3. Sir Brandon Lewis

SIR BRANDON LEWIS (sworn).

Questions From Lead Counsel to the Inquiry for Module 2C

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

Sir Brandon.

The Witness: No, it’s fine.

Ms Dobbin: Can I ask you to give your full name to the

Inquiry.

Sir Brandon Lewis: Brandon Lewis.

Lead 2C: I think you ought to have a witness statement in front

of you, which I think you signed on 22 March 2024,

I think it comes to some 38 pages. Do you have that in

front of you?

Sir Brandon Lewis: Yes.

Lead 2C: Are you content that that witness statement is true –

Sir Brandon Lewis: Yeah.

Lead 2C: – to the best of your knowledge and belief?

Sir Brandon Lewis: Absolutely, yes.

Lead 2C: Thank you.

I think it’s right, Sir Brandon, that you first

became a Member of Parliament for Great Yarmouth in

2010; is that right?

Sir Brandon Lewis: That is, that’s correct, yes, May 2010.

Lead 2C: And I think you took up your first junior ministerial

role in 2014; is that right?

Sir Brandon Lewis: No, September 2012.

Lead 2C: Oh, I apologise. I think that after 2012 you held a number of junior ministerial posts, including posts in the Department of Communities, and also in the Home Office as well; is that correct?

Sir Brandon Lewis: Yes, yes. Communities and local government, Home Office, Cabinet Office, and then the Northern Ireland Office and the Ministry of Justice.

Lead 2C: All right. I was going to say I think included in that you were also Minister without Portfolio as well, before you came to Northern Ireland; is that right?

Sir Brandon Lewis: Yes, that’s correct, yeah.

Lead 2C: I think it’s correct, then, that you were made the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland in February 2020?

Sir Brandon Lewis: Yes, that’s right.

Lead 2C: Prior to that date, had your ministerial career involved any work that related to Northern Ireland?

Sir Brandon Lewis: Yes, a little bit, not a great deal, but both when I was the security minister, I also had responsibility for some of the Brexit work and security on Brexit, and also when I was Minister without Portfolio, I had the border security taskforce, so both of those roles had an involvement with and visits to Northern Ireland.

Lead 2C: But did they provide you with any sort of in-depth knowledge of Northern Ireland, or about the politics of Northern Ireland, or how government in Northern Ireland operates?

Sir Brandon Lewis: To an extent, yes. Certainly, in terms of the politics of Northern Ireland, the challenges, because obviously I was working – when I was here, I was looking particularly in terms of the impact of Brexit and how we deal with the border, challenges between the Republic of Ireland, Ireland and Northern Ireland, so I had an understanding of the politics of that and therefore the wider politics and the background in Northern Ireland, obviously having been national security minister as well.

Lead 2C: All right. So the landscape wasn’t entirely unfamiliar to you.

Sir Brandon Lewis: No, not entirely unfamiliar, but there’s always more to learn.

Lead 2C: It’s right that power-sharing was just resuming in and around that time as well; correct?

Sir Brandon Lewis: Yes. New Decade, New Approach had been agreed, I think, in the January just before I became Secretary of State.

Lead 2C: I think it’s also right that the Northern Ireland Office had a new permanent secretary as well take up her post in and around the same time –

Sir Brandon Lewis: Yes.

Lead 2C: – that you were taking up your role?

Sir Brandon Lewis: Yes, I think she was literally about five days before me.

Lead 2C: All right. In terms of your general role or the usual role, if I may put it in that way, of the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland within government in the UK, is it right to summarise that role as essentially representing the best interests of Northern Ireland within central government?

Sir Brandon Lewis: Yes.

Lead 2C: Or is there more to it than that?

Sir Brandon Lewis: No, I think that’s – no, that is right. In practice, my experience I would say now is that a fair – there is a fair amount of time also working with the Northern Ireland Executive. The Northern Ireland Office is often, excuse the analogy, but the oil amongst the wheels of the different – five different parties at that time, now four obviously in the Executive, but just brokering agreement sometimes, but that’s the core purpose, yeah.

Lead 2C: All right. I’m going to come back if I may to that concept of you being the oil between the wheels and what your role was, but just focusing for a moment on the particular responsibilities that you had, I think it also involved distinct areas like national security, counter-terrorism, and then the implementation or I suppose the oversight of the key political agreements as well; is that correct?

Sir Brandon Lewis: Yes, that’s correct. Yes.

Lead 2C: I think that it’s also right that a distinct part of your role was in relation – or was leading relations with the Republic of Ireland as well, insofar as they related to Northern Ireland; is that correct?

Sir Brandon Lewis: Yes. Obviously, there’s an element of partnership with the Foreign Office, but in relation to Northern Ireland, primarily yes.

Lead 2C: Yes, I was going to ask you that. I don’t think that your role excluded ordinary diplomatic discourse between the Foreign Office and the Republic of Ireland as well; is that right?

Sir Brandon Lewis: That’s correct. And, for example, if Simon – at the time, Simon Coveney of the Tánaiste was visiting London, if I was there we’d meet, but he would also go and meet the team at the Foreign Office as well, yeah.

Lead 2C: All right. And then, obviously, I think part of your role as well was also related to co-operation between devolved administrations as well. So the idea that devolved administrations may also have common interests within government in the United Kingdom as well; is that also right?

Sir Brandon Lewis: To an extent. I think all the territorial offices’ secretaries of state would fulfil part of that role, but that’s also primarily what the role of CDL, as Michael Gove was doing at that time, in his role with – responsibility for the Union of having that overarching view of how you bring the devolved – when the devolved authorities has issues where they join up, and that would go more towards the Cabinet Office’s roles.

Lead 2C: I was going to ask you about Cabinet Office, and maybe I can do it and bring up a document at the same time in order to explore that with you.

If I could bring up, please, INQ000372641, please. I wanted to ask you, first of all, Sir Brandon, some of these documents refer to territorial offices. Does that relate to, for example, the Northern Ireland Office, the Scottish Office, and the Welsh Office?

Sir Brandon Lewis: Yes.

Lead 2C: I think that we can see from this document, and I’m looking at paragraph 2, that the Cabinet Office did have a specific role in co-ordination in respect of devolution and that sometimes that had an impact on the role of the territorial offices, although it’s right to point out, it says, that that was much less of an issue in respect of the Northern Ireland office.

Sir Brandon Lewis: Yeah. Correct.

Lead 2C: I’ll come back and ask you a little bit about that, if I may, but just looking at paragraph 3, I think that foresaw that there might be a role for all of the secretaries of state for the territorial offices to come together a bit more to present, I think this is suggesting, maybe a united front when it came to common issues –

Sir Brandon Lewis: Yes.

Lead 2C: – although also recognising the differences.

We can see that that’s a document from May 2020, so it was obviously generated in the context of the pandemic, but may I ask you, please, the point in respect of paragraph 2, that the sense of disempowerment was less obvious in respect of the Northern Ireland Office. Is that correct, or could you provide – could you explain a bit more why that might have been the position?

Sir Brandon Lewis: Yes. No, that is – that is correct, and I think the reasoning for that was the Scottish and Welsh Offices by structure are very small, I think. I don’t know what they are now, but it was around 30 in one case, and less than 50 members of staff in the other. The Northern Ireland Office was closer to 200, partly because of our – the structure of our role, particularly with national security, as you mentioned earlier. So Northern Ireland was, by definition, a bigger department anyway, and we had a – our own permanent secretary, whereas Scotland and Wales don’t have a permanent secretary; their director generals I think technically report in to the Cabinet Office, so it was a slightly different structure, and that’s why the NIO was always – I always felt it was in a slightly different position.

Lead 2C: Thank you.

Just turning, then, to the role of the Northern Ireland Office and your role specifically then in respect of this period and also the pandemic as well, perhaps if I could just bring up your witness statement, I think it might capture it.

If I could bring up the witness statement, please, at page 34, and paragraph 73.

I just wanted to pick up what you said in the second half of that paragraph, that:

“[You] considered that it was essential that the devolution settlement in Northern Ireland was respected when responding to the pandemic. This was of particular importance during the specified period, as this represented the first time that the [Northern Ireland Executive] had been operating for 3 years. Therefore, every effort was made to ensure that the independence of the [Northern Ireland Executive] in transferred matters was maintained.”

