4. Dr Robert Hoyle

DR ROBERT HOYLE (affirmed).

Questions From Lead Counsel to the Inquiry for Module 2B

Mr Poole: Dr Hoyle, could you start, please, by giving us your full name.

Dr Robert Hoyle: Robert Thomas Hoyle.

Lead 2B: Thank you very much for attending today and giving your evidence.

Can you please remember to keep your voice up so we can hear you, but also so your evidence can be recorded.

If at any stage you need a break, do say, and if I ask you anything that you don’t understand, please ask me to rephrase it.

Your witness statement for this module of the Inquiry is at INQ000347980 and we see the first page there. We don’t need to go to it but, page 26, you signed that statement on 30 October last year. Can you confirm that the contents of that statement are true to the best of your knowledge and belief?

Dr Robert Hoyle: It is.

Lead 2B: I’m grateful.

Dr Hoyle, are you at present the head of science for the Welsh Government Office for Science?

Dr Robert Hoyle: I am.

Lead 2B: That’s a role you’ve held since May 2019?

Dr Robert Hoyle: Yes.

Lead 2B: Before that you worked in the Welsh Government’s Science division to support the then Scientific Adviser for Wales, who was Professor John Harries, and you managed the Engineering Centre for Manufacturing and Materials. And prior to 2010 you worked in the energy and manufacturing sector; is all of that correct?

Dr Robert Hoyle: Yes.

Lead 2B: Is it also correct that you have served all four officially appointed Chief Scientific Advisers for Wales?

Dr Robert Hoyle: Yes.

Lead 2B: Can you please provide a very brief overview of the roles and responsibilities of the head of science for the Welsh Government?

Dr Robert Hoyle: My main role and principal role is to support the Chief Scientific Adviser for Wales, of which we’ve had four that I’ve served, and that is principally about providing scientific advice and evidence to government, although we do do other things. One other piece of work that we are doing at the moment is related to medical radioisotopes and that is quite a technical issue, related to the supply of medical radioisotopes to the NHS and other health services.

So – but that, again, is about collecting evidence and data and information to support policy development or strategy development.

Lead 2B: Just help us, where does your office sit within the structure of the Welsh Government?

Dr Robert Hoyle: So the Chief Scientific Adviser is a public appointment, and normally reports to the First Minister, although for pay and rations, if I can use that phrase, we sit within ETC, which is Economy, Treasury and Constitution, at the moment, but we sit within the Economy portfolio of the minister Vaughan Gething.

Lead 2B: As a very broad overview of your role during the pandemic and the various advisory groups that you served, I think I’m right in saying that you were a member of the Technical Advisory Group from 13 April 2020, that’s what’s known as TAG?

Dr Robert Hoyle: Yes.

Lead 2B: And you were also a member of the Technical Advisory Cell, TAC, from mid-April 2020?

Dr Robert Hoyle: Yes.

Lead 2B: You were also a member of the international group and in fact chair of the international intelligence subgroup from September 2020 to the end of 2022; is that right?

Dr Robert Hoyle: That’s right.

Lead 2B: And that’s the international intelligence group perhaps – I think known, shorthand, as IntTel; is that right?

Dr Robert Hoyle: Yes.

Lead 2B: One of the issues in this Inquiry is the degree to which the Welsh Government understood and engaged with pandemic strategies of other countries as a potential model or as a guide for their own pandemic response.

So as the chair of IntTel, you were involved in the surveillance and collection of data from other countries’ pandemic responses; is that right?

Dr Robert Hoyle: I was, yes.

Lead 2B: Can you briefly explain to the Inquiry the purpose of IntTel?

Dr Robert Hoyle: The main purpose, as set up, was to observe what was happening elsewhere in the world and to see whether lessons could be learnt from elsewhere in the world that might be applicable to Wales.

Lead 2B: Am I right IntTel was set up in September 2020?

Dr Robert Hoyle: Yes.

Lead 2B: How did IntTel come to be established at that time during the pandemic?

Dr Robert Hoyle: Prior to that and prior from – right from the start of the work, we started in March, we started to look at within the Welsh Government Office for Science what was happening elsewhere within the world, in different countries, to see how the pandemic was developing in different countries, and then over a period of time it was felt, because of things that were happening within TAG, that we should formalise it more by creating an international subgroup of TAG. So we went from being a sort of localised activity within the Welsh Government Office for Science to a broader activity which included a range of experts from external to the Welsh Government.

Lead 2B: So the surveillance and collection of data from other countries was going on within TAG from March 2020, but it became formalised and put into a specific subgroup in September 2020; is that accurate?

Dr Robert Hoyle: Not quite accurate, it was – the international intelligence work that was going on was conducted by the Welsh Government Office for Science, principally myself and members of my team, and then we reported – I reported to TAG on a regular basis the international situational report, as it’s often or was often known, so I reported not every week or not every meeting but on a frequent basis about what was happening elsewhere, and then when other subgroups were being formalised and sort of growing out of activities and the need to pursue discrete lines of research or evidence gathering, then I formalised this into an international group, what became IntTel, in September of 2020.

