Transcript of Module 2 Public Hearing on 09 November 2023
(10.00 am)
Lady Hallett: Mr O’Connor.
Mr O’Connor: Good morning, my Lady.
1. Mr Martin Hewitt
MR MARTIN HEWITT (affirmed).
Questions From Counsel to the Inquiry
Mr O’Connor: Do take a seat. Could you give us your full name, please.
Mr Martin Hewitt: My name is Martin James Hewitt.
Counsel Inquiry: Mr Hewitt, you kindly provided the Inquiry with a witness statement which will come on screen now. You can see it there. We see that it’s a statement in fact headed “Corporate witness statement on behalf of the National Police Chiefs’ Council”, but it is a statement that you made, is it not?
Mr Martin Hewitt: It is.
Counsel Inquiry: In fact, if we look at paragraph 1 of the statement, you explain that you regard this as being, that phrase, a corporate witness statement. If we can look at paragraph 2 of the statement, we can see, I think, what you mean to convey by that term, which is that the information in the statement is drawn firstly from your own knowledge and experience, but also, and perhaps this is why you describe it as a corporate statement, on the basis of material provided by staff within the NPCC and other policing bodies.
So that is the basis on which the statement was drafted, but with that in mind, we don’t need to go to it, but on the final page there is a statement of truth indicating that you believe, on that basis, that the facts contained in the statement are true. Does that remain the position?
Mr Martin Hewitt: That does.
Counsel Inquiry: Thank you.
I’m going to ask you first, Mr Hewitt, a few brief questions about your career. It’s right, isn’t it, that you joined the police, in fact the Kent Police, in 1993?
Mr Martin Hewitt: Correct.
Counsel Inquiry: You transferred to the Metropolitan Police in 2005, and you then remained with the Metropolitan Police and reached the rank of assistant commissioner?
Mr Martin Hewitt: Correct.
Counsel Inquiry: In 2015, is it right that you were appointed the vice chair of the National Police Chiefs’ Council?
Mr Martin Hewitt: Yes. That’s not a full-time role, but it was – there are two vice chairs at any time supporting the full-time chair, so I was one of those two vice chairs, yes.
Counsel Inquiry: And I think it’s right that you served in that capacity for four years, until 2019, so would it be right that you were doing a job at the Metropolitan Police in parallel to your role with the NPCC for that period?
Mr Martin Hewitt: Yes, my main job was on the management board of the Metropolitan Police, but as an aside I also undertook the role of vice chair.
Counsel Inquiry: What was your role with the Metropolitan Police at that time?
Mr Martin Hewitt: So I was an assistant commissioner on the management board, in a number of roles, during that five-year period, but from 2014 through to 2019 I was one of the assistant commissioners there.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes. Then in 2019, you in fact were appointed as the chair of the NPCC, and that is, I think, a full-time role?
Mr Martin Hewitt: That is a full-time role, yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: And you served in that capacity for four years or so, until earlier this year?
Mr Martin Hewitt: Correct.
Counsel Inquiry: When you ceased to be chair of the NPCC, I think it was in the spring of this year, did you in fact at that point retire from the police force?
Mr Martin Hewitt: Indeed, in April this year, that’s correct.
Counsel Inquiry: Thank you.
It will be apparent from that brief history, Mr Hewitt, that you were of course chair of the NPCC for the entire period of the pandemic, and that of course is the time period that I’m going to focus on in my questions to you today.
You provide us with a fair amount of detail about the make-up and the workings of the NPCC in your witness statement, which we’re grateful for and we have in writing. I’m not proposing to go into too much detail now, because, as you also describe in your statement, the NPCC – as indeed so many other institutions in the country – had to act in a very exceptional way during the pandemic; is that right?
Mr Martin Hewitt: That’s correct, yes.
Counsel Inquiry: And so some of the things we’ll be discussing today don’t actually fall very neatly into the type of work that the NPCC does at other times?
Mr Martin Hewitt: One of its core roles is to co-ordinate national activity. Every police service in the UK is legally independent, and the NPCC brings together the interests of the chief officers in all of those organisations, and when there are issues which require national co-ordination, that’s a role that the NPCC undertakes. But it had never taken one to the scale of dealing with Covid-19.
Counsel Inquiry: Let’s just look at that briefly and pick up some of those points you’ve just made.
We can see, we’re looking at paragraph 4 of your report, as you say, as you’ve just described, the NPCC’s sort of core function is as a national co-ordinating body representing all UK police forces, and you mention there the Association of Chief Police Officers, ACPO, which I’m sure many of us can remember from the old days. This is the successor body –
Mr Martin Hewitt: Correct.
Counsel Inquiry: – to ACPO? Then paragraph 5, it’s important to bear in mind, is it not, that the NPCC represents all UK police forces? We, as an inquiry, are a UK Inquiry, we have had a number of issues relating to the other nations, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, of the UK.
It’s right, isn’t it, that policing is a devolved matter in Northern Ireland and Scotland, but does it remain the position that those police forces are represented by part of the NPCC?
Mr Martin Hewitt: They – it is indeed devolved in both those administration – or countries, but they are full, fully participating members of NPCC.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes.
You’ve touched already on the function, in very general terms, of the NPCC, but in summary is it fair to say that it’s one of a group of national bodies designed to provide national leadership and co-ordination to local police forces that all have operational independence?
Mr Martin Hewitt: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: And perhaps of particular importance for present purposes, the NPCC has, as one of its roles, producing national standards, thematic policies and so on, covering a whole range of different policing matters?
Mr Martin Hewitt: And that’s done in conjunction with the College of Policing, so the College of Policing owns standards within policing but works very closely with the NPCC, where we would be – we would be driving where we felt those policies were required. So it’s a – it’s a joint working between the College of Policing and the National Police Chiefs’ Council.
Counsel Inquiry: Just exploring that in a bit more detail, then, is it the role of the NPCC to, as it were, commission the college to work up policies?
Mr Martin Hewitt: Yes. I think that’s a good way of describing it. So NPCC represents all the chief officers. They will obviously be working and thinking about those issues that are most important issues for policing, and when you want policies, and particularly approved practice, which defines how police should do the various things that we do, then that would be worked with the College of Policing.
Counsel Inquiry: Do those policies, and we’ll see some of them today, then, as it were, come back to the NPCC to be signed off or approved?
Mr Martin Hewitt: They would be. The main decision-making body within NPCC, and arguably within policing, is Chief Constables’ Council, so Chief Constables’ Council brings together the chief constable, or, in the London forces, the commissioner from the individual forces, and that’s where, as a body, the service makes its key decisions. That process is run by the National Police Chiefs’ Council and chaired by the chair of NPCC.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes, and that was your role?
Mr Martin Hewitt: That was my role for the four years, yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: For those years, yeah.
Let’s just look at one other dimension of this, if we can, and that’s on page 3 of your statement at paragraph 7. We’ve already referred to the fact that the individual forces have operational independence, and you emphasise in this part of your statement that the NPCC cannot direct forces to act in any particular way; is that right?
Mr Martin Hewitt: Yes, that’s absolutely correct, and I think that is – that is a really important point. The NPCC is not a statutory body, it is an agreement amongst all the chief officers, but in each individual force area, operational direction and control rests with the chief constable and whatever the political governance is in an individual police area, that may be a mayor, it may be a police and crime commissioner, but ultimately that governance and the operational ownership rests with the chief constable.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes. I’m just going to ask you to try and –
Mr Martin Hewitt: Sorry, I will.
Counsel Inquiry: – speak a little more slowly in giving us your answers, Mr Hewitt.
You do discuss in a little detail in your statement the arrangements and procedures that apply where a particular police force or a chief constable decides not to follow the guidance of the NPCC, or the Chief Constables’ Council perhaps.
Can I just ask you whether that is actually of much relevance to us here today? What we’re going to be exploring is the fairly high-level guidance that the NPCC and the college –
Mr Martin Hewitt: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: – provided to police forces during the pandemic, in particular in the context of enforcing Covid regulations.
Mr Martin Hewitt: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: Was there, in fact, any sort of deliberate divergence amongst police forces from that guidance?
Mr Martin Hewitt: No. That refers to the ability for a chief constable to derogate from a decision that was taken at Chief Constables’ Council. That, in normal circumstances, was a very rare occurrence, and in relation to Covid I don’t think it’s relevant for the purposes of what the Inquiry is seeking to understand.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes.
Let’s move on, then, please, Mr Hewitt, to a bit more detail about precisely what the NPCC did during the pandemic. For these purposes, if we can go to page 8 of your statement, paragraph 31, and you there make the point the pandemic “posed a wide range of challenges in every aspect of private and public life”, and you go on to say that was no different for the police:
“… the pandemic [you say] affected every part of our work and every part of the service.”
Was that the position?
Mr Martin Hewitt: Absolutely. It was very clear that there was going to be a policing role in helping the country respond to Covid-19, but before that, during that and after, normal policing activity was still going to carry on, to one extent or another. So for the service it was a question of how we balanced our normal duties and all the other responsibilities with whatever came as a result of the – policing the pandemic.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes, so we can perhaps quite easily imagine that just the normal day-to-day duties of the police, the prevention and detection of crime, the pandemic affected the way in which those duties had to be conducted at every level?
Mr Martin Hewitt: Every single activity that policing undertook was going to be, to some extent, different in the light of whatever we needed to do in relation to the pandemic, yes.
Counsel Inquiry: And you also refer in your statement to a whole extra category of concerns about protecting the health and safety of police officers and, no doubt, people with whom they came into contact from catching Covid during that period?
Mr Martin Hewitt: Yeah, absolutely, from the outset it was going to be very clear that normal policing to one extent or another was going to continue throughout however the country responded, so we had to be thinking very carefully about how we were going to allow that to happen safely for our staff but also for all the people that they were interacting with. And as one of the chief constables put it in one of the early discussions, you know, you can’t police at 2 metres distant; it’s really challenging to do the work that we needed to do in the context of a pandemic.
Counsel Inquiry: So all of that was something that police forces and the NPCC had to think about?
Mr Martin Hewitt: Correct.
Counsel Inquiry: But beyond that, and this takes us to really where I’m going to be focusing, there was also this whole question of the duties of the police as they became to enforce the regulations and other laws around the Covid response?
Mr Martin Hewitt: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: In your – in this same paragraph that we’re looking at, you – I think it’s in that context, looking about seven or eight lines down, that you say:
“In addition … the provisions of the Coronavirus Act … and [the] related … Regulations led the police service into [your words] public health policing, which was largely uncharted territory.”
Can you just expand on that term of “public health policing”?
Mr Martin Hewitt: Policing traditionally would be in relation to dealing with crime and criminality and safety in that sense, and we did not have experience of policing in this regard, and I think it’s important to make the point about the use of the word “enforcement”. What we were really talking about was trying to achieve compliance with whatever the – the regulations were there to keep people safe, to reduce the transmission of the virus, to keep people safe, and our role was to try to achieve – play a role in achieving compliance with those regulations.
So it was – it was a very new area. It was evident, as we were thinking about how we were going to have to respond to this, that was going to clash with our normal way of operating as the police service in this country, and I particularly recall being struck by the images in Italy where you were seeing villages and towns literally encircled by armed carabinieri stopping people going in and out. So we were very focused on: how do we conduct policing support in a health crisis that is consistent with the way that we seek to police ordinarily, and those were the kind of questions that we were wrestling with as we prepared to deal with whatever came.