I wanted to ask you whether or not, then, it was part of the strategic approach, as it were, on the part of the UK Government, in terms of the response to the pandemic in Northern Ireland, to prioritise that independence of the Northern Ireland Executive?

Sir Brandon Lewis: I don’t recall there being a conscious discussion/decision at UK Government level with the Prime Minister, Number 10 or Cabinet Office, et cetera, around “This is what we must prioritise”. I think – but there was – and even with hindsight I would say – I would still make the same case, having had Stormont not functioning for three years, and having just come back to be in place and to be functioning, it seemed to me it was very, very important that we did everything we can to support the Executive but also support the Executive more generally in existing. And I think we – and we’ve seen again more recently the damage that can be done when the Executive is not functioning. Northern Ireland is better when it has local decisions made by local elected accountable politicians. So I was always very, very keen, wherever we could, that the Executive had – and its position and the devolution of transferred matters was respected.

Lead 2C: Did that translate in reality to a slight, if I could put this colloquially, sort of hands-off attitude to the Northern Ireland Executive or a sense of sort of distance because that need to let it get on its feet and its need to exercise that independence, because that was important?

Sir Brandon Lewis: I wouldn’t – no, I wouldn’t agree it was hands – look, I suspect it’s probably for others to judge. I would say it was trying to find a balance between not interfering, and therefore you effectively void the purpose of the Executive, and that is quite a dangerous constitutional place for the UK Government to get to, and obviously it resisted it for three years, to suddenly go back to not do what hadn’t been done for three years at a point where the Executive was functioning. And there was – as I say, in my view there was a determination between the parties to make it work, certainly at that point. Would have been the wrong thing to do.

But that’s not to say it’s hands-off. You know, our role was to do what we can to support, and in fact the NIO, we actually gave a member of staff to the Executive to give them – to support and help them, but wasn’t reporting into the NIO, was using their experience of central government to help them and to help make sure they had the support they felt they needed, but very much, yes, not to interfere and – in matters that are transferred.

Lead 2C: All right.

You’ve also said in your witness statement that part of your role was to encourage alignment with the United Kingdom as well. Can you explain how you tried to balance, on the one hand, the recognition that the Executive needed to be independent with that encouragement for alignment as well?

Sir Brandon Lewis: Yeah – well, yeah, no, absolutely, and I don’t think the two things are mutually exclusive, in the sense that the – in the same way that we’ve got devolved authorities in Scotland and Wales, we have a devolved authority. It is slightly different in Northern Ireland because of the Good Friday Agreement and the structures and the level of transfer of power. For example, the Northern Ireland Civil Service is completely autonomous and separate to the rest of the UK, whereas technically in Scotland and Wales the Civil Service technically reports in to the Cabinet Secretary, the head of the Civil Service. So it is – it is a different structure. So it’s about respecting that, but also just ensuring that there is, particularly for something that’s new, the support there from us in UK Government to be able to function, to understand what we were doing.

But ultimately the UK Government is also the sovereign government for the United Kingdom and has to make United Kingdom-wide decisions that the devolved authorities are part of. So there will – there will always be, when you have devolved authorities – and we saw it in different parts of Covid with the regional structures more generally as well, where the central government as the sovereign government makes decisions, devolved authorities are part of that, and sometimes implementing them, and in other areas they are entirely transferred powers. So part of the role of the NIO is making sure that those – which can be complicated, but making sure where there is a transfer of power it’s respected.

Lead 2C: What you’ve said in your witness statement, I think, on a number of occasions was, because the pandemic was primarily – I say primarily – very deliberately a health issue, and because that was a matter that fell within the competence of the Northern Ireland Executive, that perhaps also was a limitation upon the role that the Northern Ireland Office and you, as Secretary of State, could play as well; is that correct?

Sir Brandon Lewis: Yes. And obviously in the Northern Ireland Office we have no expertise – or certainly at that point no expertise or experience of how to run or what you would do with a health service, so we as a department would not have been able to support directly, in either scientific or operational things like that.

Where the Northern Ireland health department wanted or needed support, we could connect them up, and we did and we’d make sure they had engagement with UK – the UK Government’s Department of Health and those conversations did happen between UK health and the devolved authority.

And we saw this actually very much, much later on – and I don’t – sorry to digress, but when we were dealing with abortion regulations, the NIO had very limited – we – the NIO had then to go and speak to the Department of Health to get some support of expertise that could help draft the regulations, to make sure that they would actually work, because the NIO does not have that competence and capability.

Lead 2C: All right. I was just going to ask for a document to be brought up that perhaps illuminates the limitations of the Northern Ireland Office’s role, specifically in the context of the pandemic. I think it’s right that in and around November 2020 the Northern Ireland Office sought advice about what it might be able to do if the Executive wasn’t able to come to an agreement. I don’t know if you remember that specific period of time or not?

Sir Brandon Lewis: I do remember that specific period of time, it’s – it was – yeah, it was quite a key moment in the – in that period.

Lead 2C: I’m going to come back to that later, if I may, when you’re giving evidence. I just wanted, in terms of just understanding the limits of your role –

Sir Brandon Lewis: Sure.

Lead 2C: – and, as it were, the sort of hard-edged legal limits to that role, I think that this advice encapsulates it, and I think that we can see at paragraph 2 that when it came to health matters there was a very real hard-edged limit –

Sir Brandon Lewis: Yes.

Lead 2C: – as to what the UK Government could do.

I think in fact the conclusion of this advice was that, in reality, the only thing that could be done in those circumstances, and we can see it from paragraph 4 onwards, would be to introduce a form of direct rule, but that there wasn’t any sort of basis for doing that as at November 2020; is that right?

Sir Brandon Lewis: Yes, that’s correct.

Lead 2C: So in other words, there was no power, as it were, to intervene in any sort of lesser way other than, I suppose, the sort of nuclear option of direct rule; correct?

Sir Brandon Lewis: In practice, yes.

Lead 2C: And I think the point that this advice made was that that would never be contemplated in circumstances where there was a Northern Ireland Executive up and running in any event?

Sir Brandon Lewis: Absolutely. And in fact the evidence of the previous three years shows that even where there wasn’t an Executive the UK Government did everything to not go down that road.

Lead 2C: Yes.

So that assists us, I think, probably with understanding the limits of your role, that certainly when it came to the response to the pandemic there was a limited amount, potentially, that you could do in terms of – or in terms of what powers you had. But I think nonetheless what you set out in your witness statement was that there was an element of what’s been described in the Inquiry already as sort of soft power; is that correct?

Sir Brandon Lewis: Yes, yes. And where you can make use of that to move things forward, then, yes, absolutely.

Lead 2C: I think you’ve described it as the oil in the wheels, is that essentially the same, the same thing?

Sir Brandon Lewis: Yes, and that’s – and I just would be clear as well, not just myself, as Secretary of State, the minister of state, eventually, when we had the Parliamentary Undersecretary, but also I would say probably in quantum, absolutely, and the quality of the work between the civil servants, the NIO teams and other UK Government department teams working with civil servants in Northern Ireland as well, where they could.

Lead 2C: Okay. We will come back to –

Sir Brandon Lewis: But particularly on that oil between the wheels thing –

Lead 2C: Yes.

Sir Brandon Lewis: – not just on – on other issues probably more predominantly during that period, that weren’t Covid-related. But that was a really key factor, yeah.

Lead 2C: All right.

Another issue about which evidence has been given in the Inquiry is the impact of the absence of power-sharing between 2017 and 2020, and the extent to which that may have conditioned the response to the pandemic after January 2020, and I think you’ve said that in your statement – I won’t ask for it to come up – at paragraph 25, but certainly you indicate that you were aware of the fact that certainly there had been an impact on Northern Ireland’s health and social services; is that correct?

Sir Brandon Lewis: In the sense that, yes, it – I was very aware that the – Northern Ireland’s health service was in a difficult place. Far too many people in Northern Ireland were on a waiting list already.