Lead 2B: I understand. What kind of requests were made about international comparisons, what kind of evidence or information was sought from IntTel?

Dr Robert Hoyle: From TAG or from elsewhere?

Lead 2B: From TAG.

Dr Robert Hoyle: Right. Initially we had requests that came through TAG from ministers or directly from TAG, from TAG meetings to investigate issues that were relevant at the time. One of the issues that we looked at in considerable depth was the difference between the pandemic in Latin America and how that was progressing to how it was progressing in Western Europe, in Northern hemisphere.

And what we’re looking at there, to see whether there was a difference between northern hemisphere and southern hemisphere developments of the pandemic. Of course this comes down to seasonality and whether the pandemic had a strong seasonal component to it or not. So we looked at the different hemispheres at the same time because they have different seasons. If it’s summer in the northern hemisphere it might be winter in the southern hemisphere. So that was one piece of work that we looked at.

Another piece of work that we did was on the R0 value and we submitted a paper to the First Minister on that. But it varied, the requests that were made of us were varied. But that didn’t stop us exploring our own issues where no requests were forthcoming because we were observing about what was happening at the time and we picked up on things that we thought would be interesting to investigate.

Lead 2B: I think you say in your witness statement that many requests were verbal and knee-jerk or had a panic flavour about them. Is that right? It was more reactive than formal considered commissions?

Dr Robert Hoyle: Certainly in the early days, yes. Things were happening so quickly that a sort of more formal commissioning system didn’t materialise. The requests were typically in meetings, “Please could you have a look at whatever”, in TAG meetings, and we would go off and have a look at whatever and report back.

Over time, that became less panic-stricken, shall we say, or – panic-stricken is not quite the right word, but fast-moving.

Lead 2B: You’ve referred to some countries that you looked at data from. Did you consider data and intelligence from South East Asian countries, so, for example, Taiwan, Vietnam, South Korea, who already had extensive experience in effective mitigations from viruses such as SARS?

Dr Robert Hoyle: Yes, we did.

Lead 2B: In the course of evidence tomorrow, the Inquiry is going to hear from Dr Roland Salmon who was an advocate for a Welsh approach to the Covid-19 pandemic that more closely resembled Sweden’s response to the pandemic. Is that a matter that you considered in IntTel?

Dr Robert Hoyle: At great depth, yes.

Lead 2B: Could you just provide the Inquiry with a brief overview of the course chartered by Sweden in the course of the pandemic and how this differed from the Welsh approach.

Dr Robert Hoyle: Sweden didn’t insist on a harsh lockdown in the manner that many other Western European countries did, or indeed countries across the world did. They had a much more laid-back approach to it, and in the early days it looked like they were handling the pandemic more effectively. Which raised the question about the effectiveness of lockdowns. However, when we dug into it in a bit more detail, it became obvious, and one clear point became obvious to us, the number of single occupancy households in Sweden is much higher, that’s one person per household, in Sweden than many other more populated and more densely populated countries. So they had a degree of built-in self-isolation that many other countries didn’t have and don’t have, which meant that you can’t make direct comparisons between densely populated countries and less densely populated countries like Sweden.

Lead 2B: I think you may be close to answering this question already, but what are your views about the viability, then, of Wales and the UK in general mirroring Sweden’s strategy?

Dr Robert Hoyle: We have much greater densities of population and much higher population in our major cities than many parts of Sweden, so I don’t think you can draw the same conclusions or lessons from Sweden and expect them to work in the UK. The conditions are different.

Lead 2B: Did you receive proper feedback on the work that IntTel did? Did you feel as though you received sufficient consideration?

Dr Robert Hoyle: From TAG?

Lead 2B: Yes.

Dr Robert Hoyle: It was variable. On several pieces of work we received no feedback, on other pieces of work we did receive feedback, but it was somewhat ad hoc. But there again that was partly a reflection of the rapid changing nature of what we were doing and looking at. Quite a few of the things that we looked at and were requested to look at, things had moved on by the time that we’d looked at them, because inevitably it takes time to look at some of these things. But overall there were times when I wished there could have been more feedback.

Lead 2B: And who would you say is responsible for the lack of feedback?

Dr Robert Hoyle: That would come down to the chair and the deputy chair.

Lead 2B: Do you feel as though TAG and TAC and Welsh ministers took IntTel sufficiently seriously as an information resource during the pandemic?

Dr Robert Hoyle: Sufficiently – perhaps not sufficiently seriously. I think a lot of the focus, and rightly so, of TAG and TAC was what was happening in Wales, and that meant that they didn’t have necessarily the bandwidth to cover, you know, a much broader perspective as to what was happening in the rest of the world.

They did take great notice when things like the new variants started to appear, like the Delta in India or the Brazilian variant or the Omicron variant, and so on. But there again that was transitory because things were happening so quickly, and the threat to the UK was obvious, and so they took much more interest in what we were doing.

Lead 2B: Do you view this – if I can call it sort of insularity as a shortcoming, being too Welsh-focused?

