2. Mr Edwin Poots

MR EDWIN POOTS (affirmed).

Questions From Counsel to the Inquiry

Lady Hallett: I hope we haven’t kept you waiting too long.

The Witness: Not at all. Should I stand, by the way?

Mr Scott: No. I was just checking the timings.

Would you please provide your full name.

Mr Edwin Poots: Edwin Cecil Poots.

Counsel Inquiry: Thank you, Mr Poots. Thank you for the assistance you have provided to the Inquiry. In terms of assisting the stenographer, can I ask you to keep your voice up and speak relatively slowly so the stenographer can keep a track of us.

You provided a witness statement dated 6 March 2024, that’s there on the screen, and your signature and statement of truth is at page 40. Can you confirm that the contents of that statement are true?

Mr Edwin Poots: Yes.

Counsel Inquiry: Are you content to rely on that as evidence to the Inquiry?

Mr Edwin Poots: Yes.

Counsel Inquiry: If I can just summarise your political career first, please, Mr Poots, as far as is relevant to the Inquiry. You were first elected as a member of the Legislative Assembly in 1998 and most recently were elected as the Speaker of the Northern Ireland Assembly on 3 February 2024. You have held a number of ministerial positions during your career, including minister of culture, arts and leisure from 2007 to 2008, minister for the environment between 2009 and 2011, and minister of the Department of Health, Social Services and Public Safety – it says in your statement from 2010, but that should be from 2011.

Mr Edwin Poots: 2011 to 2014.

Counsel Inquiry: Yes. And in terms of the period that this module of the Inquiry is considering, you were the minister of agriculture, environment and rural affairs from January 2020 to October 2022, although there was a temporary break for personal reasons between 2 February 2021 and 8 March 2021.

Mr Edwin Poots: Correct.

Counsel Inquiry: And you were also leader of the Democratic Unionist Party in May and June 2021.

Mr Edwin Poots: Yeah.

Counsel Inquiry: I want to start, please, with your view, given your background as being a health minister from 2011 to 2014, of why you believe, as you set out in your statement, the health service in Northern Ireland was in a greatly undermined state prior to 2020.

Mr Edwin Poots: When I took over the role of health minister – I think everybody who takes over the role of health minister, it’s a difficult time, and we took it over at a difficult time and faced many challenges, but within those challenges we also had many success stories. And, for example, we created the first North/South facility for cancer care at Altnagelvin. We introduced bowel screening for cancer. We introduced new equipment to the cancer centre at Belfast City Hospital. And amongst a series of other things, we were providing cochlear implants for children for the first time, diabetic pumps and so forth. So there was a course of work that we achieved over that period of time which made real life-changing differences.

We also managed to maintain waiting lists at a considerably lower level than they are now, so whenever I left office in September 2014, the figures are dramatically lower than they are today.

Over the intervening period, Michelle O’Neill was – became health minister in 2016 and stood down from that some I think it was eight months later, whenever Martin McGuinness resigned, and over that three years, the period of deterioration that took place under the Civil Service was quite incredible.

Counsel Inquiry: Just to clarify then, at that point in those three years, there was no health minister in place –

Mr Edwin Poots: There was no health minister in place, and if you look at the statistics for waiting times in particular, they rose rapidly. So the health service was already in a compromised state because of a lack of leadership and decision-making.

Counsel Inquiry: I just want to ask you, you set out in your statement – I wasn’t proposing to put it on screen, but I can if you wish – your personal experiences of loss and of the healthcare during the pandemic.

Did those personal experiences impact upon the way you perceived the response to the pandemic?

Mr Edwin Poots: Very much so. And, you know, I went through that personal experience of my father becoming unwell, calling the ambulance, having them take him to hospital, and the ambulance was all geared up with all of their equipment and so forth. And we followed the ambulance down to the Ulster hospital, and my father went in on the trolley –

Counsel Inquiry: I should just say, Mr Poots, I don’t want you to say anything that you don’t want to say or give too much personal detail –

Mr Edwin Poots: No, it’s okay. I wasn’t allowed to see him again until he was close to dying, and that’s an experience that thousands of families had. It was an awful experience, and that was imposed as a result of the Covid-19 regulations. And thousands of families across the province weren’t able to be there with their loved ones whenever they needed them most.

Counsel Inquiry: Do you mind me asking which month that was?

Mr Edwin Poots: That was in March, or April rather.

Counsel Inquiry: April 2020?

Mr Edwin Poots: April 2020.

Counsel Inquiry: Did those experiences in April 2020 impact upon the way that you perceived the effect of those regulations and restrictions and the approach to healthcare during the pandemic?

Mr Edwin Poots: Very much so. And I would have seen things like banning people from going to graveyards as being wholly ineffective in terms of saving lives, but utterly cruel in terms of how they affected the relatives of the deceased, particularly recently deceased. And it’s something that’s important to many people, to be able to go to the grave of a loved one, but we, the government, banned people from doing that, and I didn’t see any benefits whatsoever in terms of the fight against Covid in doing that.

Counsel Inquiry: I know you’re emotional, Mr Poots. If I could just ask you to keep your voice up a little bit to make sure –

Mr Edwin Poots: Sure.

Counsel Inquiry: In terms of the regulations that were then made at the end of March 2020, did you have any input into the content of those regulations?

Mr Edwin Poots: I was – I was in a position the same as everybody else, that we were entering the unknown, and therefore I was supportive of the regulations that were being introduced because we needed to take time to get a handle on how Covid-19 was going to affect the wider public in Northern Ireland. We were observing what was going on in the rest of the world. We obviously had all of the television footage of what was going on in Italy, which was going through an awful period of time, so I was entirely supportive of the regulations as they were introduced at that time.

Counsel Inquiry: Do you think more should have been done to make – at that time rather than in April, do you think more should have been done to maintain access to graveyards and to maintain the ability to conduct funerals?

Mr Edwin Poots: I think at that time it was difficult because we didn’t know just how bad things were going to be. You know, as it transpired in Covid, we became aware relatively quickly that this was something which didn’t severely impact the under 60 year olds who didn’t have other vulnerabilities. So I think that at that early stage, we needed to do what we done. But I think then after that, we had the opportunity to consider things a bit differently and perhaps look at things differently, in terms of just lockdown as being the only way forward.

Counsel Inquiry: Because at that stage, you were to use the term “following the science” because you didn’t have much understanding personally about Covid-19, how it transmitted, any of those issues; is that right?

Mr Edwin Poots: Everybody was new to this. Obviously, epidemiologists have studied, you know, various transmissible diseases that have come forward previously, and they had a level of expertise that nobody else had, and we were heavily reliant upon the medical advice that we were receiving.

Counsel Inquiry: I don’t know whether this will cause you any difficulties, given your role as Speaker of the Northern Ireland Assembly at the moment. Do you think that there was sufficient democratic scrutiny of the regulations when they were first made on 28 March and then subsequently?