Lead 2C: In terms of how that impacted on the response to the pandemic, were you conscious at the time in those – in the first months when the pandemic was unfolding, of that informing the response in Northern Ireland to the pandemic?

Sir Brandon Lewis: Actually, I don’t – I’m not sure that I would say I was actually. I would approach it from a slightly different point of view, which I think – there were two impacts in terms of the health department’s dealing with it. One was the fact that Stormont hadn’t been sitting for three years, politicians hadn’t been involved. The civil servants had done a fabulous job of keeping things ticking along but there had been no Executive function – meant that when Covid came upon them, they were still very new to their roles – well, we all were, but obviously for them very much so, coming into something completely new. And I think that must have had an impact on their ability, because they didn’t have the background experience of their roles themselves, or working together in that way, because they’d spent three years very much not working together, before they came into that forced coalition.

But also I think the – one thing that always struck me was – at the time – that the teams – that once they were in place were, particularly in the early stages, working very, very hard, very fast, to focus on Covid. So I don’t particularly remember feeling that the difficulties they had in the health system were affecting the work they were doing on Covid per se, but it is – other than – obviously it’s another issue to deal with while you’ve already got a difficult situation.

Lead 2C: Yes.

Sir Brandon Lewis: But it didn’t – their focus, from my limited experience of it, because I did have limited experience in dealing with the health side of it, was that their focus was – moved very fast and very full-on onto the Covid side of things.

Lead 2C: Can I just – maybe if I bring up a document and just ask you a little bit about this.

If I could have INQ000091300, please.

This is a very early document, from 2 March. I think this was a briefing prepared for you for the purposes of COBR; is that correct?

Sir Brandon Lewis: Yes.

Lead 2C: I think we can see, yes, just – yes, it’s at paragraph b, that Northern Ireland had one case of corona.

And I think if we could, please, go over the page.

We can see reference here, and it’s a few points down on that page, that a request had been made for the patient to be transferred to a hospital in Newcastle.

Then the last bullet in that section, thank you.

The concern that there wasn’t expert cover and that the patient – therefore that was why the request was being made.

Can you assist with whether or not, at that stage in the pandemic, that that sort of assistance was initially sought on the basis that there were concerns about whether or not there was adequate care within the hospital system?

Sir Brandon Lewis: I don’t recall it being about – my memory of it is it was more – I think that the reference to “expert consultant” was that the view about having someone who had the expert – the particular expertise at that point to understand and do what was needed in terms of the care for Covid.

I do remember the request because even this request was not – a MACA request from Northern Ireland, it was not straightforward to deal with, it had political –

Lead 2C: Yes.

Sir Brandon Lewis: – connotations as well. But we did manage to facilitate that.

Lead 2C: But in terms of the need for it?

Sir Brandon Lewis: Yes, yeah.

Lead 2C: It –

Sir Brandon Lewis: From memory, I think it was about having a consultant who had particular expertise in how to deal with Covid at that extreme level rather than there being a lack of availability of space in a hospital, if that makes sense – I think. But I’m – but the documentation from the health department at the time will give a better answer to that than I can.

Lead 2C: I won’t press you on it –

Sir Brandon Lewis: No, that’s fine.

Lead 2C: – if you don’t feel you’re the right person to answer. I think as well, just focusing on the pressures on the healthcare system, if I could bring up another document, please.

This is INQ000056023. If we could go to page 7, please.

I think this was a point that was being made by you at that meeting that certainly, I think, by comparison as well to perhaps other parts of the United Kingdom, that there were significant challenges that the Northern Ireland system faced compared to those; again, is that right?

Sir Brandon Lewis: Yes, absolutely.

Lead 2C: And again, presumably something that you were conscious of at that time that also needed to be fed into central government as well; is that correct?

Sir Brandon Lewis: Yes, in the sense – yes, because I think at that point it was about half a million people were already on a waiting list for medical care pre-Covid, or Covid aside, as it were, so we were very conscious that there was a deficit in that support, and therefore, you know, the Department of Health, whatever we can do to help them, we should make sure we put that support and help in, with – despite the challenge of it being a devolved responsibility.

Lead 2C: Yes. And I think in fact in terms of the sort of – what was provided – and again if we could just go to INQ000091319.

Sorry, this is a different document. I’ll take you to the one I was going to in due course, but I think if we look at this one – and again this is for a Healthcare MIG – I think concern – we see “Overall Steer”, five paragraphs down, that Northern Ireland was “experiencing particular shortages of PPE in healthcare and the wider public sector”.

I think if we look at the bottom of this page, please, and I think again in terms of your role it was about being the voice, as it were, for Northern Ireland in government; is that right?

Sir Brandon Lewis: Yes, and, as I say, making sure that we were getting the balance right between – although it is transferred, we also – citizens of Northern Ireland are citizens of the United Kingdom and therefore we have a responsibility to do what we can to help and support, and particularly to make sure that we were getting PPE where we could to Northern Ireland. Because obviously there is a logistical difference between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK in terms of mainland Great Britain, and it’s purely because of getting product across the water.

Lead 2C: Yes. I’ll come back to that added complexity to the picture in Northern Ireland as well, but I think – again, I think what this demonstrates or suggests is that provision of information to central government about particular challenges that were being faced in Northern Ireland; correct?

Sir Brandon Lewis: Well, in the sense – yes, Northern Ireland’s health service was in a difficult – difficult and a weaker place than the rest of the UK, was the view at the time.

Lead 2C: Yes – and just, sorry, I am going to come then to the document I wanted to go to, which is INQ000091324.

I think – sorry, forgive me, that’s the wrong document. It’s INQ000421542. Thank you.

If we could go, please, to page 10 of this, I think we can see that this was a later request for military assistance, and I think that was sought in January 2021. I think we can just see that –

Sir Brandon Lewis: Yep.

Lead 2C: – in the last part of the boxes.

This in fact, I think, was quite a significant request, because it was actually a request for healthcare staff to be brought from the army to Northern Ireland in order to provide frontline healthcare services; is that right?

Sir Brandon Lewis: Yes.

Lead 2C: I think the first box sets out the detail of the problem at that point, but it seems that absenteeism amongst healthcare staff had become very acute at that point in time; is that right?

Sir Brandon Lewis: Yes.

Lead 2C: I think if we may go, please, to the first page of this document, it sets out the level of support that was sought, and then the recommendation was made that that assistance be provided; correct?

Sir Brandon Lewis: Yes, correct, yeah.

Lead 2C: And I think that did in fact happen, that that assistance was given –

Sir Brandon Lewis: Yes.

Lead 2C: – at that particular point in time?

Sir Brandon Lewis: Yes, that’s right.

Lead 2C: All right.

I’ll come back to all of these issues, if I may, and communications with the government a little bit later, but moving on, if I may, then to a separate but perhaps related issue.

Sir Brandon, what you say in your witness statement – and perhaps if I could bring this up, and it’s at paragraph 81, at the very end of that paragraph, and it’s I think a paragraph in which you set out your reflections about Northern Ireland, you set out that:

“[You] noticed that the siloed nature of [Northern Ireland Executive] Departments under power-sharing meant that, as time went on, frictions occurred between Ministers in terms of both style and process. This led to some quite public disputes, often over process issues in the later stages of the pandemic …”

There’s another paragraph and then I’ll ask you about both, if I may. I think this is paragraph 23, please. Again, it’s just around the midway point, it’s the sentence that starts “For instance”, and you set out there that:

“… the [Northern Ireland] Health Minister was very protective of the remit and independence of his department, which worked to the exclusion of the First and deputy First Minister at times. I suspected this approach was (at least in part) based on party political differences, and reflected the inherent problems associated with working in a disparate political environment.”

So I think you’re pointing to two separate issues there, but they are related. First of all, the idea that departments within the Executive to your eyes operated perhaps in a conspicuously siloed way, and that being perhaps particularly noticeable in respect of the Department of Health. But could I ask you about your, that general observation first, about departments operating –

Sir Brandon Lewis: Sure. Yeah, no, it is – it’s an issue, I think, in terms of how the structure of Stormont works that I saw in a number of ways, on different issues, Covid aside actually, because the departments don’t effectively work in silos, they are in silos. The difference between – if I take the way UK Government works, ultimately every permanent secretary in every department, the permanent secretaries technically report in to the head of the Civil Service, the Cabinet Secretary. As secretaries of state, we answer to the Prime Minister.