Counsel Inquiry: One can obviously see that this was a new territory –
Mr Martin Hewitt: Entirely.
Counsel Inquiry: – but I just want to press you on quite how different it was. I mean, as perhaps we’ll come to see, would it be fair to say that many of the principles, much of the training that the police already had in public order matters, in community policing, were not that far distant from the type of approach needed during the pandemic?
Mr Martin Hewitt: Of course we drew throughout the pandemic on the skills that we already had in the way that we operated in ordinary circumstances. The difference was the fact that we were now – so in the first instance, any of those things that you referred to were now having to happen in a very different context, where the individuals that we were dealing with may or may not have been carrying the virus.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes.
Mr Martin Hewitt: Our officers were having to be considering their own safety, and potentially they could be carrying the virus. So you’ve suddenly got a very different dimension there. But the other area that I think perhaps is what was in my mind, when we talked about uncharted territory, was looking at the other countries where the virus had spread ahead of this country, you could see the kind of measures that were being taken were measures that, as far as I’m aware, in policing terms, nothing like that had happened since the Second World War. So we were going to be into positions where we were going to be imposing on people’s liberty and movement and their lives in a way that was totally out of our experience at that point in time.
Counsel Inquiry: Thank you. It’s here, I think I mentioned this earlier, that you refer to what you were facing as an “unprecedented situation calling for an unprecedented response”, and the response which the NPCC gave to this situation, you named, did you not, Operation Talla?
Mr Martin Hewitt: Correct.
Counsel Inquiry: We can see that if we go over to the next page of your statement, please, paragraph 9. You there refer to Operation Talla. If we can go on to paragraph 10 – sorry, I meant paragraph 33.
You emphasise later in the statement, and in fact this is something we’ve already discussed, that the NPCC has no operational function, and you are, are you not, emphasising here again that Operation Talla provided guidance but no more than that to the individual police forces?
Mr Martin Hewitt: I think as well as guidance perhaps the way I would describe it was as co-ordination, and co-ordination at a national level. It was very apparent, as we were watching coronavirus spread westwards, that this was going to be a critical incident in – unlike any that I had – and I’ve dealt with a number of critical incidents, as you might imagine, over my career.
Some real differences that I think are important: this was going to affect every single square metre of the United Kingdom, which is unusual. It – we had no sense of the timeline of how long this operation was going to have to run for. And perhaps most importantly as well, it was a critical incident that it was obvious from the beginning was going to engage every part of government, because every part of government was going to have to work. And on that basis, it just seemed to me that we needed to have a co-ordinated response from the police service, across all of those police organisations, working into and with government in – so that we were able to provide our response accordingly.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes. This may be a slightly academic point, you were, as we’ve established, chair of the NPCC at this time; did you have a sort of designated role in Operation Talla or was it simply that in practice, in your role as chair, you were very heavily involved?
Mr Martin Hewitt: No, I had a designated role. I took the lead for – so I was what we would call the gold commander for Operation Talla. I pulled all the chief constables together in the early – very early March, and had the discussion to say: this is going to require national co-ordination.
As I said in my statement, we had undertaken a similar process the previous December during the election, the general election, in terms of providing candidate security across the country, because there were concerns at that stage. So I pulled the chiefs together and said, “We need to do this and we will run this from the centre”, and that I would take the gold role.
Counsel Inquiry: Just a couple of further points about the way in which the operation worked. If we look at paragraph 34, we’ve talked already about the communication between forces, encouraging co-operation, but you also refer there to liaison with the government.
Mr Martin Hewitt: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: Which was another role that Operation Talla played. Can you expand on that for us, please?
Mr Martin Hewitt: So one of my key roles pre-Covid was to be the sort of chief officer representative into the Home Office, and particularly working with the Home Secretary and senior officials, and it was evident that we were going to need to be in a position to work as effectively as we could with government as the pandemic and all the measures rolled through. So we worked incredibly closely, and the team in Op Talla worked very closely with the team sitting in the Home Office that were managing the Home Office response in – for central government for the pandemic.
Counsel Inquiry: We will come to talk about the regulations and how they were drafted and so on, but I don’t think it was the Home Office, in fact, that was responsible for drafting those regulations. Was it the DHSC?
Mr Martin Hewitt: It was DHSC, yes.
Counsel Inquiry: Did Operation Talla also have links into the DHSC or did you have to go via the Home Office?
Mr Martin Hewitt: We – we did the vast majority of the work that we did, and I think quite properly, through the Home Office. So the working relationship there was incredibly strong. And latterly, and after – I was involved in a particular meeting in the Cabinet Office, I think in the September of 2020, where at that point we did then get some access, as the police service, to some of the DHSC data. At that stage we were moving into tiers and to local lockdowns, and we felt at that stage that – understanding some of that localised data, so we were able to take part in DHSC meetings. But up to that point and primarily throughout the pandemic, our route in was through the Home Office.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes. Well, I’ll come back to probably ask you a little more about that when we are talking about the regulations.
Just to finish off this part of the statement, if we can look at paragraph 35, please.
We see there a reference again to Operation Talla having application for all forces England, but also Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. We’ve already touched on the fact that policing is a devolved matter in Scotland and Northern Ireland. Did the Scottish and Northern Irish police forces in fact simply use the guidance documents that were promulgated by the NPCC, or did they adopt a slightly different approach?
Mr Martin Hewitt: They – in – they were, really important to say, they were from a policing perspective, very fully part and linked to Operation Talla. So in all of the various meeting processes they were represented there, and all of the guidance that was provided in England and Wales was shared with Northern Ireland and with Scotland, and in some cases they would – they would obviously utilise what was in our guidance but they did produce their own guidance, but it very rarely differed in any significant way from the guidance that we were producing. Because one of the other points that I think is important, we ran this as a UK police response, despite the fact that for a significant part of the pandemic the legislation and the regulations in the four countries differed to one extent or another.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes, and that’s a point we’ll come back to.
Can I turn now, please, Mr Hewitt, and ask you a little bit more about the particular powers and the legal framework for the enforcement exercise?
Mr Martin Hewitt: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: To do this, perhaps we could call up on screen – that’s it, INQ000099972. This, I think, is a guidance note or – I don’t know if that’s the correct term – produced by the NPCC. We can see it’s also badged with the College of Policing at the top there. I think it’s right to say this was produced fairly early in the pandemic in April –
Mr Martin Hewitt: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: – I think it was.
Is this, Mr Hewitt, typical of the type of document that was provided during the pandemic?
Mr Martin Hewitt: That is relatively typical. So this document, and I think we may come on to look at the document around the “Four Es”, but the challenge that we had, if you imagine, across all of the UK, 140,000-something police officers who were going to be out in the communities and doing what we were asked to do, was how we found a way to, as effectively as possible, provide the information that those officers required to go and do their job safely and properly and to achieve the objectives that we were setting. So there was an enormous effort placed in producing very clear, easily understandable guidance that would go out, obviously in this sort of form but through all the electronic devices that officers carried, so that people had access to the information they needed to have at any given time.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes. So you’re not – you didn’t see it as your role to provide sort of lengthy and wordy guidance documents to the chief constables and leave it to them to talk to their staff; you were trying to draft documents that would go straight to being used on the ground?
Mr Martin Hewitt: My experience over many decades is that lengthy documents were not going to be terribly helpful for the officers on the ground, and that whilst we shared everything, and I met very regularly with all the chief constables, the challenge in, if you like, contracting that out to them was that you wouldn’t get the consistency, and what we were aiming for was to try to get as much consistency as was possible, again against the backdrop often of different regulations in different countries.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes.
Well, just looking at the detail for a moment, there is, first of all, a distinction on this leaflet drawn between number 1, which is the police powers under the Coronavirus Act –
Mr Martin Hewitt: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: – and number 2, which is the role of the police in enforcing or, to use your term, “ensuring compliance” –
Mr Martin Hewitt: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: – with coronavirus regulations.
Mr Martin Hewitt: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: Just looking at the Act, first of all, there is there described a power to direct people to be tested for coronavirus and a power to enforce medical directions. Was that in fact a power that the police found themselves exercising very much during the course of the pandemic?
Mr Martin Hewitt: In a very limited way indeed, in a very limited way.
Counsel Inquiry: We can see from the paragraph at the bottom of the column that it, in any event, was a power that had to be exercised in consultation with a public health officer, which was presumably one reason why it –
Mr Martin Hewitt: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: – wasn’t much used in practice?
Mr Martin Hewitt: And I think it’s probably helpful: one of the – always one of the challenges with policing on the ground is achieving the level of certainty around exactly what – and I think if you take that final paragraph there that’s highlighted in red, there is so much in there that is open to – open to interpretation, that that makes that a very, very difficult power for anyone to confidently – to confidently use on the street.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes. But as it happens, as it turned out in fact, perhaps partly for that reason –
Mr Martin Hewitt: Correct.
Counsel Inquiry: – but in any event, it wasn’t a power that really featured –
Mr Martin Hewitt: No.
Counsel Inquiry: – during the course of the pandemic.
Mr Martin Hewitt: I agree.
Counsel Inquiry: But that is to be contrasted, is it not, with the powers in the second column of this note, the power, the duty to enforce the various different regulations made relating to the pandemic? There are just three described here, and we bear in mind that this document dates from April –
Mr Martin Hewitt: Early on.
Counsel Inquiry: – 2020, but it’s right, isn’t it, and we will come to discuss that over the course of the following 12 months, 18 months, there was a proliferation of similar regulations made which the police –
Mr Martin Hewitt: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: – were required to consider?
Mr Martin Hewitt: Correct.
Counsel Inquiry: When that happened, were further versions of this document produced?
Mr Martin Hewitt: Yes. The process – that process that went through – and I think by my reckoning there was something over 140 changes during the period, where that was either a minor change or a significant change that came out – the process that was then undertaken was that we would receive that – and we may come on to talk about this in a bit more detail – we would receive that and then provide operational guidance out to forces to allow them to have the best understanding they could of how those powers were – the powers that were enacted at that particular point in time. And that was, as you would imagine, a rolling process as things changed and were superseded.
So it was a – pretty much a seven-day a week process to keep us up to speed and ensure – and, of course, we have to bear in mind that there would often be differences in different countries, and then, at various stages later, where we ended up in tiers and in local lockdowns, even within an individual police force area you would have different regulations being in play at the same time –
Counsel Inquiry: Yes.
Mr Martin Hewitt: – which created all sorts of challenges, as you might imagine, for policing on the ground.
Counsel Inquiry: I was going to ask you about that. So when it did – when one did get to the stage of different regulations being –
Mr Martin Hewitt: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: – made, let’s say, in Scotland or, as you say, later on, particularly with the tiering structure, different regulations within different parts of the country, was it still your role to try and draft, with the college, documents like this which you would send to the local police forces?
Mr Martin Hewitt: And they – but they would be clearly more specific and related directly to individual areas. And then within individual police forces they would have to be – they would have to be managing those processes themselves as well, because it did get incredibly complex at times.
Counsel Inquiry: Just moving on as far as this document is concerned, we’ve looked at column 1 and column 2; they were both legal duties, legal matters for the police to enforce. On the third column, you refer to something different, which is government guidance. Again, this is a point we’ll come back to, but the message is given here, it seems, that police officers need to be aware that guidance is not the law and they should bear that in mind in enforcing in particular regulations?