Mr Edwin Poots: I think the fact that the Assembly at the early point gave the go-ahead for the health minister to make regulations and then scrutinise them afterwards didn’t give the democratic scrutiny because the decision was already made, and therefore the regulations were coming weeks after the decision to implement them, and it was carried out, so I think that the democratic scrutiny function was deficient.

Counsel Inquiry: Do you think that there might have been an alternative route to democratic scrutiny. Because you were a power-sharing arrangement of five parties, you represent, I think it’s some statistic, about 98% or something of the entire population of Northern Ireland. Do you think that there was maybe an element of democratic scrutiny that way, even though it hadn’t been through the Assembly?

Mr Edwin Poots: Well, in a sense, there is, but essentially the role of the Executive and the role of the legislature should always be separated, and it’s the role of the legislature to test the Executive in terms of their decision-making, and that’s something that I’ve always cherished, even as a minister, that people have challenged me about my decisions. And I think that’s important that that rule that the Assembly member or parliamentarian has representing the constituents that they serve to seek to ensure that the Executive are carrying out their role in an appropriate manner.

Counsel Inquiry: In terms of the limits of power, you say in your statement that:

“The power vested in the Department of Health minister, CMO and CSA was quite incredible. They needed neither the Executive nor the Assembly to introduce punitive regulations without recourse to others.”

As the Executive, surely those decisions were a matter for you rather than a matter for the Department of Health taken individually?

Mr Edwin Poots: Not as the Assembly gives the authority to the Department of Health. So de facto the health minister brought everything to the Executive, but de jure didn’t have to.

Counsel Inquiry: Why do you think he did that?

Mr Edwin Poots: Well, it gave him political cover for very difficult decisions, and in most instances, he got through what he was wishing to get through. I’m sure we’ll come on to later some of those decisions being challenged. But in most instances, he got what he was wishing to do, without doing solo runs(?) or not, so it made sense for him to do it that way.

Counsel Inquiry: Well, surely it was the best thing to do, to bring it to the Executive –

Mr Edwin Poots: Absolutely.

Counsel Inquiry: – for the Executive’s consideration?

Mr Edwin Poots: Absolutely, but he didn’t have to. He did, but he didn’t have to is what I’m saying.

Counsel Inquiry: One of the other points that you make is:

“On a regular basis, the media ran proposals in advance of the Executive Committee which built a momentum for that proposal.”

Could you expand a little bit about what you mean about that, please?

Mr Edwin Poots: It was quite evident that, you know, the media were receiving leaks in advance of decisions being made, and the leaks were being presented in such a way that it was driving towards a particular direction for a decision to be made, and it was widely viewed that those leaks were coming not from the minister but from within the Department of Health.

Counsel Inquiry: Why did you believe that?

Mr Edwin Poots: Because the nature of what was coming out, no other department would have had that level of information.

Counsel Inquiry: And what difficulties did that pose the Executive Committee at that time?

Mr Edwin Poots: It’s not so much the difficulties. I just think that it would have been better had the facts been brought to the Executive first, as opposed to there being a public debate in advance of the Executive, and the public debates were very often framed by the media in the way that they wanted to do it.

Counsel Inquiry: Is there a negative impact of a public debate between two ministers before a decision has been taken on the topic that they may be discussing?

Mr Edwin Poots: In my view, yes.

Counsel Inquiry: What would that negative impact be?

Mr Edwin Poots: I think that whenever you come to the Executive to make decisions, you should come with a clean slate.

Now, I disagree with the civil servant who says you shouldn’t take your constituents’ views into consideration in those circumstances because we’re there to represent constituents. We are public representatives. Our role is to represent the views of the public that we serve. The civil servants’ role are public servants. Their job is to carry out what the public want them to carry out, and therefore to suggest that we should ignore what constituents want, whenever it comes to Executive decisions, is something which I think the Civil Service have lost the run of themselves, if that’s what they think.

Counsel Inquiry: In terms of your ministerial constituency, is it right that you effectively have two: you have your constituency that elected you as an MLA; and then you have the entire population of Northern Ireland, whose interests you have to act in?

Mr Edwin Poots: Correct.

Counsel Inquiry: One of the other aspects that you touch upon in your statement is – just let me get the reference.

You say that – and this is in relation to the Department of Health coverage, that:

“Getting Executive buy-in was not necessary but gave the Health Minister political cover … very often it was [the First Minister]/[deputy First Minister] who broke the bad news to the public of more restrictions. When there was more positive news, DoH put it out themselves.”

Did you think that there was a breakdown between the Department of Health and, say, the First Minister and deputy First Minister about how public messaging and such issues were managed?

Mr Edwin Poots: I don’t think there was but, you know, it was noteworthy that whenever we had an Executive decision that was introducing more restrictions and more punitive things, it was always the First and deputy First Minister who fronted that up, but when there was more positive news coming out of the Department of Health, the minister may have utilised his own resources to get that information out.

Counsel Inquiry: Did that lead to a breakdown in relationships between ministers and –

Mr Edwin Poots: Not that – not that I’m aware of.

Counsel Inquiry: We’ve heard some evidence from Jenny Pyper in relation to the set-up of the Executive Covid Taskforce in December 2020, that that was at the instigation of the First and deputy First Minister –

Mr Edwin Poots: Yeah.

Counsel Inquiry: – in terms of trying to have a little bit more control – my terminology – over what was coming out of the Department for Health.

Was that your understanding of the reasons for the ECT being set up at that time?

Mr Edwin Poots: Well, I certainly heard that, and I also note the Department of Health were a bit resistant to that being established, but also the Department for the Economy weren’t wild keen about it either. So it …

I think it was the Executive Office wanting to have a bit more control of the situation than perhaps they would otherwise.

The remarkable thing about the way the administration is established is that the ministers with the least power, in a sense, is the First and deputy First Minister because their areas of service is quite limited, they chair the Executive meetings, they have – they allow the agenda and so forth, so they have power in that sense, but when it comes to day-to-day decision-making, the rest of the ministers have far more opportunities to do things than the First and deputy First Minister.

Counsel Inquiry: Do you think that would also apply equally to the head of the Civil Service, for example, not having the power to direct other permanent secretaries to allocate resources?

Mr Edwin Poots: That is also the case. The head of Civil Service has – wouldn’t have the same power as their equivalent at Westminster, for example.

Counsel Inquiry: Is that – I’m not making a value judgement – is that a potentially negative effect of the way the power-sharing structures are designed and how they operate in a national health emergency, as opposed to when you’re not in that setting and are performing the more normal roles?

Mr Edwin Poots: The truth is that the structures that we have are not the most ideal structures, but they’re structures that were established after 25 years of bloodshed, and, you know, they are just the structures that are necessary to ensure that we don’t – that – we have had a peaceful 27 or 8 years since that.

Counsel Inquiry: But work can always be done in order to make sure that relationships are built. Do you think that more work could have been done between the departments to make sure that they were working together more collegiately or more effectively?

Mr Edwin Poots: I suppose in everything, whenever the decisions are simple, it’s easy to work together, whenever the decisions are more complicated and difficult, then people will tend to have their independent views. We obviously had some very challenging decisions to make.