That is not the case in Northern Ireland, the head of the Civil Service does not have any direct power over individual departments. And when you add to that the fact that the individual departments are also then run by ministers of different parties, because of the structure of the system, for the coalition, and power-sharing, that reinforces that structural silo impact. So that what you will sometimes find, and what we came up against in different times, in different issues, Covid aside, would be that a particular department would want to do something but couldn’t get the Department of Finance to agree and it would generally be two different political parties as well as being two different departments.

So that becomes a real challenge for how the Northern Ireland structure of government actually works and delivers for people in Northern Ireland. And that, I think, in the health department, was partly the case, and you did see – there was a particular point where the Executive Office set up a taskforce, effectively, to try to have a bit more structure, and Executive Office, understanding the drive about what was going on, and the Department of Health was a little bit resistant to that, particularly at the early stages, for fear of that interference, which I think reflected the department and Robin Swann’s desire to have, as the lead department, their protection of their position.

Lead 2C: Just looking at it, I think that taskforce came a little bit later in the –

Sir Brandon Lewis: Yes – oh, yes, yeah.

Lead 2C: – in terms of the response to the pandemic, but at the outset of the pandemic, and of course understanding that you were relatively new to your ministerial role, was that control or that quite compartmentalised approach by the Department of Health evident from an early point?

Sir Brandon Lewis: I think the general point around how the structures work is something that I became more alert and aware to and at times frustrated by it, further down the line, and not actually so much with Covid, to be fair. There was a really consistent and focused effort generally from all of the Executive to work together as best they could for Covid purposes.

But with the Department of Health there were – there did seem to me to be times where the minister for health was very, very protective of that role as the lead department and the lead minister on health, in terms of – and we saw it a bit later in the year – we’ve already touched on that November period with the meeting, and a lot of the issues were around when papers were being issued, if papers were being issued, and we even had it where the department and the minister was not happy about civil servants necessarily talking to civil servants, wanting it to be at a political level, which is the private offices talking, rather than via the civil servants. So I did see that relatively early on. But I – my interaction with the Department of Health there was actually fairly limited.

Lead 2C: Yes.

Sir Brandon Lewis: One of my ministers did more of that, and it was – and also they would talk across other government departments as well.

Lead 2C: All right. I think you said about five things that –

Sir Brandon Lewis: Sorry, yes.

Lead 2C: – so probably just want to unpick a little bit, if I may, and I’m now going to try and remember them.

In terms of that point that you were making about the health minister, I think you were saying, not being happy about civil servants interacting with each other, I think you may have said “at a political level”. Can you just explain a bit about what you mean.

Sir Brandon Lewis: Well, they were – we were engaged with the Department of Health and we had a request that engagement is not done by civil servants but was done by private office, which is the – private office to me is the Secretary of State or my junior minister, with his private office, which, although they are still civil servants, is seen as slightly more political because they work directly for the politician.

And when we had the MACA requests, occasionally, the Department of Health, one of the issues that came up would – I know that the minister for health got a bit frustrated at having to follow processes and the way UK Government worked, and I having to come through the Northern Ireland office, and obviously we had to make sure that this was going to have agreement across the Executive, because UK military getting involved in the health service in Northern Ireland is not as straightforward and fair – it just isn’t – politically for some parts of the community. So we had issues like that occasionally.

Lead 2C: The Inquiry has heard evidence that at quite an early stage in the pandemic there was frustration. And I must emphasise that the deputy First Minister and the First Minister haven’t given evidence yet. But on the face of the documents, that there was a frustration on their part that they weren’t able to exercise sufficient control over the Department of Health, certainly in the first part of the response to the pandemic. Was that something that you picked up on or heard anything about at that time?

Sir Brandon Lewis: From memory, not particularly at the beginning, but, as I say, I think it’s partly what probably led to the – I think the sensible decision much later to set up the taskforce, or I think it was called the Executive Taskforce. But I think it also plays into – I think it’s more than just the – politics and personalities and the reality of working life will always come into these things, particularly in Northern Ireland, but I think the reality here was the technical legal structure of how the Civil Service worked and how the departments work in Northern Ireland sort of drove that.

It’s one of the things that – I do think, with hindsight, it’s one of the things that the Northern Ireland structure would be better served to serve the people of Ireland if there was a more – a slightly more cohesive approach across departments, and this is a very good example of where if your First and deputy First Minister leading the Executive Office, and you’ve got a pandemic, and you’ve got very – even they’ve got – I mean, I had no power because it’s transferred, but they are the First and deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland, and they have got very limited power what they can do and drive legally and technically through the Department of Health. And I would imagine for them, but that’s obviously a matter for them, would be immensely frustrating, but you’d have to ask them about that.

Lead 2C: I think you’ve reflected on some of those issues at the very end your statement –

Sir Brandon Lewis: Yeah.

Lead 2C: – and I will come back and ask you about that because that’s important. I had really just – the purpose of these questions was to try and understand a bit more about the dynamics at that time.

I think from what you’ve just said, what you might be suggesting, is perhaps in Northern Ireland that personality or that individuals may have a greater role perhaps within the structures; is that right? I suppose that was a clumsy way to put it, but perhaps that things are more personality driven than they might otherwise be.

Sir Brandon Lewis: Well, I think because you are working – Northern Ireland is – it’s – you know, it’s small; it’s less than 2 million population, so everybody is closer, you know. One of the first things I was told when I became Northern Ireland Secretary is anything you say in any room with two people will be around all of Northern Ireland straight away. And one of the most important things is you are straight with everybody because it is a small society. So in a smaller structure like that, yes, personalities do matter. But I don’t – I wouldn’t actually say I think that is necessarily the issue because you get personalities in any walk of life in any job, and certainly in politics. I think actually the bigger issue that I think probably is a better descriptor than personalities is: every decision and almost everything that is said by politicians in Northern Ireland has a political tone to it, even if – in anything, there is – there is more often than not almost a subliminal secondary message which is driven by the politics. And it’s not just about sectarian politics between the Nationalist and the Unionist Party – that will happen between Unionist parties who disagree on things – or between the Nationalist parties. Because you have got five parties – at that time – five parties in the Executive who are in a power-sharing structure that they have to be part of, it’s not a chosen coalition, they eventually work out a kind of programme of action, but they are basically in a forced coalition.

They then also, and the challenge for them that I think drives this problem is then they also, when it comes to electoral purposes, need to differentiate from each other. And how you do that when you’re in a coalition is actually very, very difficult, and I think that’s what drives some of these challenges.

Lead 2C: All right. I think one of the – or perhaps a separate issue, if I may ask you about, is the point that you’ve already made that civil servants within a department answer to the permanent secretary of that department and not to any – there is no equivalent of the Cabinet Secretary or anyone else to whom – at a higher level to whom they respond, or a central person, sorry, to whom they report.

Is there a specific reason in Northern Ireland why that’s the position in respect of the Civil Service?

Sir Brandon Lewis: I don’t know. That is just how they are technically structured. That’s how Northern Ireland’s Stormont has set itself up to structure that way. And although obviously permanent secretaries and civil servants will talk to each other, it is different when it’s – when there isn’t a clear understanding that the departments are ultimately coming into one core base, and I think that, as I say, comes back to the whole structure of how Stormont is set up, which is challenging, but it does reflect the complications and the challenges of the society in Northern Ireland and the history.

Lead 2C: Right.

I’m going to go to a different thematic issue, if I may, or a complexity that Northern Ireland faced that was distinct from the rest of the United Kingdom, and that was the border and the fact that it was the only part of the UK that shared a border with the Republic of Ireland and with the European Union as well.

I think – and perhaps if we look at a document to highlight this. If we could go, please, to INQ000421634. And I think we can see this is 11 March and a telephone call that you had. Is that with your – it’s not really, I suppose, with your counterpart in the Republic of Ireland, is it?