Dr Robert Hoyle: I wouldn’t say it was a shortcoming, no. I think it was an insufficiency but not a shortcoming.

Lead 2B: Now, during the course of the pandemic, did you attend most TAG/TAC meetings?

Dr Robert Hoyle: Yes, apart from on the occasion when I was actually on holiday, I made a point of attending every single one of them.

Lead 2B: And how or by whom were the discussions and advice formulated by TAG communicated onward to the Welsh Government and ultimately the Welsh ministers?

Dr Robert Hoyle: As I understood it, the information that we provided was assimilated and assessed by the TAG/TAC leadership, the chair and co-chair, and then passed on as appropriate to the Chief Medical Officer and other Welsh Government people, and ultimately to ministers.

Lead 2B: How transparent was that communication of advice to Welsh ministers through either the CMO or the Chief Scientific Adviser for Health?

Dr Robert Hoyle: It wasn’t particularly transparent, but that’s not to say that it wasn’t happening. It was just that we didn’t witness it. I didn’t witness it to any great extent.

Lead 2B: Did you ever see any kind of record of what advice had been given verbally from, say, Dr Atherton or Dr Orford to Welsh ministers?

Dr Robert Hoyle: No.

Lead 2B: If there had been dissent or debate within TAG, are you aware of whether that debate was accurately conveyed to the Welsh Government, Welsh ministers?

Dr Robert Hoyle: I … I can’t answer that, I’m afraid, I don’t know.

Lead 2B: Perhaps put another way, is TAG advice formulated as a consensus view or as an overview of a debate on any one topic?

Dr Robert Hoyle: Most of it was consensus view, yes.

Lead 2B: In that sense similar to SAGE?

Dr Robert Hoyle: Yes.

Lead 2B: Do you consider in your experiences of TAG that there was sufficient challenge on TAG and also TAC, was there sufficient challenge on issues or was there a culture where people didn’t feel able to speak up and challenge during a discussion or debate?

Dr Robert Hoyle: There was plenty of – can I use the phrase – soft challenge, but really hard challenge I didn’t feel there was sufficient.

Lead 2B: Were there, though, meaningful debates within TAG and TAC that actually affected the advice or the outcome of the advice that was then passed on to the Welsh Government?

Dr Robert Hoyle: Well, there were certainly debates, there were certainly debates, but it was done in a very collegiate manner. But I can remember on occasion there was serious challenge, really off the wall challenge, and I felt that at the time that wasn’t particularly well received. Soft challenge was quite acceptable, and there was a lot of encouragement for soft challenge, but not really hard challenge of the type that – you know, questioning whether lockdown at all was a good idea.

Lead 2B: So, I mean, would it be fair to say that TAG was used by Welsh ministers as a place where information or advice could effectively be rubber stamped?

Dr Robert Hoyle: No. No, I don’t think that was the case.

Lead 2B: Were you and your colleagues on TAC – TAG informed about how your advice impacted policy, did you see the advice feeding into policy decisions by Welsh ministers, or do you think you should have been appraised of that?

Dr Robert Hoyle: I think, yes, we – for instance, the firebreak lockdown, we debated that long and hard within TAG, and that did feed through to a lockdown, a firebreak lockdown, in the autumn time of 2020, I think it was. So we’d debated it and I think that did feed through into the discussions and decision-making by ministers.

Lead 2B: Dr Hoyle, I will come a bit later on to look at some of the TAG advice around the firebreak lockdown.

Just before moving away from this topic, Welsh Government in general, as head of science you suggest in your witness statement that the value of science was not understood by decision-makers in Wales and you say is fragmented across different portfolios in the Welsh Government. What impact do you think this had on the Welsh Government’s response to the pandemic and what lessons should be learnt from that?

Dr Robert Hoyle: That is a general statement rather than a specific statement related to the scientific advice being provided by – for Covid. I think ministers did seek scientific advice on Covid-related matters, but my comment there was a more general comment about scientific advice generally informing policy and strategy within Welsh Government.

Lead 2B: I understand.

If we can now talk about the initial stages of the pandemic, so the particularly January, February and March period. You say in your witness statement that you were reporting to your son in the middle of February that Covid-19, in your words, “will change the world”, and you say by that stage, so again this is mid-February, it was obvious to you that the genie was out of the bottle and there would have to be a major intervention to prevent a dire outcome.

Why was it obvious to you in mid-February that a major intervention would be required?

Dr Robert Hoyle: The rate at which it was spreading across the world and the number of countries in which it had started to appear and in certain countries, like Italy, the impact that it was having on some of the communities in, I think it was northern Italy. Not to mention, of course, the impact that it had on communities in China. So to me it was obvious from the rate at which it was spreading within communities, but the rate at which it had spread across the world, it was more or less unstoppable at that point and that, you know, drastic action would be necessary.

Lead 2B: Was this a commonly held view in the Chief Scientific Adviser, so that’s Professor Halligan’s office at that time, mid-February?

Dr Robert Hoyle: Not really, no.

Lead 2B: Do you think that the Welsh Government appreciated the potential scale of the pandemic at that stage in mid-February?