Mr Martin Hewitt: That was an incredibly important point, and remained – and I’m sure we will talk more about that, but we police to the law, and I think the challenge at times where things that were guidance were being spoken about in a way that suggested they were a regulation was a real challenge for the service.
Counsel Inquiry: Just a couple more short points on this document.
First of all, we can see both at the bottom of column 1 and also at the bottom of column 2 a note that the powers that are being discussed in each of those columns also apply to children. That was obviously the case. I’m going to come back and ask you further questions about that in due course. But was this – it clearly was something that you thought was important to flag to officers?
Mr Martin Hewitt: Absolutely. I think it was – we needed to try – with the regulations that we had we needed to be as clear as possible. So this was always an exercise in trying to reduce the question marks in the minds of the officer on the ground, because importantly, as I think we’ll come on to talk about, in our “Four Es” approach, the second E, which was about explain to the member of the public that you’re talking, that can obviously only be done if the officer, you know, his or herself understands the regulations at that point in time, which was very challenging as things progressed.
Counsel Inquiry: That was the first point.
The second point really goes back to a point you made about, in the context of the power, the duty under the Act relating to directing people to be tested. But it applies, does it not, to the second column as well in the sense that the – what police officers were being asked to do here involved them exercising a very great degree of discretion. I mean, one can contrast it perhaps with a straightforward prevention or detection of crime issue, if they see someone shoplifting, they take action –
Mr Martin Hewitt: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: – that it’s really a binary thing. Here their task was much more complicated.
Mr Martin Hewitt: I think it is fair to say that in everyday policing, pre-coronavirus, post coronavirus, police officers on the ground have discretion, and that’s the right – I think the right way that we operate: they police to the law but they have discretion on the ground.
What this did was bring into play a whole range of situations that were utterly different from your shoplifter example, where, you know, the crime is the crime and most people would understand that. So it took it into a very different space.
And if I might, just one other thing that I think is important about the second box there is where it mentions Trading Standards and local authorities. I think throughout the pandemic, I had a – some sense of frustration at times that whenever, politically, people were talking about “enforcement”, that automatically equalled the police, and the reality was this was about achieving compliance with the regulations which were there to protect people. This calls out Trading Standards and local authorities, but in other cases, for example, there were loads of businesses – the work that was done within supermarkets by the staff to enforce, if you like, compliance with the regulations, and I think it is important that we don’t – there was frustration at times from my perspective that “enforcement” automatically equalled the police, when it was really about a much broader effort to achieve compliance.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes.
Well, that complexity, the novelty of what the police officers were being asked to do, was something that, is this right, you sought to address by providing them with the guidance we see in the bottom right-hand corner of the –
Mr Martin Hewitt: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: – box, the “Engage, Explain, Encourage, Enforce” guidance?
Mr Martin Hewitt: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: That is something that we can see addressed more fully in another document, if we could go to that, please, INQ000099936.
Mr Hewitt, we see there the “Four Es”, as I think they’re referred to in your statement, and I think became fairly commonly described?
Mr Martin Hewitt: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: I don’t want to read this document out or to go through it in fine detail, but can you just provide us with a summary of the rationale behind this guidance that was provided?
Mr Martin Hewitt: So – so the rationale – as I said earlier, I was very clear in my mind, as were the others – the other chiefs that I was working with, that we – we had to police the pandemic in a way that was consistent with our policing style, a policing style that is a consensual policing style, and we knew that we were going to be going into territory that was highly unusual and the kind of restrictions that were going to be placed on people’s liberty and movement were incredibly severe, and the reason for the “Four Es” was that the approach was very much about: this is about how do you most effectively achieve compliance with the regulation and therefore protect people.
Engaging is entirely what we do, that’s how we do our policing, so it was about talking with people, talking to people.
It was about explanation. We would all I’m sure accept that at various stages throughout the process there was – there was a lack of clarity about what precisely what individual regulations meant, and in some sense I guess there would always be a degree of that, but often it was quite difficult. So we saw the police officers as an opportunity to provide that explanation to people about the rules if they were unclear.
Then really importantly, encouraging them to comply, because that, and this is a really important point from the policing perspective, that was the object of the exercise. The object of the exercise was not to take some action against a person, it was to get the person to comply with the regulation. So the encourage phase was there.
And then only lastly, and as you will see on all the literature, as a last resort, if the person refuses to comply then we would move to an enforcement stage. And that was – this was the piece of guidance that we put out and remained throughout, and was really important, because it – we always took it back to that being the point.
And it’s another, I think, important point for the Inquiry to understand, is: when people talk about the level of enforcement, they tend to go directly to how many fixed penalty tickets were issued, and there is a categoric number for that; what we can’t measure is how many, the hundreds of thousands, if not millions of engagements that happened where the process ended at one of the first three – one of the first three stages there.
We did at some times seek to try to find that, but we weren’t going to impose a bureaucratic burden and try to find that out. But that is really – I think that’s a really important point for the Inquiry to understand, and particularly thinking for any future – any future pandemic response in the country, we, I think, need a more sophisticated sense of thinking what we say – or what we mean when we say the word “enforcement”.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes. One of the ways you put it in your witness statement is to say that success was regarded as the ability to secure maximum compliance without the need to resort to –
Mr Martin Hewitt: Precisely. Precisely that, yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: Again, in terms of thinking to the future, you say that these “Four Es”, that this guidance stayed the course, as it were, it wasn’t changed during the pandemic. Can we take it, therefore, that you regard this as being a success and something that could be copied in future?
Mr Martin Hewitt: Yeah, very strongly. And in a sense it feeds off a process, a five-stage process, and I won’t go into the detail, that policing uses on a day-to-day basis. I mean, I think some people would have the assumption you start from zero to arresting, but there is a whole process that goes through, and I would very strongly suggest that this approach, for any body that is involved in – and it will not just be the police, in trying to achieve compliance with a series of safety regulations, this is the approach that should be, that should be adopted.
Counsel Inquiry: You’ve mentioned this point and, as it were, encouraged us to bear in mind the enormous number of engagements that police officers would have had with members of the public during the pandemic, and that sort of unknowable number of those engagements that ended with one of the earlier Es –
Mr Martin Hewitt: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: – without there being any need to issue a fixed penalty notice. But it must be right, mustn’t it, that – and it really goes to the point about the breadth of the discretion – that different officers will have had a slightly different or perhaps a very different approach to when it was appropriate to issue a fixed penalty notice –
Mr Martin Hewitt: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: – and, beyond that, there may have been different practices, different police forces or different police stations?
Mr Martin Hewitt: Yes, I think that’s absolutely right, there will always be that officer discretion, and I don’t think it’s particularly controversial to say that. Obviously I’m sure at times some officers didn’t get, you know, didn’t get that right. But we were – everyone was very clear. And of course, again, I think another really important point about policing, policing is always undertaken in its particular context, and that context will be different in different parts of the country, or even different parts within individual police force areas. It will be different as the pandemic progressed and we saw the different levels of regulation, the sort of – the local regulations. It will be different again, as we saw, those areas – because some areas stayed within a lockdown arrangement for much longer than others, so one has to accept that there will have been a degree of lockdown fatigue in those areas, which is inevitably going to alter the interaction that happens between that member of the public and that police officer.
So we live with that all the time, but I think it – particularly focused in unusual regulations like this.
Counsel Inquiry: One of the reasons I asked you about that sort of divergence, if you like –
Mr Martin Hewitt: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: – is that we’ll come to look at the statistics which, in the way of statistics, are very sort of black and white.
Mr Martin Hewitt: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: I want to ask you whether, when we do look at those, we really do need to bear in mind that there may have been quite considerable difference in practice in the country or not. You’ve explained that your aim was to achieve a level of consistency across the country.
Mr Martin Hewitt: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: Can you help us with whether at different stages of the pandemic perhaps you felt that you weren’t – you really weren’t achieving that and different forces within the country seemed to be having a very different approach to this sort of escalation through these Es or not?
Mr Martin Hewitt: Yeah, I’m not sure I would, I’m not sure I would characterise it as not achieving it. I think what I would say, there were – undoubtedly at different times during the pandemic different forces were faced with a different, with a different challenge.
So perhaps, if I can give one illustration, in the early part of the pandemic and the data that you – that we will come on to later referred to very high levels of enforcement in areas that might be described as kind of beauty spot areas, so in Cumbria, in the Lake District, in North Yorkshire, down in the southwest, and that was a phenomenon that was at the point where people could go out to do some exercise, people were travelling in some cases hundreds of miles to go to another part of the country, to a nice – to a beautiful part of the country to undertake that.
So that is what it is, and we can, I guess, talk about the lack of specificity in some of the regulations. But if you put yourself into the place of the chief constable in Cumbria, and I’ll use Cumbria as an example, the chief constable there has a community that is attempting to comply and to protect themselves, and are quite rightly getting quite angry about the fact that what they are seeing is lots of people from other parts of the country coming into those communities when they are – they are abiding by all the rules. That presents a real pressure in to that chief constable, because, as I’ve said before, however long the pandemic was going to go on, we were going to still carry on policing after that pandemic, and that really came to a – it kind of came to some of the behavioural science that we got involved in early on, and particularly this theory of – this concept of othering. And in terms of people’s preparedness to comply, it is eroded when I think that the other person over there is having an easier time than me.
And this particularly became relevant when we started to get local lockdowns and in some places where you would have, literally on opposite sides of the road, different regulations for people. But I think that became quite a feature – if you talk about those beauty spot areas, where people were saying, “We are doing this, we are not moving, we are staying local, and these people are coming in and potentially putting us at risk”, and that puts a pressure on policing, and I think those pressures were being responded to.
So I think it was less that we weren’t getting the message but whatever the message has to be dealt with in the individual and specific context at that moment in time in a particular place.
Lady Hallett: Can you slow down a bit, Mr Hewitt.
Mr Martin Hewitt: I beg your pardon.
Lady Hallett: Don’t worry, (unclear).
Mr O’Connor: Mr Hewitt, I’m going to move on and focus on the question of the challenges in providing effective guidance in relation to –
Mr Martin Hewitt: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: – the regulations, given the way in which they developed.
Lady Hallett: Just before you do that, Mr O’Connor, I’m sorry to interrupt.
You said earlier, Mr Hewitt, that the regulations were drafted by the Department of Health and Social Care; do you know whether any police officers were consulted, given the problems you’ve said with trying to enforce regulations that – some of them I’ve never even heard of, the ability to enforce a test. I’d be surprised if that was used at all, was it? You said “limited”, but I wonder if there is any example.
Mr Martin Hewitt: I doubt there – I didn’t know any specifically, but I doubt it very much, my Lady.
Lady Hallett: But we all know, those of us who have been involved in the criminal justice system, that regulations, Acts that create offences with penal consequences have to be clear.
Mr Martin Hewitt: Correct.
Lady Hallett: So did anybody consult your organisation or, I don’t know, judges or lawyers as to the content of these regulations or the Act?
Mr Martin Hewitt: My Lady, in relation to judges and lawyers, I can’t answer.
Lady Hallett: Obviously.
Mr Martin Hewitt: There were a limited number of occasions where meetings were being held to make decisions where I was able to be present to give a police – what would the implications be from a policing perspective. In the vast majority of cases where there was any discussion going on in central government, we were feeding that vicariously through the Home Office.
And I have to say the relationship that my team had with the Home Office team was exceptionally good, and they absolutely understood the challenges that we were facing, and they were often our advocate.
