Transcript of Module 2 Public Hearing on 28 November 2023

(10.00 am)

Lady Hallett: Yes.

Mr Keith: My Lady, today’s first witness is Michael Gove, please.

Mr Michael Gove

MR MICHAEL GOVE (sworn).

Lady Hallett: Mr Gove, may I make the same apology to you that I’ve made to other witnesses, that the module structure means we have to call you back again. I am sorry about the demands we are making on your time .

Mr Michael Gove: I quite understand, my Lady.

Mr Keith: Would you commence your evidence please by giving us your full name.

Mr Michael Gove: Michael Andrew Gove.

Lady Hallett: Mr Gove, thank you for your provision of a further witness statement in these proceedings, your statement of 1 September 2023 for the purposes of this module.

I want to start, please, your evidence by asking you some questions about your past ministerial role. You were Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster between 24 July 2019 and 15 September 2021; is that correct?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Lady Hallett: But you also held the post of Minister for the Cabinet Office between 13 February 2020 and 15 September 2021. Why did you fill both posts? Why were you fulfilling both those positions?

Mr Michael Gove: When I was first appointed the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, the Prime Minister made it clear that my role at that time was to lead on preparations for Brexit and in particular for preparations for a potential no deal scenario. It had been the case, I believed and the Prime Minister certainly believed, that preparations for Brexit had not been made in the way that they should have been, and that was my sole focus during the time that I was Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, CDL, alone.

After the general election the Prime Minister believed that government should be reconfigured and he wanted to give me a slightly broader role, now of course that he enjoyed a majority and that a Brexit deal had been secured in outline, and that broader role was to encompass looking at how the Cabinet Office might improve co-ordination of government policy particularly but not exclusively with the devolved administrations.

Lady Hallett: Was your appointment as Minister for the Cabinet Office connected in any way with the dawning realisation of the crisis, the coronavirus crisis, which of course was beginning to make itself apparent?

Mr Michael Gove: I don’t believe so.

Lady Hallett: You therefore held two ministerial posts broadly connected with the workings of the Cabinet Office, and did that mean that you were broadly responsible and you held the ministerial responsibility for dealing with matters such as civil contingencies, the resilience of government, with the response to civil emergencies? Was that all broadly within your brief?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes, but I had observed before taking on this role, and realised very quickly upon taking on this role, that the way in which the Cabinet Office was configured was not, to my mind, appropriate for the type of pandemic that we faced and, indeed, the type of crisis that requires an effective whole-of-government response.

Lady Hallett: I’m going to ask you some questions about the Cabinet Office in a moment. Before I do so, and just to conclude the issue of your ministerial positions, then on 15 September 2021 were you appointed Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities and also Minister for Intergovernmental Relations?

Mr Michael Gove: (The witness nodded).

Lady Hallett: Why were you appointed to both those positions?

Mr Michael Gove: The Prime Minister recognised that levelling up was a principal focus on domestic policy that had not, in his view, at that time, had the focus and drive devoted to it required, so he strengthened the department which I took over, previously MHCLG, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. We had an additional permanent secretary who was appointed on a temporary basis – I know it may seem odd to have a temporary permanent secretary, but Andy Howding(?) joined us in order to drive that activity. But intergovernmental relations which had been excised from the Cabinet Office was added, and I think the Prime Minister believed that it was a complement to the work of levelling up across the whole United Kingdom to have a minister responsible for co-ordination with the devolved administrations.

Lady Hallett: What was the genesis of that ministerial position, Minister for Intergovernmental Relations? Had there been a review, in fact, before that time into United Kingdom Government union capability?

Mr Michael Gove: Absolutely, conducted by Lord Dunlop, Andrew Dunlop, originally commissioned when Theresa May was Prime Minister, and of course the experience during Covid reinforced the need for us to have a more coherent approach towards sharing information and co-ordinating policy across the whole United Kingdom.

Lady Hallett: In broad terms did your appointment to Secretary of State for Levelling Up and as Minister for Intergovernmental Relations mean that you were less involved in decision-making related to Covid from that date of appointment, 15 September 2021?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Lady Hallett: All right. Coming back to the Cabinet Office, the Inquiry has heard evidence, and particularly in the context of Module 1, to the effect that the Cabinet Office performs a vital role at the heart of government in liaising between other government departments, synthesising the response of government in broking, if you like, the affairs of government between its various multifaceted parts.

There has been an abundance of evidence in this module, Mr Gove, to the effect that, over and above perhaps a degree of expected chaos or confusion in the face of an unprecedented crisis, the Cabinet Office was largely dysfunctional, and that is a word that’s been used by Mr Cummings, by Mark Sedwill, the former Cabinet Secretary, the former Deputy Cabinet Secretary, Helen MacNamara, and others.