Dr Robert Hoyle: I think it was dawning on certain people, yes, and the Chief Scientific Adviser for Health, it was dawning on him, the scale of the challenge here – or the scale of the threat.

Lead 2B: When did you start discussing the pandemic within the Chief Scientific Adviser’s office?

Dr Robert Hoyle: The week before the lockdown, approximately, I think I gave my date in my statement, and I made a note in my diary of, you know, “Started work on Covid”, although I’d of course started work long before then, I’d been monitoring it since December 2019.

Lead 2B: So you’ve identified in mid-February that a major intervention would be needed to prevent a dire outcome and yet in the Chief Scientific Adviser’s office Covid was not discussed until the week before lockdown, so that would be sort of the week before 23 March.

Dr Robert Hoyle: The Chief Scientific Adviser for Wales, we did – I did raise it with him on occasion, but it was a case of: that’s someone else’s problem. That was the response that we had.

Lead 2B: So that was Professor Halligan’s response to you informing him of your views?

Dr Robert Hoyle: He didn’t state that, but that was the implication of his actions or lack of actions, that it wasn’t for him, and that it would be a Health issue.

Lead 2B: Do you consider that action was required by the chief science adviser?

Dr Robert Hoyle: For Health or for Wales?

Lead 2B: For Wales.

Dr Robert Hoyle: Wales.

Lead 2B: So we’re talking about Professor Halligan, your office.

Dr Robert Hoyle: I went out of my way to encourage him to engage in this and to do things. He eventually took that advice, but not until very late in the day. I think he could and should have done more.

Lead 2B: What is it that the CSA and the CSA’s office could and should have been doing in terms of preparedness and response in this period mid-February to mid-March 2020?

Dr Robert Hoyle: I think engaging much more closely with the Chief Scientific Adviser for Health, the Chief Medical Officer, ministers and others, and offering to engage and offering to undertake whatever was requested of them, so offering work.

Lead 2B: Now, was the work that you’ve just identified as what should have been doing, was that work picked up by others, so for example the Chief Scientific Officer for Health, Dr Orford?

Dr Robert Hoyle: It was – after the lockdown, he – that’s when we got engaged in TAG and TAC, so the – I don’t know how it happened, but I think the request must have come through and the expectation that at least we should engage in TAC and TAG if nothing else.

Lead 2B: Did you find it a difficulty at the time reporting to Professor Halligan on the one hand as the Chief Scientist and Dr Orford in your capacity as a member of TAG and TAC?

Dr Robert Hoyle: There was no difficulty, no.

Lead 2B: Now, in your opinion, was a national lockdown necessary in March 2020?

Dr Robert Hoyle: Yes.

Lead 2B: Do you think greater regard should have been given to the experience of countries that were several weeks ahead of the curve, so you I think mentioned Italy earlier, in the lead-up to that decision to enter a national lockdown?

Dr Robert Hoyle: Well, I think at UK Government level they were looking at what was happening in other countries and the necessity for regional or total national lockdown. Within Welsh Government, I wasn’t privy to any discussions regarding lockdown, I wasn’t aware that a decision had been made by ministers and an approach to UK Government to seek a national lockdown, I wasn’t aware of that until January this year. My view at the time was that the leadership and decision-making came from the UK Government rather than Welsh Government, although I’ve since learnt that the Welsh First Minister, the Scottish First Minister and the Northern Ireland minister approached UK Government Prime Minister the day before the national lockdown was announced. That’s how I understand it happened. But I didn’t learn that until, as I say, January this year. It wasn’t visible at the time.

Lead 2B: But in terms of what you knew from your own experiences at the time and in the position you were in the CSA’s office, and also by the end of February TAC had been established, your impression was that this was – there was no discussion of a national lockdown, this was something being led by UK Government?

Dr Robert Hoyle: That was my impression at the time, yes.

Lady Hallett: I’m sorry to interrupt. You said that lockdown in March 2020 was necessary. Is that because you believe it was inevitable, because of the spread of the virus, or had it become inevitable because not enough had been done early enough?

Dr Robert Hoyle: It was inevitable because of the spread of the virus.

Lady Hallett: So you think, even if other things had been done earlier, we couldn’t have stopped the lockdown? I mean, supposing –

Dr Robert Hoyle: Sorry –

Lady Hallett: – better prepared, for example, supposing people had acted more quickly?

Dr Robert Hoyle: I think by the – I think by the time that the discussions were being had, it was probably too late to avoid a lockdown.

Lady Hallett: Well, that’s really what I’m asking. Had more been done earlier – we’ll never know.

Dr Robert Hoyle: We’ll never know. But looking about what happened subsequently, I think by the time that January had come along it was already too late to avoid a lockdown.

Lady Hallett: Fine. Thank you.

Mr Poole: At the time, did you think lockdown should have come sooner?

Dr Robert Hoyle: Yes.

Lead 2B: How much sooner?

Dr Robert Hoyle: In my statement I say possibly up to two weeks earlier. I think five to seven days earlier would have been appropriate.

