Transcript of Module 2C Public Hearing on 2 May 2024.
(09.59 am)
Lady Hallett: Mr Scott.
Mr Scott: Good morning, my Lady. May we call Christopher Stewart.
Lady Hallett: Thank you.
1. Mr Christopher Stewart
MR CHRISTOPHER STEWART (affirmed).
Questions From Counsel to the Inquiry
Mr Christopher Stewart: Good morning, Mr Scott. Good morning, my Lady.
Counsel Inquiry: Thank you for your assistance to the Inquiry.
When you’re giving your evidence today, can I ask you to keep your voice up so that the stenographers can hear you clearly, and if there’s anything unclear or if you’re talking too quickly, then I may ask you to either slow down or repeat yourself. If you need a break at any point, please do just say.
You have provided the Inquiry with a witness statement dated 4 February 2024, and that’s up on screen. I take it you’re familiar with that –
Mr Christopher Stewart: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: – witness statement?
At page 38 you have your signature and the statement of truth. Please can you confirm that the contents of that statement are true?
Mr Christopher Stewart: Yes, I can.
Counsel Inquiry: If I can just start with your background. So you served in the Office of the First Minister and deputy First Minister, which is the predecessor to the Executive Office, or TEO, as I’ll refer to it throughout, from 2000 to 2006, and during the final year of your service in the Office of the First Minister and deputy First Minister, your responsibilities included civil contingencies matters.
Mr Christopher Stewart: That’s correct.
Counsel Inquiry: You joined TEO on transfer in October 2018, and on taking up that appointment you had overall policy and operational responsibility for all civil contingencies matters.
Mr Christopher Stewart: That’s correct.
Counsel Inquiry: And in early 2020, prior to the pandemic, as part of that role, you would have been what’s known as chief of staff for the hub as well; is that correct?
Mr Christopher Stewart: Yes, that was part of the role that I had.
Counsel Inquiry: Thank you.
You plainly cover in your statement quite a similar area that Sir David Sterling did in his evidence yesterday. Did you hear the evidence of Sir David yesterday?
Mr Christopher Stewart: Yes, I was able to follow it in its entirety.
Counsel Inquiry: As far as it relates to civil contingencies, is there anything in particular that you disagreed with in his evidence?
Mr Christopher Stewart: There was nothing that I fundamentally disagreed with. There are one or two areas where perhaps I could add a little bit of light and shade, and in particular I would welcome the opportunity to cover ground, which I’m sure you’ll wish to cover anyway, in terms of the timing of the stand-up and activation of the civil contingencies arrangements, and in particular how that might have impacted on the ministerial desire for greater grip or control over matters, particularly in the early part of the pandemic.
Counsel Inquiry: Thank you, Mr Stewart, I will be coming to those.
I just want to start with some kind of slightly more fundamental principles, because there’s a lot of talk about civil contingencies and there will be a lot of acronyms coming up.
So the Civil Contingencies Policy Branch, that’s known as CCPB, and that’s part of TEO?
Mr Christopher Stewart: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: And its responsibility is for civil contingencies; correct?
Mr Christopher Stewart: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: And effectively, as you describe it in your statement, its default state is business as usual.
If we could just have up on screen INQ000468508, page 17. Thank you.
So this is the statement of Ms Bernie Rooney, who was brought in in August 2019. She sets out at paragraphs 78 through to 80 the broad areas of work of CCPB, and so you can see there that there’s liaising with Cabinet Office, developing, sharing guidance with Northern Ireland departments, liaising with other administrations.
So there’s a broad range of work that’s done that relates to preparation and responding to potential civil contingency matters; correct? And I’m going to come back to the concept of sectoral resilience, but is it right that sectoral resilience is part and parcel of the business as usual role of CCPB?
Mr Christopher Stewart: Yes, it is, in addition to its overall policy role and its overall co-ordination role during times when it’s in its operational role, it has a specific interest both during business as usual and during actual civil contingencies specifically for sectoral resilience.
Counsel Inquiry: Again, I’m going to return to that, I’m just trying to get some building blocks in place at the moment.
So, alongside the business as usual, you can have some, what I’ve been calling bolt-on requirements, and part of that can be activating the hub. Activating the hub can happen at any point, realistically, can’t it?
Mr Christopher Stewart: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: We heard yesterday Sir David talking about weather events and all the way up to pandemics, for example. So it can cover a wide range of issues?
Mr Christopher Stewart: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: And CCPB always has to be ready to activate the hub; is that correct?
Mr Christopher Stewart: That’s correct.
Counsel Inquiry: In terms of when the hub’s activated, then it has to be staffed –
Mr Christopher Stewart: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: – is that right? And it’s right that, as you describe it, it’s not staffed by a standing army, but effectively you have the CCPB staff and then volunteers from the wider Northern Ireland Civil Service are brought in to assist?
Mr Christopher Stewart: That’s correct.
Counsel Inquiry: Is it also important that we don’t mix up the idea of sector resilience on one hand and the hub stand-up or NICCMA activation on the other because they do different things. Would you just be able to describe kind of the times when you would be doing sectoral resilience comparing to standing up the hub and when they might intersect?
Mr Christopher Stewart: Certainly. It might be helpful just to set that in context of how the CCPB brought changes at the watershed point of stand-up and other contingency being declared.
As you rightly say, in business as usual mode, as its name implies, it is a policy branch, so the sorts of activities that it would be engaged in are very typical of other policy branches: policy, legislation, advice to ministers, strategies, reviews of plans and priorities, exercising, testing.
When it flips into its operational mode, then its role changes quite significantly and its core role is twofold: one, to provide the secretariat to the Civil Contingencies Group, the key decision-making body, and also to be the core of the staff of the hub.
In terms of sectoral resilience, then, there’s a similar change in its role between business as usual and an operational role. In business as usual mode, it would be responsible for co-ordinating and pulling together the sectoral resilience plans of individual departments and other public authorities, whereas once a contingency is declared and the hub is in active mode, it would be co-ordinating the response to sectoral resilience issues as they arose.
For example, if there was a particular challenge or problem or difficulty within a particular sector, to take an example, education, and that manifested itself in a problem that couldn’t be solved within the education sector alone or by that department, then it’s likely that that would be referred to the hub for assistance, and the hub might at that stage be involved with some work to try and identify a solution or it may refer the matter to the Civil Contingencies Group for a decision, perhaps on to the Executive, or even for very serious and extremely difficult matters, it might be necessary to liaise and refer the matter to the UK Government.
Counsel Inquiry: So in terms of your kind of sector resilience, that will be happening effectively prior to or when there’s no activation of the hub, is that a fair summary of the situation?
Mr Christopher Stewart: That’s correct, although I think as has already been made clear in evidence, that’s one of the areas of work that was delayed or postponed because of the need to give priority to Brexit.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes. I just want to stay focusing with the hub at the moment. So it’s – the hub was a creation effectively of the response to EU exit; is that right?
Mr Christopher Stewart: Yes, it was.
Counsel Inquiry: It was developed specifically for EU exit, it wasn’t actually designed with a pandemic in mind; is that right?
Mr Christopher Stewart: It wasn’t designed with a pandemic in mind. It was indeed, you rightly say, developed on the back of Brexit, but it was designed to be, if you like, contingency blind, to be sufficiently flexible to be deployed for any kind of contingency that might subsequently arise. So it was designed and put in place initially for a specific purpose, but I think from the outset we envisaged it continuing as a mechanism that could be deployed as and when needed.
Counsel Inquiry: Wasn’t it a slight quirk of the hub, I think as Mr Harbinson describes it, that actually it wasn’t realistically possible to socially distance in the hub, and is that reflective of the fact that it was designed more with EU exit in mind rather than in a pandemic or a disease based situation –
Mr Christopher Stewart: I think that’s entirely correct. I don’t think that sort of consideration was ever part of the design process.
Counsel Inquiry: And in terms of staffing, you mentioned earlier on that the staff of CCPB formed the core of the hub. Is it right that in February 2020 there were meant to be – well, there were about five members of staff in CCPB?
Mr Christopher Stewart: Yes, that’s correct.
Counsel Inquiry: And that the intention would be that there would be 12 full-time equivalents; is that right?
Mr Christopher Stewart: I think the recognised complement would be around about 12 but it had been quite a few years since the staffing levels had been anywhere near that level.
Counsel Inquiry: But that wasn’t through a reduction in the need for other staff; that was just a fact that you were finding it difficult to staff the hub over those years; is that right?
Mr Christopher Stewart: There were a number of reasons for that. I think the main one was simply budget constraints through the years of austerity. I don’t think it was a case of actually deciding to downsize the team at any stage, but as posts fell vacant, they tended not to be filled if the budget wasn’t there to do so.
Another difficulty that the team encountered was the difficulty in filling posts even when the budget is available, because there was a very restricted supply of staff at the key grades that endures indeed to this day.
A third and perhaps unique difficulty that the team faced is that because of the nature of the posts, their sensitivity, many of them, in fact I think all of them, are subject to the second level of vetting known as security clearance. That’s quite an intrusive process and on more than one occasion we have been in a position where a job has been offered to a member of staff, it’s been explained to them they’ll be subject to security clearance, and they’ve declined on the basis that they would prefer not to have that level of intrusion into their private lives.
Counsel Inquiry: You also mention in your statement about the fact that civil contingencies work is quite specialist work.
Mr Christopher Stewart: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: Did that play any part in the ability to staff up to the full complement?
Mr Christopher Stewart: I’m not sure whether it played a particular part in that particular difficulty, but what I did observe was, as the branch had become smaller over the years, there was, other than that, a very low turnover of staff, much lower than I would have expected in a comparable policy branch. So those who went there tended to stay there for long periods of time.
Counsel Inquiry: In February 2020, is it right that around about 6 February that there was – that effectively it had gone down to two members of staff?
Mr Christopher Stewart: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: Then we can see in an email that was sent by Ms Bernie Rooney on 21 March 2020 that there’s a line where she says:
“… At the minute I am a one person Hub and all of the issues related to Covid-19 are moving at pace.”
In your statement, you say that that shouldn’t be taken literally, because she’s indicating the numbers of available volunteers beyond her own team. I think it’s fair to say that in her statement she says:
“From September 2019 to March 2020, I was the only [TEO] Senior Civil Servant working on civil contingency matters located in Castle Buildings which was where the on site development of the NI Hub project was taking place.”
Mr Christopher Stewart: That’s correct.
Counsel Inquiry: So effectively you had that one person on site from January through 2020 working within CCPB?
Mr Christopher Stewart: At senior level, yes.
Counsel Inquiry: At senior level, yes.
How does that compare with the intended staffing levels at senior level within CCPB; was that intentional or was that significantly lower than desired?
Mr Christopher Stewart: It might sound counterintuitive but it’s actually a slight increase. In normal times, that area of work would have been part of the responsibility of another grade 5 who’s also responsible for the Executive Secretariat. Mrs Rooney wasn’t brought in specifically to take on an operational leadership role of civil contingencies, but she very kindly did take up that role when I asked her to do so. She was brought in, as you said, specifically to carry out a review of civil contingencies.
When the pressure began to ramp up, actually towards the end of the Brexit period and then into the period of the pandemic and preparations for it, Mrs Rooney stepped up to the plate and became the de facto grade 5 responsible for civil contingencies and took on that role, so it was actually a slight increase in the staffing complement that we had.