Lady Hallett: They were used to it.
Mr Martin Hewitt: And they were used to it. And they understood that. And I have to say, on a number of occasions where I wasn’t able to be at the meetings, I was absolutely assured subsequently that the Home Secretary at the time had very strongly pressed the position that the position was – you know, the policing implications. And I think, really importantly as well, not just the policing implications for dealing with this particular regulation, but the policing implications more broadly for how we police our communities, because the rest of policing was still going on to one extent or another.
So I think it certainly was one of our frustrations that we were not able to be in at an earlier stage to suggest – there were times where we did get the opportunity, but I would argue if this happened again and there was clearly going to have to be an enforcement aspect to that, getting those people in that ultimately would have the primary responsibility for that to be discussing how this thing moves forward would seem to me to make sense.
Lady Hallett: I for one would certainly agree.
As I say, going back to – I think it’s the previous page – the power to direct a test, (a) is an extraordinary power to –
Mr Martin Hewitt: Correct.
Lady Hallett: I shouldn’t be one to criticise our elected representatives, but it is, I mean – and I can’t see the purpose. I see an awful lot, as you said, of uncertainties, reasonable grounds, whether it was impractical, having to have a public health officer, and there are so many reasons why that is a bad piece of legislation.
Mr Martin Hewitt: Yes.
Lady Hallett: Sorry, again, I shouldn’t criticise, but I am going to.
Mr Martin Hewitt: But, my Lady, to just view that from a very – from a very practical policing point of view –
Lady Hallett: That’s what I’m thinking of –
Mr Martin Hewitt: How on earth one forms a reasonable ground to suggest that somebody has or may be affected with a virus that you can’t see seems to me to be quite a challenge in a practical sense.
Lady Hallett: Sorry, I interrupted, Mr O’Connor, but I think that it is something we need to go into, about whether, if we have another pandemic, or when we have another pandemic, you have on the books ready to go legislation that is better than this.
Mr O’Connor: My Lady.
Can I, Mr Hewitt, take you back to the first question you were asked by my Lady, about consultation, and perhaps just take us out of the pandemic situation for just a moment.
In normal times, were a government department proposing a piece of secondary legislation, a regulation, which one could see the police would be involved in enforcing, would you expect there to be consultation? Perhaps that would be one of the functions of the NPCC, to engage and be involved in discussions about the drafting of a regulation such as that?
Mr Martin Hewitt: Yes, that definitely would be the case and that is the case in normal circumstances, and that would work again through the Home Office, so the teams in the Home Office that would be – the Home Office officials that would be working on any legislative proposal would be working with the respective – the respective people within NPCC. And perhaps – I know we didn’t, if I may, not cover all of NPCC, but whilst I was the chair, and had a small team around me, the way that the NPCC operates is that all the areas, the key areas of policing will have a lead person, who will be an existing chief constable, so he or she will do their job but they will be the lead for a particular issue, and they would have people working with them, and we would be intimately engaged with the teams within the Home Office that were …
Now, of course in the coronavirus scenario that was all happening at a rapid speed, but I still think the lack of an ability for us directly to be able to give an input around the – quite frankly just the sheer practical achievement, would certainly be something that I would suggest is helpful going forward.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes.
If we can look at page 20 of your witness statement, paragraph 81, it’s there that you really identify this issue and you say that sometimes the notice period that you had of regulations being changed was only a few hours, therefore, perhaps obviously, no opportunity to engage at all in how that regulation might be drafted?
Mr Martin Hewitt: No.
Counsel Inquiry: And of course, as you’ve already mentioned, these are not normal times, and there might be very good reasons to need to change regulations quickly. But with your experience over the pandemic, do you think that more could have been done to arrange systems so that police input could have been more effectively or simply provided in the drafting and the thinking behind –
Mr Martin Hewitt: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: – these regulations?
Mr Martin Hewitt: I think more should have been done, and I think I would extend that also to actually more Home Office involvement directly as well, because my recollection was that on occasion where legislation or regulations would emerge, even the Home Office team seemed quite surprised.
And – and we put it there in hours – perhaps the best example, there was a regulation that was going to change at one minute past midnight on a particular day, and we received the signed off regulation, signed off by the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, at 11.45, so we had precisely 16 minutes. The process that we then undertook, not in that instance, but in all instances when the regulation, the signed off regulation arrived, we would then look at that, and particularly the team that were working with us from the College of Policing would work through, work through to provide the operational briefing documents that we would then send out. Those documents had to be translated into Welsh for Wales and we would then share those documents. But in that particular example where we had 16 minutes, I was – had a conversation and then was very clear with the Home Secretary at the time that we would not be enforcing that regulation on that day and it was going to take us probably, and I can’t remember how long it did, but probably 24 or 36 hours to actually get us to a place where I was confident that police officers out there knew what they needed to do.
And of course the challenge that then came with that, of course, a new regulation comes and you – at one minute past midnight and you would then get to 7 o’clock the next morning and the round of people spinning round the TV and radio studios would be talking about this, and I would be then having to go and respond and, at times, make it very clear that we weren’t – that will not be getting enforced immediately, because it was unfair to put the officers in a position where they didn’t understand precisely what they were supposed to be doing.
Counsel Inquiry: So that’s one category of challenge, which is simply the lack of earlier involvement from your teams and then the timing, similar point, the fact that –
Mr Martin Hewitt: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: – if you hadn’t had involvement you might even not have had notice of it and the timing issues with providing the guidance.
If we move on in your statement to paragraph 82, you there describe a different sort of challenge, which is about the substance of the regulations. In fact, in the first sentence there, perhaps you identify two different similar points. One is a difficulty where the regulations lack clarity or specificity in themselves, and secondly, or possibly additionally in some cases, where the guidance issued by the government about the regulation or government messaging is inconsistent with or goes beyond what the –
Mr Martin Hewitt: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: – regulation actually says.
In paragraphs 83 through to 85, you provide us with a sort of a worked example of some of these problems as they emerged, in fact in relation to one of those very early regulations, one of the ones we saw on that document, the regulation which, as it were, provided the legal backbone to the first lockdown, the regulation making it unlawful to leave your home without a reasonable excuse –
Mr Martin Hewitt: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: – in March 2020.
If we go on to paragraph 84, there you address the issue of what a reasonable excuse might be, and really the first point you make is that the regulations themselves contained lists of reasonable excuses but they weren’t the same in the different countries of the UK. Obviously a problem for you?
Mr Martin Hewitt: That was a problem. I think even further than the fact that they weren’t necessarily in – the same in the different countries, but even just the lack there, as I kind of point to there, any specifics, it just left a great deal for an individual – so on the first point, confusing for an individual to understand what he or she was in fact able to do, but also then created – and this point here about the lack of any specifics on how far you could travel to go and have your exercise takes me back to the example I gave earlier about the beauty spots.
Counsel Inquiry: So vagueness in the regulation, an added layer of confusion relating to the fact that specified reasonable excuses were different amongst the different nations –
Mr Martin Hewitt: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: – of the UK?
Then if we look at paragraph 85, an extra problem, which is the government guidance said something different again. Presumably part of the problem there was that the government guidance may not come at the same time as the regulation, it may develop over time –
Mr Martin Hewitt: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: – which might be a challenge if you’d already, I suppose, published those documents that we were looking at?
Mr Martin Hewitt: Very much so. And one of the real challenges for us was that the language used – and I do understand how challenging it was, but I referred a moment earlier to the sort of morning media round, and on any given day there would be a duty minister who would do the rounds to talk about where the situation was in those, and on many occasions they would – in answer to questions – and I – you know, I understand how challenging those scenarios can be, but in answer to questions they would refer to guidance as if it was regulation or vice versa, and that then would throw a whole degree of confusion out, not just in the public, and – and on a number of occasions I then found myself going and doing the sort of lunchtime media to try to say, “No, in fact that’s not – that’s not illegal, that’s the guidance says you should”.
So I do understand how challenging it was, and it did change quite regularly, but it was incredibly unhelpful – well, (a) I think unhelpful for members of the public to understand, because the vast majority of members of the public, it seemed to me, did not want to breach the regulations, did not want to be putting themselves in jeopardy, but it was incredibly confusing to understand. And then, of course, it takes you back into that othering point where people were saying, “Well, wait a minute, everyone seems to be now doing that so it’s probably okay for me to do that”, and that was really difficult.
Counsel Inquiry: Just if I may, going back to the point about the different reasonable excuses specified in the regulations and those excuses being differently specified amongst –
Mr Martin Hewitt: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: – the different countries –
Mr Martin Hewitt: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: – of the UK –
Mr Martin Hewitt: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: – we’ve mentioned a couple of times that the NPCC was a UK body. You’ve mentioned your liaison with the London government. Did you – were you able to take any steps with the – as it were, to try to sort of co-ordinate between the devolved nations and London and try to discourage unnecessary variation amongst the regulations?
Mr Martin Hewitt: It – it was not our position to be – to be trying to influence, directly influence the regulations. Through the – through the chief constable in Northern Ireland, the chief constable in Scotland and the four chief constables in Wales, they were all obviously working very closely with their devolved administrations and were in a position to influence in – in the way that they influenced in those jurisdictions.
I do think, kind of referring back to my Lady’s question earlier, I think there was probably closer police involvement in Scotland, Northern Ireland and in Wales. But it wasn’t my position to try to directly influence there, it was really through those chief constables with their own – with their own devolved administrations raising the issues that they felt were – but it was a source of frustration to policing throughout that you had that difference.
Clearly, you know, Northern Ireland, their primary border issue was with differences with the Republic. We had relatively limited challenges with Scotland because of the nature of the geography. With Wales there were more challenges with different regulations, different sides of what is essentially an invisible border, and that was very challenging I think for particularly a number of the Welsh forces and the English forces, where you had – where you had different regulations either side of a road.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes.
I want to move our discussion on a little. We’ve talked about the confusion caused by either unclear regulations or –
Mr Martin Hewitt: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: – inconsistent guidance from the government, and you have made the point that you believed that most people wanted to comply, but they needed to be told what compliance meant.
Mr Martin Hewitt: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: Perhaps it’s obvious, but help us with this: the confusion in the regulations and the guidance, was one of its consequences an impact on compliance itself?
Mr Martin Hewitt: Oh, I think definitely. It’s two things, really. The first is people genuinely at times didn’t understand where they particularly – in their particular circumstances, where they fitted. And I think what it then also did, when people felt others – because when we first went into the lockdown in March, it was such an enormous thing, and we can all remember just how empty everywhere was, but of course over a period of time that sort of certainty and that determination inevitably weakens to some extent, and then once you start having all the changes and people are a little confused about the changes, then I think it inevitably starts to erode – erode people’s commitment.
And it really is that sense of, “Well, why are we, me, my household, whoever, complying when we can clearly see that other people aren’t?”
Counsel Inquiry: Yes, and just shifting focus, did it also have an effect on the morale of the police force?
Mr Martin Hewitt: It was – I was incredibly impressed with the morale that was maintained throughout the pandemic by the police service. These officers were out there doing what they were doing in the face of the – in the face of the virus all the time, and got on with that, and we worked incredibly hard to provide them with the right protection and so on.
But nonetheless, it was difficult for their morale because the more interactions with the public became more antagonistic, because people were either just fed up with the regulations or they were fed up that they didn’t feel that everyone else was following the regulations, that then inevitably saps away at the morale of the officers, who are, you know, just trying to do their job in pretty difficult circumstances.