And I think there’s a subtle timing issue here. We value our freedoms as a democratic country, and ability to move around and all the rest of it, and so it needed to get to a certain stage before widespread lockdown would be acceptable to the local – to the national population. So it’s a timing issue.

I think we could have gone probably five to seven days earlier than we did, but it needed to become prominent enough in the population’s mind and the threat obvious enough for a lockdown to be acceptable. So it’s a trade-off.

Lead 2B: So in terms of what you attribute the delay in implementing the first national lockdown, would it be right to say that you would say it was due to a lack of political leadership or a lack of political confidence in making a unilateral decision to lock down?

Dr Robert Hoyle: What do you mean by unilateral decision?

Lead 2B: Obviously we’re looking at the Welsh Government –

Dr Robert Hoyle: I think it would have been untenable for the Welsh Government to make a unilateral lockdown ahead of a UK national lockdown, and I think ministers realised that. Because we are such a small part of the UK in population terms, I think the challenge – there would have been huge challenges in getting the population to accept it. And not only that, the political ramifications and accusations, as we’ve seen with many other things not related to this. So I think it was a national lockdown or nothing.

Lead 2B: Did TAG have involvement in the decision to lock down, was TAG commissioned to advise on the national lockdown?

Dr Robert Hoyle: I – I wasn’t part of TAG at that time, so I can’t comment.

Lead 2B: In your view, if the lockdown had been implemented earlier, what effect would this have had on the first wave case progression and fatalities?

Dr Robert Hoyle: It would have smoothed the peak, and it would have prevented as many people being infected – and fatalities, it would have reduced the number of fatalities in the first wave.

Lead 2B: What about across the extent of the pandemic?

Dr Robert Hoyle: I’m not convinced it would have made that much difference over the whole lifetime of the pandemic, until the point at which the whole population was effectively immunised either through infection or immunised through vaccination.

Lady Hallett: Do you mean by that that, even if you had managed to flatten the peak – or whatever the different analogies are that people use – in the first wave and therefore reduced the number of infections and deaths, you were always going to get the second wave and therefore overall the number of infections and death would have stayed the same; is that what you’re saying?

Dr Robert Hoyle: Yes.

Lady Hallett: Thank you.

Mr Poole: Moving beyond the lockdown into perhaps the summer of 2020, did you think that TAG/TAC had a clear objective following the lockdown of what Welsh ministers were trying to achieve with their NPIs strategy? So, for example, minimise fatalities, expedite a way out of lockdown, protect vulnerable groups, and so on and so forth.

Dr Robert Hoyle: The – I asked the question on my first meeting about what the strategy was, and essentially it was to reduce harm or harms, and I was never convinced that it was any clearer than that.

Lead 2B: What are your views on the effect of Eat Out to Help Out on the transmission of the virus and the caseloads in the autumn and winter of 2020?

Dr Robert Hoyle: In a small way it contributed to the re-emergence of the – into a new peak, but no more so than many of the other release activities that were going on at the time through the summer of 2020, allowing people to go on holiday and that kind of thing. So I’m not – it was part of the cause of the spread of the next virus – the next wave. The virus had never gone away – and still hasn’t – so all that had been happening is we’d suppressed it, so it was – to my mind it was inevitable that it was going to come back, which is what it did.

Lead 2B: Am I right in saying that TAG and TAC, they weren’t commissioned or asked to advise on the Eat Out to Help Out scheme, to your knowledge?

Dr Robert Hoyle: To my knowledge, yes.

Lead 2B: You’ve mentioned the firebreak lockdown already. What are your views on the need for a firebreak lockdown in October 2020?

Dr Robert Hoyle: It was necessary to flatten the curve.

Lead 2B: Can we, please, have INQ000313251 on the screen.

These are TAG notes from 18 September 2020 which analysed the worsening picture across Europe. If we just look at the bottom of that page, please, starting:

“The most recent data has shown that in Spain incidence per 100k has raised across the country dramatically. France has also changed rapidly in the last fortnight. Indications are the UK is currently travelling down a similar path.”

So just pausing there, you say:

“Indications are the UK is currently travelling down a similar path.”

What did you mean of this worsening picture in mid-September 2020?

Dr Robert Hoyle: That a new wave was developing.

Lead 2B: Did you think that this signalled the inevitability of a further lockdown to control those growing case numbers, or were there windows for earlier or different or less stringent intervention measures in your view?

Dr Robert Hoyle: In my view, as I said on several occasions to the Technical Advisory Group, NPIs and harsh and rigorous application of NPIs do work to suppress the virus and the pandemic, so I think given what was happening in Spain, and you just looked at the trajectory and the rapid increase, almost an exponential rise in cases in Spain and other countries, the UK was showing very, very, very similar characteristics, so in my mind it was inevitable that some kind of intervention would be necessary, it was just a matter of when and what. But given the nature of these things, the what tends to be a lockdown or firebreak or whatever.

Lead 2B: What is your view on the purpose of a firebreak lockdown and the consequences that that might have on the overall course of the pandemic?

Dr Robert Hoyle: The main purpose is to stop the health services from being overwhelmed by a massive wave of infections and seriously ill people.

