Transcript of Module 2C Public Hearing on 9 May 2024

(10.00 am)

Lady Hallett: Mr Scott.

Mr Scott: Good morning, my Lady. May we call Naomi Long.

1. Ms Naomi Long

MS NAOMI LONG (affirmed).

Questions From Counsel to the Inquiry

Mr Scott: Good morning. Would you please provide your full name.

Ms Naomi Long: Naomi Rachel Long.

Counsel Inquiry: For the purposes of today, I’ll refer to you as Mrs Long throughout. Thank you for providing assistance to the Inquiry. For the benefit of the stenographer, can I ask you to keep your voice up, but not speak too quickly.

Ms Naomi Long: Okay.

Counsel Inquiry: You provided a witness statement dated 12 March 2024. That’s up on screen at the moment. Your signature and the statement of truth is at page 68. Please can you confirm the contents of that statement are true?

Ms Naomi Long: I can, yes.

Counsel Inquiry: And you’re content to rely upon that statement in evidence to the Inquiry?

Ms Naomi Long: I will, yes.

Counsel Inquiry: If I just summarise your political career to date. So you became an elected representative for the Alliance Party in May 2001 when you were elected to Belfast City Council. You served until June 2010, including a term as Lord Mayor in 2009/2010. You were first elected as a Member of the Legislative Assembly in November 2003, became the Alliance Party deputy leader in 2006 and was re-elected to the Northern Ireland Assembly in 2007. You became an MP in 2010, before you were re-elected to the Assembly in 2016 and became Alliance Party leader later that same year. You took up a seat in the European Parliament in 2019, and then following the EU exit, you were co-opted back into your Assembly seat on 9 January 2020 and was elected as Minister of Justice on 11 January 2020 when the Executive and Assembly were restored.

Ms Naomi Long: That’s correct.

Counsel Inquiry: I’d like to start off with some questions about the Executive Committee as a body and how it operates in your experience as to that.

You say in your statement that structures of government in Northern Ireland not only enable instability but also are a barrier to efficient and effective decision-making when the Executive is in place. Could you please provide a practical example that’s related to the response of the pandemic in Northern Ireland of how that operated.

Ms Naomi Long: Yes. There were a number of examples where I believe that the structures that we had in place made co-operation and collaboration more difficult than would have been the case had normal decision-making rules applied. I think the most stark example was the week of 9 November, where we had the use of the parallel consent mechanism vote within the Executive. So on the Thursday or Friday of that week when we met, all of the restrictions that were in place were –

Counsel Inquiry: Sorry to interrupt. If I could just ask you to speak a little bit slower.

Ms Naomi Long: Okay.

Counsel Inquiry: Just from the start. I’ve already been told once this morning.

Ms Naomi Long: Apologies.

So when we met that week, we knew that on the Thursday or Friday of that week that all of the restrictions that were in place as part of the circuit-breaker would fall were the Executive not to make a decision about what restrictions would remain in place. The health minister brought recommendations to the Executive. The DUP indicated they would not support those recommendations. They didn’t only vote against them, however; they triggered a parallel consent vote within the Executive –

Counsel Inquiry: Could you please explain what that is for those who aren’t familiar.

Ms Naomi Long: So in order for the – in order for us to pass the recommendations we needed, first of all, a majority of members voting at Executive, and then ancillary to that, we also needed a majority of Unionist members to vote for and a majority of national list members to vote for.

Counsel Inquiry: Some people might know that as the cross-community vote to give a very shorthand –

Ms Naomi Long: Yes. And it effectively operated as a veto, so the health minister’s proposals, because the DUP were the majority of Unionists on the Executive, they were in a position to block the health minister’s proposals.

By contrast, if we had taken a decision by a simple majority, or even weighted majority voting in the Executive, we would have had a true cross-community representation, so Sinn Féin, SDLP, Alliance and Ulster Unionist would all have been in favour, and it would have been an inclusive vote, and the health minister’s recommendations would have passed.

Instead, we entered into a period of rather chaotic and frankly embarrassing horse-trading to try to find a solution to the fact that we were blocked from accepting the health minister’s recommendations.

Counsel Inquiry: If I can just bring you back to your experiences of the use of that. You’ve indicated that the simple majority voting, effectively that would have passed with the support of the Ulster Unionist party, Alliance, SDLP and Sinn Féin, so four out of the five parties that were sharing power.

Ms Naomi Long: Correct.

Counsel Inquiry: So you say, effectively, that would have demonstrated clear cross-community support but for one party voting against it.

Ms Naomi Long: Correct.

Counsel Inquiry: You also have indicated the fact that the health minister was a Unionist, and his proposals were vetoed by other Unionists.

What was your view on the use of a mechanism in that way in the middle of a public health emergency?

Ms Naomi Long: I felt it was an egregious abuse of a process that was there in order – conceived in order to protect minorities around issues of particular sensitivity in Northern Ireland. So, for example, constitutional issues, issues to do with language and culture, and issues to do with the Good Friday Agreement itself.

Instead, it was being deployed, first of all, on an issue that had no differential bearing on either community, so anyone in society could get Covid and be affected by Covid. It did not recognise people’s constitutional aspirations. And therefore the cross-community, if you like, demand seemed to be irrelevant in that context.

Counsel Inquiry: Can I just ask you one point that you also made: if, say, you had been health minister at the time, would you have been able to vote on your own proposal?

Ms Naomi Long: I would have been able to vote, but my vote would have been discounted in the context of whether or not a majority could be achieved. So we would have been in the invidious position where the minister who brought the proposal, actually their vote counted for less than other ministers –

Counsel Inquiry: Sorry, some people might not necessarily understand the precise mechanism of that. So when it comes to – I’m going to use the parlance cross-community vote – that all ministers have the opportunity to vote –

Ms Naomi Long: Correct.

Counsel Inquiry: – but unless a minister, when they became an MLA, designated as Unionist or Nationalist, that actually their vote wouldn’t count for the purposes of the tally.

Ms Naomi Long: It would count for the first. So there are two clauses that have to be met, two conditions to pass. The first is a majority of the Executive; it counts. The second is a majority of Unionists and a majority of Nationalists; it doesn’t count.

The other issue, if I may, which I think is important to say in this, that this was not about a protection of a minority. The DUP were the largest party on the Executive. They were also deploying it against a minister who was of the same designation, so also a Unionist, which to me shows starkly how egregious that breach of and abuse of the mechanism was.

Counsel Inquiry: There were at the time ten ministers who were able to vote within the Executive, and given that your vote wouldn’t have been counted on that second limb of the cross-community, there were nine ministers. How many DUP ministers made up that nine?

Ms Naomi Long: Four, I think.