Lady Hallett: Forgive me being slow, Mr Stewart, but Mr Scott’s question was: Ms Rooney described it as a one-person hub; how many people were working in the hub at whatever level?
Mr Christopher Stewart: It would depend, my Lady, on the extent to which it was needed to be stood up. At its full complement, somewhere between 40 and 50 people would need to be there.
Lady Hallett: How many when Ms Rooney described herself as a one-person hub? You said “Yes, I agree, at senior level”, so you’re saying there was one senior person there. How many other people were there working full-time?
Mr Christopher Stewart: I suspect on the day she wrote that it was probably herself, Anthony Harbinson, who had, for reasons we might come on to, succeeded me in the chief of staff role, and those members of the core CCPB team who were there, which may well have been as few as two.
Mr Scott: Yes, it may have been few, so the intention would be – when I say the intention, the historic intention would be 12, realistically it was five.
Mr Christopher Stewart: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: But then, as you said, in February there was two, and then you have Ms Rooney saying that she’s the only senior member, so realistically it can’t be more than two that were in the hub in March, apart from the fact that Mr Harbinson had been added; is that right?
Mr Christopher Stewart: On that particular day, I think in that particular week, I think the situation did improve in the week or at least the fortnight after that, thanks to the sterling efforts of Mr Harbinson.
Counsel Inquiry: Again, you were saying earlier on that there’s a distinction between the CCPB who formed the core element of the staffing of the hub and the fact that volunteers are added?
Mr Christopher Stewart: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: So it’s not simply that there was one CCPB person and there’s nobody else, there might be other volunteers at the time; that’s right?
Mr Christopher Stewart: Yes. Although I think, as Mr Harbinson has said in his evidence, volunteers were difficult to obtain, much more difficult than we thought would be the case, and he had to work extremely hard to get sufficient numbers in place.
Counsel Inquiry: Well, yes. So on 17 March 2020 – so that was the day after the Executive had approved the activation of NICCMA; that’s correct?
Mr Christopher Stewart: That’s correct.
Counsel Inquiry: So on 17 March you sent a message to Sir David Sterling saying:
“The team itself is on its knees - Bernie and [REDACTED] are both very tired. Only one volunteer so far.”
Is that a reference to the fact that by 17 March there had only been one volunteer for the hub?
Mr Christopher Stewart: I think that’s correct, yes.
Counsel Inquiry: If I can show, please, INQ000091309.
This is an email sent by an individual within the Northern Ireland Office. So this is not – the NIO had no specific role within the hub or creating the hub as of 12 March 2020; is that correct?
Mr Christopher Stewart: Yes, that’s correct.
Counsel Inquiry: So if we can just see the second paragraph underneath where it says “Overview” – thank you – it says:
“In their proposal [and this is the proposal in advance of 16 March] the Hub will have 28 roles.”
Just the line below it:
“For context this is about 50% of what TEO ran in the full C3 Brexit structure (55 roles).”
So when we talk about the hub having been created for the purposes of EU exit, was effectively a full complement of hub staff then 55 roles?
Mr Christopher Stewart: For it to run at its maximum intensity, over a shift pattern, yes.
Counsel Inquiry: So the intention around 12 March, as the NIO understood it, was that the hub would have 28 roles?
Mr Christopher Stewart: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: So is it not right that by 17 March, if you have Ms Rooney, you didn’t have Mr Harbinson by 17 March; is that correct? He came in a day or two later.
Mr Christopher Stewart: I believe he may already have been there on 17 March.
Counsel Inquiry: So we have Ms Rooney, potentially Mr Harbinson as well, and at most one, at most three, probably only one other staff member, and then one volunteer. So is that about four out of the 28 roles were filled at that point?
Mr Christopher Stewart: At most, yes.
Counsel Inquiry: What was your view on the capability of the hub to respond, given that you had four out of 28 roles filled on 17 March?
Mr Christopher Stewart: With only four out of 28 then the hub could only hope to discharge a very small proportion of its intended role. That doesn’t give you anything like full operating capability, and had it remained at that level, that would have been a very serious matter, the hub simply couldn’t have operated as intended.
Counsel Inquiry: You say in your statement, and this is paragraph 105, that there was activation of the hub on 26 March. I just want to check, by that do you mean that that’s when it was effectively fully staffed with volunteers and it was fully up to speed?
Mr Christopher Stewart: I think that’s my recollection, yes.
Counsel Inquiry: So are you able to remember what its staffing was like on 23 March when Northern Ireland went into lockdown?
Mr Christopher Stewart: I can’t, unfortunately by that stage I had withdrawn from the role in the hub entirely for reasons that are set out in my statement. Around about 12 March, the medical and scientific advice was that anyone with an underlying health condition, such as asthma, which I have, needed to work from home. That came as a surprise and a bit of a shock. It presented a very significant difficulty for me in relation to the chief of staff role, for which I was designated. That’s a leadership role, it needs to be discharged by someone who is physically present in the hub, able to respond and provide leadership to the staff immediately.
For an very short period, one or two days, Mr Harbinson and I tried to discharge the role together with him being physically present and me being remote, and that was in recognition that he had only just arrived and was getting up to speed with the role. That proved impractical for two reasons. One, as I said, I just don’t think the role is something that can be discharged remotely, it needs someone to be on site. And two, as it very quickly became clear, you can’t realistically have two chiefs of staff, there is a real risk of getting in each other’s way or giving conflicting advice to staff, so very quickly we both claim came to the pragmatic conclusion that one of us was going to have to do it and it would have to be him.
Counsel Inquiry: Did Mr Harbinson have any background in civil contingencies?
Mr Christopher Stewart: He doesn’t have any background in civil contingencies that I’m aware of, but it is a senior leadership role, it’s not one that intrinsically calls for specific experience or qualifications in civil contingencies, but rather it calls for the generic competences of leadership, which Mr Harbinson had in very great degree, he’s a very experienced colleague.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes, but if you are going to be running the NI hub as its chief of staff, surely you would wish to have some kind of background in either the hub or civil contingencies?
Mr Christopher Stewart: It certainly would have been preferable to have someone who was trained at least and preferably with some experience in it, as I had been. So it was a very steep learning curve for him, and I think a significant challenge to be overcome and again as of Ms Rooney and I’m very grateful for him having taken up the gauntlet at that point.
Counsel Inquiry: Again you say in your statement that:
“There was no plan in place to deal with the contingency of the designated Chief of Staff being unable to take up the role. With hindsight, it is clear that there [enough] to have been such a plan, and its omission was a regrettable oversight.”
Are you able to –
Mr Christopher Stewart: It sounds like a typing error, I think I meant “ought” to have been such a plan.
Counsel Inquiry: I may have misread it, it is probably my fault and not yours, Mr Stewart.
Is the fact that there was no plan to deal with the contingency of the chief of staff being absent, is that a reflection as well of the fact that it was created in the context of EU exit where you’re less likely to have senior members of staff be ill?
Mr Christopher Stewart: It is, and I would go slightly further than that, in that it’s a model that would have had less risk associated with it for an influenza-type pandemic; ironically being in the high risk group I’m vaccinated every year for influenza, so if that had been the challenge there would have been no difficulty whatsoever in taking up the role. There were within the structure of the hub two designated deputy chief of staff roles, but the planning assumptions for those were that they would step in from time to time if, for example, I needed to attend a meeting of CCG or even the Executive, or even if the chief of staff had fallen ill for a short period and then needed to return. What we simply hadn’t thought of at all was a situation where, because of medical advice, the chief of staff would be entirely unable to take up the role. As I’ve said candidly in my statement, that’s an oversight, we ought to have thought of that and ought to have had a contingency in place.
Counsel Inquiry: In terms of the deputy chief of staff, were either of the deputy chief of staff in late March actually the two deputy chief of staff who were intended when the hub was being planned, or were they completely different people?
Mr Christopher Stewart: One would have been Ms Rooney, the other would have been a grade 7 who was very heavily involved in the Brexit work and very experienced.
Counsel Inquiry: Okay, so one of the deputy chief of staff had experience of the hub, but Ms Rooney didn’t have any experience of the hub?
Mr Christopher Stewart: She didn’t have as much, she joined a month or two before the final completion of the Brexit work, so she would have had some familiarity with it, but certainly not as much as the other colleague.
Counsel Inquiry: I just want to press you a little bit further, because one of the essential purposes of CCPB is planning for eventualities of civil contingencies, emergencies, situations like that, part and parcel of that is about planning for resilience; correct?
Mr Christopher Stewart: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: How is it that the resilience of the staff of the hub was not something that was thought about in advance?
Mr Christopher Stewart: It wasn’t thought about enough at senior level. I would contend that it was very much part of the thinking on the overall complement of the hub. So we had in total, I think, a cadre of volunteers around 180 strong, and that was in expectation of us being able to man the hub to whatever degree was necessary over a prolonged period. Even that was suboptimal. In the design for the hub, the consultants who designed it recommended a particular ratio of staff to roles, and the ratio that they recommended was 8 to 1.
Now, if you can achieve 8 to 1, that gives you a very considerable degree of resilience, even if you’re running shift pattern over a prolonged period. In actuality, we didn’t manage to get a ratio of any more than 5 to 1 at any given time, which is enough to run a shift pattern with some resilience but only I think for a limited time. But your observation is correct, we simply hadn’t given enough thought to resilience at a senior level. The chief of staff role, two deputy chief of staff roles, that would have seen us through for a period, but in the event of a need to maintain the hub in operation for anything more than, I think, a couple of months, that would have given us a very significant resilience challenge.
Counsel Inquiry: Was there any detrimental impact upon the response to the pandemic of those staffing arrangements?
Mr Christopher Stewart: Do you mean in particular Mr Harbinson substituting for me?
Counsel Inquiry: No, well, that, but also generally broader in terms of the lack of staffing numbers that you had within the hub.
Mr Christopher Stewart: I think specifically in Mr Harbinson’s case, no. He’s a very experienced and capable colleague, he had a very steep learning curve, which I think he successfully negotiated, and I’m extremely grateful to him for the leadership that he showed in taking up the role.
In relation to the overall numbers of staff available for the hub, as I’ve said, our starting point was below the ideal ratio for numbers available, and Mr Harbinson encountered very significant difficulties in the first week in even getting those numbers to come forward.
That presented, I think, very real challenges and very real difficulties for him, in his evidence he will have said more about this, it required him to bring forward innovative solutions, and you will have seen from his evidence he did approach the four largest consultancy firms in Northern Ireland with a plea for help, which was forthcoming.
So there was a difficulty, there was an effect, it required Mr Harbinson to find innovative solutions, but I’m glad to say I think he was successful in doing so.
Counsel Inquiry: It’s never the intention in the early stages of the activation of NICCMA or the activation of the hub that some of the focus of the hub would be taken up on trying to get in sufficient staff in order to run it; is that right?
Mr Christopher Stewart: That’s correct.
Counsel Inquiry: I also want to talk about your role specifically. So effectively in late March 2020 your role that you’d had as director of CCPB, chief of staff of the hub and then responsibility for planning, that was effectively divided up into three?
Mr Christopher Stewart: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: Yourself, Mr Harbinson and Karen Pearson?
