
Mr Simon Ridley: I – there was, I think, discussion of vulnerability of NHS staff. It was a matter that was being addressed and led by the NHS.
Professor Thomas KC: Well, let me just add this: because the Cabinet Office was aware of data from Public Health England, dashboard meetings and elsewhere, about disparity in mortality and poor outcomes amongst black ethnic minority healthcare workers; that’s correct, isn’t it?
Mr Simon Ridley: That is correct.
Professor Thomas KC: Right, so what was the response to that?
Mr Simon Ridley: So in response to that, we set up the team I was referring to with Mr Keith a moment ago on disproportionately impacted groups, as it – in the round it was broader, it wasn’t about particular sectors of workers, but there was data – there was a lot of data, as you say, about worse outcomes for different ethnic groups, particularly for black and minority ethnic groups. We worked very closely with the Race Disparity Unit in the Cabinet Office, with colleagues in other departments, and essentially set up a programme of work across government and actually identified a senior official in the Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government to lead that across government, to look at that data and to look at what policy or operational changes we should make across government and across different sectors to address those issues.
That very much included the Department of Health, it also included Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government, the Department for Transport, a lot of – a lot of public-facing roles such as – were important, the implications for – were – around worse housing were important, multigenerational households were important.
That came to a Covid-O – that was set up for an Covid-O meeting in September. There was a view the package of measures needed to be strengthened and the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster wrote to his Cabinet colleagues in the wake of that. That came back to a further Covid-O discussion in October and a set of decisions and the Minister for Equalities, who I think at the time was Kemi Badenoch MP, gave a quarterly update starting in October about those issues and we put in place a number of policy measures particularly working closely with local authorities and directors of public health.
Professor Thomas KC: Thank you.
I’m just going to remind you just to slow down a bit.
Mr Simon Ridley: Sorry.
Professor Thomas KC: I didn’t want to interrupt you, but –
Mr Simon Ridley: My –
Professor Thomas KC: – you were going at a pace there.
Mr Simon Ridley: My apologies.
Professor Thomas KC: Fine.
Let me move on to the second question that I have. Your statement states that on 20 March 2020 it was noted that hospitals had limited PPE stock and that, as a Covid-19 strategy ministerial group meeting on 13 April, the lack of clear strategy in relation to PPE was discussed.
Now, Mr Ridley, let me just put this to you: you accept, do you not, that adapted personal protective equipment, PPE, for ethnic minority healthcare staff is relevant for several reasons during a public health crisis such as this; you would accept that, wouldn’t you?
Mr Simon Ridley: Yeah, it was important that we had the right PPE, yes.
Professor Thomas KC: So, my question is: were any concerns raised about black, Asian and minority ethnic healthcare workers requiring adapted PPE, for instance, you know, taking into account cultural, religious considerations, diversity in terms of body sizes, shapes, language barriers, anything like that?
Mr Simon Ridley: So, I mean, I can only – my recollection in this area is one that I think came up in an earlier hearing where Helen MacNamara raised PPE for women. That issue came to a discussion later, I think it was in April, where Lord Stevens responded around some of the broader adaptive PPE that was needed. But I don’t have further recollections about the different types of PPE and precisely what was needed. The focus for myself and the team in the Cabinet Office was in making sure we had the work in place across government to procure all the necessary PPE, the commercial procurement, through the NHS, and Cabinet Office colleagues then sought to address that. Beyond that I have – there’s nothing further I can add.
Professor Thomas KC: Sorry, can I just press you just a little bit. This is my last question. I just want to be sure on what you’re saying. So concerns were raised, were they, about adaptive PPE for ethnic minority workers? Concerns were raised, were they?
Mr Simon Ridley: Concerns were raised in my recollection about adaptive PPE for women. That’s the only recollection I have where the issue was raised with me. There was a discussion about PPE where Lord Stevens broadened that out to the different types of PPE and different adapts – adaptations of PPE. I can’t actually remember the list of things he raised, but the … the detailed procurement of PPE was not something that was part of what I was responsible for.
Professor Thomas KC: So you can’t assist us as to what action, if any, was taken in relation to concerns that were raised?