Counsel Inquiry: I’d like to show you briefly, if I can, a newspaper article from February 2021, so the middle of the pandemic. Yes. If we could go to the second page, please.
I know you’re familiar with this article, Mr Hewitt.
Mr Martin Hewitt: Yes, I am, yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: It’s a report of a survey, we can see from the top line, of nearly 12,500 frontline officers, a survey conducted by the Police Federation.
Mr Martin Hewitt: Mm.
Counsel Inquiry: Perhaps the key finding at least that this report conveys is in the second paragraph there, which was that more than seven in ten of those 12,500 officers who had been asked had said that they were unclear and the remainder did not agree or disagree with the question of whether the Covid regulations themselves had been clear and easy to apply.
We see in the paragraph below a man called Mr Apter, the chair of the Police Federation, saying that ministers needed to avoid the same mistakes and mixed messages when agreeing future rules.
If we can scroll down a bit, we can see, yes, just coming on the page now, another quote from him which is, it says:
“Mr Apter said: ‘Given the fact that there have been more than 60 rule changes introduced during the pandemic, it comes as no surprise whatsoever that only 10 per cent of police officers who responded to our survey said they found the Covid-19 rule changes to be clear.”
So that was the small group who had actually positively said they thought it was clear.
Sorry, I meant to mention the paragraph above that as well, sorry, where another finding of this survey was that less than a quarter felt that the strategy, the “Four Es” that we’ve looked at, was effective when enforcing their powers, the inference being that because they are in fact so difficult to explain and to encourage people to use.
Then finally the paragraph below the one we looked at, Mr Apter saying:
“We have been saying from the beginning, clear guidance on what people can and can’t do is needed; otherwise people will inadvertently fall foul of the law or take advantage of the mixed messages.”
A great deal of consistency between what you have been telling us this morning and what Mr Apter has reported there?
Mr Martin Hewitt: Yes. I mean, I could argue statistically with some of the way it was reported, but the fact of the matter, there was no doubt. And this was at a point, and it comes in one of the sections that was highlighted there, this was at the point where there was going to be the easing and this concept of “Super Saturday”, because police officers, being police officers and practical, were kind of recognising where this was likely to go, at the point where you were suddenly going to open up nighttime economy. One of the – perhaps it’s the wrong word, but one of the pluses from the beginning was that the nighttime economy, which is a real challenge for policing, was obviously shut down.
So I think it expressed some of that frustration but it fairly expressed the challenge that officers on the ground were finding in – in how do you go and explain things which were incredibly complex and not very specific at times.
Counsel Inquiry: We’ve already touched on the fact that this Inquiry has to power to make recommendations for the future. We’ve talked, first of all, about the value, the importance of a maximum degree of prior consultation with the police. Would you agree that’s something that is worth considering?
Mr Martin Hewitt: Definitely, I think it is, yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: Does it follow from what we have been discussing about clarity of regulations and confusion, with tension between regulations and guidance, that those are matters that also should be considered in any future pandemic, trying to keep regulations as simple as possible and avoiding conflicting guidance?
Mr Martin Hewitt: Absolutely. And I genuinely do understand the challenge that was presented and I understand and we have all seen the challenge and the debates that were going on between the – you know, the health requirements and the economic requirements and, in some sense, the political requirements, and I do get that, but I think there has to be a greater degree of a systematic process to arrive at changes.
Of course the virus changed over time and we all understand that that would happen, but really trying to anticipate and trying to get to very clear guidance as early as possible and for as long as possible staying with that guidance. Because once it started to change and then once it was really changing quite rapidly and you were getting tiers and you were getting localised, it became incredibly difficult for even a perfectly law-abiding and committed citizen to understand precisely what that meant for them, you know, in their own personal circumstances.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes, and that last point you made was one I was going to raise. You mentioned earlier this point about different sets of regulations being in force in really quite a small area.
Mr Martin Hewitt: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: I think it’s mentioned in your statement that at one point in Greater Manchester there might have been four or five different sets of regulations, different regulations –
Mr Martin Hewitt: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: – in force at the same time. We have heard some evidence about tiering in the last day or so, and does it follow from your angle on this that trying to keep sort of bespoke sets of regulations within relatively small areas to a minimum, if they have to be there at all, is something we should think about for the future?
Mr Martin Hewitt: I definitely think that. And the other really important point is that we talk about these things as if there are tangible boundaries that bound a particular – as you say, within the Greater Manchester area there were a number – I think particularly about the first local lockdown, which was in Leicester, and there is no – there was no tangible boundary that – this particular part, and so you end up in the scenario where literally people on opposite sides of the same road can be in a different set of regulations.
I think – the extent to which that can be minimised I think would definitely allow – most importantly, allow people to understand it and therefore comply more effectively, but from a selfish policing point of view would make it much more straightaway to be able to undertake the policing role.
Mr O’Connor: Yes.
My Lady, I was about to move on to another topic.
Lady Hallett: Certainly. You’re all right to continue, Mr Hewitt? We take a break.
The Witness: At your discretion, my Lady.
Lady Hallett: Thank you. I shall return in 15 minutes.
(11.14 am)
(A short break)
(11.29 am)
Lady Hallett: Mr O’Connor.
Mr O’Connor: Mr Hewitt, I’m going to stick for the moment with the issue of regulations and the police’s role in enforcing them, but I want to move to asking you some particular questions about particular sort of areas in which regulations operated.
First of all, the question of protests and outside gatherings, and then I’ll ask you some questions about that and about how regulations applied to children.
So taking protests first, could we look, please, at paragraphs 87 and 88 of your witness statement.
Thank you very much.
Mr Hewitt, the point you make at this stage of your witness statement, first of all, is that at the outset protest activity was not one of those identified reasonable excuses for being outside the house, but that changed, and that – later in the pandemic that was added as a reasonable excuse. Is that right so right?
Mr Martin Hewitt: That is correct.
Counsel Inquiry: But you explain towards the end of paragraph 87 that it wasn’t the case simply that the regulations said you can be outside as long as you’re attending a protest, it was more complicated than that, and in fact it was only a reasonable excuse to be attending a protest if it was a protest which – and we can see the italics:
“… ‘… would satisfy the requirements of regulation 3 of the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations … whether or not the gathering organiser is subject to those Regulations’ …”
I think going on to paragraph 88 you make two points, which I’ll ask you to expand on. Firstly, that to the police officer on the ground that is a very complicated test to apply when, after all, all he or she is trying to understand is whether someone is entitled to be out of the house or not.
Mr Martin Hewitt: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: And secondly, perhaps given its complexity, this would have been just the sort of regulation that you might want to have been involved in drafting, and you weren’t.
Could you expand on those points for us, please?
Mr Martin Hewitt: So, yes, I would agree with that. I mean, the context is policing protest is in any situation a challenging exercise, in terms of managing the rights of people to protest, the risks involved in that, and the various responsibilities. Trying to do that in – against the backdrop of a pandemic where there are other restrictions was even further more challenging.
And then the italicised section at the end there, this fell to the police, it fell to the police to satisfy these requirements from the Health and Safety at Work Regulations, which we pushed back quite strongly that we had neither the skills nor, quite frankly, the capacity to be – to be making that sort of – that sort of decision.
Counsel Inquiry: As I’m sure we can all remember, you make the point protest is a particularly sensitive and delicate issue for policing anyway –
Mr Martin Hewitt: It is.
Counsel Inquiry: – and we can remember there were various episodes during the pandemic when this became a very difficult issue for the police.
Mr Martin Hewitt: Very. So really the beginning for that was after the awful murder of George Floyd in America and then the subsequent – the subsequent worldwide abhorrence and response to that, then we started to have to deal with the issue of Black Lives Matter protests taking place across the whole – across the whole country, and that really became the sort of crux of the challenges of working – working both within the confines of the pandemic, working with the protests themselves and working with the government in respect of those.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes. Another of the moments during the pandemic when protest became an issue was in the wake of the murder of Sarah Everard –
Mr Martin Hewitt: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: – and I’m sure we’ll all recall the events, the vigil and the protest that was associated with it –
Mr Martin Hewitt: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: – in March 2021. So looking here, that was some time after these regulations that we’re just –
Mr Martin Hewitt: It was.
Counsel Inquiry: – looking at had been implemented, but were they still in force at that time, do you recall?
Mr Martin Hewitt: To my knowledge, they were still in force, yes.
Counsel Inquiry: I want to ask you about a WhatsApp, I’m not going to bring it up on screen, but we’ll hear more about it later, but on that day, that evening in March 2021, which was the evening of the Sarah Everard vigil, there was an exchange between a number of people who worked in Downing Street, including Boris Johnson and some of his advisers, about the developing events. During those exchanges, Lord Frost, who was at that stage a minister of state at the Cabinet Office, observed, and I’m quoting:
“Truth is the rules on outside gatherings are close to unenforceable and are evidently being widely ignored in all kinds of contexts now.”
That from a government minister. Does that reflect your experience?
Mr Martin Hewitt: The – dealing with the protest, whether it was in 2020 or subsequently in 2021, was one of the really key challenges that the police service had to face. As I think I’ve said or alluded to certainly a number of times, whilst we were having to do what we were having to do to support the Covid response, we equally had to see all of that against the backdrop of our broader policing responsibilities and the fact that we would be – carry on policing.
You mentioned earlier about the morale of officers. It’s important for people to understand how that felt for police officers when we are in a pandemic where we are talking about the requirement for people to remain distanced and then our being told to go and police a protest. So we did an enormous amount of work with scientists and others, to really try and understand the safety implications both for the protestors and for the police officers.
I remember one particular meeting where we had a number of the scientists – Professor Van-Tam chaired the meeting to talk about some of the behavioural but particularly the epidemiological elements around the virus, and the strong point that came through was that when you are outside and in the open air, the risks of transmission were much reduced, but we – and I say “we”, me at the centre, but reality, the individual forces, because they ultimately held the operational responsibility – were having to make the decisions about how they would police individual demonstrations of whichever – or individual protests of whichever sort. And those were really challenging for them to do, and particularly with their own staff as well, in that environment.
And so it became a great challenge – it became a great challenge because of the political imperatives around some of the – some of the protest and the activities that took place, and I think throughout there was – there was a confusion around where the competing legislations – well, which of the competing legislations took priority.
Counsel Inquiry: You used the word “confusion”, the word, as we’ve heard, that Lord Frost used or words was “close to unenforceable”.
Mr Martin Hewitt: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: Now, clearly, during the pandemic, you had a job to do and you got on with it in public, but did you use words like that behind closed doors, either about the regulations relating to outside gatherings or other gatherings?
Mr Martin Hewitt: I used very strong words behind closed doors in discussion with Home Office and with the Home Secretary at the time in relation to the situation. And equally it is important to remember – and if we take the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, the overwhelming majority of those were entirely peaceful, entirely peaceful protests where the police played a role that was required to maintain – maintain safety, and in most of the cases the people who were participating themselves were being sensible as well. So – but we were having really very strong conversations about what the expectation was, because again, I guess to reflect, if you like, Lord Frost’s comment in, I guess, the perception of the public, the public would be looking and saying, “The regulation says we can’t do this, and then over here there’s a large number of people doing precisely that”.
So I do, I get the point that he was making in that, and we were having very strong conversations about our role in those particular circumstances.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes.