Mr Christopher Stewart: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: Does that show that it was never realistic that during a pandemic the breadth of your role could have been performed by one person?
Mr Christopher Stewart: I think that’s a fair conclusion to draw. I think knowing what we know now, I don’t think anyone would argue that the totality of the roles could be carried out by one person for any length of time. There were times when all three of us were very busy. My view on it now is that I think it calls for at least two roles and at times more than that. So I think I have to concede that that is a shortcoming in the design and one that should be rectified going forward.
But I would say that the need that arose to apply additional leadership capacity to the work was not unique to us in Northern Ireland. If you look at the experience of the Cabinet Office around about that time, it seemed to us that there were new teams and new senior colleagues arriving there almost on a daily basis.
Counsel Inquiry: You said that it would be performed by at least two people in terms of the breadth of –
Mr Christopher Stewart: That would be my view, yes.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes. To be fair to you, you do say in your statement:
“In the event of a future pandemic, a simpler management structure would apply as Ms Pearson’s role carries responsibility for all civil contingencies matters …”
And then it’s likely an approach – for legislation:
“… is likely that an approach similar to the Executive Covid-19 Taskforce would be adopted, with lead responsibility being taken by Ms Pearson’ role.”
Doesn’t that demonstrate that at the moment one person, so Ms Pearson, would be asked to perform two out of the three roles that were undertaken during the pandemic by you, Ms Pearson and Mr Harbinson? Again, is that too much for one person?
Mr Christopher Stewart: In my view, it would be. As things currently stand, and forgive me if I wasn’t clear, that’s what I meant by my statement, if the same situation arose today then it would be under, at present, the single leadership of Ms Pearson.
Her role in that regard didn’t have the other elements of my role at that time. I was also responsible for the Executive information service, the Executive Secretariat and ministerial private offices. I mean, those are not things that fall to her. So her current role would allow her to devote a greater proportion of her time to that, but it would remain my view that there would be more than enough work there for two people.
Counsel Inquiry: So actually that current structure has come about following the civil contingencies framework review which I think took place in late 2021?
Mr Christopher Stewart: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: So that is even after there has been a review conducted following on from the pandemic?
Mr Christopher Stewart: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: Is it right to say that you believe that that should probably be looked at again, in terms of is that too much for one person?
Mr Christopher Stewart: That’s a personal view, but I think I would have to concede it’s a personal view from distance. It’s an area of work that I haven’t been involved in since May of 2020. Colleagues who undertook the review, and indeed Ms Pearson now, I think would be much better informed than I am about what’s actually required.
Counsel Inquiry: But that is based on your personal experience having performed that role for a number of years?
Mr Christopher Stewart: For a period and for a contingency as challenging and as difficult as the Covid pandemic, yes.
Counsel Inquiry: If I can turn now to sectoral resilience.
And if we can show INQ000411508, thank you very much.
It’s at paragraph 52, and it’s the end of the second line:
“… sectoral resilience, that is; the co-ordination of action to support key public services, key economic sectors, and the functioning of society generally.”
You described that as “TEO’s specific responsibility”. In the context of civil contingencies, would that always be within TEO’s responsibility?
Mr Christopher Stewart: Broadly, yes, although that paragraph, I think, is a very specific reference to planning and preparation for an influenza pandemic.
Counsel Inquiry: Well, you say planning for an influenza pandemic, would it not also be planning for any pandemic?
Mr Christopher Stewart: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: You were talking earlier on about how sectoral resilience is about co-ordination.
Mr Christopher Stewart: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: You refer in your statement about co-ordination of action. Please can you describe how TEO goes about co-ordinating that action.
Mr Christopher Stewart: Again, I would draw a distinction between the sort of planning role or the prepare phase of a contingency and the respond phase or the operational phase.
So in prepare mode, if I may use that shorthand, TEO’s role would be to regularly review plans prepared by individual departments and public authorities and to do the joining up of that.
One of the key lessons that we learned from Brexit is that it’s necessary but not sufficient for departments to plan individually, and there needs to be someone, in this case TEO, taking an overview and joining up the plans and drawing the lessons and the inferences for that.
If I could give an example, perhaps to illustrate that, and this was the case in preparation for Brexit, quite a number of departments and public authorities would have identified and planned for risks which might have included the risk of public disorder. Not unnaturally, in their plans they would have looked to PSNI to respond to that and to deal with the necessary risk. But if a number of public authorities are planning on that basis individually, and if we don’t draw that information together and present it to PSNI, then PSNI is not in a position to do its own planning and to ensure that it has the necessary resources in place or the ability to take the necessary prioritisation decisions, and that’s where the joining up and co-ordination role comes into its own for TEO.
It’s not specifically an audit or a quality assurance role, although if TEO was of the view that there were deficiencies or gaps in the plan, then we would point that out to the authority or department concerned. But TEO would not itself have the expertise, for example, to critique a plan from education or infrastructure, and certainly not from health.
When we move into the operational phase, then TEO is part of the hub and is part of the civil contingencies arrangements. What it would be doing there is responding to sectoral resilience issues as and when they’re raised by departments or public authorities, and, as I said earlier, either being part of trying to co-ordinate or develop the solution or escalating the issue still further to CCG or the Executive, or even beyond if that were necessary.
Counsel Inquiry: So in terms of in the prepare phase, you would effectively be looking to ensure that the issues the departments need to deal with are covered, as you say, during the joining up aspect?
Mr Christopher Stewart: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: And that when you were in an activated stage, so when the hub was up and running, when NICCMA has been activated, then you are more likely to be responding to points that have been raised?
Mr Christopher Stewart: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: And it’s not your role to identify, as we saw in your statement, for example, how public services should be supported or how society should function generally; that remained the responsibility of the individual departments who have the specialist knowledge; is that right?
Mr Christopher Stewart: Yes. The hub is very much a co-ordination mechanism.
Counsel Inquiry: I just want to give an example of how that played out actually in the pandemic.
If we can see INQ000309230. It’s a document we actually saw yesterday.
Now, this is an email that was circulated by the Civil Contingencies Secretariat on 6 March 2020. Just to orientate ourselves a little, Civil Contingencies Secretariat is a body that falls within the Cabinet Office and it’s broadly equivalent to CCPB; is that right?
Mr Christopher Stewart: It is, only very much larger and more sophisticated in its capabilities.
Counsel Inquiry: What was the relationship like between CCS and CCPB prior to the pandemic?
Mr Christopher Stewart: Very positive.
Counsel Inquiry: Did the – did you share expertise, best practice, anything along those lines?
Mr Christopher Stewart: Broadly, yes. I can’t cite specific examples of that, but there would have been regular and ongoing liaise between Katharine Hammond’s team and mine.
Counsel Inquiry: Just coming back to this document here, I’m not concerned about the specific timing of it or the precise details within it. So what we see in this email is that CCS is asking departments, Whitehall departments, for information, it’s talking about specific interventions and asking departments to identify what they consider would be impacts. Thank you.
Then you can see specifically there they’re referencing specific groups such as vulnerable elderly person and they’re also asked to consider possible mitigations.
Is that the type of activity that CCPB would have done in Northern Ireland when it comes to, in general, in principle, in relation to the Northern Ireland departments?
Mr Christopher Stewart: Yes, if a commission to do so were received from the Civil Contingencies Group or the Executive. I don’t know the origins of that particular request from Cabinet Office, whether it came directly from the secretariat thereof, on their own initiative, or whether they were tasked with doing that by COBR or by Cabinet.
Within Northern Ireland, I think it’s unlikely that CCPB would initiate an exercise like that on its own initiative, but might well be tasked with doing so by the Civil Contingencies Group or the Executive.
Counsel Inquiry: Why wouldn’t it do that itself?
Mr Christopher Stewart: It tends to operate under direction from the Civil Contingencies Group, perhaps with less autonomy than the Cabinet Office Civil Contingencies Secretariat would have. I wouldn’t rule it out as a possibility. I’m simply saying that in my experience, it’s more – it’s not at all unlikely that it would be engaged in that sort of activity, but I think it’s more likely that it would have been directed by CCG rather than initiated by CCPB. Forgive me, I’m using a great many acronyms.
Counsel Inquiry: CCG in normal times meets three times a year; is that right?
Mr Christopher Stewart: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: So in between those meetings, why wouldn’t it be that CCPB, given its experience of civil contingencies, given its role for sectoral resilience, why wouldn’t it be seeking to perform this equivalent task instead of waiting to be commissioned by CCG or the Executive?
Mr Christopher Stewart: Well, if I understand that particular task, and I do remember it –
Counsel Inquiry: Please don’t worry about the specific task, I mean, this is an example of the task that might be performed.
Mr Christopher Stewart: Well, I think it is, I understand your point, but it’s an example that arose in particular circumstances, I mean, this was in the early stages of preparation for the pandemic, so this was not business as usual by the Cabinet Office, this was a very specific exercise for a very specific reason.
There is no reason why, in a business as usual period, CCPB wouldn’t be gathering information, testing the state of preparedness of sectoral resilience. To the extent to which it didn’t do so in the years preceding the Covid pandemic, I think that’s a direct result of resource constraints and the lack of staffing resource that was available in the team.
Counsel Inquiry: So let’s say, for example, departmental contingency plan, doesn’t really matter which department, would that have included specifically asking about impact upon groups such as disabled, children, or others who might be potentially particularly impacted by any given situation? Was that something that would be considered?
Mr Christopher Stewart: Possibly. It may not have been as sophisticated a request as that. I say that simply because in the period where we were focused on this, in February and through into early March, the question that we asked – but that might have been a product simply more of the urgency of that particular period – was to departments: let us have your plans, let us see them, what is your state of readiness? I don’t think we went further than that in asking the more specific questions that were in that example.
Counsel Inquiry: And why was that the case, was that because of a lack of staffing availability as you indicated earlier on, or was that for a different reason?
Mr Christopher Stewart: I think it was more a case of one step at a time and the first step being let’s get the plans in have a look at them and see where the gaps are.
Counsel Inquiry: Is it not a gap if you start – is it not a gap if you’re considering that there’s an absence of consideration of groups who might be particularly affected by a plan?
Mr Christopher Stewart: I would accept that, yes.
Counsel Inquiry: If I could move on now to the actual particular pandemic response, you say in your statement that it’s actually the UK Government who provided the official advice, the preparation for the Covid-19 pandemic should be on the basis of the extant influenza plan and that this remained the advice until some time in March 2020?
Mr Christopher Stewart: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: Whether or not the influenza plan should have been used in response to Covid-19 wasn’t a matter for CCPB or TEO; is that right?
Mr Christopher Stewart: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: Your role was effectively to implement the plan that was to be used in response to that pandemic; is that correct?
Mr Christopher Stewart: And specifically a particular strand of the plan that fell to TEO, which was sectoral resilience.
Counsel Inquiry: Again, just touching upon Ms Rooney, so Ms Rooney was brought in in August 2019 in order to conduct a strategic review of civil contingencies within CCPB; that’s right?
Mr Christopher Stewart: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: Ms Rooney says in her statement:
“… I had been in post for 6 months at that time, I did not have an informed understanding of what was meant by sector resilience. It was the responsibility of the Head of Civil Contingencies Policy Branch.”
