3. Dr Jenny Pyper

DR JENNY PYPER (affirmed).

Questions From Counsel to the Inquiry

Lady Hallett: Sorry you’ve had to wait so long.

The Witness: That’s okay.

Mr Scott: Good afternoon, Dr Pyper. Thank you for your assistance to the Inquiry.

Can we ask you to keep your voice up, speak into the microphone in front of you, and not to speak too quickly so that the stenographers can keep pace. If you need a break at any point, please just say so.

You have provided two witness statements to the Inquiry, the first one is dated 17 January 2024 and that’s there on screen. If we could just go to page 2, paragraph 6, please, I understand that there is a correction in this statement, Dr Pyper?

Dr Jenny Pyper: Yes, please.

Counsel Inquiry: If you could please highlight that correction.

Dr Jenny Pyper: So the correction is in relation to the date on which I first met with the First Minister and deputy First Minister, it should read 27 October 2020.

Counsel Inquiry: Then you have provided a second witness statement dated 28 March 2024, and I take it you’re familiar with both of those statements?

Dr Jenny Pyper: I am.

Counsel Inquiry: You provided a signature and the statement of truth is on page 62 of your first statement. Please can you confirm the contents of that statement are true?

Dr Jenny Pyper: Correct.

Counsel Inquiry: And your signature and the statement of truth is at page 9 of the second statement. Please confirm the contents of that statement are true as well?

Dr Jenny Pyper: Yes.

Counsel Inquiry: Thank you.

If I can just summarise your background as follows: you joined the Northern Ireland Civil Service in 1985, you were appointed to the Senior Civil Service in 2003, you resigned in 2013 to take up the post of chief executive of the utility regulator. You remained in that role until October of 2020, and as you just indicated, it was at that time that you were approached to take on the role of the interim head of the Civil Service.

Dr Jenny Pyper: Correct.

Counsel Inquiry: And that you took up that post on, was it 1 or 3 December 2020 that you –

Dr Jenny Pyper: 1 December.

Counsel Inquiry: And then you served as interim head of the Civil Service for nine months until Jayne Brady took up the post on 1 September 2021?

Dr Jenny Pyper: That’s correct.

Counsel Inquiry: One point just to clear up. When you took on the role of interim head of the Civil Service, there had been no head of the Civil Service in Northern Ireland between Sir David difficult’s resignation at the end of August 2020 and when you took on the role; is that correct?

Dr Jenny Pyper: Correct.

Counsel Inquiry: Was there anybody filling the gap of head of the Civil Service in that window?

Dr Jenny Pyper: There was no one filling the gap as head of the Civil Service. I understand that a number of the senior staff, permanent secretaries, stepped up to try and provide support to the Executive, and also to carry on the work of the Civil Service board and the permanent secretaries group, but there was no one appointed or designated as head of the Civil Service.

Counsel Inquiry: You describe the role of the head of the Civil Service as taking a holistic view of providing support to all Executive ministers and you also describe it as leading and putting together joined up and cross-cutting responses from across the Civil Service. Is that right?

Dr Jenny Pyper: Yes.

Counsel Inquiry: In what way would you do that?

Dr Jenny Pyper: Well, in a number of ways. I made reference to the Civil Service board, the NICS board, which would have included all of the permanent secretaries and a number of additional senior staff, including the head of NICS HR human resources department, and that group would have met monthly to look at cross-cutting issues in relation to the Civil Service, resourcing and the management and movement of staff.

The permanent secretaries group met every Friday and again would have been looking at issues right across each department, that would have been a stocktake meeting, looking at what was happening on every department, reflecting that back so that the head of the Civil Service would have an overview of everything that was – the key issues that were going on in the departments, and that would allow the head of the Civil Service to have an understanding of the sorts of issues that the Executive ministers might be considering as well.

Counsel Inquiry: Is it right that there’s a slight tension between the role of the head of the Civil Service and the way that the departmental structure actually operates in Northern Ireland, to the extent that the responsibility that’s delegated to individual departments and their ministers does rather work against the kind of cross-cutting holistic role that the head of the Civil Service has?

Dr Jenny Pyper: I think that’s correct and I think Sir David Sterling gave quite a detailed explanation of that to the Inquiry yesterday and his explanation has – would resonate with my understanding and experience. It does, and you referred to the tension, and I think that does leave the head of the Civil Service in a position of not being able to dictate to the permanent secretaries how they might operate or what their priorities should be.

It also leaves, I think, the head of the Civil Service in a position of having to use soft power to at times encourage the reallocation perhaps of resources, and again I think that’s an issue that Sir David Sterling touched on yesterday when he referred to seeking volunteers to staff up the Civil Contingencies Group.

That’s – that’s one of the limitations of the model that the head of the Civil Service is also permanent secretary in – or certainly at my time and in Sir David’s time, was also permanent secretary of a department, the Executive Office, with delivery responsibilities in that office at the same time as trying to take that holistic view and represent the Civil Service as a whole.

I hope I’ve explained that okay.

Counsel Inquiry: I’m going to tease a couple of those elements out, if I may. So one point is about using the soft power in terms of reallocation of resources. Is it right that the head of the Civil Service can’t actually require or direct any action by any civil servant?

Dr Jenny Pyper: The head of the Civil Service operating in the role of permanent secretary of the Executive Office could exercise that authority, given the responsibilities for that department, the Executive Office, but could not do that in relation to other departments because the permanent secretaries of each of the other eight departments are all accounting officers and have a personal responsibility for the management and delivery of the resources underneath their command.

Counsel Inquiry: You say in your statement that you have experience of the reluctance of ministers and their departments to share resources and the inability of a head of the Civil Service to demand or impose flexibility. How kind of conceptually did that impact upon your ability to carry out your role?