Let me move on, Mr Hewitt, and ask you about the way in which the regulations touched the lives of children.
First of all, we’ll recall when we looked at that document an hour or so ago the reference to the fact that the various different regulations did apply to children.
Mr Martin Hewitt: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: And we will also recall discussing that sort of central regulation prohibiting people from leaving their homes without reasonable excuse, which came in in March 2020, and then came back at various points –
Mr Martin Hewitt: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: – during the pandemic to enforce lockdowns.
Mr Martin Hewitt: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: Do you think that there was a lack of clarity, either at that early stage of the pandemic or later, around whether this rule prevented children from leaving their house to go and play, or for that matter prevented parents from leaving their house to supervise their children who were playing?
Mr Martin Hewitt: Yeah, I mean, I think there was a lack of clarity, and, you know, we’ve rehearsed that a number of times already, but I think particularly in this instance. It’s important to be really very clear. As I said, earlier, a lot of people equate enforcement with fixed penalty notices, and there was no – we could not and would not give a fixed penalty notice to anyone that was under the age of 18, so that was not in play at all.
But where I reflect around – and it was, I guess, about more broadly about considering the impact of whatever the regulation was on different individuals, and one of the sort of points that I made on a number of occasions was: lockdown is not lockdown to everybody. Lockdown if you live in a three-bedroom house with a garden is one experience, where you have the access to open space quite legitimately whatever the rules, you have space to spread. Lockdown if you are a single parent in a small flat on the ninth floor of a block of flats is a very different experience. And I’ve seen a number of the commentaries that have come in from people talking about how they were with their children and they were then either moved on or told that they couldn’t be where they could be. And, yeah, that – there is no doubt that was a real challenge.
I’m very confident that the police officers were trying to do their best, and, as I say, this did not end up into a penalty area, but I think that clarity about what could be allowed for children – because the concept of going out to have your daily exercise is a very different thing if you’re 4 and 5 years old, it’s not going for a run or going for a walk.
So, again, that was not helpful, and again one of the challenges that puts – that puts the police officers that were on the ground in a very invidious position, where they’re asking and encouraging, and I suspect in almost all cases that encouragement would lead to the parents kind of complying, but that was a very challenging scenario for police officers.
Counsel Inquiry: You’re obviously right to say that police officers weren’t issuing fixed penalty notices to children, but, as you say, the consequence or at least the probable consequence of these regulations may have been that police officers would stop children playing, tell them to go back inside, tell their parents to go back inside?
Mr Martin Hewitt: Undoubtedly.
Counsel Inquiry: Was there guidance to that effect?
Mr Martin Hewitt: Not specifically. I mean, again it’s back to the guidance that we gave and to the “Four Es” approach, and it was about explaining, it was about encouraging. But I – you know, you can only assume that that must have felt incredibly uncomfortable for the officers, but the challenge that they had was this – this was about achieving compliance and it’s really difficult when you start – how many exceptions do you start taking a decision – and I’m sure there will be many occasions where they did make an exception and we never found out or no one ever found out about that, but the kind of stories that you – you – that I’ve seen, where people were moved on from being by a river or in a park. It was just a very challenging position for them to be in.
Counsel Inquiry: There is, of course, a broader question about whether the regulations should have applied to children at all, and the Inquiry has heard evidence that in Scotland –
Mr Martin Hewitt: Scotland.
Counsel Inquiry: – from July, I think it was, in 2020, children under 12 were exempted. That obviously wasn’t a decision for you, but was it something that you discussed with, for example, the Home Office?
Mr Martin Hewitt: We had all discussions around all the various aspects, I mean, it’s important – I either met or spoke with the Home Secretary pretty much every day for the first year of the Inquiry(sic) in one way or another, and we would constantly, through the various meetings that we all had, be discussing those issues, and I would – was aware, clearly, for the change that took place in Scotland. But certainly didn’t – didn’t push, I didn’t feel at any point really that it was my position to be pushing and suggesting. We would have the discussions and then obviously the Home Secretary would be involved in whichever discussions she was involved in at – in the centre.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes. Let me move on, Mr Hewitt, and I want to move on to the question of the disproportionate impact in terms of fixed penalty notices on some groups within society.
Mr Martin Hewitt: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: For these purposes can we look at page 29 of your witness statement, please. Just by way of introduction, there were two reports that –
Mr Martin Hewitt: There were.
Counsel Inquiry: – were commissioned, weren’t there, and we’re going to briefly look at both.of them.
Mr Martin Hewitt: Mm-hm.
Counsel Inquiry: The passage that we see on the screen now is introducing the first of those two reports, is it not?
Mr Martin Hewitt: Yes, it is.
Counsel Inquiry: You state there that during the pandemic – in fact it was at an early stage of the pandemic, was it not?
Mr Martin Hewitt: Very.
Counsel Inquiry: The report we’re talking about was published in July 2020.
Mr Martin Hewitt: Correct.
Counsel Inquiry: I’m not sure I know exactly when it was commissioned, presumably sort of June –
Mr Martin Hewitt: Before that, yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes. We see then you’re describing a report and analysing the fixed penalty notices that had been issued, in a relatively short period of two months between towards the end of March and the end of May of that year, and you indicate that the research was undertaken by someone called Mr Flatly and Ms Currenti from the Government Statistical Service –
Mr Martin Hewitt: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: – and peer reviewed and so on.
Before we bring the report up and have a look at it, what was it that prompted the NPCC to commission this report by these independent people?
Mr Martin Hewitt: So particularly – and I think where the findings that are particularly stark in both the reports is in relation to race and race disproportionality.
I – you know, I started working on the pandemic with sort of 20 years at least of policing experience of dealing with the challenges of the police relationship with minority communities and some of the disproportionality that exists therein, and so as soon as the pandemic started and at the point where it was very obvious that we were going to be into a space of very unusual regulations, it was clear to me that there was going to be an issue in terms of how the policing of that was done in a fair way across all communities and particularly those communities where the relationship with policing was more challenged. So that was the reason.
There were a number of things that we did. The first one was to very quickly initiate this first review that looked, for that two-month period at the very outset, to give us the picture so that we were then able to feed that back to the police forces, so they understood precisely what was going on in their own individual areas. And also importantly, one of the other things that we did at that stage was the creation of an independent ethics committee to work alongside us. I was – it was very clear that we were going to have to be going into territories that were highly unusual and some of those were going to have quite significant ethical challenges. So we pulled together a group, it was chaired by the Bishop of Manchester, and that group met for over a year on a monthly basis picking up the challenges that we presented to them, and they also did a further one later in 2021. But that was the first subject that we took to that group, was the issue around disproportionality in the issuing of the fixed penalty notices, so it was something that was very much in our minds at the outset.
Counsel Inquiry: Is it fair to say, as well as all of those things, that there had been some criticism of the NPCC about the way in which the very, very early statistics relating to disproportionate impact were presented publicly?
Mr Martin Hewitt: Yes, and I would – I would challenge some of that challenge, in the – on the basis that I think people need to understand how difficult it was to set up this system. There was no national system for using fixed penalty notices, we had to create a system from scratch in about 36 hours that allowed us to collate all that information.
And I think the piece that you’re referring to was talking particularly from 27 March through to about mid-April, which was the first sort of four, five – three, four weeks of the pandemic, and at that stage we were – we were running to catch up or to keep up, quite frankly, in terms of not the work that we were doing necessarily but certainly the data to support and understand the work that we were doing.
So we were doing that, but I adopted a position from the very beginning of transparency about the fixed penalty notices that we issued. We produced the data that we produced, and on a monthly basis I held a conference call, and then it became a Teams call, the Crime Reporters Association, which is all of the reporters from both broadcast and print media who look after crime and policing and some of the Home Affairs, I met with them every single month and we went through, in detail, all of the statistics of the operation that we were running.
At the beginning they were very interested in how many police officers are sick and this, that and the other, but then we very quickly got into the fixed penalty notices and particularly any issues of disproportionality, either by the person who had been given the ticket, where that was – you know, not very often age, but a little bit of gender, definitely race, but also the disproportionality between different police force areas.
So we were transparent throughout the process, and we produced this first report – or the first report was produced and – as you say, I think it was 22 or 23 July. That was shared with all chief constables, it was on the NPCC website and it was public. And then we subsequently commissioned the longer –
Counsel Inquiry: Yes.
Mr Martin Hewitt: – report latterly, because these issues were of great concern.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes, all right. Thank you, Mr Hewitt.
I’m not going to get into that very early debate, because of course it was superseded by this report, and as you fairly say that debate really only took place because, from the outset of the pandemic, you did release the figures.
Mr Martin Hewitt: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: And let’s look, then, at the first report, which is document INQ000099940, please, and if we can look at page 3 of it.
I just want to pick up on a couple of points. First of all, we can see from the first paragraph there is that date range there, so a relatively limited –
Mr Martin Hewitt: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: – time period, just two months or so.
And it’s also – if we can look at the whole page, and pick up the first bullet point at the bottom, the authors of the report note that during that two-month period the number of fixed penalty notices issued was relatively low?
Mr Martin Hewitt: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: And we will come to see that later in the pandemic the number of notices rose quite dramatically?
Mr Martin Hewitt: They did, yes.
Counsel Inquiry: So for both those reasons this first report was dealing with a fairly small sample?
Mr Martin Hewitt: It was, indeed, yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: But with that acknowledged, it’s right to say, isn’t it, that the report did demonstrate a disparity in terms of sort of ethnic group –
Mr Martin Hewitt: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: – of those who were receiving fixed penalty notices.
If we can look at the bottom bullet point on this same page, please, what this analysis showed was that for Asian and black people, which is sort of pulled out of the general BAME statistic, they were 1.8 times more likely to receive a notice than white people. That’s the –
Mr Martin Hewitt: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: – sort of headline statistic, is it not?
Mr Martin Hewitt: That is correct.
Counsel Inquiry: And if we can now just go back towards the top of the page – in fact, before we do that, that statistic itself must have prompted some concern for you?
Mr Martin Hewitt: It – absolutely it did. And, as I say, it – it really reinforced the concern that we had in the outset – at the outset, which is why we commissioned the piece of work –
Counsel Inquiry: And just to interrupt you, there are at least two concerns. One is obviously any form of –
Mr Martin Hewitt: Disproportionate –
Counsel Inquiry: – disproportionate impact is something that will mean you want to understand more –
Mr Martin Hewitt: Definitely.
Counsel Inquiry: – and understand whether something is going wrong here, but secondly, any impression of disproportionate impact is something that may well undermine public confidence in this very enforcement process that you’re trying to sustain?
Mr Martin Hewitt: Yeah, entirely. And as importantly, public confidence in policing per se, which was one of the …
But the key point when we got that report was to ensure that that was shared immediately with the police forces, because, as I said before, ultimately it was the police forces in their own area that were out and doing the enforcement.
As the report goes on to say, there was quite a disparity between different police areas, so what we did at that stage was the report was shared with every force individually in the first instance to ensure that they recognised the statistics that were there and that that was a reflection of their activity, and then, in the second instance, for them to address those issues themselves.
And very clearly for every – we touched on it very briefly at the beginning. I created Operation Talla at the centre, but there was a replica of Operation Talla in every single police force, where they had a gold commander, a silver commander, and a structure in terms of how they were going to manage pandemic policing in their area. Every one of those was obviously looking at these issues themselves and in their own context, and the really important point was that it got out there, and they were then able to look and understand: why is this happening here? Is there something about the geography, is there something about the nature of their communities, is there something about the relationship they have with their communities, that was causing the differential? Because whilst you’ve highlighted the differential, you know, the 1.8 there, actually in the body of the report it makes it very clear that that was incredibly different –
Counsel Inquiry: Yes.