Counsel Inquiry: I just want to come back, then, to your experiences of actually being in the Executive, not on 9 November.

You set out in your statement frustrations that were experienced by yourself and also by Minister Mallon. It’s right that Mr Mallon was the only member of the SDLP on the Executive at that time; is that right?

Ms Naomi Long: That’s correct.

Counsel Inquiry: So both of you were effectively individuals alone in the Executive.

Ms Naomi Long: We were.

Counsel Inquiry: And plainly Mr Swann was also in the same position, but then again as health minister, he had the Department of Health working alongside him in response to the pandemic. So a slightly different position, would you agree?

Ms Naomi Long: Very much so. We were very reliant as an Executive on his recommendations, and therefore when papers were brought, recommendations were being brought, the health minister was I think viewed to be crucial in that, in those discussions.

Counsel Inquiry: You talk about there being pre-negotiations between the First Minister, deputy First Minister and Minister Swann. What was your understanding of the point of those pre-negotiations?

Ms Naomi Long: Well, first of all, it was my impression throughout that those pre-discussions had become negotiations. We were told that was not the case repeatedly at Executive, but it clearly was the case. And now in light of the evidence that the Inquiry has exposed, first of all, we can see that the Civil Service themselves recommended that they would find a consensus with the First and deputy First Minister before bringing things to the Executive in order that things would go more smoothly at the Executive.

Counsel Inquiry: Can I just come in there. Is it necessarily detrimental for civil servants to try and identify where consensus might lie between the five parties that make up the power-sharing arrangement?

Ms Naomi Long: Not at all, but they did not do so with the five parties that made up the Executive, they did so with the First and deputy First Minister’s party and with the health minister, to the exclusion of two of the parties who were in the Executive. I believe that was detrimental and I think the evidence would demonstrate that it was.

Issues that were raised by myself and by Minister Mallon were often batted away, despite their validity, on the basis that to pull on that thread may unravel a consensus that had been reached in another meeting prior to the Executive meeting. And as a result, some, I think, valid input that we had to make to the decision-making process was not fully engaged.

Counsel Inquiry: Because a power-sharing arrangement of five parties isn’t a full power-sharing arrangement when two of them are excluded?

Ms Naomi Long: Correct.

Counsel Inquiry: In terms of the actual administrative aspects, I think you had set out things like you were getting the papers very, very late in the day so you didn’t have an opportunity to consider them, that you didn’t have an opportunity, given the rules of confidence, to actually share them with your party members, whereas those who had more than one minister were able to discuss them amongst themselves.

Did you feel disadvantaged in terms of your ability to engage with the issues as a minister?

Ms Naomi Long: To some degree we were disadvantaged. I mean, at a very practical level, not being able, for example, to seek detailed advice from my officials made it very difficult for us to provide responses in a timely fashion. It was also very isolating, because we were taking decisions which would have a huge impact upon people’s lives, and yet were not part of the wider conversation. But were expected to, in many cases, rubber-stamp negotiations that others had had, but then take full responsibility for those decisions though we didn’t have a hand in forming them. And that, I think, was incredibly frustrating.

Counsel Inquiry: We’ve heard a number of references to leaks coming from the Executive Committee. What was your view of the impact of those leaks?

Ms Naomi Long: I think first and foremost it created, at times, panic –

Counsel Inquiry: Amongst who?

Ms Naomi Long: In the public. I think things were leaked in terms of what may or may not happen at Executive that then created a debate prior to Executive having been able to even consider the evidence around what may or may not happen, and I think that that created a sense, first of all, that the Executive was incompetent. And secondly, it led to me finding out often from journalists or news reports what would be discussed at Executive, as opposed to finding out when I received my papers and my briefings.

Counsel Inquiry: Do you think that the point of those leaks was to effectively trail a proposal to see either what the public support would be, or to try to push people into supporting a proposal?

Ms Naomi Long: It’s very difficult to know what the motivation was. I think in some cases it was slightly more benign, in that I think people were trying to prepare the ground, if you like, for what might be coming down the line.

In other cases I think that there was a degree of leaking of information, mainly negative information, to put pressure on ministers to take certain positions –

Counsel Inquiry: Would you give us a specific example of that, please.

Ms Naomi Long: There were so many examples of leaks, it’s hard to recall a single example where that influence was obvious, but I would say particularly around the circuit-breaker. Some of the leaking at that time into the press was particularly … was particularly to ramp up pressure for people to agree to certain proposals, but the leaks were not consistent in that regard. There would have been other times when there would have been leaks from people who were making clear that they were not going to do certain things.

There was also, in addition to leaks of the facts, if I may –

Counsel Inquiry: Sorry to interrupt, I don’t want to cut across you, there’s – I’ve got a number of topics I want to come on – just want to make sure we’re focusing on those.

If I can just take you forward to alignment. We’ve heard a number of people refer to alignment with the United Kingdom or the Republic ofIreland. Given your viewpoint within the Executive, what do you consider would have been the optimal – let’s use the word, alignment for Northern Ireland in a pandemic towards either the Republic of Ireland or the United Kingdom or a blend of both?

Ms Naomi Long: I was quite pragmatic about how we should handle the pandemic. As I set out in my written evidence, I think there were a number of practical factors that would influence how we could do that. So our scientific guidance came from UK SAGE, and therefore was not going to entirely coincide with the advice being offered in the Republic. Not all of the actions required to align across the island would lie within the competence of the devolved institutions, so even if we aspired to align, we would not have had the powers necessarily to do so.

Counsel Inquiry: Such as?

Ms Naomi Long: Particularly around international travel, which is not a devolved matter.

Thirdly, I think our budget for dealing with Covid, so the resource available to us, was very much guided by spend in England in particular and the Barnett consequentials that we got from that. So if we wanted to do things in line with the South, we wouldn’t have necessarily always had access to the resource to do it.

We were very conscious that those living in border communities could see conflict. You know, if you’re living in Strabane, and you see schools in Lifford closed and a mile down the road in Strabane schools are open, that conflict was very live, and there would have been, I think, simplicity in having more cohesion in terms of our approach –

Counsel Inquiry: Again, just to illuminate that point you’re making between Lifford and Strabane, the border in an area like that is very fluid, people transferring backwards and forwards for work, schools, shopping, so it would feel like their daily lives had been impacted. Is that fair?

Ms Naomi Long: Correct, and people whose lives straddled the border were also having to be able to manage two often different sets of regulations and restrictions, two different sets of guidance, and so that was complex.

And I suppose the added complication for Northern Ireland was that there did not appear, certainly from my perspective, to be adequate thought given by either the Irish Government or the UK Government about the impact of divergence in their approach on a part of the UK that had a land border with a neighbouring state, and it would be fair to say that that’s a fairly consistent failing in UK policymaking, because there are no land borders in that way to consider for the rest of the UK, for GB.