Mr Simon Ridley: I cannot.
Professor Thomas: Thank you.
Lady Hallett: Thank you, Mr Thomas.
Mr Menon.
Questions From Mr Menon KC
Mr Menon: Thank you, my Lady.
Mr Ridley, I ask questions on behalf of a number of children’s rights organisations.
Earlier today you told Mr Keith that the role of the CTF was to provide policy advice to the PM. When considering non-pharmaceutical interventions, was there any discussion in the CTF about the fundamental differences between how lockdowns and social distancing restrictions impact children as opposed to adults?
Mr Simon Ridley: Yes, there was a lot of discussion.
Mr Menon KC: What was the nature of that discussion?
Mr Simon Ridley: I mean, it took various forms. There was a lot of discussion about the implications on education and –
Mr Menon KC: Beyond education –
Mr Simon Ridley: – schooling. There were discussions about the implications for caring and very young children, and indeed some of the – of the reforms of NPIs that we made in the autumn around what we called “support bubbles”, some of those were about addressing issues as they pertained to particularly very young children and children with particular disadvantages and needs.
Mr Menon KC: Was there a recognition that isolation of children is simply not comparable to isolation for adults, as the Inquiry heard in October from a professor of public health? Was there that kind of recognition?
Mr Simon Ridley: So, so, we certainly had discussions about the consequences of and risks of isolation. I … I can’t recall detailed discussion about how – you know, the differential impacts of isolation in great detail between – between different groups, but certainly I’m thinking about policy, as I say, we were taking into account the differences for children.
Mr Menon KC: Are you going so far as saying there was a recognition that the restrictions had a disproportionate impact on children, within the Covid Taskforce?
Mr Simon Ridley: No, I’m saying there was a recognition that the restrictions and isolation had significant negative consequences on a wide range of the population. I cannot – I cannot recall specific – the sort of detail of differences between children as opposed to elderly people as opposed to anybody.
Mr Menon KC: Are you aware that in the summer of 2020, as an example, Scotland relaxed the social distancing rules for children under the age of 12, and later, in September, Wales relaxed the social distancing rules in relation to children under 11? Were you aware of that at the time on the CTF?
Mr Simon Ridley: Yes, we were aware of that. We did a lot of engagement with the devolved administrations.
Mr Menon KC: And yet that didn’t translate into any changes for children in England, did it?
Mr Simon Ridley: No, we retained the – the same restrictions in terms of the numbers that could gather.
Mr Menon KC: Why?
Mr Simon Ridley: Sorry?
Mr Menon KC: Why?
Mr Simon Ridley: So, I mean, it was the balance between, if you like, the clarity and simplicity of a – of a single number for gathering versus the fact that – you know, different exceptions and different rules for different types of people could better adapt to the variety of households and family structures but brought with it more complexity, and in the end we, in terms of gathering limits, we stayed with simple numbers of individuals.
Mr Menon KC: What is complex about removing restrictions for children under the age of 12? It’s simple and straightforward. Everybody can understand that.
Mr Simon Ridley: I mean, with all these things, it’s a – it was a judgement. We were discussing the – the guidance and the regulations. As we tried to address different impacts for different types of people, as we tried to address the different way in which people live their lives, which is inherently incredibly complicated and varied across the country, the regulations and the guidance got more and more complex, as – in the round. And that in itself became a problem, it became harder to communicate it.
I’m not seeking to say we got all these judgements right, you know, some – there may well be restrictions we put in place that we shouldn’t have done and exceptions we put in place that we’d have been better off not doing. But we were trying to strike a balance overall between enough clarity to communicate what the rules were and enough complexity, if you like, to try to mirror the fact that society is complicated and the inherent harms for different types of people are different.
Mr Menon KC: But are you saying, I just want to be clear about this, the CTF positively advised the UK Government not to go down the route that Scotland went down in July and Wales went down in September?