How, as you see it, and you have been a minister for the Cabinet Office for some time, how was that position allowed to develop?

Mr Michael Gove: For a variety of reasons. I think the first thing is that the inherent structure of the Cabinet Office was flawed. Normally the lead minister, the Secretary of State, is responsible for everything that happens in his department, and of course – or her department, and answerable to the House of Commons, accountable for what happens there.

But the Cabinet Office is different. There is much within the Cabinet Office that is not within the purview and not within the control of whoever happens to be the lead Cabinet Office minister, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Minister for the Cabinet Office or whatever. So there are significant parts of the Cabinet Office that answer to the Cabinet Secretary or to the Prime Minister rather than to the lead minister for the Cabinet Office. And as Helen MacNamara I think points out in her evidence, in paragraph 22 of her evidence, she says that:

“In July 2019 [she] had been given clear instructions by the Prime Minister and his team that following the de-facto Deputy Prime Minister model [which some attribute the role of CDL into being] was not the intention behind appointing Mr Gove into the Cabinet Office … my teams and I should be clear that our Ministerial accountability flowed through the Prime Minister only.”

And I think actually, even though Helen was talking about the particular circumstances under which I was appointed, it was a feature of the way in which the Cabinet Office worked that various secretariats there, the National Security Secretariat and so on, worked to the Prime Minister.

Lady Hallett: Ministerially, to whom should the Inquiry look in terms of accountability for the state into which the Cabinet Office descended prior to the onset of the coronavirus pandemic?

Mr Michael Gove: Well, I would take two steps back. I think my point would be that the Cabinet Office in and of itself, over many years, has operated in a way which is not as effective as it should be for the effective delivery of government policy, both business as usual and also in response to crises.

In the first module, we touched on the lead department model for responding to crises and there is much merit in that for many of the crises that government faces. An animal health emergency or flooding emergency are best handled using the expertise that Defra, for example, has.

But when we are dealing with a whole-system crisis of the kind that Covid clearly was, then the lead departmental model is not adequate for that. We had an approach, the Cabinet Office had an approach, which I fear ceded too much responsibility to lead government departments and did not mean the assumption of sufficient responsibility at the centre. And we can see that in the way in which the Civil Contingencies Secretariat believed that it was supposed to respond. It was not occupying, I believe, the space and it did not exercise the authority that it should have done across government, partly because of the lead department model. And that is a structural issue of government that had not been addressed and which I believe this Inquiry is seeking to address.

Lady Hallett: Can I return to the structural position in a moment. My question was in fact directed at the nature of the Cabinet Office itself rather than structural issues which may have arisen between itself and other government departments, in particular the response of government in the face of a whole-government crisis.

The Cabinet Office itself has been described as dysfunctional, bloated, too many senior levels, too many director generals, a degree of duplication and confusion, a huge number of communications engagement staff, and so on. That is a facet of the Cabinet Office itself and not any other lead government department.

Why do you think that the Cabinet Office came to be in such a state?

Mr Michael Gove: Well, again, the Cabinet Office acquired additional responsibilities before and during my time there. There was a tendency, there has been a tendency, amongst successive prime ministers to shove into the Cabinet Office responsibilities that do not appear to fit conveniently or easily elsewhere. At different times, different prime ministers have used the Cabinet Office, for example, to lead on drugs policy or on policy towards charities and the third sector. So it becomes a sort of Mary Poppins bag into which different prime ministers will shove things that they believe require to be dealt with by the Government’s nanny, as it were. And it’s also the case that the Cabinet Office under previous ministers had acquired responsibility, which I believe is right, for ensuring that various cross-government functions, procurement, communications and buildings and so on, were administered more effectively.

On many of those occasions, as the Cabinet Office grew, as its responsibilities grew, what we did not have was the drains(?) up exercise to look and to focus on exactly what should be done through the Cabinet Office and what should be done through other government departments and what should be done in Number 10. And when I assumed responsibility for the whole of the Cabinet Office in the middle of February and in early March, I believed that we needed to change the way in which it operated and I made my views clear to the Prime Minister, to the Cabinet Secretary and to those working for the Prime Minister that we need to reform the way in which the Cabinet Office operated.

Lady Hallett: Again, Mr Gove, you’ve referred to the areas for which the Cabinet Office became responsible and to the structural system around it. Was it not apparent to you, particularly when you became Minister for the Cabinet Office, that in terms of personnel, in terms of its working arrangements, in terms of its ability to function, there were very serious concerns revolving around the nature of the Cabinet Office?

Mr Michael Gove: On the question of personnel I would gently push back. I think that the Cabinet Office had some of the finest civil servants in Whitehall working within it and overall I was and continue to be impressed by many those who work there. And it was certainly the case that one of the additional responsibilities that the Cabinet Office had, as we mentioned earlier, from July, was preparing for the UK’s departure from the European Union. During that time some of the civil servants, both who were there and who joined, were among some of the finest public servants that this country has.