Dr Jenny Pyper: I think where I found it particularly challenging was in some of the later stages of my tenure after the Covid Taskforce had been established and was up and running, and there were a number of difficult cross-cutting issues coming through, such as managed quarantine arrangements and the establishment of a support scheme to assist travel agents. Neither of those issues – both were – certainly the managed quarantine was – arguably had cross-cutting implications, but there was a sense that that probably was the responsibility of the Department of Health; and the travel agents scheme should in the minds of many have fallen to the Department for the Economy, which had responsibility for tourism.

The difficulty arose because neither of those departments would accept responsibility for delivery of those two big initiatives, and my department, the Executive Office, was seen sometimes as a little bit of a dumping ground for cross-cutting initiatives and those two particular areas were allocated with considerable reluctance to my staff, and when I tried to seek some additional resources to support my team in delivery of a grant scheme – not something we were resourced to do – and to a lesser extent the managed quarantine service, that’s when I experienced the reluctance to release resources to the centre to help support delivery of those two initiatives in particular.

Counsel Inquiry: So effectively at that time you had two hats on, you were permanent secretary of the TEO and you were head of the Civil Service, so as permanent secretary you could allocate resources within your own department?

Dr Jenny Pyper: Correct.

Counsel Inquiry: But actually as head of the Civil Service you weren’t able to then direct anybody within the Civil Service, whether it be to TEO or any other department, in order to fill any gaps that arose; is that right?

Dr Jenny Pyper: That’s correct, and was the source of some frustration, I think, to Executive ministers.

Lady Hallett: I can understand, I didn’t know about this until this Inquiry started, Dr Pyper, but I can understand why you have the system of the independent departments with ministers because they’re coming from the different political parties, but is there any scope for suggesting that may well be the right way to do it here in Northern Ireland given all the sensitivities but in a national emergency?

Dr Jenny Pyper: My Lady, I would agree with that, and indeed for me it would be one of the reflections from my tenure that that perhaps in the case of a national emergency the head of the Civil Service could exercise some additional authority or powers in relation to brigading the necessary resources, whether that would be to manage and staff up CCG or whether it would be to take forward some of those big cross-cutting initiatives. I think my team deserve a huge amount of credit for delivering, as do all of the departments, and Department of Health was exceptionally pressed, but it did show one of the weaknesses of what ministers and indeed the general public might have imagined was the case in terms of the extent to – the head of the Civil Service could control all of the resources under his or her command.

Mr Scott: So in terms of the specific examples that you’ve given earlier on, was there any other negative impact that arose from the fact that you weren’t able to direct staff across the Civil Service, not just necessarily within TEO but within other departments?

Dr Jenny Pyper: I think it was a regular frustration at the permanent secretaries’ stocktake group, that there were some departments under severe resource pressure, particularly the Department of Health – particularly the Department of Health – for obvious reasons. And the permanent secretary would have, at almost every meeting, have raised his concerns about how stretched and strained his resources were, and he, like me, was trying to exercise soft power and plead with other departments that if they had any staff that they could release, he would – he would – could use them to take up the strain in the Department of Health.

I think one of the problems with that that I faced was the difficulty we had in getting people who could do the necessary legislative drafting, particularly in very short timeframes. If the Executive agreed changes, for example, to the guidance and regulations needed to be amended, those regulations were invariably public health regulations, and required an understanding of not just how to make regulations but also an understanding of the health regulations, and I think there was a paucity across the Civil Service of people with those – with those appropriate skills, and therefore it was not straightforward to simply direct anyone that had legislative experience to work in support of the Department of Health.

Counsel Inquiry: If I can just jump in there, so is that a feature of the fact that there had been a series of effectively redundancy schemes, for want of a better phrase, in the years prior to 20 in which you had lost a number of older more experienced civil servants who had legislative experience?

Dr Jenny Pyper: I think that’s undoubtedly the case, but I would suggest that a further factor was the fact that we hadn’t had an Executive for three years until January 2020 and there had been no legislative programme being delivered during that time. So there were civil servants there during my tenure who had no experience of making legislation and doing the necessary work because there had been no executive for a prolonged period of time.

Counsel Inquiry: Because you set out in your statement that in June 2021 there were 4,000 unfilled vacancies in Northern Ireland Civil Service. What percentage of the Civil Service is that?

Dr Jenny Pyper: I wouldn’t know that offhand.

Counsel Inquiry: Well, what was the impact upon the pandemic response in 2021 of 4,000 unfilled vacancies in the Civil Service?

Dr Jenny Pyper: Clearly the Civil Service had been running with that level of vacancy for some time, and the Civil Service board had been working through a process of trying to recruit more staff, but even recruitment during a pandemic, particularly during lockdown, was not straightforward. I think what – the impact that it had was probably to place additional pressures on the senior cadre within departments in particular. I can’t recall now – although the figures are available in minutes of the NICS board, I can’t recall exactly where those vacancies lay, many of the 4,000 might have been in the administrative grades, but certainly the strain, the slack, was taken up at senior level and it was, you know, the principal officers and above that were bearing a disproportionate burden.

Counsel Inquiry: Thank you.

If I could then just move to the state of the pandemic in Northern Ireland as at 1 December when you took on the role. So you commenced the role about three weeks after there had been a, I think it’s fair to describe, lengthy and taxing Executive Committee meeting that commenced on 9 November and continued on and off until 12 November. Significant restrictions had been implemented in Northern Ireland that started on 27 November. Restrictions were going to expire on 10 December, and it wasn’t known at the time that you started what those restrictions would be replaced by. Plans for Christmas 2020 were under consideration, and it was also believed that restrictions would be required after Christmas 2020.

That’s a very challenging set of facts to drop yourself into when you were appointed to the role of interim head of the Civil Service. Had you had any handover, introduction, induction, into your role before you started?

Dr Jenny Pyper: I’d had some opportunity to put in place a number of familiarisation meetings in the first week of my tenure, and in addition there was what the Civil Service calls first day briefing that had been prepared for me on arrival. The reality, however, was that I didn’t know until 24 November for definite that I was taking up the post –

Counsel Inquiry: So you had a week?