And I’ll just say this about Northern Ireland. We’re a population of 1.9 million people, and we are much closer to the wider public than a Westminster government. So the public have a lot of direct access to me as a minister then they ever would have in, for example, a secretary of state who would be making decisions in the cabinet. And that does have a bearing, because whenever you’re getting lots of phone calls from people about a whole range of issues, that would never happen with, you know, a member of the cabinet, because that access just wouldn’t be available to them, and it is a consideration in how we do our business, is that we just – you know, we’re just much more available and approachable to the wider public.

Counsel Inquiry: That takes me neatly on to another topic in terms of access to information, I think this morning described what you were discussing there as anecdotal evidence that ministers take in from constituents. That’s not meant to diminish it, but it’s just a – putting a different term on it.

Do you think that you, as a minister, dealing with a public health matter which was not within the central remit of your department – is that fair to say?

Mr Edwin Poots: Mm-hm.

Counsel Inquiry: Do you think that you had sufficient information of the wider societal and economic impacts of the restrictions that were imposed in response to the pandemic?

Mr Edwin Poots: I think in terms of the information coming from the Executive, probably not. This was a health crisis, and it was led by the Department of Health, and their focus was Covid-19, and it was Covid-19 to the exclusion even of other health matters.

So, for example, over that period of time, there was over 25,000 breast screenings – cancer breast screenings cancelled, nearly 94,000 bowel cancer screenings cancelled –

Counsel Inquiry: Mr Poots, can I just say, there is a subsequent module which will deal with healthcare, and so I don’t necessarily want to blur the lines too much.

Mr Edwin Poots: No, it’s fair enough.

Counsel Inquiry: But in relation to particularly social impact –

Mr Edwin Poots: Yeah.

Counsel Inquiry: – do you think that you received enough information about, for example, older people or disabled people or the impact upon young people?

Mr Edwin Poots: Whenever the Executive first sat, and that was in January 2020, they had decided that one of their priorities was going to be mental health. That, for example, was entirely obliterated and ignored throughout this crisis. We didn’t take into account so many other things, and this was something which was raised by myself and others on a regular basis: the issues about domestic abuse, alcohol abuse – alcoholism rose significantly – young people and their mental health, and so many other societal issues. But the focus was almost entirely on our response to Covid-19, to the complete ignorance of everything else.

Counsel Inquiry: Is that the focus that was driven by the Department of Health?

Mr Edwin Poots: Yes.

Counsel Inquiry: And do you think they got the balance wrong?

Mr Edwin Poots: Yes.

Counsel Inquiry: And do you think that there was more that you could have done as a minister to refocus that balance?

Mr Edwin Poots: I think that I raised these issues on a very regular basis and, you know, I had no other mechanism to alter that.

Counsel Inquiry: You say in your statement that, and I paraphrase slightly, please tell me if I’ve mischaracterised it, that as your understanding of the science improved, that you challenged the scientific advice that you were being provided by the CMO and the CSA to a greater extent. Does that reflect a change in approach from yourself from, say, March 2020 through to the summer and then the autumn of 2020?

Mr Edwin Poots: Absolutely.

Counsel Inquiry: Because you – would you please describe what you believe should have happened – and go back to February or January 2020 should you wish – in terms of the Executive’s response to the growing pandemic?

Mr Edwin Poots: I think the initial response was the right response. I think if anything it should – the lockdown should have happened more quickly. So we were – we were largely waiting on what was happening with Her Majesty’s Government.

Counsel Inquiry: Do you think you could have moved quicker than –

Mr Edwin Poots: No. No, we didn’t have the wherewithal to do that, so had we organised a lockdown without having the backing of the Treasury, we hadn’t the financial capability to see that through, so we had to wait till Her Majesty’s government moved. And, you know, frankly I think it was appalling that Cheltenham and all of those things were allowed to happen in advance of the lockdown happening.

Northern Ireland was slightly better off in that we were probably about two weeks behind the rest of the UK. London obviously as a hub, particularly Heathrow, was always going to have things a lot quicker than the outliers, as we would be in Northern Ireland.

Counsel Inquiry: So at what point do you think Northern Ireland should have entered into a lockdown, if you believe it should have been earlier?

Mr Edwin Poots: It probably wasn’t – wasn’t going to be many weeks earlier, but certainly it probably could have been done the previous week.

Counsel Inquiry: Did you push for an earlier lockdown?

Mr Edwin Poots: No, because we didn’t have the capability to carry that through.

Counsel Inquiry: Did you seek to improve the capabilities in order to be able to carry out what you believe should have been carried out?

Mr Edwin Poots: Well, our First and deputy First Minister, and indeed finance minister, you know, were engaging at that level with Westminster in terms of what steps needed to be taken, because we all knew that a lockdown was coming, but certainly in my role as DAERA minister, my work was preparing that department for what was coming our way.

And Northern Ireland is accountable for over 10% of the United Kingdom’s food production. The United Kingdom is around two-thirds self-sufficient in food and, moving into the pandemic, it was absolutely critical that local food supply would continue, because you don’t know what’s going to happen in the rest of the world. So my focus was very much on ensuring that we were able to maintain a food chain. We’re supplying around 20% of the UK’s chicken, well into the teens in pork, around, over 10% in milk and beef. So, you know, our role in providing food for all of the people of the United Kingdom is a very critical role, and that was where my focus was on.

Counsel Inquiry: I’m going to come back to some of those points, just deal very briefly with the food chain. Was there ever a cliff edge moment in terms of whether the food chain might have broken down between Great Britain and Northern Ireland?

Mr Edwin Poots: We – there was a number of areas. We were seriously concerned, first of all, of our ability to keep factories open, because factories were a place where, if – you know, if this pandemic, if this Covid-19 could spread asymptomatically, you know, people are working pretty close together, there’s a lot of water being sprayed and so forth, so there was a great opportunity for spread in those factories, so that was a really big concern.

The second thing that we had a real significant issue with was in the ferries, because it wasn’t paying the ferries to keep operating, so there had to be financial support for the ferries to be able to continue to move goods.

Counsel Inquiry: Where did that financial support come from?

Mr Edwin Poots: The Treasury, and that was negotiated by the Department for Infrastructure.

Counsel Inquiry: I just want to then come back a stage. I was asking you earlier on about being – you have a couple of different constituencies, you have your local constituency, you have the entire population of Northern Ireland, you also have your departmental role, as you’re identifying there. But they’re not mutually exclusive, you may have been preparing for aspects within DAERA, but also if you did have that level of concern about the potential impact upon Northern Ireland as a whole, do you think you should have been pushing harder about what needed to be done at an early stage in March 2020?

Mr Edwin Poots: Essentially we all have a collective responsibility. I don’t think we, as a Northern Ireland Executive, could have moved ahead of the decision at Westminster. So we were waiting on the Johnson government to move, but, you know, most of us were wanting to move quickly, and of course we did respond immediately whenever that did happen.

Counsel Inquiry: I just want to deal with some of the points that you make about moving earlier on.