Mr Simon Ridley: I – I confess on this issue I cannot completely recall what we advised. We definitely knew about it, we definitely discussed it, we would have put the issues and the options together. There were – there was certainly advice we put about the choice between gathering limits about simple numbers of people and gathering limits about different numbers of households, and we had those debates. I’m afraid I can’t tell you exactly what we recommended at different points.
Mr Menon KC: Was that based on any evidence or any research or was that simply a decision plucked out of thin air?
Mr Simon Ridley: It was based on evidence and research we had available and were aware of at the time, but ultimately we were, across the piece, making a series of judgements both in our advice and in the decisions that ministers ultimately made.
Mr Menon KC: What evidence? What evidence that the English model was better than the Scottish model?
Mr Simon Ridley: Well, we didn’t have any evidence that the English model was –
Mr Menon KC: You just said you had evidence. That’s why I am asking –
Mr Simon Ridley: No, I did, sorry, they’re different types of – I mean, forgive me. I was saying where there was evidence available and we were aware of it in general about the impact of different gathering limits – and it was pretty scant, I should say, because we were doing – this was all new – we sought to use it.
There was not a comparison, as I recall, between the efficacy either in terms of the impact as part of a set of NPIs nor in terms of families at the time we were taking these decisions in the autumn of 2020 that in detail compared those models. So we were making a judgement based on the information we had available and in the round what the set of measures we had in place were.
Mr Menon KC: To be fair to you, Mr Ridley, at page 369 of your statement you do say that some lessons were learnt by 2021 and some changes were made, and you specifically mention exempting very young children, under the age of 5, from some restrictions, as of January 2021.
Why then only children under the age of 12? I mean, why not children – sorry, under the age of 5? Why not children under the age of 12, as others had obviously done many months earlier?
Mr Simon Ridley: I mean, the … I’m at risk of, I fear, repeating myself slightly. I mean, we made changes to the NPIs and the restrictions to try and create exceptions where we thought they were necessary for the welfare of different groups as we went through. We actually expanded support bubbles in November 2020 for very young children, I think under the age of 1. We expanded some of that again in 2021. The – we had, and I’m sure discussed, lots of different options. The decisions were made, as I say, in the round as part of the overall NPIs that we had. We were seeking to learn the lessons from the, you know, the very stringent lockdown at the beginning with respect to – with respect to society. That was necessarily a set of – a set of judgements.
Mr Menon KC: Were you aware at the time on the CTF that children’s rights organisations and indeed the Children’s Commissioner for England, Anne Longfield, were calling for children to be exempt from social distancing rules as there were serious concerns about the impact on children’s wellbeing of these rules? Were you aware of that on the CTF?
Mr Simon Ridley: I’m sure – I am sure – I’m sure we were. I cannot give you a specific recollection of when, but we were working very closely with other departments and other organisations across government and beyond to try to maximise the information we had. We won’t – as I say, that won’t always have been complete.
Mr Menon KC: Finally this, on the issue of disproportionate impact: could we please have on the screen INQ000137239, Mr Keith had this on the screen earlier. This is the recovery strategy from July 2020. Thank you.
If we could turn to page 10, please, top of page 10, I’ll just read this out:
“We now have sufficient testing capacity …”
Sorry, that’s the wrong page. One second. (Pause). I’m just finding it on my laptop. Sorry, Mr Ridley, one second. Yes:
“While these impacts have been widespread [that’s the impacts of the rules and restrictions], they have not been equally distributed. Evidence shows the varying impacts on different groups or people with specific characteristics, including, but not limited to, BAME individuals, single parents, disabled individuals, victims of domestic abuse and low income groups, many of whom have been disproportionately affected.”
Now, I appreciate that it makes it clear here that this is not a full list, but it’s right, isn’t it, there doesn’t seem to know any acknowledgement here in the recovery strategy of the disproportionate impact of the rules and restrictions on children?
Mr Simon Ridley: So, you are right that this list does not include children specifically. I don’t think we would have – I mean, they are – they would have been included in terms of our thinking about disabled groups, black minority ethnic and low income groups, but you are absolutely right we have not listed children as a cohort, if you like, in and of themselves, in this sentence.