Dr Jenny Pyper: So I had a week during which I was able to make contact with some former colleagues, make contact with some of the staff I knew would be running my private office –

Counsel Inquiry: Because in comparison, I mean, as you set out, Dr Brady had a handover from mid – that lasted from about mid-June to the end of August 2021; plainly that’s a very beneficial position for a head of the Civil Service to find themselves in and to have that handover, and it would’ve been a benefit of you to have something similar?

Dr Jenny Pyper: It would, but my understanding was that until First and deputy First Minister had made a decision and then briefed the Executive, which I understand was done on 26 November, prior to the press release about my appointment on the 27th. Until that had been done it wouldn’t have been appropriate for me to have made contact or sought to have briefings with anyone, and, as I say, I only received a draft contract on 24 November.

Counsel Inquiry: Given the circumstances that were in existence at the time that you took up the role, and given the fact that there hadn’t been a head of the Civil Service for a number of months, do you think at that point in time Northern Ireland was and the Civil Service was missing an experienced head of the Civil Service who would be able to use that soft power that you describe to potentially navigate a way through some of those tricky situations?

Dr Jenny Pyper: I can only speak with a degree of confidence about what I found from 1 December, at which point the minister for health and the CMO were providing options around restrictions, were providing very clear health medical and scientific information, and I think as we moved through December, the extent to which Northern Ireland was facing a post-Christmas surge, I think that was known and was anticipated. Where I think a head of the Civil Service might have been able to add value in the weeks preceding that, particularly around the time of that difficult – very difficult three, four-day Executive meeting, there might have been the possibility or scope for a head of the Civil Service to exercise some control or some processes around consideration of a range of issues. That was the point at which ministers were starting to really explore that tension between the impact on the economy and the health implications. By the time I started, they had had that initial foray into a very – a series of very ad hoc meetings. By the time I came, yes, we did have, as we went through December – particularly as we got closer to Christmas, we did have an increasing series of meetings after 17 December. I think 17 December –

Counsel Inquiry: If I can just stop you there, because we are slightly going off the path.

Dr Jenny Pyper: Sorry.

Counsel Inquiry: If I can just bring you back in terms of the benefit of the head of the Civil Service, so fair to say that the role of the head of the Civil Service, you have to be able to build effective relationships with ministers and permanent secretaries?

Dr Jenny Pyper: Indeed.

Counsel Inquiry: You also have to know the relationships between the ministers and their permanent secretaries?

Dr Jenny Pyper: Yes.

Counsel Inquiry: You had last worked in the Northern Ireland Civil Service seven years before you took on the role?

Dr Jenny Pyper: Yes.

Counsel Inquiry: Did you have any of those established relationships with any of the permanent secretaries or the ministers, or were you effectively building them from scratch when you took on the role?

Dr Jenny Pyper: I think I knew all of the permanent secretaries. Some I knew quite well. I’d worked with some of them before. I knew a number of the ministers quite well, I’d worked with some of them before, particularly the First Minister and the finance minister, whom I’d worked directly for in previous roles. So I didn’t feel that I was starting from absolute scratch with any of the permanent secretaries or the ministers, and indeed for some of them the work that I had been doing as utility regulator would have brought me into contact with them on occasion. So, for example, the infrastructure minister would have been aware of some of the work I’d done with the regulator. So I don’t think I was an unknown quantity to ministers or the perm secs or vice versa.

Counsel Inquiry: But in terms of the working relationships from within the Civil Service as opposed to working with the regulator dealing with civil servants or the ministers, in terms of the ability to build up those relationships and the understanding and the trust that that takes, that took time?

Dr Jenny Pyper: It did take time, and I met all of the – all of the ministers with their permanent secretaries in the first few weeks of my – of my tenure.

Counsel Inquiry: And do you think that there was any impact upon the pandemic response at the time that it took you to build up those relationships?

Dr Jenny Pyper: No, I don’t believe so, because ministers had already been working with one another and working with senior officials in the TEO team.

Counsel Inquiry: If I can then move to the preparations for Christmas 2020. So is it fair to say that in December 2020 the primary consideration of ministers generally at that time was maintaining the ability of people to interact with their families at Christmas in 2020?

Dr Jenny Pyper: I think given what had happened over the summer in terms of the progress of the pandemic and in terms of the relaxations in the regulations that ministers had been put in place – had put in place, I think there had been a hope probably from, you know, from late summer, as ministers looked ahead they had been a hope and a desire to be able to give people more of a normal Christmas, if that were possible. They knew, and I think accepted, that that was dependent on the R rate, they had a desire to keep that under or at about 1. And I believe that they weighed carefully and talked at length, I believe, about the impact of lockdown, the impact of the prolonged restrictions, about the ability to maintain adherence to those restrictions, and I think they had a real concern for the impact of prolonged restrictions, particularly on some of the more vulnerable groups. They were concerned about mental health. So they were weighing – it wasn’t just that they said “We all want to have Christmas”, I think they were weighing carefully the implications for individuals, for communities and for business sectors as well.

Counsel Inquiry: In terms of the changes that you brought about – I’m going to deal with the ECT shortly, the Executive Covid Taskforce – were there any other changes that you brought in in that month of December, apart from the ECT, that you thought were necessary when you arrived as the interim head of the Civil Service?

Dr Jenny Pyper: I think establishing a clear separation between Executive meetings that were considering EU exit matters and Executive meetings considering Covid response, and separating those into, I think we took EU issues on a Tuesday and Covid Executive meetings on a Thursday. That sort of discipline I think was one of the first things that I tried to reinstate.