And if we can have INQ000426982 – this is your statement, Mr Poots – page 25, paragraph 102.

I think it’s important to use your words rather than my words.

Can we highlight paragraph 102 – thank you very much.

So the point that I’m focusing on there is the fourth line up from the bottom, where you say:

“It transpired the greatest super spreader of Covid-19 was in fact the [Department of Health] with devastating consequences.”

Could you please expand upon what you mean by that.

Mr Edwin Poots: I think that the Department of Health followed the Department of Health in England and took a decision that we needed to have hospital beds ready for potentially an awful lot of people coming in, and in order to do that we needed to empty the hospital. And as former Minister of Health, I recognise that a hospital is one of the most dangerous places you can be, in terms of every infection is within a hospital, so the sooner you can get out of a hospital, the better, in normal circumstances, but that’s to home.

In this instance, if Covid was going to be around, it was going to spread within a hospital environment; it’s warm, there’s lots of people moving about and all of that. And the fact that a lot of elderly people had Covid-19 in hospital should have come as no surprise to anyone, and therefore to move people directly from hospital to residential care or to nursing care homes without having any form of quarantine or any form of testing, in my view, was a reckless act.

Counsel Inquiry: You said earlier on that you believed the Department of Health Northern Ireland was following the Department of Health and Social Care in Westminster. Are you critical of the Department of Health in Northern Ireland for following Westminster’s approach on this topic?

Mr Edwin Poots: Yes, I am.

Counsel Inquiry: Why?

Mr Edwin Poots: Because the evidence is there for everybody to see. And I know you can say, well, we have the benefit of hindsight, and we do, but a little foresight involved would have said: we should not be putting, you know, people from hospitals into a care facility, where there’s other vulnerable elderly people, without having some form of quarantine in place, and ensuring that there’s a separation between the people coming out of hospital into care, or indeed that these people have been tested, which they weren’t.

Counsel Inquiry: I just want to just focus a little bit about following the advice as opposed to the output.

Northern Ireland doesn’t have anywhere near the same level of scientific advice, on a governmental scale –

Mr Edwin Poots: No.

Counsel Inquiry: – that the United Kingdom does, so would it, with the knowledge that you have now, about SAGE and other structures, do you think it was realistically possible in March 2020 for the scientific advisers within the Department of Health to take a different view to that that was being advanced by SAGE or Westminster?

Mr Edwin Poots: Yes. I think what I’m saying is common sense. And, you know, I also have an agricultural background, and what I learnt from my earliest days is prevention is better than cure, and in this instance – you know, you would never put someone with pneumonia in with a sick patient because pneumonia spreads. Any of these diseases that can spread, you know, by air, you would never actually mix people like that. But the Department of Health took that decision to do that, and they done it on the basis of they’re going to need all of this bed space.

Now, I indicated about my father being in hospital in April, the – whenever we were allowed in at the very last, the hospital had very few people in it. So the urgency that was created to get all of these elderly people out of hospital and have these beds available, that didn’t materialise, but what did materialise was that the nursing homes were left in an absolutely perilous state.

Now, my daughter was a student at the time and she worked in the nursing homes, and it was just awful, absolutely awful. Whenever she was coming home – they were run ragged, they were wearing all of the equipment and all of the gear and all of that, and it was an horrendous experience for all of those people who were working in nursing homes, and they were losing patient after patient after patient, and it was a horrific time for nursing homes and the people who were providing care within them.

Counsel Inquiry: If I can just bring you back to your view of the scientific advice that was being received. Are you saying that it should have been clear or it wasn’t – let me phrase it a different way.

Are you saying it was clear to you in March 2020 that the scientific advice should have been not to allow – well, what do you believe the scientific advice should have been at that period of time?

Mr Edwin Poots: The scientific advice should have been that, if we believe we need beds in the hospital, then we need to empty these beds in a manner which doesn’t cause further issues and further problems. And therefore the removal of those people from the beds should have been done in a much more structured way as opposed to just divest them all to the nursing and residential homes, without any form of testing or without any form of quarantine.

Counsel Inquiry: Is it right to say that you are not a man who struggles to put their point across should they wish to do so?

Mr Edwin Poots: No, I’m not.

Counsel Inquiry: So were you making that view known in March 2020?

Mr Edwin Poots: No, because it was done without me being made aware of it in the first instance. This decision was made within the Department of Health.

Counsel Inquiry: So this is what you say at the bottom of this paragraph:

“[The Department of Health] did not consult the Executive Committee at any point on this …”

Do you believe that that was a decision that should have been taken by the Executive?

Mr Edwin Poots: It would have been much better had it have been taken by the Executive, because it would have allowed a challenge function to be exercised.

Counsel Inquiry: Yes, but two slight different matters, about whether it would have better to whether it should have been?

Mr Edwin Poots: It should have been, yes. That was a major decision, which caused the deaths of many people needlessly.

Counsel Inquiry: Well, when you realised that that decision had been taken, did you seek to take steps to bring it to the Executive to say “We need to consider this as the Executive”, or not?

Mr Edwin Poots: You couldn’t undo the harm that had been done. The people had already been put out to the nursing homes and, you know, the damage had been done.

Counsel Inquiry: So in those early days after the decision had been taken, you don’t think it would have been possible to reverse it by – as an Executive Committee?

Mr Edwin Poots: No, because the hospital beds had already been depopulated.

Counsel Inquiry: One of the other critical elements or one of the elements that you’re critical of is a failure to implement early test and trace. I just want to ask about an area that DAERA was able to help with. There is the AFBI; would you be able to explain what that is, please?

Mr Edwin Poots: Agri-Food and Biosciences Institute.

Counsel Inquiry: That is a scientific institute?

Mr Edwin Poots: Yes.

Counsel Inquiry: And it was one that, in middle of 2020, was able to provide testing –

Mr Edwin Poots: Yes.

Counsel Inquiry: – for Covid-19.

Mr Edwin Poots: At my instruction.

Counsel Inquiry: Yes. Is the sequence right that there was – and this has come from the DAERA corporate statement, I don’t know how familiar you are with that one – that on 18 March 2020, AFBI received an alert that it needed to be ready to provide assistance?

Mr Edwin Poots: Mm-hm.

Counsel Inquiry: Do you think that that alert should have been sent earlier than 18 March 2020?

Mr Edwin Poots: I think the information flow that came to the Executive in the first instance was very slow, in February for example, and it was March before we were getting much information through.

So immediately, you know, at the first Executive meeting that this was discussed, I was able to indicate that we had the resource to carry out scientific analysis and testing and that other things would be stood down to make that available for the purposes of fighting Covid-19.

Counsel Inquiry: But in fact testing within AFBI didn’t actually commence until after 11 May 2020.

Mr Edwin Poots: Yes.

Counsel Inquiry: Northern Ireland is not blessed with a vast array of resources in terms of testing laboratories, is it?

Mr Edwin Poots: No.

Counsel Inquiry: So do you think in the event of a future pandemic it would be important that all available resources, whether intentionally designed for human testing or not, should be able to be stood up quickly in order to provide as much testing as possible?