Lead 2B: And in respect of the Welsh firebreak, do you think that the decision to impose it when it was imposed was taken at the right time in Wales?

Dr Robert Hoyle: Pretty much, yes.

Lead 2B: What about the length of the firebreak? We know it was a two-week firebreak that spanned three weekends. Was that long enough, in your opinion?

Dr Robert Hoyle: Erm … probably. It’s – whether it went on for, you know, a few more days you could argue about, but I think it was an appropriate length, yes.

Partly it’s about mindsets and introducing a – or reintroducing a certain mindset in the population to say that if we don’t undertake certain protective measures, then this thing is going to get out of control. And so it’s – there is an expectation that government does something, and this is government doing something, which sets the mindset for the population. So it’s as much a psychological thing, I think, as a real control of the virus, but certainly a lockdown will control the virus or suppress it.

Lead 2B: Now, Dr Hoyle, just changing topic, I want to talk to you briefly about discharge from hospitals into care homes.

Were you involved in the decision to discharge untested asymptomatic patients into care homes from hospitals –

Dr Robert Hoyle: No.

Lead 2B: – or was TAG involved in that decision?

Dr Robert Hoyle: I don’t know whether TAG was involved, but I think that was probably before my time at TAG.

Lead 2B: You referred earlier in your evidence to there being a lack of hard challenge in relation to some issues that were raised with TAG and TAC. Are you able to help us there? The answer may be no, given the answer that you’ve just given, but in respect of this decision to discharge untested asymptomatic patients, was that subject to harder challenge within TAG or TAC?

Dr Robert Hoyle: I think the decision was made before I joined TAG, so I can’t say.

Lead 2B: If we can please have a look at INQ00034698, this is an email that was sent 30 April. It’s an email that I think in fact you sent to Dr Rob Orford and Fliss Bennee concerning, as we can see from the title, the subject, “FM’s [First Minister’s] comments about no value in testing in care homes”, and you write:

“Dear Rob, Fliss,

“Peter Halligan is keen to understand the rationale, evidence and advice behind the First Minister’s comments last night on the telly that there is no value to testing for Cov-19 in care homes. Please can you enlighten us. Thanks.”

Why did you feel the need to send that email, what did you think of the Welsh Government’s approach to discharging patients from hospital into care homes at that time?

Dr Robert Hoyle: Well, there’s two things going on here: one is discharging patients from hospital to care homes and whether they are tested or not; and then there’s the ongoing issue of testing patient and care home occupants on an ongoing basis. And they’re not quite the same thing. And I think this relates to testing of people in care homes, not testing prior to discharge from hospital to care homes.

So I think we need to be careful about conflating two different things here.

Lead 2B: No, obviously, there are two issues, but you here are raising with the Chief Scientific Adviser for Health, Dr Rob Orford, a point about something that’s been said by the First Minister about there being no value to testing for Covid in care homes, and I just want to know: why did you feel it necessary to send this email, having heard that?

Dr Robert Hoyle: Okay. This is not my normal way of phrasing such emails. I made it very explicit by stating “Peter Halligan is keen to understand”, not me. So it was in response to a request from Peter Halligan that I send this request. Normally I would say a little bit less tersely than this, or frankly than this. So the way I read it now, and I do have a vague recollection of it, it was a specific request from Peter Halligan for me to send this request off to Rob and Fliss.

Lead 2B: Do you share either the concern or perhaps it’s just a question as to why the First Minister made the comments that he did? Do you share Professor Halligan’s concern?

Dr Robert Hoyle: Well, I think there’s a real issue, again, coming back to the difference between discharging untested people from hospitals to care homes, and that’s different from the issue of ongoing testing of care home residents.

Now, I think there isn’t a huge lot of benefit in ongoing testing of care home residents so long as they are and have been well isolated and protected. There is a lot of benefit in testing people who have been discharged to care homes, so as to prevent influx of asymptomatic people but infected people that would impact other residents of the care homes.

Lead 2B: Now, in your witness statement you link discharges to care homes with the fact that Covid-19 is an airborne virus. What is the relevance of Covid-19 being an airborne virus on this question of hospital discharges, and what consideration was given to whether Covid-19 was in fact an airborne virus at this time?

Dr Robert Hoyle: At the time there wasn’t – there was a lot of debate about whether it was actually an airborne virus or whether it was passed by touching or fomites, I think the phrase is used, you know, objects. My view at the time that it was pretty obvious that it was an airborne – mainly airborne transmissible virus. The impact that that would have would be on control of asymptomatic but infected people within care homes, and the threat that uncontrolled discharge, the threat that that would pose to care home – other care home residents.

Lead 2B: Those concerns that you’ve just expressed to us, did you raise those concerns at the time, how that might affect hospital discharges to care homes, either within TAG or within the CSA office?

Dr Robert Hoyle: I don’t believe I did, no.

Lead 2B: Do you think you ought to have done at the time?

Dr Robert Hoyle: Yes. And to follow up on this, we did look at testing and regime testing across different European countries, in care homes and other healthcare settings, and we did prepare a paper on that, which is not part of my evidence but we did, and I have it with me at the moment.