I also reinstated the weekly meetings with special advisers and weekly meetings with the ministers as well, first deputy and the head of the Civil Service and for the Executive at that stage my attendance at Executive meetings and the ability that First and deputy First Minister gave me to speak to Executive ministers about the taskforce was again something of a change. The normal situation would be that officials don’t speak at Executive meetings, other than perhaps to clarify an issue or a …

Counsel Inquiry: Okay. So you’re talking then about bringing back the weekly meetings; the implication of that is that those meetings had either ceased to happen or had happened less frequently. Had there been a bit of a drifting apart of the departments and so they were more focusing on their own area of responsibility, without somebody to pull them all together from the top?

Dr Jenny Pyper: I think that was – I think there was – there was inevitably, I think, some of that, perhaps exacerbated by the fact that ministers were beginning to think beyond a collective response to the pandemic and beginning to think about their own departmental responsibilities and priorities, and that inevitably was provoking the permanent secretaries to focus on, you know, on their ministers’ other priorities not just the response to the pandemic.

Counsel Inquiry: That’s going to take us conveniently through to the Executive Covid Taskforce. You say in your statement that:

“The First Minister and deputy First Minister made it clear to me that the ECT was my first priority on taking up the interim head of the Civil Service role.”

How stridently was that put to you that that was your first priority?

Dr Jenny Pyper: I couldn’t say that it was strident, but it was certainly mentioned to me by First and deputy First Minister when I first met them on 26 October. They didn’t talk in detail about an Executive Covid Taskforce, but they did indicate that they’d been giving some thought to a head of the Civil Service led taskforce to look ahead at the approach to lifting restrictions or addressing restrictions and starting the work towards recovery. So that was flagged with me as early as October –

Counsel Inquiry: Did they say why they wanted this brought in?

Dr Jenny Pyper: They did indicate that they felt there was a need to start and look at things not simply from the health perspective but to find a means to consider other issues particularly around the economy and what was happening in the community, and they felt that that could only be done because that raised cross-cutting issues, they felt that could only be done by a head of the Civil Service.

Counsel Inquiry: Was there a sense of frustration that they felt that they weren’t receiving the information that they wished?

Dr Jenny Pyper: I think that’s – that’s documented in a number of areas, including a minute of one of the meetings.

Counsel Inquiry: Shall we pull that up?

If we could have INQ000391436. Thank you.

So this is a meeting between yourself, the First Minister and the deputy First Minister on 1 December 2020. Is this the meeting that you were referring to in terms of it indicating their views and their thoughts at the time?

Dr Jenny Pyper: This is – this is not the – this is not what they talked to me about back in October, but yes, this is the meeting I was referring to where they perhaps were more candid about some of their – I think you used the word “frustrations”, and I think that’s reflected in this note.

Counsel Inquiry: Yes. I mean, how well do you remember the meeting?

Dr Jenny Pyper: Erm –

Counsel Inquiry: Because it’s not a memory test, if you don’t remember it –

Dr Jenny Pyper: No, I do remember it and I recognise this note of the meeting and I recognise it as reflecting the discussions that we had, and I think it does – it does bring across the level of frustration that perhaps they were both feeling at the time, and it chimes with what they had said to me about needing a HOCS-led approach to make sure that there was a more balanced approach and better process put in place.

Counsel Inquiry: Because there was, as it set out there, First Minister under “Low key points” is looking for a more co-ordinated approach required, that they don’t know what’s happening, and then under the deputy First Minister’s points, “left not knowing and left to front things”.

Again, are you able to provide any further indication of what they were thinking or is that best left to ask them?

Dr Jenny Pyper: Well, I mean, I know that they were frustrated that on a number of occasions the minister for health and I think on one occasion the CMO had been giving briefings to the press, as was normal and as you would expect, but information –

Counsel Inquiry: Did you mean that in terms of the joint press conferences or separate from those joint press conferences?

Dr Jenny Pyper: I mean those press conferences where the health minister spoke or where the CMO in his professional capacity would have spoken. They indicated to me that there were – had been a number of occasions where information that they were unaware of was revealed to the media, and that had caused them considerable annoyance because they were the joint heads of government. So that’s I think the reference to the “don’t know what’s happening” and I think the reference to “late papers and process” really was a reference to some of the health papers that were coming through from the minister of health that were coming very late to the Executive. The process would be that any papers to be discussed at the Executive would be provided to the First and deputy First Minister in the first instance, and then once they’d had a chance to consider them and agree the agenda for the meeting, the papers would be circulated to the other ministers, and if papers were late coming to First and deputy First Minister, that then meant they were even later being circulated to the other ministers, which had the impact of sometimes causing the start of an Executive meeting to be postponed, and in terms of process the deputy First Minister describes it as disrespectful.

Counsel Inquiry: Yes, and in fairness the bullet point below is an example of “DoJ – late issue given”, so it wasn’t entirely the Department of Health, but were you able to get a sense of where there was a primary or a more frequent source to their concerns about information not being given to them?

Dr Jenny Pyper: I think the primary source that was reflected to me would have been the Department of Health. However, I have to agree with Sir David Sterling, who reflected yesterday that the frequent leaking of Executive papers did perhaps encourage some ministers to hold back their papers to the last possible minute before they circulated them. And there was a bit of poor process and poor behaviour bred, poor process and poor behaviour, from all ministers.

Counsel Inquiry: You were talking there about leaking, Sir David difficult was talking about leaking. There was a three-month gap, a sort of three, four-month gap between when Sir David retired and when you started. How long did the leaks continue for when you were in your role?

Dr Jenny Pyper: They were continuous. I would have to say that I felt as if all of those meetings in December, I felt as if we were living them in the media, because the timing of meetings was – seemed to be available to the press, any delays, any postponements.

I do think, if I may, once the Covid Taskforce got up and running and we got into a better process and a better rhythm, and I know we may go there, and there was a bit more certainty and predictability about when decisions would be made around restrictions, I think we did get some – an easement in the extent to which there were leaks, but there’s no doubt in my mind that everything started up again really between March and April. And, you know, there were political issues going on then which I think were perhaps encouraging some parties to leak.

Lady Hallett: March and April 2021?

Dr Jenny Pyper: Of 2021, yes.