Is it not a cause of concern that Ms Rooney could have been involved in CCPB for six months and still not have an informed understanding of what was meant by sector resilience?
Mr Christopher Stewart: I was surprised to see that statement. It’s not for me to put a gloss or an interpretation on what she’s said, but my assessment at the time was that she was a very high performing individual who I thought in a comparatively short period of time had got to grips very effectively with what the role of CCPB was, but I absolutely understand and respect the concern I think that she’s expressing there.
Counsel Inquiry: Again, coming back to staffing numbers, if you had five members of staff, again I think it’s where we settled, and one was Ms Rooney, is the practical implication of Ms Rooney’s statement that you – Northern Ireland had at best four people within CCPB involved in sector resilience prior to the pandemic?
Mr Christopher Stewart: That’s correct. I wouldn’t dispute in any way that CCPB was, even at its full complement, a small team and, as you’ve correctly set out, it was nowhere near its full complement, it was a very small team.
Counsel Inquiry: Again, Ms Rooney observes that her view was that staff within the existing CCPB lacked the expertise, skills to undertake a cumulative risk assessment of the emerging pandemic. Would you agree with that?
Mr Christopher Stewart: Not entirely. I respect her giving that view, but I wouldn’t entirely agree with that. I think there was greater expertise in relation to that in Karen Pearson’s team, which is why it was of very considerable benefit when they joined us. But I think there was expertise, sufficient expertise within CCPB, albeit concentrated in a small number of people, to do that assessment at the time when I asked them to do it.
Counsel Inquiry: In terms of the timeline, Ms Pearson’s team arrived around 14 March?
Mr Christopher Stewart: Yes, that’s correct.
Counsel Inquiry: So I think Ms Rooney’s statement is that within the existing CCPB, again, you’re saying that you thought that those four individuals did have sufficient expertise and skills to undertake a cumulative risk assessment?
Mr Christopher Stewart: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: Prior to 14 March?
Mr Christopher Stewart: Yes. But I respect Ms Rooney’s right to take a different view on that.
Counsel Inquiry: And Ms Rooney’s view would be based on her role that you tasked her to do to effectively perform a review of those issues such as experience, skills, expertise within CCPB?
Mr Christopher Stewart: Yes, and I think particularly in feeding in to that review the recommendations in the lessons learned reports from PwC consultants following the design exercise for the hub.
Counsel Inquiry: Because you say that you reached a conclusion that there was a need for a greater focus on preparation, particularly in relation to cumulative planning and risk assessment; is that right?
Mr Christopher Stewart: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: And you’d actually reached that view prior to February 2020?
Mr Christopher Stewart: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: One of the documents that we’ve had which was referred to frequently and I’d like you to be able to talk about it is INQ000205712.
This is a document that you prepared, as we can see from the top there.
Mr Christopher Stewart: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: “A strategic review of civil contingency arrangements …”
So the question that I was just asking about, the focus on preparation, is this a document that arose from your view that you needed a greater focus on preparation?
Mr Christopher Stewart: It does. Perhaps before I turn to that, I may not have been sufficiently clear in my previous answer or I may have been answering perhaps a little too literally.
It was not my view that Civil Contingencies Policy Branch had all the capacity or capability that it needed to fully discharge the entirety of the role that I envisaged for it, but at that particular point in time, in February 2020, it was my view and remains my view that it had sufficient capacity to deal with the immediate challenge of gathering together sectoral resilience plans in preparation for the coronavirus pandemic.
As that paper sets out, and as I’ve just said, I think there’s an important point perhaps which is worth bearing out here, because it touches on a concern I think raised by Ms Dobbin in her questioning of Sir David Sterling, and indeed in her opening remarks where I think she understandably asked: why, in the teeth of the pandemic, were you talking about a review and why in a document that describes a review were you talking about possible future emergencies, when it was well known at that point that we were about to enter into a pandemic?
The explanation for that is that, despite its timing, that exercise was not ever intended to be part of the response to Covid. It long pre-dates that, for the very reasons that you’ve given. It’s long in gestation, its origins go back to August 2019, when I asked Ms Rooney to join the department to carry out just that review. Folded into that were the lessons learned reports from PwC on the experience of standing up the hub, and Ms Rooney’s own assessment of what the capacity situation was at that time. And its focus is very much future-looking. Its focus is very much on dealing with new types of contingencies, where we hadn’t even begun to plan, and perhaps the most obvious example there is cyber attacks, particularly where they would relate to critical national infrastructure such as the power transmission and distribution network.
That was an area of work that CCPB had simply never been able to get into, and it was my view that we needed additional capacity to do that going forward, and that was the provenance of the review.
But it was not intended to be part of the response to Covid. That document is dated February. It wouldn’t be remotely conceivable even to start a review, never mind finish one, in the period before the pandemic arrived.
There was also a concern I think expressed that, you know, were we resorting to a classic civil service tactic there in the face of a problem: let’s call for a review and simply kick the can down the road. Again, I’d like to, if I can, reassure you that that was not the case.
This review was an entirely different purpose, it wasn’t part of the solution that I required in terms of our ability to respond to the pandemic. The solution to that, by that time, could only be found in transferring staff from other parts of the department to give us a short-term boost in our capacity.
Counsel Inquiry: In terms of the review, though, if you’re going to carry out a review, somebody’s got to carry it out.
Mr Christopher Stewart: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: Who was going to carry that out?
Mr Christopher Stewart: It would have been led by Ms Rooney, but, as is laid out in that paper, in her estimate it wasn’t something that one person could do, even the review needed additional capacity, and our request was for approval to – in addition to our own team, to employ some consultancy resource to assist with that.
Counsel Inquiry: But you’re taking resources away from CCPB in late February, just before the pandemic – well, you’re taking resources away in late February; surely at that point in time you don’t want to weaken the capacity of CCPB by asking them to do something else?
Mr Christopher Stewart: That’s entirely correct, which is why the review did not commence at that time.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes, but you say, and we can see on the screen there, that:
“[The] Issue: [of] civil contingencies arrangements in Northern Ireland have not been reviewed for over 20 years. This paper seeks agreement to commission a strategic review …”
Is that not demonstrating that your intention was that the review would be carried out at that time?
Mr Christopher Stewart: No, that wasn’t my intention.
Counsel Inquiry: Well, then, why would you put a paper to the board asking for a review to be carried out if you didn’t intend it to be carried out around that time?
Mr Christopher Stewart: Quite simply because even at that stage, and I appreciate that this may appear incongruous, there was some normal business as usual still being transacted within the department, and this was part of the normal business as usual.
That paper, as I said, was long in gestation. It finally got to the point where it was ready to go to the departmental board in February, and the board’s approval was secured. But at no stage – and I regarded that as approval to proceed at the right time. At no stage would I have considered taking resource away from Civil Contingencies Policy Branch in the teeth of the pandemic to carry out a review. That would have made no sense.
Counsel Inquiry: If we can go to page 9 of this document, please, paragraph 23.
And again, it’s worth remembering that this is a document that you’d authored:
“… no action is taken to address the lessons learnt and to implement recommendations …”
So that opening sentence is effectively: if the current position continues; is that right?
Mr Christopher Stewart: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: It then goes on:
“… the risk arises that civil contingency arrangements in Northern Ireland will fall even further behind the rest of the UK, and the Executive and wider society may not be prepared for, or have the capacity and capability to deal with, an emergency situation should a major contingency present.”
Given that’s 25 February, do you not consider that there was a likelihood of a pandemic and that, therefore, a major contingency had presented itself by that point?
Mr Christopher Stewart: It was, and again I was conscious in Ms Dobbin’s opening remarks that that might be interpreted as a belief on my part that a pandemic was not inevitable. That was not the case at that stage.
There was also a concern raised, I think on behalf of one of the core participants in the opening statements, that: how could I be asking the departmental board for a review and stating very robustly there, as I did, that it was necessary in February, but yet be assuring ministers in March that we had the capacity to mount the immediate response to the pandemic? The explanation there is that the scope of that paper is a review to ensure that, going forward, we had the entirety, all of the capacity and capability that we needed, to deal with all conceivable contingencies going forward.
On the separate question of were we, in March 2020 or even earlier, able to take the immediate steps that were necessary to respond to the Covid pandemic, my view was: yes, but only just. I said in my statement I thought we had adequate. What I meant by that was just enough and no more resource to mount that response. But I certainly didn’t intend to imply by that statement that CCPB had all the resource that it could possibly need to do all the things that it could possibly be called on to do, hence the need for the review.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes, although is it not fair that the paragraph that you’ve authored there, on 25 February 2020, is a little bleaker in tone about – “may not be prepared for, or have the capacity and capability to deal effectively with”; that’s a bit bleaker than what you’re currently saying now; do you agree with that?
Mr Christopher Stewart: No, and if I’ve given you the impression this morning that it wasn’t as bad as that, then let me take the opportunity to correct that. It was my view from quite early on in my tenure in TEO, and remains my view today, that, at that point in time, Civil Contingencies Policy Branch was very considerably under-resourced for the task that it was tasked with doing.
Counsel Inquiry: What’s unequivocal from that paragraph is that you were concerned that there was a deficit in the ability of CCPB to prepare for an emergency situation; is that right?
Mr Christopher Stewart: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: So if you had that view on 25 February 2020, had that led you to put extra emphasis on the need to prepare prior to February 2020 in the event of a pandemic when you were hearing whispers that Covid was potentially likely to be a major issue for Northern Ireland?
Mr Christopher Stewart: Yes, forgive me, if I understand your question correctly, it was clear from an email that I received on 22 January from the head of the branch that we were behind in our planning and preparation. She put it very succinctly in saying that we were 18 months behind where we ought to have been in terms of preparation for an influenza pandemic. So from that point on, I was encouraging and indeed directing the team, probably ad nauseam, to give priority to planning and preparation, because one of the key lessons that we had learned from the work on Brexit was the importance of doing just that, and the importance of doing not only the risk assessment but the cumulative risk assessment across departments and public authorities. That’s what’s behind my encouragement and constant expectation of the branch to prioritise that at that stage, that is what is behind the advice that I was giving, which I’m sure we’ll come on to, in terms of the appropriate point at which to activate the hub to move into operational role. That is a matter of very fine judgement. Activate too late and you impede the response. Activate too early and you won’t have got – made sufficient progress in the planning. And again, I think the importance of planning was emphasised in the opening remarks of a number of the core participants.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes, but again it’s important to focus on the planning and the preparation stage. You’re talking here about preparation. We’re not actually at the point of activation yet, are we?
Mr Christopher Stewart: No.
Counsel Inquiry: This is about focusing in the planning stage?
Mr Christopher Stewart: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: So what emphasis are you putting on the additional planning at this point in February 2020 given your view about the potential deficit in the ability to plan?
Mr Christopher Stewart: I’m directing the team to set it as their top priority, which indeed they did, they worked extremely hard on it, got us to the point where, by 9 March, we were able to present to Sir David Sterling our initial overview, our initial co-ordination of the sectoral resilience plans across all departments and, as I think you quoted from earlier, my signal to him that, as a result of that extremely busy period, that the branch had had – I think the phrase I used was that they were on their knees.
Counsel Inquiry: Because you’d – if we could go to INQ000309214, and it’s focusing at the top – sorry, well, we’ll focus at the top and then we’ll scroll down.