Lead 2B: Dr Hoyle, just again changing topic and I want to understand a bit more about the issue of behavioural non-compliance.

So as I understand it, during the pandemic in Wales there were a number of hotspot areas or areas where it appears that transmission was high and perhaps compliance was low, and so, for example, there were concerns about high case rates and lack of isolation, lack of social distancing in regions like Caerphilly and Rhondda Cynon Taf in September 2020, leading up to the firebreak. You recall those instances?

Dr Robert Hoyle: Mm-hm.

Lead 2B: How did TAG approach the problem of differential transmission and differential compliance with NPIs?

Dr Robert Hoyle: I think with great difficulty. Although there were, you know, NPI controls in place and expectations on the population to comply with the expectations, with the NPI controls, it was obvious that certain areas and certain groups were not complying. But I’m not sure that TAG really had a solution to that.

Lead 2B: Did the group of scientists who sat on TAG, do you think they fully understood or apprehended the nature and the causes of lower compliance in certain areas or amongst certain groups?

Dr Robert Hoyle: I think overall, no, and I think the reason for that is that a lot of – most of the TAG members didn’t have the same life experiences that people who live in the more deprived parts of Wales or amongst some of the communities of Wales have and did have, and so couldn’t relate to some of the motivations and behaviours that were being exhibited by some of these communities.

Lead 2B: Would it be fair then to characterise this as a form of groupthink within TAG?

Dr Robert Hoyle: Groupthink by omission, perhaps, and unconsciously. Yes, I think there was a degree of soft groupthink based on the nature of the membership of TAG. If I could explore that a little bit more, virtually all the people – the members of TAG were either public sector, HE or other – you know, the health sector people, all of whom could work from home on a regular basis, and so they didn’t have the same lived experiences as other parts of the population. So from that respect there was a degree of unconscious bias.

Lead 2B: Could that have been remedied perhaps by commissioning more evidence in the area of behavioural science? Should there have been more data about behavioural behaviour to inform TAG’s thinking in this area about non-compliance with NPIs?

Dr Robert Hoyle: Only limitedly. I think the best to have addressed that would be to invite other people from other walks of life to the TAG activity. Inevitably if you commission a piece of behavioural science advice, it’s done by academics and academia who are experts in sort of behavioural science, rather than lived – experts in lived experience, and I think there’s a subtle difference there.

Lead 2B: Was non-compliance attributed to behavioural fatigue?

Dr Robert Hoyle: Partially.

Lead 2B: And do you think rightly?

Dr Robert Hoyle: Inevitably, I think, rather than rightly.

Lead 2B: Now, the Inquiry has seen a 5 June 2020 TAC summary of advice document which includes a SAGE advice in it, advising on the increased risk from Covid-19 to minority ethnic groups. Now, I don’t propose to display the summary of advice for the purpose of this question, but the advice suggests that this should be urgently investigated, with consideration given to how enhanced risk of poor outcomes could be managed and reduced.

The Inquiry heard yesterday from Professor Ogbonna about how Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic Covid-19 Advisory Group, how that came to be established, how it then reported later in June 2020.

In your view, were issues about the need to understand and mitigate the factors that made certain minority groups more vulnerable to poor outcomes sufficiently considered before June 2020 when that advisory subgroup reported?

Dr Robert Hoyle: This is a very difficult area. My view, that there was – people were inhibited from discussing frankly and objectively and dispassionately some of the issues involved. And I think you’ve just demonstrated that, if you don’t mind my saying so, by saying you’re not going to display the evidence in this hearing.

Lead 2B: Well, I think, in fairness, that’s a limitation of time and because it’s a long document –

Dr Robert Hoyle: Okay.

Lead 2B: – Doctor.

But in terms of you saying people felt inhibited, I just want to explore that with you. What do you mean by people felt inhibited?

Dr Robert Hoyle: The whole issue about religion, ethnic minority, disadvantaged people, is, you know, LGBTQ, as it now is, quite emotive, and I think there was a reluctance amongst some to really explore some of the issues involved in any great depth.

Lead 2B: What was the effect of that reluctance, that meant it simply didn’t get discussed, didn’t get looked at by TAG?

Dr Robert Hoyle: Well, it – some of the symptoms were looked at by TAG, but I think the attribution of cause was not necessarily appropriate. There was a desire to try to attribute cause to populist things, if I can use that phrase.

Lead 2B: If I can ask you to keep your voice up, please, for the stenographer, thank you, Dr Hoyle.

In conversations had by TAG, what reasons were ascribed to higher transmission and higher fatality, mortality rates amongst black, Asian and minority ethnic groups?

Dr Robert Hoyle: Well, I think there was a tendency to try to attribute it to some of the inequalities, societal inequalities that exist. At the time there was a lot of people within the health professions who were ethnic minority, and they were being exposed because of their line of work, and there was a sort of view that maybe this is because of – the increased infection rate amongst these people was due to their ethnicity rather than, you know, a disproportionate – a large amount of them in a noble pursuit such as the health service.