Mr Scott: Those issues, they were non-pandemic-related issues; is that right?

Dr Jenny Pyper: They were non-pandemic issues.

Counsel Inquiry: But plainly when you have an Executive Committee of ministers, they’re not focusing solely on pandemic-related issues, and any issues that arise in – for non-pandemic matters are naturally going to have an impact upon the relationships they have with each other?

Dr Jenny Pyper: Correct.

Counsel Inquiry: And therefore it’s going to have an impact upon the way decision-making is taking place; is that right?

Dr Jenny Pyper: Correct.

Counsel Inquiry: So in terms of you were talking about December before the ECT got up and running, what was the impact upon the – living the meetings in the media, as you described it, upon decision-making of the Executive at that time?

Dr Jenny Pyper: I think it hampered – it hampered decision-making because there was a breakdown of process and a breakdown of trust. I think it added to perhaps the sense of – you know, the public loss of confidence in decision-making, and that could have had other impacts as well in terms of public confidence about adherence and whether it was guidance or regulation. I think it didn’t create the right impression –

Counsel Inquiry: As far as you’re aware, did it have any of that particular impact in terms of adherence, or you just don’t know?

Dr Jenny Pyper: I couldn’t say at Christmas that there was any particular impact. It certainly made for a very intense schedule of meetings and the chairs pleading with colleagues not to leak to the press.

I’m not conscious of papers being leaked, I’ve no memory of papers being leaked, but certainly the timing and the rescheduling and the frequency of meetings, the press seemed to be aware. And it did add, I believe, to people’s uncertainty about what was happening and what the guidance would be.

Counsel Inquiry: I want to move away from non-pandemic issues and go back to the setting up of the ECT.

Was there resistance from any quarters to the setting up of the ECT?

Dr Jenny Pyper: My understanding is that the Executive itself was in fact briefed about the proposition to set up a taskforce back in November, late November, and there was not resistance or opposition to that. I think there was a recognition that some fresh process, perhaps a step change in process might be valuable.

I did brief the Executive on the emerging structure and modus operandi of the taskforce on 3 December, and there was push-back, particularly from two ministers, from the minister of health and the minister for the economy, not an absolute push-back but concerns were raised about how the taskforce would operate.

Counsel Inquiry: What were the concerns raised by the minister of health?

Dr Jenny Pyper: I think his concern was that in some way the taskforce would dilute or seek to reinterpret the health information. Clearly the initial response to the pandemic had been health led, and perhaps there was a concern that this move now to look at issues in a cross-cutting way would take a focus off the health aspect of the pandemic, which still remained hugely, hugely important. I think perhaps he and maybe some of his senior colleagues might have had a concern that there would have been some challenge to the integrity of some of the medical and scientific information coming forward, or perhaps some reinterpretation by non-medical experts within the Executive Office. And that was a concern that I could recognise.

I think he was also operating initially – at the time that he raised the concerns, he was operating under a slight misconception that it was an Executive Office, a TEO, as a department, a TEO taskforce. So TEO as the department as opposed to the Executive as a whole.

In fact the taskforce had the endorsement of the entire Executive and it was not a narrow departmental issue.

Counsel Inquiry: It seems like that the genesis of establishing the ECT was the First Minister and the deputy First Minister wanting to have a little bit more knowledge and control of the events that were coming out of the Department of Health, and is it right that you’re describing there slight resistance from the Department of Health because they want didn’t want to lose that control over their own data and their own information?

Dr Jenny Pyper: I think that’s fair, but I think it’s also fair that the regulations were all within public health legislation, and therefore they did have that primus inter pares role, I think. So I did recognise and understand where the minister of health was coming from, and an early meeting with him in December I think was helpful in teasing out those concerns and reassuring him that actually the purpose of the Covid Taskforce was to take information from all departments, see what they were saying, what proposals they might have around lifting of restrictions, almost as a triage exercise that could then be referred to the CMO and the CSA in terms of: if we did this, what might the implication be?

So in fact what happened was the taskforce operated and we actually built in the health input, and the health information still came as a separate paper with all of the information that they would have been providing anyway and had been providing.

So it actually enhanced – I think it enhanced the information flow, and indeed I believe the minister of health did recognise that in subsequent meetings.

Counsel Inquiry: And is that an example of the soft power that you’re bringing to bear, that it’s – even though you’re talking about legislation and the responsibility for the Department of Health for health matters, that you still had other ministers who felt that their areas of responsibility were being slightly pushed back on, and so it’s not just a matter of process when you’re in a mandatory power-sharing arrangement, you have to maintain the relationships between the ministers to make sure the Executive is working as efficiently as it possibly can?

Dr Jenny Pyper: Absolutely.

Counsel Inquiry: So is it right that that meeting that you had, I think as you described it, did that end up helping the situation in terms of the relationships between ministers as opposed to just the flow of information through the ECT?

Dr Jenny Pyper: I believe that it did. It – certainly I believe it reassured the health minister, and indeed within a matter of weeks, five or six weeks, I proposed the idea of the health minister joining First and deputy First Minister for a pre-brief ahead of Executive meetings so that he had an opportunity to tease out with them any issues or concerns that they had, and also to make sure that his voice in terms of the medical and scientific position was being presented. And I believe that was really helpful to First and deputy First Minister in their chairing of meetings, but it also, I think, reassured him that he was, you know, still very much in a key position within the Executive.

Counsel Inquiry: You had also mentioned the economy minister, it wasn’t just about the health minister, about resistance.

Dr Jenny Pyper: Yes.

Counsel Inquiry: Would you be able to describe what your views were of any resistance from the economy minister to the ECT? Were they similar concerns or were they different?

Dr Jenny Pyper: No, I think they were – they were quite different, although they may still have come from the same place in terms of the positioning of her department.