Counsel Inquiry: Did that put the Executive in a difficult position in the sense that at times significant announcements could be made either from Westminster or from Dublin which then the Executive would have to react to?

Ms Naomi Long: Very much so. Those decisions were often made with little or no advance warning, so I recall we knew that, for example, something akin to a lockdown might emerge, but I found out about it when Boris Johnson made his public statement on television. We found out about the Irish lockdown when I think Leo Varadkar made the announcement from Washington.

So we were not prepared in advance, but understandably the media then immediately said: well, what are you going to do? And we had to try to reconcile both – both of the other jurisdictions, what they were doing, how that would impact on us, how we would manage that internally, and do that at speed.

Counsel Inquiry: Are you able to exercise the level of leadership you would have liked to as a minister in those situations?

Ms Naomi Long: Well, I think leadership is about how you respond in situations. It was certainly not – I wouldn’t describe it as the optimum situation for demonstrating leadership, but I think that that is the nature of leadership, that it’s often how you respond in those challenging situations that defines whether or not you are leading. I think at times whilst it appeared to the public that we were reactive, we were following the advice and guidance given to us to the best of our ability and seeking as best we could to show leadership within our own community, bearing in mind that the trajectory of Covid in Northern Ireland was not the same as in England or the South.

Counsel Inquiry: So just moving slightly onwards in terms of, let’s call it, visible leadership or engagement with the leadership about public statements. There’s one in particular that seemed to have an impact upon the Executive in and around 14 March, after the Republic of Ireland had taken a decision to close schools, and Michelle O’Neill made a public statement setting out that there had been contradictory medical advice and that her view was that:

“… we [I presume Northern Ireland] should err on the side of caution.”

And:

“… it is our duty to make decisions in the interest of everyone based on all available advice.”

From your perspective, was a public statement at that time, in March 2020, detrimental to public confidence or actually boosted public confidence?

Ms Naomi Long: This was a matter of public debate, so it would be fair to say there were already divergences in opinion. It was a matter of debate in the media, so people were already reaching a degree, if you like, of discussion around this irrespective of any public statement. But I believe that it did undermine confidence fundamentally in the advice we were given.

The advice that we received collectively, as an Executive, was that it was not necessary at that point in time to close schools, and from my perspective I believed that it was important that we acknowledged that that was the case and that we collectively reached a decision as to when schools would be closed.

Counsel Inquiry: Can I just ask then, in principle there’s no difficulty with ministers making public statements by themselves; do you agree with that?

Ms Naomi Long: Well, we’re all bound by the Ministerial Code, and so when we have made decisions we are bound by those decisions and we are also bound to defend those decisions. I could point to numerous examples of decisions with which I disagreed, but that I defended publicly.

Counsel Inquiry: But that relies upon a decision having been taken. So on 14 March the Executive hadn’t taken a decision whether or not to close schools; is that right?

Ms Naomi Long: In the –

Counsel Inquiry: That came on the 16th.

Ms Naomi Long: It does, but I think also there is an expectation in the Ministerial Code that the negotiations around the Executive table remain confidential, so if you publicly state, going into the Executive, your pre-judged position, it’s very hard then for other Executive colleagues not to do likewise, and you end up with an Executive debate in the public arena, which is not necessarily helpful.

It was also, from my perspective – we all agreed that we should err on the side of caution at that stage, in fact the Department of Education said that we should not be blasé very early in this. I disagreed with the immediate closure of schools, but I also disagreed, I have to say, with the DUP counter to that, which was we should not close schools until the CMO recommended it. Because there are other factors to consider. I’ve mentioned the border as an example.

So we started to see school management in Northern Ireland, the Catholic-maintained school sector saying that they believed schools should be closed. We saw parents start to withdraw their children voluntarily from school, because they saw schools closing elsewhere. And so I don’t think it was purely a decision to be taken on the basis of medical advice, but we needed to look at how, as an Executive, we could maintain support from the community and take into account the views of the community as we proceeded.

Counsel Inquiry: That sounds like you’re considering the balance between the medical advice and then societal factors. Do you think that the Executive was given sufficient information about societal factors throughout the pandemic, particularly in the early stages?

Ms Naomi Long: Well, there were a number of pieces of evidence that we were given. So we were provided with potential societal impacts, we were provided with economic information in terms of impact. We were also very conscious of the impact, for example, on older people, people with disabilities, vulnerable groups, in terms of – one of the motivations for entering lockdown was to protect those particular groups. But I think – and I’ve expressed, I think, in my statement – the degree to which we had the same level of expert input to Executive decision-making when it came to societal human rights, equality, and other impacts, I think was not so extensive as the health information. So the Chief Scientific Officer, the Chief Medical Officer, were regular attendees at Executive and were able to elucidate their arguments.

Counsel Inquiry: Can I just take you to some of the examples of some of the documents that you’re talking about the fact that you received, because there’s clearly a distinction between receiving a document and actually the document content being sufficient to provide you, as a minister, with enough information to take a decision. Would you agree with that?

Ms Naomi Long: Yes, I think that’s true, and, as I said, I felt that we lacked the same level of expertise, in terms of informing our decisions, from those other sectors as we gained from the Department of Health. That’s not to say they weren’t considered, but the weight we could attribute to them was affected by the lack of an equal weight of expert advice.

Counsel Inquiry: On 9 November 2020, you wrote a letter to your Executive colleagues, and you were saying that:

“… the inability of modelling to disaggregate the impact on R of different parts of the economy/society at a more granular level remains a weakness in our ability to consider the likely impact of more nuanced restrictions.”

Even in November, are you suggesting that actually the modelling didn’t provide you with the information that you needed?

Ms Naomi Long: No. There was a desire within the Executive at that time to look at intrasectoral differentiation. So, for example, within close contact services, to look at hairdressing versus driving instructors versus nail technicians. And the point I made was that the modelling was not sufficiently nuanced, and Dr Ian Young had been very clear. It was not sufficiently nuanced for us to be able to understand what the impact of, for example, closing hairdressers but opening up driving tests again would be –

Counsel Inquiry: Would that not have been very useful, to have greater detail about what the impact would have been on specific sectors when you’re considering whether to open or close?

Ms Naomi Long: Well, there are two things that I would say. First of all, given that the impact on the R number was relatively small for many of these sectors, to further disaggregate it, you then end up with a situation statistically –

Counsel Inquiry: Well –

Ms Naomi Long: You end up with a situation statistically where the confidence in the information you’re using declines as the number of – as the nuance increases.