Mr Edwin Poots: Totally agree. So I indicated that we should do this, and gave the instruction that we should do it, and the Civil Service is a remarkable machine, but it managed not to have it available until 11 May, but it wasn’t for a lack of political will.

Counsel Inquiry: Well, was it an element of political chasing your departmental officials in those nearly two months –

Mr Edwin Poots: Yes, there was.

Counsel Inquiry: And what was the outcome of that chasing?

Mr Edwin Poots: We got it for 11 May as opposed to some later point. But there was quite a bit of chasing done, yes.

Counsel Inquiry: I also want to ask, and it was a point that was raised with Professor Sir Ian Young, about the role of the DAERA CSA. So DAERA has its own Chief Scientific Adviser; that’s correct?

Mr Edwin Poots: Yes.

Counsel Inquiry: And it’s actually that Chief Scientific Adviser rather than Professor Sir Ian Young, within the Department of Health, who is plugged into the UK-wide science network; is that right?

Mr Edwin Poots: Mm-hm.

Counsel Inquiry: And what the DAERA corporate statement sets out is that from early January to mid-August 2020 that the DAERA CSA wasn’t receiving communications from the CSA network because an incorrect email address for the DAERA CSA had been used and that actually the DAERA CSA had assumed communications were not being produced by the CSA network because of the informal nature of the meetings.

In terms of the process within DAERA, that you can have a CSA in the middle of a pandemic who assumes that there is no contact through a country-wide CSA network for the best part of seven months, does that not indicate there’s a bit of a deficiency within the effective processes of the department?

Mr Edwin Poots: I’ll be honest, I wasn’t aware that that was the case, and, you know, it does indicate a deficiency, I accept that.

Counsel Inquiry: I want to take you to one of your WhatsApp messages. This is dated 14 March 2020.

It’s INQ000356174, and it’s page 8. Thank you very much. And it’s – thank you very much.

15.36, you say:

“We are in this first a long haul. It is likely schools will have to close, but last week was ready on the hysterical side.”

So that’s 14 March. What did you mean by “on the hysterical side”?

Mr Edwin Poots: There was the effort to close schools down more quickly, I suppose, than other things, and obviously at that stage there was a push to align with what was going on with the Republic of Ireland and – you know, parents were being scared, and I think that’s where that was coming from.

Counsel Inquiry: If we can then go to page 9, please, and it is the entry at 18.01, thank you very much.

And we can see there that’s from Emma Little-Pengelly. At the time Ms Pengelly was the special adviser for the First Minister; is that correct?

Mr Edwin Poots: Yes.

Counsel Inquiry: Then this is 14 March, and there’s an indication about some issues that the civil contingencies could and should be doing, so information for schools, so parents with complex medical needs, dealing with self-isolating child, drawing up guidance, considering a daily briefing.

To what extent did the members of the DUP who were ministers – who were all on this group chat, is that right?

Mr Edwin Poots: Yes.

Counsel Inquiry: To what extent were they pressing for this to be done across the government?

Mr Edwin Poots: That would have been led by the First Minister, and the First Minister worked extremely closely with her special adviser and, you know, she would have been actioning that in terms of seeking to move these things forward.

Counsel Inquiry: Can we scroll down a little bit, please. Thank you.

Again, those other five elements, so: implementation of an update, twice-daily update; co-ordinating support in local communities – and then:

“… risk registers and update for Ministers in a regular basis.”

Do you think that what Ms Pengelly was setting out there was actually what happened on 14 March, or at what point in time did any of those aspects come into play?

Mr Edwin Poots: Well, certainly there was aspects of it came into play. Obviously these are Ms Little-Pengelly’s thoughts at an early stage of how we could respond, and, you know, this is essentially thinking out loud and putting something in writing. It is for a wider group to make those decisions and the wider group was Executive Committee, who were also getting information from the Department of Health, and they were the lead department in terms of bringing their thoughts forward as to how to do these things. It’s for individuals to argue for the types of things that Ms Little-Pengelly was offering, and that again would have been led by the First Minister, who she was directly, you know, working for.

Counsel Inquiry: Because, for example, the co-ordination of local councils, third sector, we know the next Executive meeting was 16 March; had there been a sufficient push from the DUP in the Executive to make sure that that was done?

Mr Edwin Poots: Again, I think that that question is probably best placed for the former First Minister.

Counsel Inquiry: I also want to talk about other steps that you were taking as DAERA minister. One of the aspects of your statement that you’re very focused on is about making sure that people had access to outdoor spaces?

Mr Edwin Poots: Yes.

Counsel Inquiry: And you say in your statement that you re-opened country and forest parks. Was within the DAERA remit, in terms of the closure of those open spaces from – I think they were closed from March 2020 through to 5 June 2020.

Mr Edwin Poots: Yeah.

Counsel Inquiry: Do you believe that those car parks, public access facilities, should have been opened at an earlier stage?

Mr Edwin Poots: I would have liked to have opened them earlier and pressed very hard for that to be the case.

Counsel Inquiry: Did you press very hard for that, or on reflection you thought you would have liked to have pressed harder?

Mr Edwin Poots: No, I did press very hard for it.

Counsel Inquiry: Because you pressed hard in terms of access to graveyards?

Mr Edwin Poots: Yes.

Counsel Inquiry: But equally, the open spaces weren’t open until June 2020, so –

Mr Edwin Poots: No.

Counsel Inquiry: – there was a bit of a lag between graveyards and those open spaces?

Mr Edwin Poots: Yes.

Counsel Inquiry: Again, on reflection, do you think they should have been open at a much earlier point, to assist the population of Northern Ireland?

Mr Edwin Poots: I think that they could have been opened at an earlier point and should have been opened at an earlier point. We were able to arrive at a conclusion relatively quickly that people outdoors were relatively safe, that – there was concerns that, you know, the – given the numbers of people who were at home, that the country parks could be overrun and potential for congregating in car parks and so forth because of those numbers, so it wasn’t exactly straightforward, but it was something that we had a strong desire and push to do, and they were open on 5 June. I’d have liked it to happen earlier.

Counsel Inquiry: What prevented them opening earlier?

Mr Edwin Poots: Some of the things I’m just after saying. We had to take into the considerations of management –

Counsel Inquiry: Apologies, in terms of –

Mr Edwin Poots: Of the numbers. So you take, for example, Castlewellan Forest Park, you know, the parade after that, these – Tollymore Forest Park and places like that there, the numbers coming through those country parks was incredible. So people, having been closed in their house, having the ability to do something, an awful lot of people wanted to do that, so we did have to look at the management of that, having enough staff and so forth in place. And again, whilst I would have liked it to happen quicker, it happened when it happened, it wasn’t as a result of lying back.

Counsel Inquiry: At that time were you considering the scientific advice about the benefits and potential risks about opening up those open spaces?

Mr Edwin Poots: Yes.

Counsel Inquiry: If I can then show you INQ000356174.

And it’s page 37, and this is dated 16 July 2020. Thank you. It’s at 13.36.