I think her concerns were really about who would be leading recovery, and particularly recovery of the economy. She was concerned that that was an area that her department was leading on in terms of a new economic strategy, the 10x strategy. I think she expressed concerns about the Covid Taskforce slowing things down, and perhaps duplicating work that was being done elsewhere or creating additional layers of reporting and bureaucracy that might divert her officials from driving forward with the economic recovery document.

Counsel Inquiry: In relation to those ministers, the health minister has responsibility for the Department of Health, the economy minister is responsible for the Department of the Economy, plainly it is part of their role in order to advance the views of their department to the best of their ability at the Executive Committee; is that right?

Dr Jenny Pyper: Indeed.

Counsel Inquiry: So did you end up bringing the ministers together again and actually having that little bit more cohesion as in the Executive through the introduction of the ECT?

Dr Jenny Pyper: I think I probably – there was more progress with the minister of health in terms of cohesion. I think the economy minister remained throughout my time impatient with the pace of the lifting of restrictions as they applied to the business community, particularly as we got beyond Easter, and a very strong call came from the hospitality and tourism sectors. I think perhaps she felt that some of her concerns were valid, but in fact the Covid Taskforce was not a decision-making body, it was a means of co-ordinating policy. But in contrast to the CCG, which was looking at operational co-ordination, the ECT, the Covid Taskforce, was looking at co-ordination of policy responses and trying to make sure that there was an overall coherence to the Executive’s response to lifting restrictions, and in particular to developing an overall Executive response to recovery, in addition to what the minister for the economy was doing with the economic recovery.

Counsel Inquiry: Thank you.

If I can move now to consideration of inequalities in – probably into 2021.

If we can have up INQ000411509, and if we go to page 60, please, paragraph 273.

We can see there:

“The extent of the impact of NPIs on different groups within society was not assessed in any systematic way during my tenure …”

Why not?

Dr Jenny Pyper: It’s a very good question, and I think it’s one of the key learnings for me from this process. Initially I believe that the pace of decision-making was such that it simply wasn’t possible to do the normal section 75 or EQIA reviews that would be a normal part of civil service process.

We were unable, therefore, to consult in a short space of time in the way we would normally, but stakeholder engagement was very extensive, both before I came and also throughout my tenure, and I suppose that was – that was our proxy for consultation –

Counsel Inquiry: But isn’t it a difficulty, when you say about proxy of consultation, that you are the government of Northern Ireland, you have access to different sections of information and it is incumbent on the government to be able to identify the source of information so that in a pandemic you have an understanding of the impact of the pandemic on different groups?

Dr Jenny Pyper: Yes, I wouldn’t disagree with that.

Counsel Inquiry: Was there anything that you directed, as the head of the civil service, about any steps that could have been taken in order to ensure that there was a greater understanding or assessment of the impact of NPIs on different groups within society, as you include in your statement?

Dr Jenny Pyper: Both ministers, both the Executive and the Covid Taskforce, did consider the impact of restrictions and indeed of lifting restrictions on different groups as we worked through our process. And particularly in relation to the Covid Taskforce, some of the work on adherence and behavioural insights did delve into what the implications were for particularly vulnerable groups. I think the point I was trying to make is that we didn’t do it in any systematic way during my tenure and that an opportunity, I would say, an opportunity was missed by the Covid Taskforce to perhaps have an equality workstream that would have given some focus to the work that was being done in terms of stakeholder engagement but also the work that was being done by individual departments with their stakeholders. So I’m thinking perhaps of the Department for Communities, with disadvantaged communities and with low paid families. I’m thinking of the Department of Health in relation to all of the information that was coming through from the Public Health Agency and in particular from the trusts, a huge amount of information from the social care system. That information was – I think assumptions were made that that information was being considered and assessed by departments and was factoring in and featuring in their individual departmental responses. I think we missed –

Counsel Inquiry: Apologies to cut across you, just I’m conscious of the time that we have.

In terms of the assumptions that were being made, was there anybody within the ECT who was suggesting that more should have been done to make a systematic assessment, or was it effectively a collective assumption that sufficient was being done elsewhere?

Dr Jenny Pyper: I couldn’t say that there was anyone in particular, which is why on reflection I would say we should – we missed an opportunity and we should have taken more care and made greater proactive efforts to make sure that all the voices that should have been heard were in fact heard.

Counsel Inquiry: Because if I can just take you to – it’s the document “Moving Forward: The Executive’s Pathway out of Restrictions”, it’s INQ000104467.

I presume you remember this document quite well, it was published on 2 March 2021. This was intended to be a public-facing document.

Dr Jenny Pyper: Yes.

Counsel Inquiry: So it was intended to communicate the Executive’s thought processes, plans, intentions to the population of Northern Ireland.

If we can go to page 6, please.

In terms of the “Societal Impact” there, it is set out that:

“… the pandemic and restrictions have had an impact upon physical and mental wellbeing …”

It then moves into issues in relation to housing, sports, arts and culture.

And then – down into the next page, please:

“The financial impact …”

In the top left corner:

“… has been heavy for many people, with increased levels of unemployment …”

And then:

“Across society, it would be difficult to imagine anyone who has not been negatively impacted by this pandemic …”

On reflection of this framework, do you consider that there is sufficient attention given to inequalities and impact upon the population of NPIs, or do you think that on reflection more should have been included in there, given that it was a public-facing document?

Dr Jenny Pyper: I think it would have been – with hindsight it would have been better to draw out some of those implications and those impacts more clearly in that public-facing document, which was intended to be a communication to explain to the public how the Executive’s process was working, and in a way that was an attempt to try and deal with the concern and perhaps any loss of public confidence about how the Executive was working.

I would say to you that we did learn from the engagement that we had with the stakeholder groups, and when we came to develop the recovery document, the Pathway out of – recovery, which was published in August 2021, one of the key workstreams, and I think we described it as a recovery accelerator, one of those themes was tackling inequalities, and that was an explicit recognition of the disproportionate impact that the pandemic had had on various groups and various sectors, and it was – it was a recognition that there was a – there were specific streams of work that would need to be taken forward as we moved into recovery to address those impacts and those inequalities.