So from a modelling perspective, I understood that in a situation where you’re dealing with a relatively small sample, if you then split that sample into very small parts, the confidence that you can have in how representative that disaggregation is declines. And so it wasn’t whether or not it would have been useful to have, but whether or not it was practical to be able to deliver, and I don’t believe, in fairness, that we could have delivered the level of disaggregation of sectors in terms of the R number that some people were looking for.

We could tell in broad terms the likely impact of close contact services or hospitality, but we couldn’t necessarily go kind of … we couldn’t go, I guess by each individual –

Counsel Inquiry: The balance between coffee shops or restaurants, for example, which was a point that was raised.

Ms Naomi Long: Incredibly difficult.

Counsel Inquiry: Yes. But isn’t the difficulty, as you highlight in November – we’re not talking about the low rates in the middle of the summer, for example; we’re talking about in November when the transmission rates are high. Isn’t the difficulty that if you haven’t got a proper disaggregation of the impact on the different parts of society, you actually can’t tell whether your assessment of what the impact on the R number would be, as you just suggested is; you actually need that aggregation to then identify whether your modelling is correct.

Ms Naomi Long: I think there are two things I would say. First of all, one of the things that I pressed for throughout, which I think would have been helpful, was that as we emerged from the first lockdown that we did so in cycles of three weeks because we were told it took around three weeks for the imposition of restrictions to lead to a lowering of R, and equally as we lifted to see a change.

And I wanted to move in three-week blocks for a couple of reasons. It gave people the opportunity to see the impact of the changes we were making, and that would also have allowed us, if we reached a point where the R rate – when we were reliant on that for a period – was increasing, we could take one step back. But the rush to open things up in a more chaotic fashion meant that we couldn’t tell as we emerged whether the changes that we were making, which parts of the changes we were making were actually having the impact that we were seeing on the R rate.

So I think we lost an opportunity by not being more coherent and restrained as we moved out of lockdown. Not that I wanted to move slower for slowness’ sake, but because I felt that by doing so in a much more coherent and steady fashion would allow us to acquire that information that we would then need if at a later stage, as expected, we needed to impose further restrictions.

Counsel Inquiry: Okay. If I can just show you a document. It’s INQ000346707. This is a briefing paper dated 17 June 2020, and it’s about one of the reviews of restrictions that had to take place. You’ll be very familiar with these types of documents, no doubt.

If we can go through to page 7, please. Now, the purpose of this document, if I’m correct, was to pull together all the various threads to inform you as ministers about an overview of the state of the regulations, the state of transmission, the impact of the restrictions and allow you to take a decision about what should be done next.

Is that a fair summary of what the point of this is –

Ms Naomi Long: Yes.

Counsel Inquiry: So we have a section here at paragraph 36 that’s called “Wider health, societal and economic impacts”. Now, we can see that paragraph is all about economic impacts.

If we can go over the page, please, and then there’s paragraph 37. Now, again, it’s worth remembering this is – the paper’s dated 17 June 2020 so it’s not the first iteration of a paper such as this. Do you consider that that paragraph 37, which appears to be the extent of the consideration of the wider societal impacts, do you think that gives you sufficient information in order to take a decision about what to do with the restrictions?

Ms Naomi Long: I wouldn’t characterise it as you have, as representing all the consideration of the wider societal impacts. It was certainly the consideration that the Department of Health had undertaken of the wider societal impacts, but these papers then came to the Executive, and we also raised issues.

So, for example, a consistent theme that I raised was around the balance between the economy and wanting to protect our economy, but also looking at wider societal impacts that were not economically driven.

And there were at times, I think, conflicts at two levels. Firstly, I think that when it came to how we decided to prioritise –

Counsel Inquiry: If I could just please ask you just to focus on the specific question I’m asking in relation to this document because it’s about the information that you were provided with, rather than the information that you were necessarily imparting, because this document is meant to inform all ministers in advance of a meeting; is that correct?

Ms Naomi Long: From a health perspective, yes.

Counsel Inquiry: Yes. So were there equivalent papers from everybody else that were setting out the impact from all of their departments, or is effectively this the summary?

Ms Naomi Long: There would have been other papers in circulation and correspondence in circulation at that time that would have raised other concerns.

I mean, I wrote about other issues that were of concern to me that I had picked up either as a constituency MLA or as a minister. For example, the impact it was having on young families, the impact that it was having on single people, the impact it was having on bereaved families –

Counsel Inquiry: But at that time, you were the minister of justice.

Ms Naomi Long: Yes.

Counsel Inquiry: Those were anecdotal experiences.

Ms Naomi Long: Yes.

Counsel Inquiry: They weren’t coming from the broad sway of a government department. So surely you need, as a minister to be able to take decisions, the information from departments rather than the information that you’re necessarily gathering yourselves?

Ms Naomi Long: Well, as I said, I believe we lacked that expert opinion when it came to being able to measure those wider societal and economic impacts, where we had a very strong level of scientific and medical evidence that was provided to us. We didn’t have a chief economist. We didn’t have a chief social scientist. We didn’t have a chief family – and part of the difficulty, if I may say, is that there is no single department that advocates for families or for individuals. There is no single department that holds that brief. So it was relevant to my brief in terms of the impact it may have, in terms of children at risk of offending, in terms of the impact it may have on prisoner rehabilitation, in terms of the impact that it may have on the vulnerabilities that we know may expose people in later life to the justice system in a negative context.

So I felt it was appropriate for me to raise those issues, but I didn’t have access to the level of expertise of a chief medical officer or a chief scientific adviser to be able to do so in the way that you suggest.

Counsel Inquiry: Yes, and actually that is a gap in the ability of you as a –

Ms Naomi Long: It is.

Counsel Inquiry: Because just that point 37(b) there:

“Population health and inequalities are expected to be significantly affected, with the greatest effects felt by the most disadvantaged.”

Does that give you any practical benefit about what the actual impact of those restrictions that you were considering at that point in time were, or is that actually falling quite a long way short of what you need in order to take a decision?

Ms Naomi Long: Well, I think we understood that those who were most disadvantaged in society, that the impact of that would be compounded by both lockdown and also at times how restrictions were lifted –

Counsel Inquiry: But you –

Ms Naomi Long: – but it didn’t give us the level of quantitative data that would allow us to factor that and weigh it directly against, for example, the impact of decisions on case numbers for Covid.

Counsel Inquiry: But isn’t that exactly what you need in order to be able to balance the health matters with the societal impact?

Ms Naomi Long: I think in the early stages of the pandemic, the focus was very much on how we would prevent the spread of Covid and save lives, and so in that context and not knowing at the outset how long this may continue, our focus was more on how we would mitigate those impacts on wider society, rather than whether or not they were in and of themselves a reason not to proceed with some of the measures that were recommended.