So we can see that that’s an email from you on 6 February 2020 and this is about sectoral resilience, you’ve got there an indication that:
“… the outbreak might not peak in China for another 5 weeks, and 2 to 3 weeks after that …”
And then this is where it has come from about CCPB:
“… down to 2 members of staff … I’ll need to take some fairly drastic re-prioritisation decisions …”
If we can just go down to the email that’s below that, which is from – it says “redacted” there, is that actually from Professor McBride? Is that actually likely that it’s from the CMO?
Mr Christopher Stewart: Yes, I think so.
Counsel Inquiry: So you have an email there from 6 February from the CMO to you saying:
“I anticipate the cross-government co-ordination and wider sector resilience aspects will ramp up significantly.”
So on 6 February, by that point in time you had your own concerns about the ability of CCPB to plan for an event such as a pandemic; is that right?
Mr Christopher Stewart: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: And you had the CMO saying “I anticipate the wider sector resilience aspects will ramp up significantly”, that’s a bit of a pinch-point if, as your email above says, you have two members of staff, you have concerns about planning and the CMO is suggesting that wider resilience will need to ramp up. Were you satisfied that CCPB could give an adequate and an effective response in those circumstances?
Mr Christopher Stewart: My view was that it could give an adequate initial response, but I still had a very real concern about resilience versus sustainability with that effort for anything other than a short period and that’s why there are the two references there, one to asking NIO colleagues for help, which in the end I didn’t do, but also to the step which I did take on 19 March, if I recall correctly, which was to, with ministerial agreement, suspend all work on programme for government and re-prioritise and re-direct actually an entire division of staff from work on the programme for government on to Covid work.
Counsel Inquiry: I just want to dive a little deeper into that.
If we can go to INQ000092712.
And I think this is probably the document that you were referring to earlier on, from the head of the civil contingencies – it’s probably the document you were referring to earlier on; is that right?
Mr Christopher Stewart: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: Then if we scroll down to paragraph 3, please – thank you very much – and we can see there it’s under the heading of “Sector Resilience”:
“CCPB was allocated responsibility for taking forward the sector resilience element of Pandemic flu preparations a few years ago. It is allocated to CCPB in the CCG(NI)Sector Resilience Programme.”
It is taken on as a non health-related issue.
Just pausing there, health-related issues should be dealt with by the Department of Health?
Mr Christopher Stewart: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: “However, no work had commenced on it due to competing priorities and then the impact on staff resources due to EU exit preparations. This has resulted in Northern Ireland being more than 18 months behind the rest of the United Kingdom in terms of ensuring sector resilience to any Pandemic flu outbreak. It is clear there is a pressing need to move … forward.”
So is that what you’re talking there, that in the 18 months – sorry. You were 18 months behind the rest of the United Kingdom. Plainly any planning that happens in 18 months can have an impact upon how someone like a civil contingencies body would respond in the event of a pandemic?
Mr Christopher Stewart: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: And also you’re saying there that the reason why no work was done was other priorities and staffing resources?
Mr Christopher Stewart: Yes, that was the advice that I was given and I’ve no reason to doubt that that was the reason.
Counsel Inquiry: The staffing resources situation wasn’t actually any better by January 2020; is that right?
Mr Christopher Stewart: Correct.
Counsel Inquiry: If we can have up, please – this is your statement – INQ000411508, thank you.
This is page 12, I want to – you deal with this at length in your statement, fair to show this. If we can go to paragraph 51, you say you don’t recollect that document.
Then at paragraph 52, you say:
“I do not recall being made aware of such concerns prior to receipt of the document.”
So that’s 22 January, you don’t remember being aware of what people within CCPB considered being 18 months behind England – behind the rest of the United Kingdom, prior to 22 January?
Mr Christopher Stewart: No, it had not been brought to my attention prior to that point.
Counsel Inquiry: Then this is the section where we were dealing earlier on with sectoral resilience.
You then say at the bottom, and this is the rapid pace – if we could just have the zoom-in section back, please, so it’s the last three lines:
“… the rapid pace of developments around that time …”
What time do you mean by that?
Mr Christopher Stewart: From that point on, from late January through into February and March.
Counsel Inquiry: “… meant that the focus shifted rapidly thereafter from the development of a more general plan onto a small number of discrete tasks …”
Then if we can go over the page, please, and then those top three bullet points.
So those are the three tasks, so it’s: input to the development of the Coronavirus Act 2020; ensuring readiness to activate the NICCMA protocol; and preparing for the activation of the hub?
Mr Christopher Stewart: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: You don’t actually include in there any of the sectoral resilience work in advance of the pandemic.
Mr Christopher Stewart: Those I would have seen as the three most pressing priorities or, if you like, the innermost concentric circle. The next priority after that is to do the work with the departments and other public authorities in gathering in the plans.
Probably worth saying as well that had we not been 18 months behind in our planning, those I would have seen as the top priorities in a well developed plan.
Counsel Inquiry: So sectoral resilience from January through to March 2020, using the timeframe you used earlier on, wasn’t one of the top priorities?
Mr Christopher Stewart: Sorry, I’ve given you the wrong impression there, and I think perhaps, with hindsight, my statement is less than clear on that point.
In the situation that I found – where we found ourselves in in January, my judgement was that we needed to do two sets of things. The first was those three points that are on the highlighted document. The second was to get the sectoral resilience planning under way at great pace, and those things were done, and I apologise if that’s not reflected clearly in the statement.
Counsel Inquiry: Did CCPB have the capacity to do these aspects and sectoral resilience with the limited number of staff that it had between January 2020 and then when the hub was stood up in March?
Mr Christopher Stewart: With a very considerable volume of work done on their part, yes, and not without very considerable pressure. And that is why at the end of that period my advice was that the team was on their knees.
Counsel Inquiry: Again, I just want to focus on the planning, because, again, prior to 16 March you are still in the planning and preparation phase; is that right?
Mr Christopher Stewart: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: So if we just go, again, same document, if we go down to paragraph 59, please, and if we can zoom in there, this is discussing the CCPB. You’ve formed the view the focus within – on preparation, which you’ve highlighted there, about the need for preparation.
Is that bottom line:
“Fortunately, it was possible to address this by involving the Brexit team (which was skilled and experienced in planning and risk assessment) in the preparation for the pandemic.”
Are you saying there that planning really was advanced when the Brexit team joined?
Mr Christopher Stewart: It was advanced to a certain point. By 9 March, I think it was, we had done the initial co-ordination exercise in gathering in the resilience plans from departments. The arrival of the Brexit team I think gave that work a considerable boost, significantly boosted our capacity, took some of the pressure off the CCPB team at that point.
And I think if I may characterise it in this way: the CCPB approach had been very much bottom-up, gathering in the plans, assessing them, trying to spot the gaps, and join the dots, as it were. That was complemented by the arrival of the Brexit team, which took more of a top-down approach, starting by identifying critical risks and then seeing how they were reflected in the sectoral resilience plans that were coming forward.
So the two approaches were complementary.
Counsel Inquiry: I’m going to look at the actual planning just after the break, Mr Stewart, but let’s get the timeline correct. So the Brexit team joined on 14 March?
Mr Christopher Stewart: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: And the WHO had declared a global pandemic on 11 March?
Mr Christopher Stewart: Yes, I think that’s correct.
Counsel Inquiry: Would you agree that’s very late in the day for having the sufficient planning resources?
Mr Christopher Stewart: I would absolutely accept that point, I would absolutely accept the point that our planning overall was very late in the day. Sir David said yesterday, and I entirely agree with him, we were not as well prepared as we ought to have been. We ought not to have been 18 months behind in our planning for an influenza pandemic. We got to where we got by mid-March by dint of extremely hard work by a small and under-resourced team over a very short period. That is not a satisfactory position to be in, and it is not a position that I would seek to defend. We ought not to have been in that position. We ought to have been better prepared.
Counsel Inquiry: You do say – and thank you, that document can come down now, I believe.
You do say in your statement that, as it transpired, the influenza pandemic plan was of limited utility in relation to the Covid-19 pandemic, which presented a wholly different challenge in relation to sectoral resilience and required a substantially different response.
I just want to clarify there, Mr Stewart, are you saying that in the end any lack of sector resilience didn’t matter because, in effect, the wrong plan was being used?
Mr Christopher Stewart: No, absolutely not, and I want to ensure that I’m not giving you that impression. The fact that we were behind in planning for influenza is a serious matter; we ought not to have been in that position. Prior to Brexit and prior to Covid, an influenza pandemic was our number one risk. Being 18 months behind in the planning for your number one risk is not a satisfactory position and not one that I would attempt to defend.
The point that I was trying to make is that, notwithstanding the very hard work of the branch to get, if you like, influenza-based plans together in the period from the end of January to early March, quite simply the world turned upside-down with the announcement of lockdown, and all of the planning that we had done to that point, late though it was, from that point forward, in my view, was of limited utility.
I might perhaps illustrate that with a couple of examples, if I may.
A sectoral resilience plan for an influenza-type pandemic in education would essentially be looking at the task of: how do you keep the schools system going with a 20% absence rate at any given time?
A sectoral resilience plan for education in a coronavirus-type pandemic presents a wholly different challenge, because the school system is closed. The challenge there is: how do you ensure sectoral resilience of the delivery of education to children when you no longer have a functioning schools system?
Similarly in health, although it wasn’t TEO’s role to do the sectoral resilience in health, the sectoral resilience plan in health for an influenza-type pandemic is quite simply: how do you maintain services with a 20% absence rate?
In a coronavirus pandemic, one of the challenges is: how do you maintain health and social care when the schools are closed and when large numbers of parents perhaps are unable to come to work because they’re having to make alternative childcare arrangements?
That’s what I meant when I said that an influenza plan was of limited use in the actual circumstances of a Covid pandemic. I was absolutely not trying to give the impression that the fact that we were late to the game on influenza planning didn’t matter. It did matter, in and of itself.
Counsel Inquiry: But whichever way, it still comes back to planning, is that right, the more that you’re able to plan for different scenarios and different plans, the more likely you are to be prepared in the event of a pandemic?
Mr Christopher Stewart: That is absolutely correct, and that is what lay behind the views and advice that I gave, and on occasion the challenge that I had to give, when we were being urged to stand up the hub at an earlier point than when we actually did.
Mr Scott: My Lady, that’s a convenient point for the break.
Lady Hallett: Perfect timing, Mr Scott.
I shall return at 11.30.
(11.15 am)
(A short break)
(11.30 am)
Lady Hallett: Mr Scott.
Mr Scott: Thank you, my Lady.
Mr Stewart, there’s one point I just want to put to you, and it was about the paper from February 2020.
If we could just have up on the screen INQ000391222.
My fault for the delay, rather than anybody else’s, Mr Stewart, it’s just on its way now.
So this is the minutes of the TEO departmental board meeting. The document that we were discussing earlier on, your note about the review, that would have been considered at this departmental board meeting?
Mr Christopher Stewart: Yes, I think that’s correct.
Counsel Inquiry: If we scroll down the page, please, we have 3b there, and it says:
“Chris Stewart …”
So it’s headed “Strategic Review of Civil Contingencies across Northern Ireland.