Sir Brandon Lewis: The Tánaiste – so it was Simon Coveney. He would be the foreign minister.

Lead 2C: Foreign minister, all right.

Sir Brandon Lewis: Yeah.

Lead 2C: I think if we could just look, please, at paragraph 4 of this note –

Sir Brandon Lewis: Sorry, that’s – I mean, yes, he’s my – the counterpart to the Northern Ireland Secretary is the Tánaiste.

Lead 2C: Yes, but he has a role that perhaps is more akin to the Foreign Secretary in the –

Sir Brandon Lewis: Yes. Correct, yeah.

Lead 2C: I think that this was setting out the advice – sorry. I think we can see in the paragraphs that lead to paragraph 4 that this was providing some background to I think what was one of your very early discussions with him about the approach that you would take in respect of relations with him, and I think we can see from paragraph 1 that almost the most immediate and first thing that was alluded to was the need for consistent messaging between the two jurisdictions.

And I think if we could go to paragraph 4 then, please. And, again, the reference to ensuring consistency, I think particularly around border regions.

If we could go to paragraph 7, please. I think that that sets out some of the other links between other parts of the structures –

Sir Brandon Lewis: Yes.

Lead 2C: – between the UK, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. And I think, again, we see that at page 4.

So I think as well we can see it’s the lines to take but obviously I think setting out as well about officials in both jurisdictions working together or co-operating with each other as well.

I think what we can see is that consistency of messaging and the idea that that should – that that should inform the approach from the outset was probably strained at points and at the early part of the pandemic as well; do you agree?

Sir Brandon Lewis: Yes. Yeah. I mean, we were – we recognised, and I was very cognisant very early on at this stage, that there would be complications because people live and work literally either side of the border, and obviously there’s no border as such, so it’s free-flowing. People live one side, work the other and will commute across the border between Ireland and Northern Ireland several times a day in some cases, and some products cross the border in their production. So we were going to have to be, and particularly for those communities there, very cognisant of how we manage messaging and how we’re managing things so that people understand if there are going to be differences what those differences are. So it seemed to me, yeah, very logical that we try and keep in close contact on that.

Lead 2C: I’ll come back maybe to some of the challenges, but in terms of the additional complexity that politicians or ministers in Northern Ireland faced, obviously the United Kingdom had control over immigration matters, so effectively it did control the border, so to speak, but that didn’t preclude Northern Ireland ministers from implementing measures to control what happened, for example, when people crossed the border, is that right, in terms of having to provide information or that kind of thing?

Sir Brandon Lewis: Correct, yes. I mean, we – the Common Travel Area was maintained, from our point of view, all the way through, but yes, what – information which obviously became an issue, but what information was available and was required by the Northern Ireland Executive for health and safety in Northern Ireland was a matter for them, absolutely, yeah.

Lead 2C: But in terms of the complexity that ministers faced in Northern Ireland, they had no control over who entered the Republic of Ireland and no control over the policy of the Republic of Ireland in respect of entry.

Sir Brandon Lewis: Correct.

Lead 2C: And once people were in the Republic of Ireland, then they could just move across the border to Northern Ireland; yes?

Sir Brandon Lewis: Well, technically, physically, yes, you can do that, but obviously there were Ireland – the Irish Government put restrictions in place themselves.

Lead 2C: Yes.

Sir Brandon Lewis: There was a point during the pandemic where they effectively, technically, you can argue, they closed the border.

Lead 2C: Yes.

Sir Brandon Lewis: They restricted people from moving.

Lead 2C: But at those points in time during the pandemic when travel restrictions from foreign countries, for example, were lifted in the Republic of Ireland, I think that was the issue. Then there was – Northern Ireland ministers didn’t have sight, so to speak, of who was crossing the border into Northern Ireland.

Sir Brandon Lewis: Correct. That’s – yes. Well, they – they wanted that information, but they didn’t automatically have it because obviously it’s a different sovereign jurisdiction.

Lead 2C: And that relates I think to an issue that was ongoing for Northern Ireland from a very early stage which was that there was a difficulty in the Republic of Ireland providing passenger locator forms and information to Northern Ireland as well?

Sir Brandon Lewis: Yes. That’s correct, yeah.

Lead 2C: And I think it’s right that although that obviously related, as it were, to the border with the United Kingdom, that that issue about passenger locator forms actually fell to the health minister in Northern Ireland to deal with and that he took responsibility for that; is that right?

Sir Brandon Lewis: Yes.

Lead 2C: I think that it’s right that despite the fact that this was an enduring issue that was raised on a number of occasions with ministers in the Republic of Ireland, it didn’t in fact get resolved until quite late into 2021; is that right?

Sir Brandon Lewis: Correct. Yes, that’s right.

Lead 2C: Just coming back, then, to the issue – and, again, it’s a linked issue of communications or issues that potentially caused difficulty for Northern Ireland ministers because of their very distinct position. I think the Inquiry has heard that on 12 March 2020, the Republic of Ireland made the announcement that it was going to close schools, and it’s understood from a number of witness statements that Northern Ireland ministers hadn’t known that the Republic of Ireland was going to make that announcement and that that became a cause of some difficulty. Is that correct?

Sir Brandon Lewis: Absolutely right, yes.

Lead 2C: What the communications from around that time suggest was that that lack of notice effectively put all of the ministers in Northern Ireland under some pressure. Is that also correct?

Sir Brandon Lewis: Well, I don’t know. They’d have to answer that. But it certainly did cause an issue because obviously, as you’ve seen from the notes, only days before, myself and Simon Coveney were discussing how we ensure that we work together, keep each other informed if there are going to be differences, which there is likely to be with two sovereign governments making decisions and the Northern Ireland Executive with their powers, that we at least understand what they are so we can manage them. And then we were all taken by surprise. I was actually in Washington DC when the Taoiseach went out in Washington and made that announcement. And I was – I saw him within an hour or so of him making it, and it was a complete surprise to everybody. And that was surprising, bearing in mind we’d just been all talking about working together.

Lead 2C: Yes. I’m obviously not going to explore with you what reasons there might have been for that. I just want to focus on the difficulties it presented for ministers in Northern Ireland. But presumably one of those difficulties is the messaging aspect of it and the idea that you posited in that meeting, which we saw took place the day before, of having a consistency of approach.

Sir Brandon Lewis: Yes, and actually for wider UK Government as well because it immediately put a question mark on: well, if the Irish have got a reason to do this, why is not everybody else doing this? So it was for wider UK Government it created an issue, but it created a particular issue in Northern Ireland as well because of the lack of notice, lack of understanding of why they were doing it, and the complication of there were potentially people who would be living and working, as I say, on either side of the border where their children, in theory, they’re not quite sure what applies to them, so the messaging of that put an extra complication in, yes.

Lead 2C: Did you play any part in trying to resolve that difficulty or in trying to improve communications with the – between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland in that regard?

Sir Brandon Lewis: I don’t recall any particular – there may have been, but I don’t recall any particular meetings or conversations at the time where we were sort of finding a way through that. Specifically, that became an issue that was more the Northern Ireland Executive then working very quickly within itself and the Department of Health to – with the Department of Education to get some very clear messaging out for people in Northern Ireland very, very quickly.

Lead 2C: All right.

Another point of tension, and you’ve already referred to this in your evidence, or a difficult period for ministers in Northern Ireland was what happened in and around the autumn of 2020, and that perhaps becoming a more fragile period of time for all ministers. And perhaps if I could ask to look at this document, please, INQ000372626.

I think we can see from the first paragraph that the advice that you were being given by the department was the need for a strong message about getting back to a sustainable footing and reference to the meeting last Thursday. Forgive me, I skipped over it, we can see that the date of this note is 18 November 2020.

I think if we just go a little further down, you refer to the fact everyone recognises that the last week or so has been difficult and the way that decisions played out in public was unhelpful. And the sense at that time that there were real tensions and frustration amongst all parties. And I think you were advised that you should ask how relationships could be repaired.

So in terms of coming back to the idea that you – that part of your role was to try, I suppose, and act as a – perhaps an interlocutor amongst ministers as well.