Counsel Inquiry: Do you think that the government of Northern Ireland truly understood the section 75 equality duty or broader equality matters and it took all steps during the pandemic to minimise the risk on those who were most disadvantaged by the restrictions that were imposed?

Ms Naomi Long: I think that there is, first of all, considerable sensitivity to section 75 categories. Could we have done better in terms of factoring that into decision-making? Yes, I think we could.

As a department, every paper that comes to me will be screened for equality issues, human rights impacts, and I worked on the presumption that that was also the case for every paper, every set of recommendations that were being provided to other ministers –

Counsel Inquiry: Because –

Ms Naomi Long: – I wouldn’t be sighted on that internal advice.

Counsel Inquiry: Because you need that as a minister. When you’re considering matters that have been brought to the Executive, which therefore are significant cross-cutting or controversial, you need to know that the other departments have conducted that exercise properly; is that right?

Ms Naomi Long: Yes.

Counsel Inquiry: And –

Ms Naomi Long: It’s also fair to say that if you look to the mitigations that we put in place that it would be unfair to characterise the Executive’s approach as being completely unaware of the impacts. So there was considerable discussion about the impact on early years. There was extensive discussion around isolation and the impacts on mental health. There was a significant body of work done to support people who may come from more disadvantaged backgrounds. For example, the extension of free school meals over summertime and during the pandemic so that people would still receive payments for food during that period.

So whilst I would concur that the evidence could have been stronger, I would take issue with the suggestion, if that suggestion is being made, that the Executive was in some way insensitive to those issues, because I think the record would show that we tried to ameliorate the damage in as best we could. Would we have been aided by more clarity? Yes, I think we would have.

Counsel Inquiry: Taking a step away from that topic –

Ms Naomi Long: Just before we move on, I would like to say one other thing.

One of the strengths of the pandemic handling in Northern Ireland was our engagement with the unions, with the community and voluntary sector, and with community-based organisations who were very proactive in terms of their engagement. And they provided an insight, as well as support to the Executive, around the challenges that we were facing and around potential mitigations. And engaging, for example, with the community and voluntary sector led to myself and Minister Mallon putting in place free public transport for those who were fleeing from domestic abuse and violence, and there were a number of other similar mitigations through that time. So it would be remiss of me not to acknowledge that the community and voluntary sector and the kind of wider unions and so on actually played a huge role in informing the decisions of the Executive and in implementing many of the mitigations.

Counsel Inquiry: Do you think that the community and voluntary sector would consider that actually the government in Northern Ireland paid sufficient attention to inequalities during the course of the pandemic?

Ms Naomi Long: I think it would depend very much on which sectors one looks at, but I suspect in broad terms, no.

I think a lot of reliance was placed on the community and voluntary sector. I think they stepped up in terms of both offering advice and assistance, of being flexible in the way they delivered their services.

They were also facing a crisis, because many of the community and voluntary sector organisations rely, for example, on fundraising. It was impossible during that Covid period, and so we tried to put in mitigations for charities and other groups, but it was quite late, I think, in coming, and they had – they struggled.

So I think it would be a mixed message at best.

Counsel Inquiry: Because it wasn’t for the community and voluntary sector, there wasn’t an obligation on them to step up. They chose to.

Ms Naomi Long: They did, and the community generally opted to step up.

Counsel Inquiry: And they stepped up into a gap, would you agree, that was probably left by what more could have been done by the government?

Ms Naomi Long: No, I genuinely think that many of those gaps pre-existed Covid. That’s the first thing to say. We already work in partnership with the community and voluntary sector in Northern Ireland. This is not about knitting circles and baking scones, albeit that that’s very valid and worthy activity.

Our community and voluntary sector in Northern Ireland are incredibly skilled individuals. Many of the services, for example within the Department of Justice, that we provide are serviced by the community and voluntary sector, they are outsourced to those organisations. And they provide, for example, support for victims and witnesses in court cases, they provide counselling for victims of domestic and sexual abuse.

So in many ways, they were part of the service delivery landscape in Northern Ireland pre-Covid. Others stepped forward into that space during Covid, and others, I think, took on a greater share of responsibility during that period, and we were very grateful for that. But it would be, I think, unfair to say that, if you like, it was because government left things undone. They were part of that landscape of delivery of service prior to Covid and remained essential to that during Covid.

Counsel Inquiry: I’m going to move away from where the balance lies between community and voluntary sector and government and then look at care homes.

You say in your statement that care homes were a priority area of concern from the outset.

Is it right that the Executive Committee – well, I’ll complete the quote. You say that:

“Whilst the Executive took an active interest in the work being done by the [Department of Health] to protect residents and staff in care homes, the responsibility for policy and practice resided solely within the [Department of Health]. Ministers … had no formal role in operational decision-making or monitoring of transmission within care homes or other parts of the healthcare system.”

If the Executive Committee had wished it to be so, then it could have considered taking decisions in relation to the care homes on the basis that that was a significant issue and would fall within its purview; would that be right?

Ms Naomi Long: Theoretically that would be correct. Practically that would have, I think, been potentially impossible for us to deliver, in that we would have been reliant – first of all, the government structure means that the accountability mechanisms are to the individual minister, and so it would be a considerable overreach for the Executive to direct the individual ministers’ officials or to seek to influence those officials as they would bring their recommendations forward.

Also, in terms of managing the health elements of the pandemic, the health minister, as with the Executive more widely, on the particular health elements would have been entirely reliant on the same advice, which would have been the CMO, the CSA and the PHA –

Counsel Inquiry: Yes, but –

Ms Naomi Long: – so we would not have had a separate or alternative set of advices that were being provided to us, and therefore I don’t think it would have been possible.

I –

Counsel Inquiry: I just want to pick up on one point you said earlier on, it would have been a “considerable overreach”. If the Executive had considered that the situation was so bad in care homes during a pandemic, are you suggesting that they couldn’t have considered it was significant and therefore it would fall to the Executive? That wouldn’t be an overreach, would it?

Ms Naomi Long: Well, significant in the terms of the legislation is a high bar, and similarly cross-cutting, has to engage another department, and so I think that to have met that requirement would have required a degree of co-operation with the Department of Health that may not have been available.

I would draw your attention, for example, to the point where the Executive Covid Taskforce was first introduced and the resistance expressed on that occasion by the potential for duplication or interference in the health minister’s remit at that time. So I would imagine that had Executive colleagues tried to direct the health minister on issues around care homes, there would have been very similar, if not more robust push-back.

The situation, if I may –

Counsel Inquiry: But I just wanted to say, in terms of the ECT, that was in December. Your statement’s talking about from the outset.