Counsel Inquiry: That framework, “Moving Forward”, was criticised by the Equality Commission, is that right, for not paying sufficient attention to section 75 duties?

Dr Jenny Pyper: I understand that, however that postdated my tenure, but we did – that was the first document that we put through the formal EQIA process and I’m aware that it was criticised, yes.

Counsel Inquiry: In truth, that building forward Covid recovery plan was published on 2 August but it had started consideration back in March 2021, so it was about five months in the making; is that right?

Dr Jenny Pyper: It was.

Counsel Inquiry: I want to move now to WhatsApps.

You say in your statement that you’ve:

“… had no experience of any key decisions relating to the pandemic being made during informal or unminuted discussions.”

And:

“… no messages were deleted by me, or on my behalf, regarding how the public in Northern Ireland approached the response to the pandemic.”

Is that true?

Dr Jenny Pyper: It is true.

Counsel Inquiry: So you, in your original statement, and if we can have up INQ000411509, page 47, and it’s paragraph 212.

You set out there, under:

“On the day of my departure from the interim HOCS role on 3 September 2021, I returned my NICS mobile phone and laptop and have had no access to either device since. I had deleted nothing from them and had no informal messages on any other personal device …”

I’ll give you the opportunity to explain, Dr Pyper: is that accurate?

Dr Jenny Pyper: It is not correct and that’s why I made a second statement on 28 March to correct that assertion.

Counsel Inquiry: And so your further statement says that:

“… contrary to what I stated in paragraph 212 … I did delete material from my work and personal devices.”

Joining those two limbs together, you’re saying that you did delete some material, but you’re also satisfied that you didn’t delete any material about the government in Northern Ireland’s response to the pandemic; is that right?

Dr Jenny Pyper: I can only be clear about my personal phone, because although I returned my Civil Service, my work phone, when I left, and I did not reset that phone, I learned on, I think it was, 13 January that that device could not be located, so I can’t speak confidently about my work phone.

But my second statement does set out the circumstances of deletion of material from my personal phone, and confirms that that material was not related to the Covid Inquiry or to – or not related to the pandemic response or to decision-making.

Counsel Inquiry: Yes, if we can have up INQ000421746, please, page 6.

At paragraphs 25 to 27, I’m not going to go through them, but that sets out your understanding of the circumstances of the – that led to the deletion of that material?

Dr Jenny Pyper: It does.

Counsel Inquiry: And so you say that you were not advised by Jill, so that is Jill Minne, the –

Dr Jenny Pyper: That’s Jill Minne.

Counsel Inquiry: And she is the head of NICS HR; is that correct?

Dr Jenny Pyper: She is.

Counsel Inquiry: And you say that you were not advised to delete messages but you were advised about appropriate and acceptable behaviour, that’s what you say there in your statement.

Dr Jenny Pyper: Indeed.

Counsel Inquiry: If that was the advice that you had received, why did that lead you to – in the words of the message that you sent, why did that lead you to clear out all of your WhatsApps and messages on your personal phone and your work phone?

Dr Jenny Pyper: I did not clear out all WhatsApps and messages on my personal phone. I cleared out – deleted – the exchange with Dr McCormick because I’d believed that I had shared some casual and offhand comments on what was a personal communication channel, but I believed those comments, on reflection, were unprofessional. I don’t believe that I consciously thought that those messages needed to be retained but, having spoken to Jill, I reflected that my communications with Dr McCormick had drifted towards the inappropriate.

Counsel Inquiry: Just in terms of accuracy, if I can take you to INQ000378038 for the reason why I talk about clearing out WhatsApp messages.

So if we can scroll in at the top there, so it’s that message there, 17 May 2021, 19.49.35:

“On Jill’s advice I have cleared out all my WhatsApp and Messages on this and my work phone.”

So are you saying that you didn’t actually clear out everything, you just cleared out aspects?

Dr Jenny Pyper: I did not clear out everything, and a number of my exhibits confirm that there were other WhatsApps exchanged. It’s very casual, especially when you read it now, knowing what has happened in relation to the loss of information. There was nothing more than – I suppose the conversation with Jill was nothing more than a reminder about not using informal channels for casual conversations, and I regret now that I deleted anything from my personal phone because I believe that – you know, it could have led – or given the impression that in fact I had deleted more than I had.

Counsel Inquiry: You were aware at that time of the need for accurate retention of records?

Dr Jenny Pyper: I was aware of the Civil Service guidance at the time, yes.

Counsel Inquiry: And in terms of the timeline, so that is dated 17 May 2021, so it was on the – if we could just have INQ000409662.

So this is 10 June 2021, so it does postdate the messages that you sent in terms of the letter from the director general, propriety and ethics, at the Cabinet Office about recording records in relation to the Covid-19 independent inquiry, and you saw that letter from the Cabinet Office?

Dr Jenny Pyper: I did.

Counsel Inquiry: And you circulated it around permanent secretaries in –

Dr Jenny Pyper: I did.

Counsel Inquiry: What steps did you take in response to this letter to ensure that information was secured across the government of Northern Ireland or the Executive Office to ensure that all records were retained that might be relevant to the Inquiry?

Dr Jenny Pyper: As you have said, I did circulate that guidance to all permanent secretaries and senior TEO colleagues. I drew specific attention to the need to secure information and reminded permanent secretaries about the fact that this might raise governance issues for their – I don’t think I explicitly said audit and risk committees, but it was in my intention was to ensure that their governance processes were cognisant of the likelihood of Northern Ireland joining this Inquiry. At the time Northern Ireland had not committed to join the Inquiry, the deputy First Minister had not agreed that we would be part of it, but I think the assumption was that we would form part of that Inquiry. I did draw specific attention to the requirements in that – in that memo. But permanent secretaries are accounting officers and accountable for their own staff and their own resources, and frankly I felt the responsibility, the primary responsibility, lay with them to ensure that proper procedures were followed. I did talk with my own accounting officer, because although I was the permanent – I’m sorry.