First of all, that idea that the position had become – I think, as you’ve put it, that it had become difficult or particularly fragile at that time. Could you explain a bit more about that and your perception of that?

Sir Brandon Lewis: Yes. Well, I think it was about a week before this was where they’d had the three-day long, roughly, Executive meeting, and that was really difficult. I do remember that – during that period being concerned that I could see the Executive collapsing again. One of the ministers had been talking about resigning just out of frustration at how things were happening. And it wasn’t – and it wasn’t about so much the decisions per se; it was about the process, papers coming late, or inappropriate people leaking things during the meeting. There was a real frustration with each other.

It was a very, very difficult period, and I think this kind of became the – to me, it seemed this had become the public exposure of challenges and problems that had been in the Executive since the Bobby Storey funeral. That changed everything, and this was where it sort of manifested in a – through a different thing, but I think that this was a sort of – where everything came together at one point and it became very, very difficult and I think it had – the damage – the fact that it took them three days of publicly having a protracted meeting to come to a decision therefore undermined the public perception of the – not so much the decisions but the messaging coming from the Executive and I feel was very important that they find a way to get back to a situation where they can work together.

And the third bullet point I think is not unrelated. I think they were suffering from not having a head of the Civil Service and the inability to agree on somebody at that point.

Lead 2C: That was exactly what I was going to ask you about, was that we haven’t heard very much about this perhaps in evidence, but the fact that the head of the Civil Service had retired at the end of August, I think, or the start of September 2020, and that the Executive had moved into a difficult period in terms of the challenges it was facing in the autumn without anyone in that role. Was that your perception, that that lack of perhaps counsel that a permanent head of Civil Service might provide was actually impacting?

Sir Brandon Lewis: To an extent, yes. And I should be very clear. David Sterling was an excellent head of the Civil Service. I dealt with him even during the three – I had seen him at meetings in the three years previous in my other roles. And he had given a lot – he had given plenty of notice throughout the Executive, plenty of time to arrange the replacement for David’s retirement but hadn’t been able to. And it was the fundamental issue of the First and deputy First Minister basically not being able to agree on a candidate.

And I do think that had an impact for that period in a sense that it was a difficult period anyway, as I say, following that funeral and the way the processes were running, and there wasn’t that head of Civil Service who is independent of all the political parties who can just sometimes work as that connector between to make sure things are done and possibly would have been able to have an impact – maybe had an impact on some of those processes that were becoming frustrating, particularly for the smaller parties.

Lead 2C: All right. I’m going to move on, then, if I may, to deal with some different issues about the structures within UK Government and how the ministers in Northern Ireland were integrated or not into those structures.

So, first of all, just starting at the beginning of the pandemic and the COBR meetings. The sense that’s been conveyed, I think, through a number of witness statements and I think evidence given in perhaps other modules, was the sense that these were forums within which information was provided, or ministers from Northern Ireland were told of decisions, rather than being actually integrated into the decision-making itself.

Is that something that you would accept?

Sir Brandon Lewis: To an extent, yes. I think some of those particularly earlier meetings were following decisions made – I mean, I wasn’t in some of those, but decisions that had been made around – by the UK Government for the United Kingdom. And therefore bringing in the devolved authorities to talk to them about how that would be implemented, I think that is true.

Having said that, none of the politicians involved in those meetings are generally very shy about speaking up when they’ve got issues, and therefore in any of those meetings, there is no reason why anybody who had something they wanted to raise or bring up would have been prevented from doing so. So they had – they were in the meetings, and if they had issues, they could have raised them.

But I think very much at that early stage, some of those COBR meetings were about outlining how we implement decisions that the UK Government has made.

Lead 2C: But is that realistic in the context of an unfolding pandemic, when you look at the COBR minutes and the type of meetings that they were, it doesn’t appear that there was very much opportunity for ministers from the other devolved administrations to actually contribute to the decision-making process –

Sir Brandon Lewis: No.

Lead 2C: – and it’s unclear that that was in fact being made at COBR rather than elsewhere?

Sir Brandon Lewis: No, I can understand that perception, but I think in practice, I’m not – I don’t think that’s a fair assessment in practice.

Obviously, I can speak from the Northern Ireland side more than Scotland or Wales, but the devolved authority, certainly in Northern Ireland, there were conversations going on at all times, and I would think looking back, almost – I would be pretty confident pretty much daily between civil servants across the Northern Ireland Civil Service and the UK Civil Service, not just the NIO but with the Department of Health and elsewhere, that would have fed into what was being decided in UK Government.

There were also other meetings going on around COBR. COBR becomes the sort of culmination. But even in COBR – and I can remember COBRs where both the First and deputy First Minister spoke, and Robin Swann actually as Health Minister would have contributed, so there was always the opportunity to contribute. And I’ve got to be fair, my experience of particularly the Prime Minister when he was chairing at the time, and CDL when he was chairing meetings, there was never a reticence about letting people come in if they had something they wanted to add or say or challenge.

Ms Dobbin: My Lady, I think we’re probably just about at the time for a break.

Lady Hallett: We didn’t start til 2.

Ms Dobbin: Sorry. I was passed a note.

Lady Hallett: It’s entirely up to you.

Ms Dobbin: No, it’s absolutely fine. I’m always afraid of running over, so I thought that –

Lady Hallett: I think you’ve been falsely prompted on this occasion.

Ms Dobbin: Thank you.

Sir Brandon, I wanted to take you, if I may, or to ask you about some of the other groups or parts of the decision-making structure at around this time to ask you about those and whether they were, from your perspective, an effective way of integrating the devolved administrations into decision-making, and I think that the ministerial implementation groups were the part of the structure that effectively replaced the COBR meetings; is that right?

Sir Brandon Lewis: Yes. To an extent, yeah.

Lead 2C: And were you actually involved in the ministerial implementation groups? Did you attend those –

Sir Brandon Lewis: I would have attended some of them.

Lead 2C: Yes.

Sir Brandon Lewis: One of the challenges with memory of that period is there were lots and lots of meeting, so which were one meeting or another, I’d have to look back at some of the paperwork but I would have attended some; others would have been my minister of state. And occasionally it would have just been the devolved authorities attending without either – anybody from the NIO potentially.

Lead 2C: All right. And in terms of your view of those and whether or not they were effective – I mean, we’ve seen some of the notes in terms of the health ministerial implementation groups – did you perceive those as useful to Northern Ireland?

Sir Brandon Lewis: Yes, and at the time, it felt to me that the way we were engaging was working and their – I don’t recall – I don’t recall at the time there being a shortage of engagement, whether it was through a formal ministerial implementation group, or the meetings between ministers and the conversations between ministers, or the meetings I was having regularly with the First and deputy First Minister. There was a whole range of engagement going on, yeah.

Lead 2C: All right.

I want to just ask you a bit about, if I may, the realities of that, and if we could go to INQ000091348. I think we see this is a note or an email quite early on, and an email that deals generally with the approach that ought to be taken to the devolved administrations. I won’t read out all of it. I think this was at the point in time where there were discussions as to whether or not there should be a different format for communications with the devolved administrations; correct?

Sir Brandon Lewis: Yes.

Lead 2C: If we just scroll down a bit, please, I think we can see that you contributed to this as well. So we see that at the bottom, that Covid engagement had worked well, that devolved administrations are getting huge exposure to decision-making, that another meeting – and I think that that’s the meeting that was foreseen with the Chancellor, is that right, of the Duchy of Lancaster?

Sir Brandon Lewis: Yes. Yes.

Lead 2C: That that was too much and that you were concerned that you had a better insight, as it were, into the particular or the sensitivities perhaps of the relationship with Northern Ireland; is that correct?

Sir Brandon Lewis: Yes, because the territorial offices managed the day-to-day relationships, and I would say that, I appreciate obviously looking through the lens as – I haven’t been the Secretary of State for a little while, but Northern Ireland has particularly unique circumstances compared to the other devolved authorities, and that day-to-day engagement we have gives that understanding that you can bring to the UK Government and CDL’s role as we saw it at the time. And what Michael was doing was bringing together the devolved authorities, so he would chair the meetings where all of the devolved authorities were coming together with UK Government. It didn’t seem logical to then have a separate – another meeting with CDL with each individual devolved authority because that is what the territorial offices do –

Lead 2C: If –

Sir Brandon Lewis: – and were proactively doing at that point, yes.