Mr Menon KC: And the only mention of children that I have been able to find in the recovery strategy is on page 15 – I think, to be fair again to you, you should see it – where there is a paragraph that addresses the re-opening of schools planned for September that year; do you see that?
Mr Simon Ridley: Yes, I mean, I think we and indeed ministers and the government were very, very concerned about the impact of lockdown on education and on schools and sought as far as possible to keep schools open and to maximise the support when they were not.
Mr Menon KC: With the exception of that single issue of the re-opening of schools, I mean, this is, is it not, largely a recovery strategy for adults as opposed to children?
Mr Simon Ridley: I mean, this was a recovery – a recovery strategy applied to – across the whole – the whole country. I agree there is – there is – there is not detail in here on children in the round.
When we get to the winter plan in the autumn, we do seek to increase the flexibility around some of the constraints for some groups of children through the widening of support bubbles, but you’re right, we did not go as far as other parts of the UK in England.
Mr Menon: Thank you, Mr Ridley.
Lady Hallett: Thank you, Mr Menon.
Mr Metzer.
Questions From Mr Metzer KC
Mr Metzer: Thank you, my Lady.
Mr Ridley, I have a few questions on behalf of the Long Covid groups, on three short topics.
First, Long Covid and the plans in response to the pandemic. Can you help us, please, as to why there was no reference to Long Covid in the Covid winter plan of November 2020 when the DHSC had issued a public statement warning of the risks of Long Covid just a month earlier?
Mr Simon Ridley: I think, I mean, we were focused in the winter strategy about the plan to try to keep the suppression of the virus low enough to reduce Covid harms for everybody that caught it. We did not refer to Long Covid specifically. I don’t recall the extent to which there was a sort of – a kind of clear and agreed definition of Long Covid at the – at the time, but we – we were concerned about Covid harms in the round, not just about hospitalisations.
Mr Metzer KC: Yes. I think – I’m not going to go over it, but I think it’s well established and clear from the DHSC about Long Covid generally. But do you agree that people, primarily the young, still needed to know that there was an indiscriminate risk of long-term harm from Covid-19?
Mr Simon Ridley: Yeah, I think it’s important that people knew their – the risk they could face from catching Covid-19. We sought to communicate that through a number of means, including the work around the clinically vulnerable, which we were – I mean, that was driven by the – by medics and that changed in the winter plan. We adapted that to include some new – some new groups to improve that – that – the communication of that risk.
Mr Metzer KC: Would you accept there was a failing by not referring to Long Covid so that people could know and seek appropriate treatment if they had long-term symptoms?
Mr Simon Ridley: I don’t know whether there was a failing in that. We were, as I say, seeking to put in place the policies to keep the level of the virus under – under control, and I think there was a lot of communication about the potential risks to Covid albeit that we weren’t discussing Long Covid in and of its – by that label.
Mr Metzer KC: Secondly, advice given to the Prime Minister on Long Covid. Did the CTF advise the Prime Minister on the risk of Long Covid before January 2021?
Mr Simon Ridley: I’m – I’m not sure that we put specific advice up about Long Covid as a – sort of labelled as such. We were concerned about the risks of high prevalence to those that are most vulnerable.
Mr Metzer KC: Is that an agreement that the CTF didn’t advise him before then?
Mr Simon Ridley: I don’t recall notes from us on Long Covid specifically.
Mr Metzer KC: On 13 April 2021, the CTF produced a detailed paper, In Depth, Long Covid, which covers prevalence of Long Covid, its socioeconomic impacts, including the economic cost of work place absenteeism, and the cost of Long Covid QALYs and its impact on the health system. We don’t need to go to it, the reference is INQ000292660, I’m sure you know of it. Why did the Covid Taskforce produce this paper?
Mr Simon Ridley: So we – I mean, this was a paper that was produced by our data and analysis team, a part of it, which over the course of particularly from sort of I think November/December 2020 onwards did a number of pieces of work in depth on different aspects of Covid and different implications. We did similar bits of work on educational impacts and so on and so forth.