Counsel Inquiry: No, apologies to cut across you, I’m just conscious of the time.

As far as you were concerned, you received this letter in and around two weeks after that you had deleted those messages, are you satisfied that the messages that you deleted didn’t have any relevance to the Covid Inquiry?

Dr Jenny Pyper: I cannot speak with authority about when I deleted the messages, but because the action point is noted in my own notebook, I believe I deleted them then, before 10 June.

Mr Scott: My Lady, I’ve no further questions.

Lady Hallett: Thank you.

Does anybody else have any questions? Mr Friedman.

Questions From Mr Friedman KC

Mr Friedman: Dr Pyper, I ask questions for Disability Action and I want to raise a matter with you in the knowledge that you very understandably did not have the luxury to read into your role, and we’ve heard that very clearly this afternoon. But as to what you found on 1 December, would it be right that you were initially dependent on what was flagged up to you and what had sufficiently left its mark in the everyday workings of the Executive Office to otherwise be clear to you?

Dr Jenny Pyper: I think that’s an accurate statement, yes.

Mr Friedman KC: Now, at paragraph 276 of your statement, you just give a personal sense that the impact of the pandemic on certain groups within society only really began to emerge, at least for you, as 2021 progressed, and you may recall you refer to the Sarah Everard event in London then triggering your own awareness of things going on in Northern Ireland. That’s a context for what I’m about to ask you.

Therefore, given you coming into the job at the end of 2020, does it follow that you were not aware of or otherwise briefed about following reports in relation to disabled people?

I’m going to give you a list and it may be “no” to everything, but if I may.

In May 2020 the Cabinet Office in London, the Disability Unit, published a paper entitled “The impact of Covid-19 on disabled people”, and it made its way to the Executive Office, we know that. Did you ever see that?

Dr Jenny Pyper: No.

Mr Friedman KC: In June 2020, the Northern Ireland Council for Voluntary Action published a report on the impact of Covid-19 on carers in Northern Ireland. Did you ever see that?

Dr Jenny Pyper: No.

Mr Friedman KC: In September 2020, Disability Action – the DPO in Northern Ireland that I act for – published a report “The impact of Covid-19 on disabled people in Northern Ireland”. Did you see that?

Dr Jenny Pyper: No.

Mr Friedman KC: Now, that report followed UK-wide reports on the impact of Covid-19 on disabled people published in July 2020 by the Office for National Statistics, and I’m wondering whether you saw that?

Dr Jenny Pyper: I’m afraid I didn’t see that either.

Mr Friedman KC: Well, it’s not a criticism.

Just to clarify, then, the last would be in December 2020, the House of Commons’ Women and Equalities Committee in the UK Parliament published the report of “Unequal impact? Coronavirus, disability and access to services”. Did you see that?

Dr Jenny Pyper: No, I did not.

Mr Friedman KC: So really picking up on your acknowledgement about the learned lessons about not having a systematic approach to analysing adverse impact, is that a set of at least reported impacts on disabled people that haven’t been obvious to you when you’ve come into your office, haven’t been flagged up to you, haven’t made their way into sort of the everyday thinking of the Executive Office that could, if there was a more systematic way of approaching these things, have been at least more embedded in the Executive Office? Would you agree with that?

Dr Jenny Pyper: I would agree with it, and it’s why I said what I did around the Covid Taskforce and, with hindsight, the benefit of having an equality workstream within the Covid Taskforce to look at those sources of information, to be a point of direct contact for Disability Action, for the Commissioner for Older People, a central point of contact as opposed to relying on sources of information held in disparate parts of the system.

Mr Friedman: Yes.

Now, my Lady, I did ask for one follow-up question, and it –

Lady Hallett: I gather. Don’t worry, carry on, Mr Friedman, thank you.

Mr Friedman: I’ll carry on. That’s very helpful.

I just wanted to then follow up on engagement, as you fairly put it, being a proxy for proper consultation, and I didn’t hear you to say anything other than that would be a second best, but I just want to ask you about engagement.

You may know, but my clients do not believe and they give evidence about why they were not properly engaged with as a DPO, I don’t want to ask you details about that, your impression was that there was extensive stakeholder engagement, you’ve spoken about that this afternoon, it’s in your statement.

Now, just in terms of how that processes into final government product, are you aware that disabled people are not mentioned at all in the moving forward strategy from March 2021?

Dr Jenny Pyper: Yes, and that has been put in front of me as part of the hearing today, and they are not mentioned explicitly. I would just slightly push back that the moving forward document is not a strategy, it is an explanation of the process that was going to be followed by the Executive, but I absolutely accept that there wasn’t anything explicit within that process that referred to engagement with people with disabilities or their representatives.

Mr Friedman KC: Yes. I understand what you accept and I understand the slight caveat. Of course the Covid recovery plan was a plan, and disabled people or people with disabilities are only mentioned once in that document, and that is with regard to enhancing their skills so that they can gain more employment. Now, that may be valid, but just in terms of engagement not really leading to enough in terms of important flagship government plan product, would you agree that’s just not enough, and therefore whatever engagement went on it just wasn’t good enough and not a sufficient proxy, to use your words?

Dr Jenny Pyper: I would absolutely agree that we should have made more efforts to make sure that we had a more inclusive process and that the voices of people who should have been heard were heard and reflected in the documents, yes, I would agree.

Mr Friedman: Thank you.

Thank you, my Lady.

Lady Hallett: Thank you very much, Mr Friedman.

Thank you very much, Dr Pyper, very grateful for your help.

(The witness withdrew)

Lady Hallett: That’s it for today?

Mr Scott: Yes.

Lady Hallett: 10 o’clock tomorrow, please.

(4.25 pm)

(The hearing adjourned until 10 am on Friday, 3 May 2024)