Lead 2C: If we could go, please, to the second page. And, again, if we just go a little bit further down, thank you. I think yours is the penultimate point:

“Devolved administrations are dispersed in wider UK Government meetings. If we convene them in a smaller meeting, they may prove more difficult to handle. Reiterated that the NIO hasn’t been asked for this and the Northern Ireland Executive have been very positive re: the government’s approach to date.”

Sir Brandon, was that dispersement, so to speak, of Northern Ireland ministers into wider meetings, that would appear to have been a deliberate choice and a convenient choice; is that right?

Sir Brandon Lewis: No. This isn’t talking about Northern Ireland; this is talking about the wider devolved authorities.

So one of the things that – there was a risk of – and this is where the politics does come into it – was we had seen as UK Government quite early on what seemed to be political moves by one of the devolved authorities in Scotland, in particular in terms of making announcements. And there was also then sometimes for political reasons a risk that we would have the politics of wanting to differentiate for political reasons. So, for example, in Scotland around independence, but also with Sinn Féin with the deputy First Minister for – making political cases rather than dealing with the issues around Covid, and that’s what that’s referring to.

Lead 2C: That idea that they were more difficult to handle in smaller meetings, is that specifically a reference to the deputy First Minister, or …?

Sir Brandon Lewis: I think – well, the general issue is, I don’t – I don’t recall what the reference to a smaller meeting would be because the meetings we used to have were Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland together with CDL and the territorial offices. Generally, the territorial offices would be involved.

Lead 2C: Because it might be thought, given all of the challenges and complexities that Northern Ireland ministers faced, only some of which I think we’ve touched upon this afternoon, that the idea that they might have access to smaller meetings in which they could press their individual concerns might have been a very good thing for Northern Ireland, rather than ministers being part of these much bigger, for example, COBR meetings or ministerial implementation groups?

Sir Brandon Lewis: Well, don’t forget – and I think part of the reason is it makes the point there that the Executive are being positive about the engagement with the UK Government and weren’t asking for this was they did have that access. There were meetings and debate – discussions going on between directly the Department of Health in Northern Ireland and the UK Department of Health where they were sharing those. I think there’s reference elsewhere to Matt Hancock also visited, as Secretary of State, Northern Ireland early on. So they were having those smaller meetings. That was happening.

I think my – my point more generally in this meeting was around not duplicating and repeating what is already happening.

Lead 2C: I think that in terms of the – that idea that the devolved administrations were being dealt with, as it were, as a bloc rather than individually is, in fact, reflected by the NIO office, isn’t it, in its reflections on Covid? Do you agree?

Sir Brandon Lewis: I think no, not quite. So I agree it’s something we were always very conscious of, and we were very keen and always did – look, I would say we did consciously do everything we can to work to make sure that the differentials and the particularly unique circumstances in Northern Ireland – and I don’t just mean the political circumstances; I mean the fact that it hadn’t had Stormont up and running and was a much smaller, tighter knit society were reflected and understood, so we were always trying to make sure that the wider UK Government understood that the devolved authorities cannot be and should not be treated en bloc. We have to be alert to the variations and the differences between them and within them.

Lead 2C: Perhaps if we could go to INQ00003154.

I think you’ve seen this. So it’s a response – again, it’s June 2020, and I think a response to a review that was taking place.

If we look at the first paragraph, so, first of all, obviously issues about whether or not – and that was an issue that arose in Northern Ireland about having representation on SAGE.

If we go, please, to the second paragraph –

Lady Hallett: Sorry, this is from whom to whom?

Ms Dobbin: Oh, I do apologise.

Lady Hallett: You may have said it.

Ms Dobbin: It’s redacted but it’s from the Northern Ireland Office.

Lady Hallett: Yes, so it is. To?

Ms Dobbin: To Cabinet Office, and it’s part of a review, I think.

Lady Hallett: Got it, thank you.

Ms Dobbin: That’s my fault for racing ahead.

I think we can see from this subject that it’s “[Covid-19] lessons learned and options for a review”.

I think that that paragraph refers certainly to the concern that had been expressed on the part of devolved administrations that they weren’t sufficiently sighted on the pace of response. And it refers there to devolved administrations being informed of key changes to policy direction far too late, and that it was unclear whether they were England-only or UK-wide.

I think that was a separate issue about the Northern Ireland Civil Service on discrete issues, I think that’s on test and trace.

Then if we see the third paragraph up from the bottom:

“The other point we would suggest really emphasising is around the importance of understanding the unique circumstances in each of the [devolved administrations]. They seem to sometimes be treated as a single entity as opposed to three separate administrations with some significant differences …”

Then:

“… whereas we would likely get better results by adapting plans for engagement depending on the specific [devolved administrations].”

So that email does suggest, I think, and does fairly reflect concerns that were being expressed by the time, and I think those include concerns, perhaps on the part of Northern Ireland as well, about being belatedly informed of decisions that had been taken.

And then, as that points out, there being confusion as to whether or not those decisions actually apply as well. Yes?

Sir Brandon Lewis: Yes. I mean, that’s not – this would be an email between civil servants, but I think it does reflect this point that we were continually making which is that when we’re looking at things that are UK-wide we need to understand and be alert to the differences with the devolved authorities, and obviously, in my case, particularly with Northern Ireland, which, as I say, I’ve said many times, has a differential that is unique to the other devolved authorities.

I would still say though, and I think there’s other evidence that I saw when I was going through the papers for this, that sort of highlights there was a huge amount of engagement between various parts of the Northern Ireland Executive political parties and at Civil Service level across UK Government and with the NIO, and at that point it seemed to me that – from memory, now – it was still that the main thing was just making sure that when core decisions were made, that they are alert to the differences between the devolved authorities, in central government.

Lead 2C: All right. I think, then, just moving away from those –

Lady Hallett: If you are, that is now –

Ms Dobbin: That is the time for a break.

Lady Hallett: I hope you were warned that we take breaks, but I promise you we will finish your evidence today.

Sir Brandon Lewis: That’s fine.

Lady Hallett: I shall return at 3.35.

(3.17 pm)

(A short break)

(3.35 pm)

Lady Hallett: A bit longer and no one needs it.

Ms Dobbin: Sir Brandon, I think we’re on to the last topic, if I may, which was to ask you a little bit about relations with the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland as well. I think what you’ve said in your witness statement was that the quad meetings that regularly took place between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, and I think you were involved in those, those were the most regular and perhaps effective form of communication during the pandemic; is that correct?

Sir Brandon Lewis: Yes, I mean, I instigated those, I wanted to – it just seemed to me a logical way of doing what we can to make sure everybody was talking, because the North South Ministerial Councils obviously existed, but there were sometimes challenges with those as well, so it just seemed a good way where both the UK and Irish Government were together and bringing together the parties of Northern Ireland the issues where there’s an impact between Northern Ireland and Ireland.

Lead 2C: Why were there less challenges with these quad meetings than there would have been in respect of the council meetings that you’ve just mentioned?

Sir Brandon Lewis: As in the North, do you mean the North South ministerial meetings?

Lead 2C: Yes – sorry –

Sir Brandon Lewis: Obviously the UK is not involved in the North South ministerial meetings. Occasionally – not Covid-related, but occasionally North South Ministerial Council meetings have been delayed, postponed, avoided for political purposes on different issues by politicians in Northern Ireland, whereas having a quad – and the way we structured it was a bit more informal. Obviously, particularly at the early stages they were generally by Zoom anyway, but it also meant both the Irish Government and the UK Government were there so it would be hard for the Northern Ireland ministers to not be engaged with that. And it was something actually, to be fair, that particularly the health minister was very keen on, to try to make sure there was as much engagement with the Irish as there could be.