I think the reason we did one on Long Covid at this point was because it was – it was an issue that was coming more towards the forefront. There was also more information and more evidence about it. I think it’s about the same time the ONS have started to collect data on Long Covid and the purpose of us doing these notes in general, including this one, was to pull that information together from across government so that we had the best and most rounded picture of it that we could have to inform future decision-making, which in this case was the opening up from the third lockdown.
Mr Metzer KC: Do you consider that this paper had any impact at all on government discussions on Long Covid?
Mr Simon Ridley: I mean, I would like to think so, yes.
Mr Metzer KC: Can you elaborate at all, can you assist?
Mr Simon Ridley: I mean, I think if you turn to the February roadmap that we published to set out the plans for opening after the third lockdown, I don’t think it refers to Long Covid by name, but we’re very clear about the risk of extended symptoms for a number of people as a result of catching Covid, and that was informing the way in which we wanted to open up and the length of time between steps to make sure we did that in as successful a fashion as possible.
Mr Metzer KC: Do you agree that – Long Covid was known about well before April 2021, wasn’t it?
Mr Simon Ridley: Yes.
Mr Metzer KC: Last area I want to ask you about: Covid-19 dashboards and Long Covid. Why was the data on Long Covid gathered by the DHSC and the ONS excluded from the Covid-19 dashboard?
Mr Simon Ridley: I – I don’t recall that it – that it was fully. I mean, the – the ONS data we got we put through the dashboard. We could only show a portion of the data we had available at any one meeting. I don’t – I don’t think there was a decision to exclude it.
Mr Metzer KC: Well, Mr Ridley, do you agree with me that the data on Long Covid was in fact not part – never featured as part of the Covid-19 dashboard?
Mr Simon Ridley: I honestly can’t recall all the dashboards. You may be – you may be right, but I don’t know.
Mr Metzer KC: On the assumption that is right, do you agree that not feeding this available data on Long Covid into the main Covid-19 dashboard deprived you, the CTF, and thereby the public, of vital information on the prevalence of Long Covid?
Mr Simon Ridley: No, I don’t think I do agree with that. I mean, as we’ve just discussed we’d done an overall evidence and analysis note on Long Covid. The ONS collected Long Covid data. That ONS data was very, very widely available across government, including the taskforce and the Cabinet Office, but across other departments as well, and it was fantastic that the ONS were collecting it.
Mr Metzer KC: Yes, but the absence of available data on Long Covid meant, surely, that there was insufficient information such that that might have meant that Long Covid was not factored into decision-making?
Mr Simon Ridley: As the ONS started to collect data we had more information on Long Covid. I think there was a debate and a degree of a lack of clarity about exactly what Long Covid referred to specifically. There was clarity that there was a risk of long-term sufferance from symptoms for a number of people who caught Covid. We sought to reflect that in the policy we made, particularly through 2021, and the data that was available as a result of the ONS’ work was very widely available.
Mr Metzer KC: More generally, but the available data on Long Covid didn’t feed in, did it, to the Covid-19 dashboard, which was significant?
Mr Simon Ridley: As I say, I don’t recall exactly what was and wasn’t in all of the different dashboard meetings. I think it’s worth saying the Covid-19 dashboard wasn’t, every day, exactly the same set of charts. It was a consistent set of data to help provide a baseline and a bedrock for ministers to have – prime ministers to have a common understanding of where we were, but the data – we couldn’t go through all the available data at every dashboard so we highlighted different things. I’m afraid I haven’t been back through all of them and exactly what we covered when, but the ONS data and other data was there alongside the dashboard and as available to everybody.
Mr Metzer KC: But the DHSC, I’m sure you agree, were producing their own Long Covid dashboard, so the data was available; do you agree?
Mr Simon Ridley: Yes, there was data available, I do agree.
Mr Metzer: Yes, thank you very much indeed, Mr Ridley.
Thank you, my Lady.
Lady Hallett: Thank you, Mr Metzer.
Thank you very much, Mr Ridley, I’m very grateful for you staying as long as you have done.
(The witness withdrew)
Lady Hallett: We’ll break now, I’ve been asked to take a break, and I shall return at 3.05.
(2.53 pm)
(A short break)
(3.05 pm)