“Chris Stewart provided an overview of the paper circulated, recording the importance of a review of current arrangements given the changes in the strategic landscape that now impose new risks and considerations for civil contingency preparations. Following discussion [name redacted] noted the timely nature of the proposed review, the importance of engagement with key stakeholders and the recording of all associated risks.”
It doesn’t indicate there, would you agree, that it was considered that the review would be something that would be delayed to a point in future?
Mr Christopher Stewart: That isn’t explicitly reflected in that paragraph, that’s correct.
Counsel Inquiry: If that was the intention, would you have expected it to be explicitly referred to in that paragraph?
Mr Christopher Stewart: I wouldn’t have necessarily seen that as an omission. I regarded the board’s agreement as giving me permission to take forward the review at a time and in a manner of my choosing.
Counsel Inquiry: Thank you.
If I can take you now, because I want to move on to the actual planning that was conducted rather than some of the approaches, if I can take you to INQ000023220.
So this is the note of the CCG meeting on Thursday 20 February 2020. So, again, just to orientate ourselves in time, this is before the briefing paper that we were discussing of 25 February and the TEO departmental board that we were just looking at.
Could you just describe what the purpose of the CCG meeting was on 20 February 2020.
Mr Christopher Stewart: It’s a little difficult to do so at this remove. I don’t have a particularly clear recollection of it.
Counsel Inquiry: Can I help you?
Mr Christopher Stewart: Please.
Counsel Inquiry: So was it an indication that when you were contacted by the Department of Health in early February 2020 that there was a suggestion that there be a meeting held by TEO in order to try to pull together some planning and preparation for the pandemic?
Mr Christopher Stewart: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: Does that sound about right?
Mr Christopher Stewart: Entirely right, yes. Forgive me –
Counsel Inquiry: So is it likely that this is that meeting of 20 February?
Mr Christopher Stewart: It is exactly that. You’ve jogged my memory. I think I referred to that in my statement.
Counsel Inquiry: So what we can see there is we have the priorities, of isolation facilities, so – the Coronavirus Bill, excess deaths. And then it’s only at the bottom, in terms of priorities, that we have “Readiness”, and it’s:
“All organisations to review business continuity plans in light of reasonable worst case parameters …”
There is no indication there that there’s any specific role for CCPB. Is that right?
Mr Christopher Stewart: There isn’t an indication there, but I think implicit in that is review plans and pass them into CCPB.
Counsel Inquiry: Well, in terms of the organisations, that relates to the departments; is that right, and their arm’s length bodies?
Mr Christopher Stewart: That’s right, their arm’s length bodies, yes.
Counsel Inquiry: Then if we can take off the zoom-in section, we can see that we have the “Actions”. Again, we can see at the bottom, the second one up from the bottom:
“TEO to issue a short questionnaire … on readiness …”
Would that be work that CCPB needed to undertake?
Mr Christopher Stewart: Yes. The questionnaire was, indeed, issued by CCPB.
Counsel Inquiry: And then:
“DEPARTMENTAL MEMBERS to review readiness with their CNI …”
What does that mean, please?
Mr Christopher Stewart: Critical national infrastructure.
Counsel Inquiry: Thank you.
Again, just for completeness, if we could just go over the page, please.
So discussions there of working group meetings, C3 leads – so:
“… to consider the need for, and … potential content of, accumulative impact document.”
Does that meeting, that’s 20 February, indicate that actually at that point in time there wasn’t any accumulative impact document in place in Northern Ireland about any prospective pandemic?
Mr Christopher Stewart: I’m not sure I could say that there wasn’t anything, but it certainly wasn’t fully developed at that stage.
Counsel Inquiry: Why was that, that it wasn’t fully developed or wasn’t – well, why wasn’t it fully developed by 25 February?
Mr Christopher Stewart: That was very much during the period where we were running very hard to try to recover the lost ground from the 18-month delay, and, as I have conceded, we were not as well prepared as we ought to have been. We were trying to make up the deficit, and that’s the reason why, on that date, things were not as advanced as they might have been.
Counsel Inquiry: Is it fair to say that, based on what you were just saying then, you were working hard to make up the deficit but, by the time of 23 March, you actually hadn’t made up the deficit?
Mr Christopher Stewart: What I would say is at the time, by 23 March, we had got to a certain point, we had issued and received the responses to that questionnaire, we had received the sectoral resilience plans from departments and carried out an initial overview of those. That was summarised in the table I think Ms Dobbin referred to yesterday. That was clearly not the end of the story. Planning is not complete at that point, which is why, as I said earlier, the very welcome addition of Karen Pearson’s team gave us a boost and allowed considerable volume of further work to be done on planning beyond that date. I would not claim that by that date planning was complete. In fact I’m not certain that planning is something that ever ends in this context.
Counsel Inquiry: At this point, around 20 February, do you think that the planning that had been conducted by the departments was sufficient in order to respond to a pandemic?
Mr Christopher Stewart: There were some gaps in it, and actually Ms Dobbin referred to one or two of them on the table yesterday. Which is why in the final column of that table you’ll see a red, amber, green assessment of the state of readiness. Not a terribly sophisticated analysis, I must concede, but nevertheless an initial view from CCPB on the state of readiness in each department.
Counsel Inquiry: Because again I come back to the point that we canvassed very early on, that it’s actually not for CCPB to carry out the planning in relation to individual sectors, that’s for the departments –
Mr Christopher Stewart: That’s correct.
Counsel Inquiry: So your role in terms of the co-ordination role would be that you could press departments –
Mr Christopher Stewart: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: – and you could ask them to cover certain specific areas and certain queries, but you couldn’t do the planning for them?
Mr Christopher Stewart: Correct.
Counsel Inquiry: If I could just take you to INQ000325143, and it’s page 2 of this document.
These are going to be some messages between yourself and Ms Rooney, Mr Stewart, and they’re from around 8 March, around 4.30 pm. Just while we’re waiting for that to come up, you can tell that from where it comes up in the middle of the text, about …
Thank you.
So on the left-hand side, as we understand it, is messages from Bernie Rooney, and on the right-hand side are your messages.
Mr Christopher Stewart: I think that’s correct, yes.
Counsel Inquiry: So we see Ms Rooney saying:
“Ok thanks. Should we circulate to Perm Secs seek lines on what [Departments] are considering or assume that this work [is] ongoing. The only evidence that I have seen of any real planning is Economy.”
You say:
“… I think we need to wait for advice from Michael on the timing of this in Northern Ireland.”
Again, reference there to “Michael”; is that the CMO?
Mr Christopher Stewart: It would be the CMO, yes.
Counsel Inquiry: Why would you need to wait for advice from the CMO on the timing?
Mr Christopher Stewart: I’m afraid I’m not quite sure what it was that Mrs Rooney was referring to in terms of what it was that we should circulate to permanent secretaries.
Counsel Inquiry: Okay. Well, then, let’s focus at the paragraph on the left-hand side at the bottom:
“I am concerned about [Departments] delay in planning. All a bit slow at present, waiting to be asked and told what to do.”
If this is 8 March, is the suggestion here from Ms Rooney that actually there hadn’t been sufficient planning done by the departments?
Mr Christopher Stewart: I think that’s the only construction that you could put on that sentence, but I’m not sure that I entirely agree with her assessment at that point, in particular the assessment in the paragraph above.
By 9 March we had an assembled table which set out the status and the state of planning in each department. There were clearly some gaps in it identified, but there was also, I think, evidence of a great deal of planning that had taken place.
Counsel Inquiry: Okay.
Mr Christopher Stewart: I respectfully disagree with my colleague on that.
Counsel Inquiry: Okay, let’s take you to INQ000023226. It’s likely to be page 18 that opens up, but hopefully we could start at page 1. Thank you.
So this is the document that –
Mr Christopher Stewart: The very table that I referred to.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes. And again, it’s the non-health sectoral resilience returns, anything health related would have been dealt with by the Department of Health; is that correct?
Mr Christopher Stewart: That’s correct.
Counsel Inquiry: So when it says “version 2” in the top right-hand corner, 13th March –
Mr Christopher Stewart: There was an earlier version on 9 March which is why that was version 2.
Counsel Inquiry: So that’s what you’re saying was the totality of the planning that had come through to CCPB?
Mr Christopher Stewart: With respect, no, that’s what I’m saying is the summary prepared by CCPB, not the totality of the planning.
Counsel Inquiry: Okay.
Then Ms Dobbin asked Sir David Sterling about whether he considered that this document showed a sufficient level of planning. What’s your view on whether this shows a sufficient level of planning at 13 March 2020?
Mr Christopher Stewart: I think it clearly identifies gaps, there are a number of ambers, if memory serves me I think further down the table there are perhaps one or two reds as well.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes. If we could just go to page 18, for example, so what happens in this document is that you’ve got tables for each of the individual departments.
Mr Christopher Stewart: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: So this is the Department for Communities, so if we were to look at, for example, the impact upon disabled people, would we naturally be wanting to be looking at the “Communities” section?
Mr Christopher Stewart: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: So we have there the key areas of concern, welfare, services to the public, we’ve got the impact of vulnerable citizens disproportionately impacted and then the mitigations about a working group.
Given that this is 13 March 2020, it doesn’t look like there’s a significant amount of planning in terms of the mitigations of the potential impact of the pandemic on disabled people. Would you agree with that?
Mr Christopher Stewart: Based on what’s in front of us, yes, and I think the point might also be made that you would expect to see reference to the needs of disabled people in other departments’ plans, not just those of the department of communities.
Counsel Inquiry: You say that this was a summary table. Are you suggesting that this table would – well, this table would have distilled the key elements of that, that’s the nature of a summary, isn’t it?
Mr Christopher Stewart: It would have aimed to do so, yes. Just to be absolutely clear, this is not a plan, this is a summary table of plans.
Counsel Inquiry: But it’s going to contain effectively the highlight points of those plans?
Mr Christopher Stewart: It should do, yes.
Counsel Inquiry: I just want to then talk about planning. So when Ms Pearson arrived – and she, by 17 March, had produced a plan; is that correct? What was described as a plan?
Mr Christopher Stewart: She had produced, if memory serves me, I think, a proposal to take planning to, if you like, the next level or the next steps that she was advising that needed to be taken going forward.
Counsel Inquiry: Let me use your words on this, if we can see INQ000325137, and this is going to be a message from yourself to Sir David Sterling on 17 March 2020.
Mr Christopher Stewart: I suspect it’s the one where I describe it as a tour de force.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes, so your words are:
“Karen’s planning paper is a tour de force, but I worry that it involves a complexity that will be hard to manage and hard for Departments to populate without a major shift in resource and attitude they struggled to get to a point where [again name redacted] and Bernie handed over.”
So even by 17 March are you expressing concerns there that there’s not sufficient planning within the departments in order to meet the plan that had been advanced by Ms Pearson?
Mr Christopher Stewart: I don’t think I was giving an overall judgement on the adequacy or otherwise of planning in departments at that stage, what I was saying was that it had taken considerable time and effort on the part of CCPB and indeed within departments to get to that point. Having – I wouldn’t use the word “struggle”, but having experienced challenges in getting to this point, the more sophisticated and more comprehensive approach that Ms Pearson was recommending, I think rightly so, was going to be a considerable further challenge to departments going ahead, hence I was signalling very clearly that more resource was going to have to be applied within departments on planning.