Mr Martin Hewitt: – in different force areas –
Counsel Inquiry: Just pausing there, Mr Hewitt. I think it’s important that we’re clear about the limits of your –
Mr Martin Hewitt: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: – capacity here.
Mr Martin Hewitt: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: You’ve commissioned the report, and you’re quite right to say that a thorough reading of the report gives you much more sort of – a much richer picture –
Mr Martin Hewitt: It does.
Counsel Inquiry: – than that simple headline 1.8 figure –
Mr Martin Hewitt: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: – and that can be helpful to the different forces that you sent it to. But did you have a role that went beyond alerting police forces to a problem, for example did you require them to respond to you or to update you with what they were doing, or was that a job for someone else?
Mr Martin Hewitt: No, the forces were always – always responding. The process that I was running was a very regular gold group with – with a range of different groups. There were a number of groups that I was chairing on a weekly basis, looking at specific issues as well.
I referred earlier to the chief officers that would be the lead for particular issues within policing. That was another group that I would engage with, so that wherever there was an issue that we felt needed that very specific focus, and obviously the issues of, you know, race and equality were key, one of those key groups, all of that work would be happening and the forces would be feeding back in. Below my level, the silver group that was operating and meeting on a daily basis would be talking about these very issues.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes.
Mr Martin Hewitt: Because of course the other point is that they were finding their way – you know, quite a lot of the media reporting that would emerge would particularly – every time, every month when I gave the statistics, the media reporting would pick up obviously on any of the – any of the outlying – any of the outlying figures within the statistics.
Counsel Inquiry: I want to just ask you about a couple of paragraphs here. First of all, if we can look at the third paragraph down, starting “disproportionality”, we will recall of course this is an arm’s length report, it states:
“Disproportionality could legitimately result from the fair application of the regulations when sub-groups differ in their observance of the regulations or from an uneven enforcement by the police of the regulations across different sub-groups …”
Mr Martin Hewitt: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: That is a very bold explanation or statement of possible causes of disproportionate impact. But can we take it that you would not have been, and your fellow officers would not have been complacent about this: the second possibility of an uneven enforcement pattern is something that you needed to get to the bottom of, or was it?
Mr Martin Hewitt: And absolutely did. I mean, no complacency whatsoever. And that was really why I’d started making the comment about my experience. These issues are live and real at all times with police leaders, you know, regardless of the pandemic. So they were very clear that that was an issue that needed to be addressed.
There were – there were legitimate reasons why some of the disproportionality would occur because of the nature of the regulations. Some of the examples I gave about people travelling from one area to another area – there will have been – and as the – and I accept it’s not in this particular report, but when we – you know, in the subsequent report, as regulations changed and some – what became some of the flash points for people who weren’t following the regulations, again added to this.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes.
Mr Martin Hewitt: But there was never a point where there was a disregard of the potential that some of this could be bias on the parts of the officers that were doing what they were doing.
Counsel Inquiry: Can I ask you about another paragraph which is on the next page.
Lady Hallett: Mr O’Connor, this is quite a level of detail – it’s a very important issue, of course it is, and there will be a time when I’m going to address this in a great more detail, but I’m just wondering about this level of detail for this module.
Mr O’Connor: My Lady, I have only a few more questions on this topic and I will go briefly to the second report and then –
Lady Hallett: I think we need to move on, I’m afraid.
Mr O’Connor: Yes.
Well, let me, if I may, just ask you one more question about this report –
Mr Martin Hewitt: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: – then I’ll take you to the other one briefly.
It’s at the top of the page. It follows from the bullet point we were just looking at about the 1.8 figure. It says:
“While the context is very different, these disparity rates are lower than for the police power of Stop and Search. The latest published official statistics on Stop and Search showed, for example, the disparity rate for all BAME people was 4.3 …”
Mr Martin Hewitt: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: The context is hugely different, isn’t it?
Mr Martin Hewitt: The context is different, I accept that, but I think – I suspect the reason that the statisticians wanted to put this into the report was they had the same recognition, as I’ve stated myself, that this is an issue that policing lives with all the time.
Stop and search is, if you like, the iconic issue in terms of disproportionality, so I suspect that’s why they wanted to find a reference point for something that was entirely novel in the sense of fixed penalty notices for Covid.
Counsel Inquiry: There wouldn’t be a suggestion that, for example, as long as one kept the disparity rates below stop and search, it wasn’t something to be too worried about?
Mr Martin Hewitt: Well, those were the words of the government statisticians, but I would never accept that, the point that you’ve just made, and we would never and we did not accept that – you know, there was a line here. The objective was, as best we could, with all the – all the issues with the regulations, we could enforce the regulations fairly across the population.
Counsel Inquiry: Just finally, then, if we can complete the story by looking at the second report –
Mr Martin Hewitt: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: – which is … thank you.
If we can go to page 12, this is in the executive summary, the figures here probably – precisely because the data is much richer, are a little bit more –
Mr Martin Hewitt: It is.
Counsel Inquiry: – complicated, but in summary, we look sort of three or four boxes or three or four bullet points down. Do we see that in fact the disparity rates in this report over a much longer period, a period of over a year –
Mr Martin Hewitt: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: – including the same period at the beginning as had been covered by the first report, are in fact more pronounced and so, for example, we’re looking at figures in the region of sort of 2.8, 3.2 and so on?
Mr Martin Hewitt: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: As opposed to the 1.8 that we’d been looking at before?
Mr Martin Hewitt: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: You’ve said that in between the times of these two reports you had been taking steps, you had been discussing with local police forces, trying to improve the position.
Mr Martin Hewitt: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: It looks in fact as though the position had got worse?
Mr Martin Hewitt: Well, I think there’s a number of factors there really. So first off, you’ve got a much longer period of time that’s been looked at. You’ve also got a much broader – if you think back to that first period, that first two-month period, pretty much everyone was indoors and it was incredibly quiet. When you move forward you get the different range of – you get the different range of regulations being in place, some of which actually put you into particularly challenging areas.
I think particularly the period where we were seeing large numbers of illegal music events and parties, this is aligned again with the fatigue that I guess everybody was feeling and particularly younger people were feeling. So we’ve started to see a real incidence, particularly in the big urban areas, of the kind of music parties and large numbers of people deliberately breaching all of the regulations.
You also see, and I – you know, if we mapped across the locations where you ended up with local lockdowns, the locations where you ended up with higher tier regulations remaining in place for longer periods of time, I think often you would look at those and then look at the ethnic breakdown of those groups as well. So that is immediately putting minority ethnic groups directly in contact with the police enforcing regulations.
So I think all of those factors come together. None of that is to suggest any complacency or acceptance of the disproportionality. The really important point was to have a really thorough academic review, and that review sits there now and is part of the Police Race Action Plan that I started in 2020, not related directly to Covid, that still goes on today. So that report is there. So – but I accept the figures, clearly.
Counsel Inquiry: Just finally, then, we’ve spoken about lessons that can be learnt for future pandemics in the context of the clarity of regulations and consultation and so on. In this context, disparities, no doubt one lesson would be that precisely this sort of transparency about the statistics, and the need to keep them under constant review is something that you would recommend. Are there any, briefly if you will, particular points that emerge from this process relating to disparities that you would advance as something that we can learn for the future?
Mr Martin Hewitt: So I think the point about transparency, the police and whoever is undertaking any enforcement activity, there needs to be absolute transparency about that.
I would – having been through the experience once, I would hope that there would be the ability to anticipate where likely problems and challenges will come, particularly around people moving, you know, moving in different places around the country.
And the other place, my Lady, that I would suggest the Inquiry wants to look is that work that is ongoing, and has now been ongoing for over three years in the Police Race Action Plan, will be producing changes and recommendations that will be very relevant to any policing – you know, particularly policing minority communities in any pandemic in the future. So I would certainly suggest a link across to that work that’s being undertaken.
Mr O’Connor: Yes. Thank you very much, Mr Hewitt.
My Lady, those are all the questions I had. There are some questions –
Lady Hallett: There are.
Mr Thomas.
Questions From Professor Thomas KC
Professor Thomas: Assistant Commissioner Hewitt, I represent FEHMO, the Federation of Ethnic Minority Healthcare Organisations.
Now, I’ve only got a handful of questions for you, and I won’t take up too much of your time, but can I just start with a little bit of context for my questions.
We can agree on this, can’t we, that these were unprecedented challenges posed by Covid and the pandemic and that police officers and police forces were having to grapple with a multitude of issues including the enforcement of public health regulations; we can agree on that?
Mr Martin Hewitt: We can agree on that.
Professor Thomas KC: Yes. And we can also agree that police agencies play a crucial role in ensuring compliance with these regulations, often implementing strategies to maintain social order and public safety?
Mr Martin Hewitt: Correct.
Professor Thomas KC: Yes. And you would accept, would you not, that this has to be done in a fair and transparent way without discriminating against certain groups in society?
Mr Martin Hewitt: I agree.
Professor Thomas KC: Yes. However, the pandemic response highlighted disparities in the enforcement of Covid-19 regulations, especially affecting minority ethnic communities?
Mr Martin Hewitt: That’s correct, that’s what I’ve just said to Mr O’Connor.
Professor Thomas KC: Yes. Concerns arose regarding those ethical implications, these disparities, prompting oversight bodies and committees such as the independent ethics committee to address these concerns and guide enforcement agencies in their responses.
So it is in this context that FEHMO seeks to shed a little light on the strategies employed by the law enforcement agencies, especially the National Police Chiefs’ Council, NPCC, in addressing these ethical implications.
Now, the independent ethics committee played a pivotal role during the pandemic, providing valuable guidance, did it not, on addressing these ethical implications –
Mr Martin Hewitt: A number of implications, yes.
Professor Thomas KC: Now, it’s imperative to understand how the committee specifically contributed to addressing any disparities in the enforcement of the Covid-19 regulations, particularly among ethnic minority communities. So here are my questions.
Number one, how did the independent ethics committee actively contribute to addressing the ethical implications arising from disparities in policing and enforcing Covid-19 regulations, specifically concerning ethnic minority communities?
Mr Martin Hewitt: So, the way the process worked, we anticipated from the outset that there would be a number of challenges when we were in, as you described, this kind of novel situation. So we needed a group that were able to provide a very independent and a very diverse – in my statement I think it lists the members of that group, an incredibly diverse challenge into me and those that were taking the very difficult decisions that we needed to take as we went through.
We would pose questions – they met monthly. From July 2020 they met every month through till July 2021, and they did one exceptional meeting in December of 2021, and those groups would have a free ranging challenging discussion about not only what we were – often what we were raising were questions of “We are now facing this challenge and we are thinking we might go this way, that way, what do you think?” So they would be able to challenge that. They would then feed in their views.
On the point of race disparity and the FPNs, to my recollection that came back on four occasions. It was the – on the first occasion it was the subject we wanted to talk about. And I’m pretty sure it came back at least three or four occasions subsequently because the ethics committee themselves wanted to come back and kind of challenge and test where were we, what was happening.
They were obviously aware that we had commissioned the first report and we reported on the first report pretty much just as they came into existence, so that started that initial conversation, and then they were aware that we commissioned the second piece of work as well.
