5. Submissions on Behalf of the National Police Chiefs’ Council by Mr Phillips KC

Mr Phillips: My Lady, in my brief opening submissions on

behalf of the NPCC on the first day of this hearing,

I suggested that the focus of the hearing would be, and

would rightly be, on high-level political

decision-making and political governance in

Northern Ireland, rather than on police work, and so

it’s proved.

So although Mr Todd, who led the police response to

the pandemic here, was your penultimate witness, the

striking thing about the evidence which preceded his was

how little time was spent on policing.

What then did you learn from the limited evidence

which did touch on that topic?

First, I’d suggest that those non-political

witnesses who were asked about policing here in the

pandemic were united in their view that the police’s

approach to the Covid regulations, set out by the NPCC

and then adopted here by the PSNI, was appropriate and

fair.

The four Es approach – and I know that I don’t have

to spell out the four words for you – was a realistic

and proportionate response by the police to the extraordinarily difficult task that they faced, in seeking to persuade the public to comply with regulations which, as Mr Todd explained to you, were often produced at short notice, were often hard to understand, and harder still to apply, which changed very frequently, and about which there was insufficient guidance from government.

As you know, the police’s aim was to achieve compliance, and in that, enforcement, by the imposition of fixed penalty notices or other means, was the last and not the first resort.

As the Chief Medical Officer said in his evidence, “We couldn’t police the virus into submission”, or, to put it another way, as Karen Pearson noted, “You can’t arrest your way out of a pandemic”.

The truth is that, for the reasons which I touched on in my opening submissions, and as was explained by Mr Todd in his careful evidence to you on this point, the PSNI faced the most formidably difficult challenge of all of the police services in the United Kingdom when it came to the Covid regulations. Community trust and public confidence have been harder won here than anywhere else, as you know.

The PSNI’s approach to that challenge was, of course, shaped by this very specific policing context. The operational decisions which were taken by its leaders, and by Alan Todd in particular, drew on their unrivalled experience of those unique conditions.

Those decisions were not for politicians or anyone else to make, but, as one of the senior officials put it to you, the PSNI were placed in a nigh on impossible position, and of course the Bobby Storey funeral was a paradigm example of that.

That, my Lady, is a background, but also the answer to the suggestions made in some of the witness statements, though not pursued with any vigour in the evidence that you heard, that the PSNI’s approach could have been more robust.

Those comments, with respect, misunderstand the PSNI’s operational strategy and decision-making, and fail to take account of the context which I’ve just outlined.

Moreover, the statistical information with which we’ve provided the Inquiry, shows, ironically, that the period during which it has been suggested that the police had eased off, namely in the autumn of 2020, was in fact the peak of enforcement in terms of FPNs. You’ll remember the details of fines and other enforcement measures in about September that year, which Mr Todd gave you in his evidence yesterday.

My Lady, turning back to the more general question of enforcing the Covid regulations, I would suggest that Naomi Long, Minister for Justice during the pandemic, accurately and fairly summed up the position in her witness statement when she said, at paragraph 198:

“It was an unprecedented ask of police officers and staff in an unprecedented time. I believe that, overall, the PSNI endeavoured to enforce the regulations fairly, sensitively and proportionately; advise the Executive of the limitations of their powers and of the regulations and/or guidance; and work in a collaborative manner throughout.”

My Lady, we will, of course, put in written submissions, but that’s all I wish to say at this stage, and I think I’m well within my allotted time.

Lady Hallett: You are, Mr Phillips, thank you very much indeed.

Ms Murnaghan.