So this has moved slightly on in time, this is 16 July, the Covid rates are slightly on the increase in Northern Ireland; is that correct, as far as you remember?

Mr Edwin Poots: Yes, slightly.

Counsel Inquiry: So you say there:

“I just don’t get the sense this [is] driven by the science.”

I presume that’s meant to be.

Again, what do you mean by, at that point in time, it’s not being driven by the science?

Mr Edwin Poots: In terms of it, and I made reference earlier to the issue about cancers and about cancer screenings, for example, being cancelled, we got into a situation where Covid became the single issue, and we didn’t take into account enough of the other matters. I was indicating about the number of screenings that were cancelled in that period of time was actually – runs into 160-170,000, over 4,000 heart screenings cancelled, diagnosis, in terms of people seeing consultants, 4,500 cases cancelled, a thousand of them red flags.

The science is that, you know, people are – there’s 4,600 people died of cancer in 2020, and we were closing down so many of the areas to actually ensure that we fought cancer. In that year we had 2,000 less diagnoses. Therefore, you know, we weren’t doing what we should have been doing as a health service, and ensuring that we were following the science, and the science was that we needed to prevent cancer, heart disease, diabetes, but we closed down all of those clinics unnecessarily.

Counsel Inquiry: I appreciate the factors that you’re taking into account. I want to talk about your decision-making as it’s progressed. You say there:

“… we will have to respond probably with localised lockdown …”

In July 2020, was that something that you were prepared to contemplate, the idea of localised lockdowns?

Mr Edwin Poots: Yes, because, first of all, having recognised that Covid-19 was particularly virulent amongst the elderly and the vulnerable population, the view that I was establishing over the period – because there was a learning curve for everybody, and I have to say this: I think everybody was trying to do their best grappling with something that they had little knowledge about previously, with the information that was coming forward and based on what was happening on the ground. And I don’t think any single person meant harm to anybody else, either at political or Civil Service level or anything else. So whether it was considered to be a good job or a bad job, and I think that it was a bit of both, people were doing things as they saw best.

In terms of how I thought we should have been responding was: we recognised that people with vulnerabilities, people with various conditions, including obesity, were much more vulnerable to Covid-19, or elderly people were much more vulnerable to Covid-19, so why are we locking down everybody and everything? And, therefore, I did think that we should be looking at being much more strategic, perhaps, in how we responded, as opposed to a blanket approach.

Counsel Inquiry: You had a situation where you believed –

Mr Edwin Poots: Sorry, if I can just reply, because I’m just getting the context of that a little better.

This was in relation to the masks issue, and the challenge was: are we following the science on masks because was there science on masks? Because at one point, Dr McBride had came to the Executive Committee when people were pushing for masks and said won’t work and masks won’t provide much benefit. And then by the time we got to July, that had changed, and I hadn’t heard the scientific back-up for that particular change.

Counsel Inquiry: Because – I think this can come down off the screen, thank you. You’d had March 2020 where you believed there should have been earlier responses.

Mr Edwin Poots: Yeah.

Counsel Inquiry: In summer 2020, it’s fair to say that you believed that there should have been more targeted responses.

Mr Edwin Poots: Yes.

Counsel Inquiry: And what do you think those targeted responses should have looked like?

Mr Edwin Poots: First of all, I think the essential workers in themselves ensured that there was an awful lot of mixing, and whenever you looked at the range of essential workers – including people working in retail and people working in all of those food factories that I referred to earlier on, as well as your hospital workers, police, everything else – ensured that no lockdown with all of those people still mixing would ever be entirely successful in stopping the spread of the virus. Therefore, for me, the focus should have been on providing the greatest amount of protection for the cohort who were most likely to get – or to die from Covid-19, as opposed to the cohort who weren’t likely to die from Covid-19.

Counsel Inquiry: The reason why I’m asking the questions is because your statement could be interpreted as being very critical about the actions that you believe were being driven by the Department of Health, which I believe you will accept that they were following what they considered to be the best scientific course. Do you accept that?

Mr Edwin Poots: I accept that they were following the scientific course that was being followed by United Kingdom broadly, and indeed United Kingdom was probably following what World Health Organisation was recommending as well.

Counsel Inquiry: But in terms of your criticisms of the response, and you’re saying that there should have been a different response, are you able to indicate what you believe that different response should be?

Mr Edwin Poots: I think that we should have been encouraging people who were vulnerable. I’m saying “encouraging”. Encourage them very strongly in informing them for their own wellbeing that they should avoid contact with other people.

So you cannot do that for every older person, but there was quite a lot of older people who were not being cared for who could have had their shopping delivered, who, you know, didn’t have to mix with other people, and this would have been hugely unpleasant for them. But as vulnerable people, it would have been a means of avoiding them, you know, getting the condition which is Covid-19 which could have led to a premature death.

So I believe that more work could have been done on actually ensuring that those who were more susceptible to dying from Covid-19 could have taken steps to avoid catching it. But instead over the summertime, everybody was allowed to mix, and then that led to the spike that happened in the autumn time.

Counsel Inquiry: Can I press you a little further?

Mr Edwin Poots: Yeah.

Counsel Inquiry: You say – and I think it’s clear from the Executive Committee handwritten notes – that you were posing your view on the fact that there should have been different groups taken into account, but were you ever proposing what you considered the solutions should be rather than identifying what the problems were?

Mr Edwin Poots: I did, and I had a dispute with the Chief Medical Officer that, you know, instead of locking down everybody, we should be focusing on the people who are most likely to die from Covid-19 if they caught it, and he indicated that would be discriminatory against the older population. And I said, but we’re discriminating against the entire population and the younger people in particular who are not likely to die from Covid-19 by preventing them having their education. And the consequences of preventing those young people having their education is that, in the aftermath of it, absenteeism in schools went from – went up by 123% for people who were absent from school more than 10% of the time. The consequence of that is that people who are absent more than 10% of the time with five GCSEs or more goes down from 88% to 46%. Their mental health –

Counsel Inquiry: Can I ask you, Mr Poots, just to focus on the question in terms of –

Mr Edwin Poots: I thought I was. I apologise.

Counsel Inquiry: I think we may have strayed fractionally off the path.

You said you had a conversation with the CMO. When did that take place, as far as you are able to remember?

Mr Edwin Poots: It would have been in the summertime, possibly August.

Counsel Inquiry: Did you have a full and frank and forthright discussion amongst the Executive Committee about those views?

Mr Edwin Poots: Yes. I remember the discussion that took place, and I remember the challenge that the focus should be on protecting the people who are going to be most vulnerable to this condition, because whenever I agreed in March and was actually looking for lockdown in March because we didn’t know what was coming, by the time we got to June, July, August, we had a reasonable evidence base of how Covid-19 was affecting the wider population. And we recognised that children weren’t dying from it, and that was a real fear at the very outset, you know, that we were going to lose, you know, many children. We recognised that that wasn’t the case, so for me, the focus should have then switched from the entirety of the population to the people who were most vulnerable to the condition which was Covid-19.