Ms Naomi Long: Yes, I realise the difference in time. The analogy that I’m drawing or the point that I’m drawing out is the degree to which there was resistance to that engagement and at cross-departmental level.

The situation with care homes would have been analogous to my responsibilities within the prison system. So I had sole responsibility for decision-making in terms of protecting those committed to my care in the prisons –

Counsel Inquiry: Mrs Long, can I please bring you back onto care homes. I understand perfectly the analogy that you’re drawing, I just want to talk about –

Ms Naomi Long: Well, it is essential because I would not have been able to make the decisions I did, with the speed with which I made them, had I had to bring each of those decisions to the dysfunctional Executive that you exposed earlier in this conversation.

So I was able to act at speed, in line with the advice and guidance that I was receiving from my officials, in a way that prevented a single death in the prison system in Northern Ireland, in contrast to almost every other jurisdiction. But had I had to bring that through Executive and get, for example, cross-community support for every single decision, we would not have been able to act as swiftly and effectively.

So I could understand the rationale for allowing ministers within their own remit to be able to act with a degree of independence. It is a fundamental part of the structure of Northern Ireland Government that ministers have a degree of autonomy within their own departments, and to have breached that in a context where the Executive was not functioning well, and in the early days where there were strains between ministers, I think would have been incredibly difficult.

Counsel Inquiry: But there may be times – well, I won’t get into the hypotheticals.

It’s true that the Executive didn’t get to the point where it then tried to direct, it didn’t get to the point –

Ms Naomi Long: No.

Counsel Inquiry: – where it considered that the significant or the cross-cutting stage had been reached where it needed to then take a decision in relation to care homes; is that right?

Ms Naomi Long: That is correct. We probed the decision-making, we asked questions, we sought more information, with the intent, I think, to be able to provide constructive input.

I believe that the work that I did in prisons could have had a positive impact on the handling in care homes. So, for example, when people were released from hospital directly to care homes without a step-down facility, this was an issue that was raised at Executive and there was a conversation that a step-down facility would be sought, potentially a hotel where people would move for a period. Within prisons, we quarantined all new committals for 14 days to ensure that anyone arriving in prison did not enter the general population until such times as they were symptom-free or Covid-free.

And I believe that that learning that we had, which I shared with Executive, would have been useful in terms of managing the care home situation. But it was a matter for the Department of Health how they opted to implement that.

Counsel Inquiry: Thank you.

I just want to take another point in your statement.

This is – we’ll have it up on-screen – INQ000436642, and it’s page 28, paragraph 123.

This is on the topic of your view of the relationship between the Executive and, in this case, the health minister.

So this is at the time of the meeting of 9 November that then ran through until 12 November. You set out there that:

“… the Health Minister maintained the advice remained unchanged … so any compromise … would have to come from elsewhere.”

You say:

“The CMO … stated during the course of the meeting that any alternative approach would lead to additional excess deaths, which further raised the stakes …”

Could you expand a little bit about what you mean by the actions of the CMO raising the stakes in that meeting?

Ms Naomi Long: So I had tried repeatedly to seek a consensus. When the DUP made clear they would not support the health minister’s recommendations as produced, the alternatives available to us were to agree a compromise or to allow all of the restrictions to fall at the end of the week.

So whilst I understood the CMO was saying that anything short of what they had recommended could lead to excess deaths, it became difficult to get people to look at a compromise when they were being told by the CMO that that compromise could lead to excess deaths. What wasn’t reflected, perhaps, was that the number of excess deaths from the compromise would be less than if we agreed nothing at all, which was the point that I was trying to drive home.

By telling ministers, who were under extraordinary pressure – I mean, this was a low point for the Executive, it was a low point for me in the Executive, and to tell ministers who were, for whatever reason, struggling with these decisions that to do – to make these choices would lead to people dying, which we were already aware of in the most simplest terms, but to be told it by the CMO meant that other ministers who may have been willing to vote for a compromise then made clear that they would not do so, on the basis of that specific advice.

So it went from us seeking to find a compromise that would allow us to do better than the inevitable consequence of no decision, but wasn’t going to be as good as the original recommendation.

Counsel Inquiry: At that time, Sir David Sterling had retired about three months beforehand. Do you think that in the run-up to 9 November, in and around the meeting of 9 November that ran through from the 9th to the 12th, do you think an experienced head of the Civil Service, with the ability to deploy soft power, as we have been hearing, do you think that would have helped matters in and around 9 November?

Ms Naomi Long: I’m not sure, because I think people had become very entrenched. They had taken public positions, the point I made earlier. If we go into Executive having established a public position, there is then very little room for manoeuvre at the Executive table. So people had taken very public positions, became very entrenched, and I’m not sure that any of the soft power in the world was really going to move things.

Counsel Inquiry: But this was a slow burn situation. If people had been taking public positions, the rates had been building, it was reaching almost a crescendo, and so maybe at an earlier stage there would have been a benefit?

Ms Naomi Long: Perhaps. As I say, I can’t deny that that might have been the case, but the trajectory and the tone of the meetings by this point this shifted significantly. People were very determined to hold to a position.

Not all people. I, on this occasion, worked very closely with Executive colleagues, particularly with Minister Dodds. I presented a paper to her and asked if she would table it, because if I tabled it I knew that the DUP would dismiss it, but if their colleague tabled it they may consider it, and she did. So I then withdrew my paper, which was the fallback position – so hers was slightly tweaked – I withdrew my paper to allow hers to be taken first, in the hope that that would get us to consensus.

So would a civil servant perhaps have been doing that tick-tack in the background? Potentially. But my experience, bluntly, was that at the times where we had strong leadership in the Civil Service myself and Minister Mallon, both of whom bent over backwards to try to find consensus, were actually excluded from the conversation.

So it’s hard, given that experience, for me to see that it would have led to better outcomes.

Counsel Inquiry: Can I move to a completely different topic, and this is part of your responsibility as the justice minister.

My Lady, this is a topic that might be of some sensitivity. I just hope to avoid upsetting anyone, but I just want people to be aware it’s about the management of the deceased.

That was a topic that fell within the Department of Justice’s remit, and one aspect was about responsibility for planning and delivering a facility for the management; is that correct?

Ms Naomi Long: That’s correct.

Counsel Inquiry: Again, I don’t want to be insensitive, but matters about the management of the bodies of the deceased was actually part of the Department of Health’s responsibility, not the justice department; is that correct?

Ms Naomi Long: That is correct, although it would be fair to say that the systems that were put in place at what became known as the Northern Ireland Temporary Resting Place, in the end were managed by PSNI officers who had experience of large-scale death management in crisis situations.