Lead 2B: You referred earlier to an issue that you had with TAG, you said lack of lived experiences or lack of similar lived experiences. I mean, does this indicate a lack of diversity also on TAG?

Dr Robert Hoyle: A lack of social diversity, yes. Not necessarily ethnic or religious diversity, but a lack of social hierarchy diversity.

Lead 2B: Changing topic, to talk about face masks now briefly.

We’ve heard your evidence about Covid-19 being an airborne virus and the concerns that you had about that, and TAG’s approach to this issue. Were you present when TAG discussed the question of face masks throughout the spring and summer of 2020, or was that before your time?

Dr Robert Hoyle: Well, from when I joined TAG in April 2020 I would have been present, yes.

Lead 2B: So can we just, please, have on screen INQ000221076.

This is a – I think it’s an IntTel report produced on mask wearing based on emerging evidence. It’s dated, as we can see from the top, 20 January 2021. Are you able to briefly summarise the key findings of that report, Doctor?

Dr Robert Hoyle: Yes, the key finding of this is that face masks prevent transmission. The best advantage is it prevents transmission or helps prevent transmission from people who are infected, and there was reasonably good evidence so that if you’re infected and you wear a face mask, then the chances of you transmitting it to others is reduced because the viral particles are caught in the face mask. There is less good evidence to protect people who are not infected from picking up the virus from airborne virus, although there’s – it’s debatable whether there is a small advantage.

Lead 2B: Now, we know that Wales mandated the use of face masks on 14 September 2020, which was significantly later than other European countries and later certainly than England, Scotland and Northern Ireland, and it was a significant difference between the four nations of the UK. Do you think that that was the correct approach for Wales?

Dr Robert Hoyle: No, I think we should have mandated it much earlier than we did.

Lead 2B: And when you say “much earlier”, when do you think it –

Dr Robert Hoyle: At least as early as the other nations of the UK.

Lead 2B: Is the fact that Wales failed to mandate the wearing of face masks earlier and adopt perhaps one might say a more precautionary approach, is that a further example of perhaps a reluctance or reticence on the part of the Welsh Government to learn from actions of other countries? I referred earlier to a sort of insularity; is that an example of that or not, in your view?

Dr Robert Hoyle: I think at the time, if memory serves me correctly, the evidence wasn’t very strong. This report here, of course, postdates that, this is in 2021, so I think another four months or so after we mandated it in Wales. The evidence wasn’t very strong, and I think Welsh Government ministers and the Chief Medical Officer decided on the basis of the weak evidence that it wasn’t appropriate to mandate face masks in public places. I don’t think that was quite the right approach. I would have gone earlier, as I said earlier.

Okay, I’m going to stop there, unless you’ve got more questions.

Lead 2B: Let’s more to another NPI, social distancing.

Dr Robert Hoyle: Yeah.

Lead 2B: You explain in your witness statement that there was no science, you say, to underpin the extent of social distancing in terms of metreage; is that right?

Dr Robert Hoyle: Yes.

Lead 2B: Is that something you raised or is that something that was discussed within TAG at the time and, if so, what were those discussions?

Dr Robert Hoyle: I vaguely remember some discussion about this, but it wasn’t a particularly hot topic that I recall, the whole issue about whether it was 1 metre, 1.5 metres, 2 metres, 2.5 metres or some other distance. And I quote those because those were the numbers used by different countries, the World Health Organisation advice and so on. So there was no clear advice or evidence from other countries about what was appropriate distance other than the obvious statement that further is better.

Lead 2B: Obviously there were a number of factors that are in play when making these determinations about distance, one of those being an economic consideration, and we know in the UK the UK Government in England reduced social distancing of 2 metres to 1 metre and the Welsh Government didn’t follow suit and they stuck at 2 metres. Was that something that TAG was – or can you tell us, is that something that you were involved in in TAG or that TAG advised on?

Dr Robert Hoyle: We did report on, in our situation reports, IntTel TAG reports, different countries and their social distancing, but again I would say that further is better, so it would be better to remain 2 metres rather than 1 metre.

Lead 2B: The Inquiry understands that you were asked to advise on school closures and looked at comparisons overseas about the first wave. Can I ask you: did other countries in Europe follow Wales’ approach to close schools during October 2020 and then again during December 2020?

Dr Robert Hoyle: Some countries did, some countries didn’t.

Lead 2B: Was any country to your knowledge, especially any European country, closing schools but at the same time keeping sort of hospitality open or vice versa?

Dr Robert Hoyle: I – without doing a detailed trawl through my notes, I don’t know, I can’t remember.

Mr Poole: Dr Hoyle, those are all the questions I’ve got for you.

I don’t think there are any Rule 10 questions, my Lady.

Lady Hallett: Thank you very much indeed, Dr Hoyle. I hope we haven’t kept you too long, we’re very grateful for your help.

The Witness: You’re welcome, thank you.

(The witness withdrew)

Lady Hallett: Right, it’s 10 o’clock tomorrow. Thank you very much.

(4.15 pm)

(The hearing adjourned until 10 am on Friday, 1 March 2024)