Counsel Inquiry: Ms Pearson, as is indicated, arrived around 14 March, she produced a plan on 17 March, why wasn’t an equivalent plan produced by CCPB earlier, even before Ms Pearson arrived?
Mr Christopher Stewart: I think it’s fair to say that the approach that we took in CCPB prior to that point was less sophisticated. It was, as I described earlier, a bottom-up approach based on gathering together the plans, probing them for weaknesses, challenging where necessary, joining the dots and completing the picture. What Karen and her team brought to it was an altogether more sophisticated approach and one which I characterise as top-down, which began more with identification of the risks and then assessing how or whether those risks were reflected in departmental plans. The two approaches I think are quite complementary.
Counsel Inquiry: But is that not what CCPB should have been doing, a top-down approach, given your experience in civil contingencies in terms of departments in terms if information you required in the same way that the Civil Contingencies Secretariat did at an early stage in the pandemic?
Mr Christopher Stewart: I accept that that would have been a better approach.
Counsel Inquiry: I’m going to be moving on to a different topic in relation to legislation planning. You said earlier on, Mr Stewart, that you wished to talk about the activation of NICCMA, would you please indicate what points you would wish to make in addition to what Sir David Sterling said?
Mr Christopher Stewart: I won’t repeat the points that he made, other than to say that I agree entirely with his evidence that the judgement that we made at the time was that we had asked for activation at the right point, but like Sir David, I entirely accept that the Inquiry may come to a different conclusion on that. Points I think have been well made and drawn out in your questioning that there is a fine judgement to be made in identifying that transition point between planning and operations, because both are important and it is a matter of judgement. Stand up too early and you may not have got – made sufficient progress on planning. Stand up too late and you may impede the response.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes. And if you have sufficient resources you’re able to both plan and prepare for the stand-up at the same time; is that right?
Mr Christopher Stewart: Well, sufficient resources are a pre-requisite to both modes, but I think another point that’s worth bearing in mind is when you reach the operational point, the hub is new and involves a cadre of staff who join the operation at that point. Prior to that, and indeed from that point forward, other than hub staff, planning and operational response are actually carried out by the same teams of staff.
Counsel Inquiry: Unless there is anything further you wish to add, I was going to move on to your role in terms of planning for the legislation and the initial set of regulations in 2020?
Mr Christopher Stewart: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: So after you had to relinquish the role of chief of staff of the hub, which you have explained earlier on, the focus of your role was on preparing legislation and that was what became The Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2020 which was the governing set of restrictions that came in and I think they were made on 28 March?
Mr Christopher Stewart: That’s correct.
Counsel Inquiry: Now, what those restrictions did, in essence, was that you had taken the English regulations and then I think the way you describe it is that you made some necessary changes to reflect differences in administrative and enforcement arrangements.
There doesn’t appear to have been any particular consideration given to any specific features of Northern Ireland society which might be distinct from society in England; is that right?
Mr Christopher Stewart: I think that’s a fair comment.
Counsel Inquiry: When you were looking to bring in place those regulations, which they came in after Northern Ireland went into lockdown; correct? They were made on 28 March and lockdown was 23 March.
Mr Christopher Stewart: Yes, but whether or not there was observance of lockdown prior to the regulations is not something I could give an authoritative view on.
Counsel Inquiry: No, but it’s about your planning for the legislation and the circumstances you find yourself in at the time, is that right, in terms of when you were drafting the legislation, and the urgency?
Mr Christopher Stewart: So the announcement as you say was on the 23rd, the full detail of how that would be operationalised in England wasn’t with us until the 25th, when we first had sight of the English regulations, and indeed a set of regulations for Wales at that point. Thereafter the task was to move as quickly as possible to have, as you say, broadly equivalent regulations made for Northern Ireland.
Counsel Inquiry: But there would have been time for consideration to be given to whether any amendments needed to be made to the substance of that legislation to reflect any specific features of life in Northern Ireland; is that right?
Mr Christopher Stewart: Yes, but it was two days of very intensive effort even to do that.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes. But those regulations were going to have a significant impact on the entire population of Northern Ireland, and therefore you would agree that consideration needed to be given to what those regulations were going to do to the population?
Mr Christopher Stewart: I would accept that point, but what I would say again was in the period of 48 hours that it transpired we had in order to get the regulations made, that required a great deal of effort even to do it in the way that we did. I absolutely concede there would have been better ways of doing it in terms of giving consideration to those particular considerations that you’ve outlined, and indeed engaging in the stakeholders and those very profoundly affected by the regulations, which there simply wasn’t time to do.
Counsel Inquiry: Is it correct or not that there were three ministers who had an input into the content of those regulations: the First Minister, the deputy First Minister and the health minister?
Mr Christopher Stewart: Yes, I think my advice went to all three simultaneously.
Counsel Inquiry: Did any other minister have any input into the content of those regulations before they were made?
Mr Christopher Stewart: At ministerial level, no, but there was intense engagement with colleagues in the Department of Justice to ensure that we had matters such as fines and penalties and enforcement correctly described in the regulations, I’m not sure that they would have referred that work to their minister, I very much doubt it.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes, but those were the administrative aspects. In terms of cross-cutting issues, whether appropriate for ministerial level, there was no consideration of any minister, other than the First Minister, the deputy First Minister and the health minister; is that right?
Mr Christopher Stewart: Not until the entire matter came to the Executive for its approval.
Counsel Inquiry: Well, actually when it came to the Executive, it was made by urgent procedure, wasn’t it?
Mr Christopher Stewart: It was, but there was a remote engagement with all ministers prior to the regulations being made, largely by email and telephone.
Counsel Inquiry: And how long was that period?
Mr Christopher Stewart: It was over a few hours, I think, on the evening when the regulations were made. There may have been some contact the day before, but I regret I don’t recall that clearly. Certainly the most intense period of engagement with ministers was in the hours before the regulations were actually made.
Counsel Inquiry: And there was a driver at that time in order to get the regulations made; is that right?
Mr Christopher Stewart: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: And who or what was driving that?
Mr Christopher Stewart: The need as it was seen to give urgent effect to the decision that had been announced on the 23rd.
Counsel Inquiry: I just want to ask in terms of the relationship with the United Kingdom and recognise the difference in available resources between Cabinet Office and TEO.
During the period from January 2020 to March 2020, were you receiving any assistance from CCS or anybody within Westminster about civil contingencies planning for the pandemic?
Mr Christopher Stewart: No.
Counsel Inquiry: So it was all requests, effectively, to assist their planning, as we’ve seen earlier on in that document from March?
Mr Christopher Stewart: That might be a little unfair to them, requests and liaison but not help in the sense of secondment of staff or anything of that nature.
Counsel Inquiry: No, but also were they giving any indications about any suggestions about what you might be able to do in terms of getting more information out of departments?
Mr Christopher Stewart: No.
Counsel Inquiry: Then one final topic, if we can just see INQ000409665. This is an email from you dated 25 June 2021, and this followed on from the letter that had been circulated originally from the Cabinet Office about preserving records, and you set out there in detail to a number of very – if we could go back up to the top – a number of senior figures within the Executive Office.
Mr Christopher Stewart: In fact that’s the top management team for the department.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes, and you’re giving your advice, thoughts, understanding of issues that could arise. How far did you expect that advice to be disseminated?
Mr Christopher Stewart: To all staff who would have been in a position to contribute evidence to the Inquiry.
Counsel Inquiry: And would you have expected it to be escalated to ministers as well or is this just something within TEO officials?
Mr Christopher Stewart: I confess I wasn’t actually thinking of ministers at that stage. Although I think the note makes clear, reflecting on my own experience of an earlier public inquiry, a rather well known one in Northern Ireland, on the Renewable Heat Incentive. What I was trying to get across to colleagues was that unless you have experience of a public inquiry, it is very easy to underestimate or to be entirely ignorant of just what the inquiry’s requirements might be in terms of information, and I wanted to ensure that no one was going to go into that situation without sufficient awareness, and I wanted to ensure that colleagues were also in a position to take action early, because there is an enormous amount of effort involved in gathering together and collating the information that’s necessary for an adequate response to a public inquiry. And to put it simply, the earlier you start the better, and that was the sense of what I wanted to get across to colleagues.
Mr Scott: Thank you, Mr Stewart, I have no further questions.
Lady Hallett: Can I ask you one question pursuing something Mr Scott asked you about, Mr Stewart.
You were asked about whether you received assistance from the Civil Contingencies Secretariat in London. Given sensitivities of the devolution settlement and Westminster not interfering and trying to undermine it, what would you need to do to get it, would you need to ask for it, is that what would happen? What would be the process if you did want help from a Whitehall department?
Mr Christopher Stewart: Exactly that, I think a simple request, and forgive me, perhaps I should clarify this, I wasn’t meaning to imply in any way that any reasonable request was turned down by Cabinet Office secretariat, we simply hadn’t made one, I think that’s probably a learning point going forward, CCPB will never be able to have the level of capacity or capability that the Cabinet Office secretariat has, and perhaps going forward we should be more ready than we were in this instance to ask for that help.
Mr Scott: And there’s one point just on the back of my Lady’s point about devolution, if we can just go to INQ000325137, again this is another message between yourself and Sir David Sterling on 14 March 2020, if we can go to page 17, please, it’s 14 March, if we can go down the bottom, please, so around 14 March there were issues in relation to relationships within the Executive and the approach; is that correct?
Mr Christopher Stewart: Sorry, could you just direct me to the particular paragraph?
Counsel Inquiry: Well, on the right-hand side just underneath where it says “Saturday, 14 March 2020”?
Mr Christopher Stewart: Yes, I’m with you. I had misunderstood you. Yes, there were, and I think that was covered in the some of the earlier sessions. That refers very specifically to the issue around the timing of the closure of schools.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes, I am not interested in that but if we can go further down to the message, just scroll down, please. Thank you very much. Then there’s, I believe this is a message from you to Sir David Sterling, I believe.
Mr Christopher Stewart: Yes, it is, that’s – I had attended the meeting of Irish and Northern Ireland ministers earlier in the day, that was me giving a read-out of the meeting to Sir David.
Counsel Inquiry: Because you say there:
“I’m having to work quite hard to keep NIO from jumping in. So far advice is being heeded but SoS mad keen to get involved. For now he is limiting himself to ringing Simon Coveney.”
Do you know why the NIO were “mad keen to get involved” as you describe it?
Mr Christopher Stewart: The Secretary of State’s natural exuberance.
Lady Hallett: Sorry, I missed that.
Mr Christopher Stewart: Secretary of State’s natural exuberance, my Lady.
Mr Scott: And you were seeking to prevent that from happening?
Mr Christopher Stewart: I was seeking to ensure that any intervention was helpful. If I perhaps may give an example from a different time which might illustrate that. There was at one point a degree of tension within the Executive around the issue of the re-opening of –
Counsel Inquiry: Sorry, just to interrupt, Mr Stewart, unless this is an example of your specific involvement, I think maybe we can leave this to other individuals who might be in a better place to deal with this point?
Mr Christopher Stewart: It is an example of my specific involvement and I hope it will be helpful to illustrate my concern about ensuring that the Secretary of State’s involvement was correct.
If you would indulge me, my Lady, for a couple of moments.