Counsel Inquiry: I just want to talk about the planning that gets us to that point. That became known as Project Dignity, if I’m right?

Ms Naomi Long: Yes.

Counsel Inquiry: The Inquiry’s seen on a number of occasions a table of non-health sectoral forms. I’m not going to take anybody to that, but there’s no reference on that table on 13 March to the management of excess deaths or Project Dignity in the Department of Justice section of that table.

Had planning commenced on that by 13 March 2020, to your knowledge?

Ms Naomi Long: Yes.

Counsel Inquiry: How far advanced was that planning?

Ms Naomi Long: At that stage we knew – first of all, we had identified the sectoral weaknesses. So within Northern Ireland there was only one crematorium. It was operated by seven members of staff, but I think only one or two of them were able to actually operate the crematorium itself. So we knew there was a vulnerability.

We had also been liaising with the Department of Health about the reasonable worst-case scenario and what that might look like in terms of the system becoming overwhelmed, and the degree of storage capacity that would be required in any resting place facility.

We were conscious of some of the images that had been broadcast both in China and in Italy of bodies being put into mass graves, of bodies being laid outside hospitals in piles, and we didn’t want to run the risk of any family in Northern Ireland having to deal with that situation.

At the time when I – it would have been February when I was, I think, first briefed on this. By March we were seeking to establish a location for this, which was ultimately a section of Kinnegar army barracks.

Counsel Inquiry: Did that in itself cause difficulties?

Ms Naomi Long: No, it didn’t. It caused sensitivities, which had to be carefully managed, but there was no objection to the site within the Executive.

So we had a very constructive relationship with the MoD, and with the 38th (Irish) head of service here. They offered us a site which was secluded, not visible from main roads, so it would offer a degree of privacy and dignity to families. They also offered us a portion of ground which was not – which had no military trappings, because that would be a sensitivity for some parts of our community in Northern Ireland, and I was able to reassure Executive colleagues when we sought the MACA, the military assistance for civil authority arrangement, that that would be the case, and that families arriving, bereaved families arriving would have dignity, that there would be space for them to be able to have religious counselling, other counselling and support, and also to be able to spend time with the deceased, but that there would be no trappings around the building that would cause people any discomfort. And we spent some time thinking that through, and ensuring that there were no objections.

So I had no difficulty from Executive colleagues in terms of any objections to that, and we did – we were very conscious of the sensitivities of it and took that into account in any of the conversations.

Counsel Inquiry: Can I just ask, then, given all that planning that had taken place about the sensitivities, what consideration was given when the regulations came in on 28 March 2020, before they were made, to ensuring that there was maintenance of that dignity and respect in terms of funerals, the ability to visit grave sites? And if there wasn’t such consideration, should such consideration have been given?

Ms Naomi Long: There was considerable consideration given to that. So one of the first things that we – I mean, obviously we were not responsible for the management of graveyards, so graveyards were managed by either churches, where they were part of the church estate, or by local councils, and we liaised with local councils around some of these issues.

The issue of graveyards was incredibly sensitive, and, I mean, I just want to reflect, if I may, on that, because it’s something that I was sensitive with –

Counsel Inquiry: Can I just make sure that we’re talking about the same time period. I’m focusing on prior to the regulations being made, rather than any amendments afterwards.

Ms Naomi Long: No, I mean, it was something that we were conscious of, so things like the necessity of PPE, the need for grief and bereavement issues were things that were considered but would not all have been the responsibility of the Department of Justice. Our responsibility was the management of excess deaths and the contingency arrangement, so it was a very specific responsibility, and we did consider issues around dignity and burial.

I raised the issue, for example, of how we would communicate in Northern Ireland, where, first of all, burials usually happen very swiftly, within two to three days. That was going to shift dramatically and people’s expectations would change. For example, it would be quite abnormal in Northern Ireland for people to return to work between the death of a relative and their funeral. That would not be the case in other parts of the UK. Also the rituals around death are quite different here. So, for example, it is quite typical for people to have a wake for the dead, where family, friends, colleagues will come to the house and spend time with the family, and that was not going to be possible.

So we tried to communicate that and I made a statement to the Assembly around the sensitivities of this quite early in the pandemic to set out my concerns.

Counsel Inquiry: Let me try to wrap this up –

Ms Naomi Long: Okay.

Counsel Inquiry: – with one final question: for you as a minister, rather than the Department of Justice as – consideration as a whole –

Ms Naomi Long: Yeah.

Counsel Inquiry: – do you think that there was – that the regulations were properly drawn as of 28 March 2020 and took into account sufficiently all of those factors that you set out about the specific circumstances of funerals and deaths in Northern Ireland?

Ms Naomi Long: It’s very difficult to say, because I have the benefit of hindsight, and that’s an advantage I didn’t have at the time. Graveyards were not the peaceful, tranquil places that we know them as today.

At that stage, we had, for example, large numbers of graves that had been opened in advance in case the death toll would rise and those graves needed to be available, so there were diggers and heavy machinery in graveyards digging graves. People were not sure whether Covid would be spread by the bodies themselves, and therefore we had people in full PPE presiding over funerals and over burials, and that in itself was an incredibly stressful and distressing experience.

Do I understand the sensitivity of asking people to abandon the normal rites, the normal processes around grief and loss? Absolutely. Was there an obvious and better way at that point in time and in light of what we knew? I’m not sure.

And I’ll give an example where this became a tension, because it perhaps explains where we were coming from.

We reached a point where there were only a small number of people allowed at the graveside, and then we talked about opening graveyards up for individuals to come to visit graves.

At the same time a conversation was being had in the Executive about enforcement and how we needed to step that up, and one of the points that I made was: how do you distinguish between the small number at the graveside and other individuals who are attending neighbouring graves, graves in the – or who are part of a larger group from that family but standing at some distance? And did it matter, was the other question that I raised. Was it a risk for people to be 5 metres apart but closer to the grave?

In the case of the crematorium it did matter that people were not able to enter the crematorium, because we were trying to protect the staff. In terms of the graveyards themselves, I think less so.

But again, we were being strongly advised that if we were to open up those flexibilities, that they would lead to other unforeseen consequences in terms of other open spaces, gatherings. When people go to the grave they congregate at the top when they’re filling their vase with water for flowers, they talk, they do all the things that we had been saying people shouldn’t be doing.

So it was – it was an incredibly difficult decision. Both my parents died in March, so it was at the start of the pandemic, and I wasn’t able to attend their graves to remember, and that is difficult. That is difficult. So I appreciate that it was a lot to ask, and with the benefit of hindsight I don’t know how much of a contribution it would have made to protecting people from Covid, but we didn’t have that benefit of hindsight.

Mr Scott: Thank you, Mrs Long.