Lady Hallett: Mr Poots, sorry to interrupt. Do you think taking the approach that you have just been advocating, would that have been easier in Northern Ireland, given the particular circumstances in Northern Ireland, or harder than the rest of the UK? In other words, England has a larger population, for example.

Mr Edwin Poots: Yes, and we have a much stronger family structure in Northern Ireland as well. We are a smaller country, and it’s easier to support your elderly relatives, you know, personally. And at the outset of Covid, for example, in my own family, we dismissed the carers who were looking after my father at that stage, and our own family took over, and he didn’t get Covid.

But yes, I do. I think it would have been easier in Northern Ireland. But I’ll say this: it wouldn’t have been easy. Nothing was easy during this. And there was no easy solutions to fighting Covid-19. If there was, it would have been devised by someone much smarter than me, but there wasn’t. But I did challenge that we shouldn’t be locking down everybody whenever there was evidence that this wasn’t affecting everybody equally. I know and understand that children could carry it home to their parents, and their parents could carry it home to their grandparents, and all of those arguments. And it was for people to take steps to ensure that they mitigated that as much as possible.

Mr Scott: At the time you had that conversation with the CMO or subsequently, did you advance or suggest or provide a package of possible restrictions that you believed would have been appropriate, or again was it: you’d raised the concerns, and then it was for the CMO or others to design something in response?

Mr Edwin Poots: The second.

Counsel Inquiry: When you felt that that wasn’t making the headway that you sought, did you press again or not?

Mr Edwin Poots: I … I think there was huge frustration, and again that – the only thing that we seemed to be relying upon was the lockdown method, and, you know, that manifested itself in later meetings. But we did press – not me only – but we did press that we should be looking at other means of trying to ensure that we reduced the spread of Covid-19.

Counsel Inquiry: In terms of the scientific advice, I mean, I think you’re very clear in your statement that you were challenging and probing and testing the scientific advice –

Mr Edwin Poots: Yes.

Counsel Inquiry: – and at times you believed that it was – you weren’t getting the evidence base that you sought, but at any point, did you have what you considered to be sufficient scientific evidence that pointed against the advice that you were being given?

TODO: Poots wasn’t asked why he didn’t push for a basis?

Mr Edwin Poots: Well, if we go back to the masks, we had advice from the Chief Medical Officer which said no, and then we had advice from the Chief Medical Officer which said yes, but we didn’t get the scientific basis for the switch in that position.

Counsel Inquiry: Did you get sufficient scientific evidence, as far as you were concerned, about the reason why ongoing restrictions were as they were?

Mr Edwin Poots: Sorry?

Counsel Inquiry: Did you get sufficient scientific evidence about the reason why the restrictions in terms of the impact of closing various sectors of the economy or personal restrictions as opposed to masks?

Mr Edwin Poots: We got considerable – the Chief Scientific Adviser gave considerable evidence, and, you know, I remember questioning the whole issue about R and how it was – how we arrived at R. And then it transpired that that was changing all of the time, so R wasn’t one consistent piece of, you know, things that were met and then you got your R rate. That changed over time.

So I remember, for example, having, you know, considerable discussion about hairdressers and, you know, these are people who don’t have a lot of money, they’re on the lower end of the pay scale, and they weren’t being allowed to re-open, and the R rate was – having a very negligible impact upon the R rate, but nonetheless, the decision was made by the Executive not to allow them to re-participate.

So we were getting advice, and the advice sometimes was that –

Counsel Inquiry: Again, just to be clear, the advice –

Mr Edwin Poots: – the impact was very nominal, you know, on making decisions, but generally, even when the impact was nominal, we did our minimal. They decided not to proceed in any event.

Counsel Inquiry: Just for my understanding when you say the advice there, was that from the CMO and CSA, or was that –

Mr Edwin Poots: Yes, CSA in the main.

Counsel Inquiry: So, again, is it fair to summarise it that at no point did you have evidence that was contradicting what the CMO and the CSA were saying; it was just that you were taking a different view about what should be done with that advice?

Mr Edwin Poots: Yes.

Counsel Inquiry: I want to move now to the meeting of 9 November. Was that meeting so contentious because it was a culmination of months – sorry. I don’t know whether you heard what I was saying there.

Was that meeting so contentious because it was the culmination of months of rising rates and frustration about the restrictions that were in place?

Mr Edwin Poots: That and the absence of identifying anything other than lockdowns to actually stop the spread of it.

Counsel Inquiry: At that time, in 9 November, was it the intention of DUP ministers to use the cross-community vote to prevent those restrictions being extended?

Mr Edwin Poots: They met beforehand, and it was indicated, you know – the lead was coming from the First Minister and the party leader that should they proceed to it vote on it that we should use a veto, and that was – that was the direction at the meeting. It was a direction that I agreed with at that point because the First Minister had been trying over the previous number of days to find an agreed way forward, and that hadn’t proven to be possible. And the Executive does largely operate on consensus, and we wanted to try to – try to maintain that and achieve that, but we were moving to a position where majoritism was going to be the only way forward, and I think that that – that would be a back – that would have been a backward step.

Counsel Inquiry: Was there any DUP minister who did not want to use the cross-community vote?

Mr Edwin Poots: They didn’t express that, if they did.

Counsel Inquiry: You say in your – sorry.

Mr Edwin Poots: Minister Weir seconds the proposal, so no, I don’t think there was.

Counsel Inquiry: It’s right, isn’t it, that the suggestion of using the cross-community vote was discussed on the Executive Committee group of the DUP; is that right?

Mr Edwin Poots: Yes.

Counsel Inquiry: That wouldn’t have been a knee-jerk reaction –

Mr Edwin Poots: No, it wasn’t.

Counsel Inquiry: – that was a decision that was taken in advance?

Mr Edwin Poots: Correct.

Counsel Inquiry: You say in paragraph 152 of your statement:

“Using the cross-community vote as a check to bring the reality home that things cannot be driven through …”

When you’re saying “bring the reality home”, were you using that vote as a marker to the other parties that you weren’t prepared to accept that any further?

Mr Edwin Poots: I think that we had, in spite of all of the ups and downs of that year, and there was mainly downs, but we had tried to work together and arrive at conclusions, and very often, you know, there was – as you look at the minutes you’ll find there was lots of breaks in those meetings where the First and deputy First Minister met with the health minister and came back to the meeting sometimes within 20 or 30 minutes – very often it took hours – but they hammered these issues out and found a way forward.

But at this point, there didn’t seem to be a willingness to do that, and that led to the situation. And I don’t propose that this was the best way forward, but nonetheless, I think I indicated at the meeting this was an action of last resort, so it wasn’t something that we just charged into lightly; it was thought about beforehand, but we were trying to get an agreed way forward as opposed to having a majority decision take place in the Executive.

Counsel Inquiry: Did you consider what the impact would be of using a cross-community vote on a public health measure in November 2020, what the impact would be on the broad population of Northern Ireland?

Mr Edwin Poots: We did, yes. And the thing is, as public representatives, we tried to look at the thing as holistically as possible.