Whatever came out of their meetings, which were fully minuted, would then feed into our structures, and would be shared and pushed out in the way that we were pushing out all of the information about how we did what we did. And then where that also went, and I haven’t mentioned it thus far at all, is we set up a number of knowledge-sharing, learning processes throughout the whole pandemic, very early on we created a specific piece of work to learning the lessons going forward.
So all of the outcomes from the ethics committee and all the other work that was going on would feed into those as well, which would find its way out into forces, either in terms of information or in terms of how to undertake the following activities, whatever they may be, in a Covid background.
So it was a – it was a very live and continuous process, and we were very fortunate that the people that we had on that committee were, you know, strong, independent-minded people, and that was really the whole purpose of setting it up, to give us that completely external challenge from the – in a sense, the kind of bubble that we were in, trying to do what we were doing and working with government.
Professor Thomas KC: Thank you.
You may have touched upon my second question but I’m going to ask it in any event, just to see if there is anything you wish to add.
Can you provide details about specific measures or initiatives undertaken by the NPCC to engage with and involve representatives from minority ethnic communities and organisations with the aim of addressing their concerns and building trust during the enforcement of the Covid-19 regulations?
Mr Martin Hewitt: So, the reality is that where that was happening – where that was happening primarily at my level was working – and one of the groups that I worked through very much at the national level was through the National Black Police Association, so NBPA not only, obviously, represents black officers within policing but it also has incredible links externally. So I worked with them at that national level.
What we were – what I was requiring and what was happening at every individual force level, as you’ll be aware, in every individual police force they will have a range of mechanisms through which they communicate and work with minority communities, a whole range of boards and groups that they – so they were doing that, because the reality, as I said, in answer to one of Mr O’Connor’s questions, that this was happening on the ground in a police force area, which I obviously couldn’t control.
So we were doing all of that.
And just let me refer again to the Police Race Action Plan which I’ve referred to, and I think it is important in the context of your questions. The murder that happened in America created what we all saw and understood, and I then very quickly that June pulled together all of the chief constables from across the country and we had two half-day sessions where we not only looked at the issues from our perspective but we also had a large number of our – every chief constable brought three or four black members of staff into those meetings – they were virtual obviously – into those meetings to express their views about where we were in terms of our relations with the black community, particularly the black – the African Caribbean community particularly, and out of that emerged the Police Race Action Plan, which – which has worked through and still goes on today.
So those are some of the really – the practical things that happened as a result of the disparities that we were identifying.
Lady Hallett: Mr Hewitt, I’m afraid Mr Thomas has limited time so if you could make your answers a little bit shorter –
Mr Martin Hewitt: I apologise.
Lady Hallett: – I’m sure he’d be very grateful.
Professor Thomas: I’m grateful, my Lady.
I’ve only got three questions left. Let me see if I can get to them.
Was there any training or guidance provided to officers on how to ensure proportionate and non-discriminatory enforcement of the Covid-19 regulations, especially when interacting with ethnic minority individuals?
Mr Martin Hewitt: Not specifically, because that responsibility exists in all of their policing activity, so in that sense there was nothing specific that was around Covid.
Professor Thomas KC: Even after the disproportionality became apparent?
Mr Martin Hewitt: It – there was always the absolute acceptance and, quite frankly, the legal requirement that they undertook their actions in – under the Equalities Act, so there was no – there was no additional guidance, which is your question.
Professor Thomas KC: Let me move on.
How were police officers equipped with resources, tools, platforms to access this information? Moreover, how were they encouraged to stay up to date with legislative changes related to the Covid regulations, particularly concerning the nuances in the law and the regulations?
Mr Martin Hewitt: So there was an entire array of communication processes that went on. Everything that came out from the centre went to every force, went to the Operation Talla in every force. Police officers were getting – any updated briefing that was required would happen at the beginning of their shift. By that stage, in 2020, most police officers had some form of mobile capability whether it was a mobile phone, an iPad or whatever, and so all of that, all of the information that we were provided – were providing, should I say, was provided directly to those systems as well. So everybody had access to that information. There were websites on the College of Policing with all the information, a Covid hub where you could access all the information, and it was being put through the normal briefing processes for officers.
Professor Thomas KC: Finally, did the NPCC or police forces conduct any comprehensive evaluation or assessments to determine the effectiveness of the “Four Es” approach, briefing materials and influencing public compliance with the Covid regulations especially within minority ethnic community? If not, why not? And if it did, please explain how.
Mr Martin Hewitt: I am not aware of a specific piece of research that looked at the “Four Es” as a model. Clearly you will have seen in the second report on disproportionality they focus on that, but I’m not aware – there may well have been, but I’m not aware of a piece of academic work to understand whether they were – it was an effective mechanism.
Professor Thomas: My Lady, those are the questions I ask.
Lady Hallett: Thank you, Mr Thomas.
Ms Davies.
Questions From Ms Davies KC
Ms Davies: Thank you, my Lady.
Mr Hewitt, I represent Southall Black Sisters and Solace Women’s Aid, who, as you know, are part of the violence against women and girls sector.
Mr Martin Hewitt: Yes.
Ms Davies KC: So my questions are on domestic abuse.
Mr Martin Hewitt: Yes.
Ms Davies KC: If I can take you to your witness statement, page 24, which is INQ000216925, page 24, paragraph 109. Do you have it?
Mr Martin Hewitt: We’re not … page …
Ms Davies KC: 109 has come up.
Mr Martin Hewitt: Okay, yeah, I’ve got 109 there. It’s not on 24, but …
Ms Davies KC: You tell us that:
“The COVID-19 restrictions meant that those crimes that occurred in the home and online appeared to increase. Early reports from China and Italy, who imposed lock down early on, indicated a significant increase in domestic abuse (DA) cases.”
Mr Martin Hewitt: Yeah.
Ms Davies KC: So you were aware that there could be an increase in domestic abuse as a result of, shall we say, social isolation, even before lockdown?
Mr Martin Hewitt: We were very aware of that in the outset in terms of our preparation, both for domestic abuse and also, for that matter, for child abuse as well, where it was clear we were going to end up in a situation where people were confined. And if that place was the place where some of those offences were taking place and the vulnerability existed, then clearly we were aware of that from very early on. In advance, quite frankly.
Ms Davies KC: And you were aware of that because of the reports coming from other countries, and also it’s kind of obvious?
Mr Martin Hewitt: It was self – you know, from my professional experience, it was self-evident that we were going to end up in some sort of lockdown and that that lockdown was going to put vulnerable people at a higher risk.
Ms Davies KC: Yes. You told us this morning that you brought, I think, the chief constables together –
Mr Martin Hewitt: Yes.
Ms Davies KC: – to start planning in very early March, so would it be fair to say that in very early March, when you are planning, one of the things that you’re thinking about is the possible increase in domestic abuse?
Mr Martin Hewitt: And – absolutely. And I’ve referred a number of times to the individual leads that the NPCC have, and so in this – in these two instances the assistant commissioner, Louisa Rolfe, from the Met, was the lead for domestic abuse, and then chief constable, as was then, Simon Bailey, was the lead for child abuse, and we were engaging very closely with both of them, who were then engaging with all of their structures and all the other groups and organisations that they worked in within those sectors to start talking and thinking about how we were going to find a way to properly protect people in an environment that we feared was going to come.
Ms Davies KC: If we can go to the next paragraph in your witness statement, I don’t know if we still have that page up, paragraph 110, you tell us that the college regularly met with the domestic abuse charity sector:
“These meetings identified significant changes in the number and nature of demand …”
That’s once lockdown starts.
“… and as a direct result …”
Of those significant changes and of your meetings, presumably; yes?
Mr Martin Hewitt: Yes, so not just the college but also, as I say, the leads for domestic abuse were – were meeting and trying to work through, and I was working then with the Home Office and – and, I have to say, the Home Secretary at the time was very, very engaged with the issue of the threat around particularly domestic abuse and child abuse but particularly domestic abuse as well.
Ms Davies KC: And we’re about to hear from her, in fact –
Mr Martin Hewitt: I suspect you will.
Ms Davies KC: – yes.
“… as a direct result, the government carried out publicity campaigns to highlight [domestic abuse] risks and encouraged victims to report.”
So that’s your point.
Helpful on publicity campaigns, can you tell us if there was also any guidance published by the college for potential victims of domestic abuse?
Mr Martin Hewitt: There was – there was repeated guidance – as I’ve said, we had a number of mechanisms through which we were sharing information, because if – you will obviously recall at the time there was a lot of media coverage about concerns, a lot of the support organisations and charities were publicly talking about the increase in people coming and speaking to them.
So we produced a range of guidance about how best you can deliver services in a Covid environment, how you can work with all of the other agencies that are there to provide services to protect people, and then even into the really practical of how do you go and – how do you go and deal with an issue when you actually turn up at the house. Because quite clearly there were going to be occasions where we needed to go and intervene in the way that we ordinarily would do, and we needed to equip officers to understand how you did that in a Covid environment, because what we clearly didn’t want to be doing was going and actually spreading the infection and so on.
So it was very complex but there were repeated throughout the period new pieces of information and guidance.
We created the learning process that I described and part of that was sharing good practice, so where we found somewhere where they had worked up a really good way of operating with other agencies, we then made sure that that was shared with other police forces, so that we were trying to do the best that we could do in the circumstances that we had.
Ms Davies KC: That’s helpful, thank you.
Was there any guidance for potential victims of domestic abuse so that they could find out quickly whether or not, for example, they would be within the regulations to leave home?
Mr Martin Hewitt: That –
Ms Davies KC: Was there any guidance to the public?
Mr Martin Hewitt: Yes. That guidance did come out – it did come out, and I think I recall in the first – in the very first set of regulations that one of the – one of the exceptions was if it was staying indoors, if it – unless it was unsafe to do so. So that came –
Ms Davies KC: Mm, so risk of harm?
Mr Martin Hewitt: The risk of harm point.
Where we would often, and where we did, but in ordinary circumstances, would try to mediate is through – through support groups, through the charities, through those people that are – that are clearly engaged, but we would be feeding through them but also giving our own messages.
And throughout the pandemic I did three of the podium briefings at Downing Street and I’m pretty certain to say in every one of those three one of the things that I said was making it very clear that anybody who felt unsafe was to – was to take action to make themselves safe and to come to the police.
Ms Davies KC: You talk about guidance to colleagues and police officers, that’s actually at paragraph 79 of your statement, which is page 17 of it.
I don’t know if we can have that up?
And you give us – do we have it?
Paragraph 79. I don’t think that’s page 17 –
Mr Martin Hewitt: Yes, 79 there.
Ms Davies KC: Ah. You talk about the guidance in some detail:
“Responding to domestic abuse;
“Referral support for victims …”
So again that’s for police officers.
Was that guidance drawn up with domestic abuse charities, stakeholders and so on?
Mr Martin Hewitt: Yes, everything that we draw up in that arena through our leaders, the people who lead thematically for that, is done in conjunction with those, with those groups.
Ms Davies: Thank you very much.
Thank you, my Lady.
Lady Hallett: Thank you, Ms Davies.
Thank you very much indeed for your help, Mr Hewitt.
The Witness: Thank you, my Lady.
(The witness withdrew)
Mr Keith: My Lady, the next witness is Dame Priti Patel, if she could be sworn, thank you.