Lady Hallett: Do you know where we’re going, Mr Scott?
Mr Scott: No.
Mr Christopher Stewart: I’ll have you on tenterhooks now.
There was an issue within the Executive on the correct timing of the re-opening of waste disposal centres. It was a difficult issue on which the Executive struggled to gain agreement. The Executive had come to the view that one particular local council, which was out of line with the Executive’s recommended approach, should be spoken to and asked to come back into line. At around about the same time, the Secretary of State intervened in the media and the comments that he made were: they may be breaking the law but I’m not going to criticise them if they’re doing it for the right reasons.
That, if I may put it mildly, was less than helpful in terms of maintaining the Executive’s message at that point. I was very disturbed by that, and raised my concerns with Northern Ireland Office colleagues, and asked them to try and ensure that we maintained as far as possible a degree of consistency between what the Secretary of State was saying and what the Executive was saying. Forgive me, it’s not an example directly related to what you asked about, but I hope it does realise what lay behind my concern in ensuring that we were all square with NIO.
Mr Scott: Thank you, Mr Stewart.
Lady Hallett: Mr Wilcock? Oh, Ms Campbell, sorry.
Ms Campbell: Thank you, my Lady.
Questions From Ms Campbell KC
Ms Campbell: Mr Stewart, my name is Brenda Campbell, and I ask questions on behalf of the Northern Irish Covid Bereaved.
May we have back on the screen, please, INQ000325143, and it’s a set of messages between you and Bernie Rooney, Ms Bernie Rooney, you looked at some of them already this morning.
Just to assist you, because the data’s potentially important, we can see at the top that the messages start on Sunday 8 March at about 17 minutes past 4 in the afternoon. It’s not a memory test. We know that a teleconference was taking place at this time between the Executive Office and the Cabinet Office and other Whitehall departments in advance of a COBR meeting that was to happen on the Monday morning, this being the Sunday afternoon, and it’s in relation to the request that had come in on the Friday for various responses from Northern Irish departments in relation to their, if you like, civil contingency readiness. Okay?
We also know, and we’ve heard some evidence of it yesterday, that the Chief Medical Officer had intervened in that response and, if you like, indicated that Northern Ireland would not be responding for reasons that he will no doubt be asked about.
But you start, you’re on the right-hand side, and Ms Rooney’s on the left-hand side of these messages, and you message Ms Rooney and say:
“On call. Obvious irritation with [Northern Ireland] non response!”
And that’s to the request from the Civil Contingencies Secretariat that we’ve discussed.
Ms Rooney says:
“Yep! We did raise this on Friday with DoH several times before speaking to you. Complete lack of interest from [Department of Health] Gold as they were packing up to go home.”
The inference being on a Friday afternoon.
“May be tricky for our Ministers tomorrow …”
And we may put in brackets, at the COBR meeting.
“… B.”
For Bernie.
And you reply:
“David is aware …”
And that David would be David Sterling; is that right?
Mr Christopher Stewart: It’s David Sterling, yes.
Ms Campbell KC: So the inference from Mrs Rooney’s messages to you is that on the Friday evening when that request had come in on several occasions she had sought the attention of the Department of Health in relation to a response; is that right?
Mr Christopher Stewart: Yes.
Ms Campbell KC: On each of those occasions there was a complete lack of interest or non-response?
Mr Christopher Stewart: Those are her words.
Ms Campbell KC: Yes, well, she also indicates that she then spoke to you, so that non-response came in advance of speaking to you?
Mr Christopher Stewart: Yes.
Ms Campbell KC: Do you recall her speaking to you about it?
Mr Christopher Stewart: I don’t, but I’ve no reason to doubt the accuracy of what’s said there.
Ms Campbell KC: No, and indeed you don’t actually question the accuracy of what’s said in any response from you?
Mr Christopher Stewart: No.
Ms Campbell KC: Then she said there’s a “Complete lack of interest from [Department of Health] Gold”. Now, help us, please, what’s “DoH Gold”?
Mr Christopher Stewart: DoH had within its own department a fairly orthodox arrangement for its civil contingencies response: gold, silver and bronze command. Gold would be the strategic level of command within any organisation in responding to a civil contingency. In essence DoH gold would have been the senior leadership team within DoH, and Professor Sir Michael McBride would have been, if not a member of DoH Gold, certainly in regular engagement with it.
Ms Campbell KC: Yes. Now, we don’t know which individuals Ms Rooney managed to speak to, or indeed if any, or contact, but the complete lack of interest from DoH gold means a complete lack of interest from those, if you like, at the top of the helm of the strategic response on a Friday afternoon in response to this urgent request from Whitehall?
Mr Christopher Stewart: That was Ms Rooney’s assessment, yes.
Ms Campbell KC: And you say “David is aware”.
Mr Christopher Stewart: Yes.
Ms Campbell KC: Now, what was David aware of, Sir David Sterling?
Mr Christopher Stewart: I think if I recall this correctly, and I think this – another sequence of text messages was examined, it was the one where I had indicated that, to Sir David, that I faced a choice between annoying the Cabinet Office and annoying the Chief Medical Officer and he gave his response to that in a particular way, so this is a follow-up to that, so that’s what I meant by “David was aware”, which was that I had already flagged to him that we were coming under pressure from Cabinet Office to respond but some very clear advice from Sir Michael McBride that a response was not in his view required at that time.
Ms Campbell KC: In fairness to you, I think the chronology will prove your recollection correct, because that exchange of messages in relation to who better to annoy or who worse to annoy –
Mr Christopher Stewart: Yes.
Ms Campbell KC: – was the Saturday evening before these messages on the Sunday afternoon, and we know that –
Mr Christopher Stewart: If you would permit me, it may assist the Inquiry if I give a little bit more context there, because I think my use of the word “annoy” might be rather misconstrued.
Sir Michael had a pivotal role in all of this and he was under enormous pressure at that time, and his input to everything that we were doing was absolutely crucial to success. We had on a number of occasions prior to that acted or behaved in a way that he found not entirely helpful, there were one or two instances where he felt we were getting ahead of the opportunity for him to provide his advice and input into the exercise. So I was exercising, if you like, there an abundance of caution in wanting to ensure that we did not act in a way that made it more difficult for Sir Michael to discharge the very weighty responsibilities that he had around that time. I regret now with hindsight using the word “annoy” to describe that; I don’t think that properly captures my intention.
Ms Campbell KC: If I might, my Lady, in light of the answer, there’s a further message on page 4 of this document, and we’re jumping ahead in the chronology because we’re now at the Monday morning, and I’ll just make sure I have the page correct, because we have gone to the Monday morning at 8.14 in the morning, and again you’re messaging Ms Rooney and you’re saying, bearing in mind what had just happened over the weekend:
“Tread carefully” –
Mr Christopher Stewart: Yes, I’ve put it rather more pithily there, yes.
Ms Campbell KC: “… around Michael today. He is under considerable pressure and, rightly or wrongly, we are not in the good books, so extra caution please.”
And Ms Rooney replies essentially she’s keeping her head down and doing what she’s told.
Now, by the Monday morning did you get the impression that, for whatever reason, you or your team or the CCPB were not in Professor McBride’s good books?
Mr Christopher Stewart: I think it stemmed from earlier than that. As I say, I think there were one or two instances where Michael was concerned that we were, if I could put it perhaps too simplistically, jogging his elbow a little bit, and that’s what I was reporting there.
I should say in relation to that that, to the extent to which we were doing that, that’s my responsibility and not the responsibility of any member of the team.
Ms Campbell KC: Back on track, if we may, in relation to my questions.
Could we go, then, to page 2 of this same document, because – and we’re back in the time of that meeting on the Sunday afternoon with your colleagues across in Whitehall. And Ms Rooney, the conversation continues about – no doubt prompted by what’s happening in the meeting itself, and she says on the left-hand side of the page:
“[Northern Ireland] is bound to struggle with Adult Social Care and I don’t think that DoH want to think about it.”
Now, you reply, and this is what we looked at briefly a moment ago with Mr Scott, that you will do a quick email to ministers after this just to warn them that the slide deck is coming, and it’s in that context that Ms Rooney then says that the only evidence that she has seen of any real planning is in economy. Okay? I’ll come back in a moment to that.
But here you are in a conversation with one of your senior colleagues, who is saying: the Department of Health don’t appear to want to think about adult social care and it is plainly an area in which we’re bound to struggle.
The first observation is you don’t disagree with Ms Rooney in this message, do you? You don’t say “Actually there’s lots of work ongoing and there’s lots of planning ongoing, so fear not”?
Mr Christopher Stewart: I neither agreed nor disagreed with it, that was Ms Rooney’s assessment. Personally I wouldn’t have felt in a position to make that assessment.
Ms Campbell KC: Well, we heard yesterday from Sir David that if anybody was, if you like, holding that strategic or overarching role in terms of what departments were doing at this period of March, it probably would have been you, although it’s fair to say he maybe didn’t say it definitely was you?
Mr Christopher Stewart: I think he could perfectly reasonably have said that it was me, yes, that was my responsibility.
Ms Campbell KC: Well, if in fact there was a great deal of work going on
or evidence that the Department of Health did want to
think about adult social care, firstly what was it, what
was that work?
Mr Christopher Stewart: I can only answer you on the basis of what I was aware
of at that time, and I was not aware of any sort of
significant deficiency in the Department of Health’s
planning in that regard. I honestly don’t know what
prompted Ms Rooney to advance that view.
Ms Campbell KC: Well, in fairness, in answering questions to Mr Scott,
you did say that you respectfully disagreed with her
assessment that the only evidence of any real planning
that she had seen was in economy.
Mr Christopher Stewart: Yes.
Ms Campbell KC: And you respectfully disagreed, and we can see that:
“All [was] a bit slow at present …”
Mr Christopher Stewart: Yes.
Ms Campbell KC: You see, you didn’t in fact respectfully disagree at the
time, because if we go to the top of the next page, we
see your answer coming in to Ms Rooney, and it’s:
“Well, I did try to kickstart it on Friday…”
Mr Christopher Stewart: Would you mind just showing me just the page above that,
I’m not quite sure –
Ms Campbell KC: Absolutely, it is important to see these in context.
If we start at the top – sorry, about a third of the way down page 2 –
Mr Christopher Stewart: Yes, so what Ms Rooney is indicating there, she’s concerned about the delay in departments’ planning, “a bit slow at present, waiting to be asked and told what to do”, and then my response to that was “I did try to kickstart it on Friday”.
Ms Campbell KC: Yes. So what had you tried to kick start on Friday?
Mr Christopher Stewart: I’m afraid I don’t recall in detail exactly what I refer to at that stage, but clearly, I think, the only construction that you can put on that was that I felt there was a need to give some further impetus to whatever departments were doing at that point.
But I should make clear perhaps an important distinction here. The CEO’s role in co-ordinating sectoral resilience planning covered all departments except one: the Department of Health.
Ms Campbell: Yes.
Thank you, my Lady.
Lady Hallett: Thank you, Ms Campbell.
I think that completes the questions for you, Mr Stewart. Thank you for your help.
The Witness: Thank you, my Lady.
Lady Hallett: Thank you.
(The witness withdrew)
Ms Dobbin: My Lady, may I call the next witness, please,
Dr Joanne McClean.