So if I can give an example, my Lady. We had a young lady approach us, for example, who had a seat in a hairdressers. Because she didn’t have a business address, she didn’t get any financial support, and that young lady was raising two children on her own, and she didn’t have the finances to feed her children.

Now, for her, fortunately enough, her grandmother emptied her savings account to provide support for that young lady. That is an example of what was happening with thousands of people across Northern Ireland. And as a politician, we have to take these things into account as well as everything else, that people do have needs out there, and consequently, you know, we perhaps looked at the thing more broadly, perhaps, than was coming from the Department of Health, who looked at it purely from the health perspective.

Counsel Inquiry: Just one very niche topic to finish with, and these are the tweets that you sent on 9 November. You say in your statement:

“I sent the tweets after the 9 November meeting out of frustration at the damaging proposals …”

Then you go on to say:

“… I do not consider the tweets impacted the public’s confidence in the Executive, rather the tweets reflected the views of many in the public.”

Is it not actually the case that those tweets were intended by you in order to set the agenda and set the policy considerations of the population of Northern Ireland?

Mr Edwin Poots: Well, they were an alternative viewpoint, and there was great frustration that perhaps a lot of the issues that had been raised, not just for – you know, in the run-up to 9 November, but for weeks and months in advance of that, perhaps hadn’t been taken as seriously as they should have.

Counsel Inquiry: Were they part of the communications strategy from you?

Mr Edwin Poots: No, it wasn’t a strategy, it was probably – probably more in frustration than anything else.

Counsel Inquiry: Well, can I just please show INQ000274194.

I’m very close to the end, my Lady.

We can see there that’s the first – there were three tweets that you sent –

Mr Edwin Poots: Yes.

Counsel Inquiry: – one at 1.01, 1.09 and 1.27.

If we can just please go to the third one, that’s INQ000274196, where we have:

“Mental health and domestic abuse rising dramatically. Leading cardiologist warning poorer outcomes from lockdown.”

That’s at 1.27.

Mr Edwin Poots: Yeah.

Counsel Inquiry: If I can take you to INQ000356174, that’s at page 55, scroll down to 00.48, please.

So that’s that message at the bottom, and that’s 11th of the11th, 00.48, so that’s sent about 13 minutes before your first tweet is sent, and you say:

“Comms is critical.

“We need our people on every programme setting the agenda.”

Then there is reference there to:

“Lead cardiologist in the Royal and three other doctors are publicly criticising it …

“Mental Health issues are rocketing as is domestic violence.

“Lowest paid workers are losing vital wages …”

So when you’re talking there, 13 minutes before you sent your first tweet about communications and setting the agenda, is it not right that actually the content of that message finds its way into the tweets that you sent between 13 minutes and half an hour later on?

Mr Edwin Poots: But it wasn’t a comms strategy on behalf of our party. This is what I believed should happen. And, you know, it’s – it’s what I said.

And what I said there in terms of mental health rocketing, there was over a 10% increase in mental health drug or anti-depressant drug prescriptions over that period of time. There were reports coming from the PSNI indicating a much higher rate of domestic violence. All these things were happening. We did have cardiologists in the Royal saying “We’ve got a problem here”, and consequently we have considerably more people, you know, dying of heart disease now. So these were actions that we were taking.

And this is one thing that I said very often in the Executive, there will be more people die as a result of how we responded to Covid than will die of Covid –

TODO: grandiose statement that he will want to be true

Counsel Inquiry: Mr Poots, I believe that’s set out in your statement. I just want to end here with that question: did you consider when you were sending out those tweets what the impact would be on the population of Northern Ireland watching the content of that meeting on the evening of 11 November?

Mr Edwin Poots: Well, I considered that the issues as I set them out, you know, particularly the bit that says – in terms of the evidential base. Mr Young – at that time the R rate was 0.7 – said the impact of having close contact services, that’s the hairdressers and so forth, being allowed to work again, would have been 0.05, so that was a minimal impact that he was suggesting, the Chief Scientist was suggesting. So the only evidence that was being provided by the Chief Scientist would have indicated that it wouldn’t have been an unreasonable thing to allow those people to re-engage.

Mr Scott: Thank you, my Lady, I’ve no questions.

Lady Hallett: Thank you.

Ms Campbell.

Ms Campbell: (Inaudible).

Questions From the Chair

Lady Hallett: Thank you.

I just have one question, Mr Poots.

Mr Edwin Poots: Sure.

Lady Hallett: In other jurisdictions I have heard complaints about mass gatherings. You mentioned Cheltenham Races; that of course was in England. Were there any mass gatherings planned or took place in Northern Ireland that were of concern to people?

Mr Edwin Poots: I think – well, there was obviously the Bobby Storey funeral, and that’s – you know, everybody saw that on television, and that caused an awful lot of pain, and it diminished the role of the deputy First Minister and the Sinn Féin ministers. And I recognise the apology that was offered by Ms Ní Chuilín yesterday for that, and I think that’s been the first significant recognition by somebody from that political party to do that, and

I commend her for making that apology.

Lady Hallett: I was thinking more of concerts, sporting

matches. There was nothing of that kind in

Northern Ireland that – it’s very much an issue in

Scotland, Wales –

Mr Edwin Poots: In the summer of 2020 there was a lot of sporting

events, and those were mainly Gaelic sports, because

that’s whenever they play –

Lady Hallett: But that’s when we were opening up

restrictions.

Mr Edwin Poots: The restrictions were lifted at that point, so they

were.

Lady Hallett: Had there been a plan – supposing there had

been a Bruce Springsteen concert about to take place in

March 2020, who would have taken the decision, other

than the organisers, as to whether it would go ahead?

You’ve talked about the lack of power in the

First Minister and deputy First Minister. In Wales and

Scotland it would be the then –

Mr Edwin Poots: Yes.

Lady Hallett: – First Ministers; who would it be here?

Mr Edwin Poots: In terms of the regulations and so forth, I think that

people were being encouraged not to organise those –

Lady Hallett: Who would say, “Okay, we’ve got this concert

planned for Thursday night and we’re really worried about Covid”, who would be responsible for that decision? What I’m concerned – it’s not just –

Mr Edwin Poots: I’m trying to work it out – I apologise, my Lady – whether it’s the local authority or a combination of the Department of Health and Department of Justice –

Lady Hallett: So with all your experience you can’t work out who would take such an important decision in Northern Ireland?

Mr Edwin Poots: It certainly never crossed the previous department that I sat on, my Lady, and I apologise for not knowing the answer to your question.

Lady Hallett: I’m trying to work out – obviously I’m learning a lot about the structures in Northern Ireland.

Mr Edwin Poots: Yes.

Lady Hallett: It’s one of the things where the power to take that kind of decision that could have such an impact on people’s lives. And you can’t help me, don’t worry, I tried.

Thank you very much. I shall return at 2 o’clock.

(The witness withdrew)

(1.00 pm)

(The short adjournment)

(2.00 pm)

Lady Hallett: Ms Dobbin.

Ms Dobbin: My Lady, please may I call the next witness,

Sir Brandon Lewis.