Thank you, my Lady.

Lady Hallett: Thank you, Mr Scott.

It’s Mr Wilcock.

Questions From Mr Wilcock KC

Mr Wilcock: Mrs Long, I ask you questions on behalf of the Northern Ireland Covid Bereaved Families for Justice.

On the topic you’ve just been discussing, and I don’t want to dwell on it any longer than I have to because it is very upsetting for you and everyone else, I’m just not clear: you’d explained how your specific responsibility within the department was for the – delivering a facility for the management of excess deaths and contingency planning and how there were other bodies such as the PSNI, graveyards and churches involved.

In relation to the specific upsetting topics that you’ve talked about, about the use of PPE and sealed body bags, et cetera, was that a decision made by the Department of Justice for the reasons you’ve outlined, or was it a decision made by someone else for the reasons you’ve outlined?

Ms Naomi Long: It was a decision informed by the Department of Health, and so we worked with the Public Health Agency and others. And there was a concern that bodily fluids and skin-to-skin touch could contribute to Covid spread, and therefore to protect those who were involved in the funeral and death management processes, they were issued with PPE.

There was also an additional layer in that councils had a duty to protect their staff and therefore were looking as to how they could protect their staff from any potential infection, because obviously the worst outcome that we could envisage was that we would have large numbers of grave diggers, or indeed the people who operated the crematorium, ill with Covid and unable to actually deliver a timely burial or interment.

Mr Wilcock KC: Thank you very much. Can I move to a different topic. Could we have please on screen INQ000409337, please.

This is a letter you wrote to all your Executive colleagues on 13 March 2020. And if we look in the second paragraph very quickly, we can see that you spoke of the difficulties you told us about this morning, the obvious difficulties to anyone who lives here caused by any divergence between the UK and the Republic of Ireland. All right?

But in the next paragraph you go on to say that:

“The danger with such confusion [referring to what I’ve just been talking about] or perceived conflict between ministers and the advice of the Chief Medical Officer is that people may ignore the core advice of the CMO and the risk of transmission will actually increase. A united, joined-up Executive response is, in my view, most likely to reassure the public and effect compliance with any measures being introduced.”

This is what you were writing as early as 13 March, but that joined-up Executive response should have been obviously fundamental to anyone in government, shouldn’t it?

Ms Naomi Long: I believe so, but as we’ve reflected, this happened during a week – well, first of all, it happened during a week when I had been diagnosed with Covid, so on the 10th, I was not at the Executive meeting that took place.

By the 13th, via the media, I had picked up on the fact that there had been various ministers, particularly the deputy First Minister then, briefing that we should close schools immediately. My concern –

Mr Wilcock KC: Mrs Long, may I interrupt you for time purposes only? I’m not criticising you writing the letter, and we have been over the issues that happened on the 12th. I was really asking you that by way of introduction to my next question.

Ms Naomi Long: Could I make one point?

Mr Wilcock KC: Yes, of course you can if you want to.

Ms Naomi Long: Both SAGE and the World Health Organization stressed that coherent messaging, cohesion around what we were doing, but also not just taking decisions that were clear but explaining those decisions to the public was critical in terms of people being willing to comply, and I think that this was my concern, that we were not in that space.

Mr Wilcock KC: Understood.

Would you agree, however, that the confusion or the perceived conflict within the Executive is, as you’ve described in this letter, in spite of the warnings in the letter, too often on display in the Executive’s public response to the public health emergency?

Ms Naomi Long: Yes.

Mr Wilcock KC: And do you also agree that, as well as making it, to use your words in the letter “very hard for normal people to work out if they were abiding by the rules, which rules they were abiding by”, this inconsistent messaging increasingly fuelled the political tension and disagreement you’ve told us about this morning and hindered the implementation and enforcement of restrictions, thereby creating a negative impact again on public trust and confidence?

Ms Naomi Long: I think in the immediate aftermath of my letter, we went through a period where things improved somewhat. So I think as we – as the restrictions were implemented, there was more cohesion around the Executive – the First and deputy First Minister were making joint press conferences and so on. But I think with the Bobby Storey funeral and others, that was lost, and I think it was never fully regained.

I think tensions increased quite significantly as we moved out of the restrictions, in terms of how we would do that, and some ministers took those tensions public and made it very difficult for the public to have, I think, full confidence in the Executive in that different ministers seemed to take a very different approach and yet claimed it was based on the same advice.

Mr Wilcock KC: One of the reasons – you mentioned Mr Storey’s funeral. One of the reasons that led to the loss of public confidence was because the joint press conferences that had worked before were stopped for a period of time thereafter.

Ms Naomi Long: I think those joint press conferences were very powerful, given what we’ve talked about in terms of the divisions between parties. That sense of unity of purpose was quite important in terms of maintaining public adherence.

I also think that it undermined people’s confidence at another more fundamental level in that if the people who were making the rules did not themselves adhere to the rules, it raised the question as to whether or not they truly believed what they were trying to achieve, and I think that that undermined the sense of exceptionalism. And Bobby Storey funeral is one example, very clear local example, but there were lots of other public examples of politicians who appeared to say one thing and do another, and I think over a period of time, that eroded public confidence in their politicians but actually also in the advice and the guidance and the regulations themselves.

Mr Wilcock KC: I think it’s right, isn’t it, that in the immediate aftermath of the funeral, the public statements of the deputy First Minister rejected any criticism of her action and didn’t actually, until 9 September, publicly express regret that the public health message had been undermined in the way you’ve described; is that right?

Ms Naomi Long: That is correct. It also created significant tension within the Executive. Minister Poots lost his father during Covid, and only six members of his family were able to attend the grave. His father had been a long-standing political representative and would otherwise probably have had a considerable funeral. And I think at a personal level, Edwin openly expressed the distress and the hurt and pain it had caused him and his family, and that was replicated right throughout the community.

One of my constituents was the family who immediately preceded at the crematorium Bobby Storey’s cremation, and they had to leave. They had to turn at the gate and watch the hearse drive away with their loved one inside and go home. For the next cremation to have people present on the grounds of the graveyard was incredibly distressing for them, and that was, as I say, multiplied right across the community.

Mr Wilcock: Thank you very much, Mrs Long.

Lady Hallett: Thank you, Mr Wilcock.

Thank you very much indeed for your help, Mrs Long. I’m very grateful.

The Witness: Thank you.

(The witness withdrew)

Lady Hallett: I think there may be some people who ought to think about getting some support during the break, so I shall take a longer break, and I shall return at 11.40.

(11.21 am)

(A short break)

(11.40 am)

Lady Hallett: Mr Scott.

Mr Scott: My Lady, may we call Edwin Poots.