Lead 2C: Did the importance of those meetings lie in the fact that they happened, in other words that they were a show of willingness to engage on the parts of all involved, or were they substantively valuable in terms of the issues that were discussed or ideas that were shared or the co-operation perhaps that they promoted or didn’t?

Sir Brandon Lewis: If I’ve understood correctly the point – I think if I’m understanding your question correctly, I’d like to think both.

I do think, and we – I wouldn’t underestimate the importance and the value of the display of unity and working together, for the UK Government and the Irish Government to be seen to be working together, and for the Northern Ireland Executive to all be working together. It obviously practically makes a positive difference, and I’ll come back to that – I think it’s the second part, but the fact that it’s happening and the presentation that it’s happening is important, so everybody in the whole community of Northern Ireland, whatever their constitutional view, can see that everybody is working together. So there is an importance to that, and we saw that with things later on unrelated to Covid. When there were challenges, the public seeing that – the two governments working together matters.

But it did have a beneficial substantive impact as well. There were some things that were frustratingly slow and difficult and the – you mentioned earlier on the data issue took a long time, far longer than we thought it would do, to get resolved, but I think it was also helpful in a substantive sense, yes, because the ministers, both in the Irish Government and the Northern Ireland Executive, had that forum in which to be able to engage and understand and talk about things. Not just health but – I think at times we had the education ministers as well and even the economy as well.

Lead 2C: A witness to the Inquiry, a Dr McCormick, who had special responsibility in respect of EU exit within the Northern Ireland Executive, thought that there was perhaps a slight froideur in relations between the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland at this time, although perhaps it’s less clear whether or not that – or how much that mattered in respect of Northern Ireland. But could I ask you about that observation first of all, whether or not that was your experience, that perhaps there was a chill in relations, because of EU exit.

Sir Brandon Lewis: Yes, I think that I – I think on a personal level I would say, and I would let others give their view of it from their side, but from my point of view I felt I had a – and we had a good working relationship and had a very amicable relationship with myself and Simon Coveney, who was my main point of contact.

I didn’t deal with Leo Varadkar directly other than one – for one conversation while he was Taoiseach, because he changed quite early on to Micheál Martin, and had a good working relationship with Micheál, but my main point of contact was Simon Coveney. And I felt I had positive relationships and we got on well, both with the Taoiseach and the Tánaiste, on a personal level.

But yes, I think it is fair to say there were challenges because there were other things going on at the time that were challenging for the relationship. Brexit was one of them. And obviously that had happened in advance and it put – and it made – there were certain times that that – because at the same time as Covid we were also having discussions around the impact and how we managed the border because of what became the Northern Ireland Protocol and all of those things, and those were challenging conversations.

So, as I say, at a personal level I always felt we had a good personal relationship but, at a structural level, I have no doubt there was there were some tensions there because of what was going on outside of Covid.

Lead 2C: From what you’ve said then, did those tensions sometimes creep in then to the relations between the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland in respect of the response to Covid –

Sir Brandon Lewis: The only time I can think of where I would say that – the answer to that is yes. And I don’t mean it intentionally in terms of the relationship, in terms of the discussions being – practically getting the result, was the data issue.

Lead 2C: Yes.

Sir Brandon Lewis: Because the Irish Government had a real – their point was that they were struggling to share the data that Northern Ireland Executive wanted because of data regulations and rules and their role within the European Union. And their position as a member of the European Union was hugely important to them, and them being cognisant of their role as a member of the European Union, whereas we have left and we weren’t, I think was part of the issue around why it took so long to get the data issue resolved.

Lead 2C: All right.

The appearance is given, but it may not be true or not, but if I can ask you this, whether or not co-operation between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland functioned quite well at an official level, so, for example, between perhaps public health officials, like the respective CMOs, and whether relationships at that level were perhaps easier than relationships at a political or ministerial level?

Sir Brandon Lewis: I suspect that – look, my understanding is that the – at officials level, yes, there were good relationships, strong relationships. I’m probably not able to give you an informed view about how that compares to the MIG(?), because obviously the ministers in North South councils and other direct engagement, that would have been a matter between them, so I’m not sure I can really give you a fair assessment of that.

Lead 2C: Thank you, Sir Brandon.

I wanted to come then, at the very end, just to ask you a bit about what you have reflected upon in terms of lessons learned, and perhaps if I could bring up paragraph 82 of your witness statement.

What you’ve set out there was that you thought that there needed to be a form of mechanism to ensure that different parties that make up the Northern Ireland Executive have a more cohesive way to work together in a national emergency.

And what you seem to suggest as well, and I’m just looking at the last few lines, was that there ought to be a mechanism that enables the First Minister and deputy First Minister to have a “more direct responsibility and authority over key decisions”, in order to reduce tensions between them.

I wanted to go back, I think that was something that you alluded to a little bit earlier in your statement, but I suppose the question is really whether or not you have any idea of what sort of mechanism that might be that could be used in a national emergency, or is it really rather the idea that something like that might be needed that you think needs to be reflected upon?

Sir Brandon Lewis: Yeah, no, it’s more the idea. I wouldn’t – I wouldn’t venture to – I don’t think it would be helpful for a UK – the former UK Government Secretary of State to start outlining how I think Northern Ireland should do things. That’s, I think – I think it would be a mistake and, no, I don’t have a direct answer to that.

What I did find though, and I do still believe, is that that structure – and it was manifested again in that issue with the meeting that went over three days in the November, where part of the frustration, particularly with the use of the cross-community vote, is of course that excluded the Alliance Party, who are the third largest party, instantly, because they don’t categorise – they’re listed as “other”. So that structure is quite difficult when you’re in this kind of a situation.

One of the things I – I always felt that there was an opportunity with the Good Friday Agreement’s anniversary, of the 25th anniversary, to have some – I think to do this you would need some kind of an international symposium with partners from the US, experts in constitution, and all the parties involved to have a big conference that works through what would be the next stage of development for future growth and improvement of the way that Stormont structures.

I’m not going to profess to be the expert and give the perfect answer to that but I do think Stormont will benefit generally, and certainly in this kind of situation, from something that has …

When you get to a situation like this, I also, again – the others may have a different view, but I think when you have a First and deputy First Minister with an Executive Office, I suspect there were some people in Northern Ireland who may have been surprised at the lack of direct power they actually have over the departments to be able to bring things together and drive things. And I think to the credit of both the First Minister and deputy First Minister, who I know disagreed on things at a range of times, there was, particularly in the early stages, a huge amount of effort I saw from them both to work together to try to drive that. I think that Northern Ireland would benefit from the structure supporting that beyond having personalities who are prepared to do it.

And I – but, as I say, I think the Northern Ireland structure makes it quite difficult when you’re, you know, having a forced coalition with people who fundamentally disagree on things. And I’m not just talking about the sectarian issues; as I said earlier on, that can be within the Unionist parties or within the Nationalist parties.

So I think there does need to, at some stage, need to be a piece of work done around how you further mature the way that Stormont works to reflect the needs of modern society and democracy.

Ms Dobbin: Thank you.

My Lady, those are my questions. I think there were –

Lady Hallett: If the former Secretary of State for Northern Ireland can’t do it, what about a retired judge of England and Wales, Sir Brandon?

Sir Brandon Lewis: I think it certainly needs somebody like that to chair, as I say, a wider group of people –

Lady Hallett: No, I wasn’t thinking about that. I’m just thinking about this Inquiry.

Is it you, Ms Campbell?

Ms Campbell: My Lady, Ms Dobbin has asked the questions that we wished to be asked.

Lady Hallett: All right.

Ms Campbell: I’m very grateful, thank you.

Lady Hallett: Thank you very much indeed, Sir Brandon, even if you didn’t go far enough and give me quite the final answer I might have been hoping for. But thank you very much for your help.

The Witness: Thank you.

Lady Hallett: Thank you.

(The witness withdrew)

Lady Hallett: Right, is that it?

Ms Dobbin: That’s all of the evidence for today.

Lady Hallett: Right. So tomorrow is Chief Medical Officer.

Ms Dobbin: Yes.

Lady Hallett: And 10 o’clock.

Ms Dobbin: Yes, my Lady.

Lady Hallett: Thank you.

(3.48 pm)

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