I would not blame them. I think the dysfunction in the Cabinet Office was a consequence of two things: responsibilities being added in a piecemeal and cumulative way, without strategic thought being given to how the Cabinet Office would discharge all of those, and a related failure to think strategically about how there centre of government should be reconfigured.

Lady Hallett: Regardless of whether the cause was a systemic one, a structural one, a problem with the Cabinet Office, in blunt terms, being given too much to do, the reality in terms of the impact was very serious, was it not?

Mr Michael Gove: Oh, yes.

Lady Hallett: The government body responsible for synthesising the response of government in the face of this unprecedented crisis was largely, as it must have seemed to you, not fit for purpose in February, March, April, May of 2020?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes. I want to take this opportunity, if I may, my Lady, to apologise to the victims who endured so much pain, the families who endured so much loss as a result of the mistakes that were made by government in response to the pandemic. And as a minister responsible for the Cabinet Office and who was also close to many of the decisions that were made, I must take my share of responsibility for that.

Politicians are human beings, we’re fallible, we make mistakes and we make errors and I’m sure that the Inquiry will have an opportunity to look in detail at many of the errors I and others made but I also want to stress that I and those who – with whom I worked were also seeking at every point, in circumstances where every decision was difficult and every course was bad, to make those decisions that we felt we could, in order to try to deal with an unprecedented virus and a remarkable assault on the institutions of the country.

Lady Hallett: Could we have, please, the report from Helen MacNamara on the screen. INQ000136755.

Mr Gove, you will be very familiar with this document?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Lady Hallett: It’s a document about which Helen MacNamara herself, somebody who I’m sure you also described as being one of our finest public servants –

Mr Michael Gove: Absolutely.

Lady Hallett: – prepared in May 2020. The tenor of this document, Mr Gove, is that, not in terms of the structural responsibilities of the Cabinet Office but in terms of its output, in terms of the personnel, in terms of the culture, in terms of what it was actually able to do, there were very serious problems: the culture was not “getting the best from people”, there was “powerlessness”, there was “bad behaviours from … leaders”, “too much politics”, the talking over of junior women.

She says:

“Too many [Cabinet Office] senior leaders which means they can’t take decisions without consulting others … Super-hero culture …”

The Cabinet Office has “fallen out of shape”.

Those are damning observations, are they not?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes, they are. And Helen’s broader evidence points to the way in which, as she says, the Cabinet Office is not elastic. It was moved into a particular shape as a result of some of the successive responsibilities that I mentioned earlier, and so the overall structure of the Cabinet Office was not such that it could perform as it should, as any government department should when faced with the crisis.

Some of the behaviour that Helen quite rightly points out and calls out is, I think, a regrettable feature of one of our failures to effectively and at an early stage change the way in which the Cabinet Office worked. And as I mentioned earlier, there were a variety of changes that I wished to make, including some that I did make to personnel, which were intended to address some, though not all, of the concerns that Helen rightly raises.

Lady Hallett: Right at the bottom of that first page there are these words:

“Sense that Cabinet Office has lost its way in making the Whitehall machine work for No 10 [and then over the page]: not synthesising departments or leveraging machine.”

That is a fair broad observation of course but it may be thought to be an obvious one. If it had appeared to Helen MacNamara that in this very general sense the Cabinet Office was failing in its primary role of leveraging the government machine, that must have been apparent to you from being Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, which of course is a related Cabinet Office ministerial role, and certainly from February 2020 when you became Minister for the Cabinet Office.

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Lady Hallett: What did you do yourself in February, March, April to address the concerns which you appear to have shared?

Mr Michael Gove: Well, the first thing is that when I was Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster solely, as I mentioned earlier, my focus on was on Brexit preparations and, again, we discussed in the Inquiry the extent to which I believe that those helped us to prepare for some of the challenges of Covid. But after assuming responsibility for the whole of the Cabinet Office, I sought to try to wrestle it into shape and I – both with my private office and also with the new permanent secretary, Alex Chisholm, made a series of recommendations as to how things should and might change, improving its analytical function, changing the way in which reporting lines operated.

But, if I may, one of the things that I found while I was there, and even as the situation with Covid was looming on the horizon, was that I discovered during the course of those early weeks that there were parts of the Cabinet Office and ways the Cabinet Office operated that were shielded almost from my scrutiny and intervention.

A case in point occurred when on 3 March, I believe, I had to answer an urgent question about the resignation of the Philip Rutnam as permanent secretary at the Home Office and the consequences for the position of the then Home Secretary, Dame Priti Patel. I was preparing, as the minister accountable, to go into the House of Commons to answer the question when, shortly before I went in, I was told – and didn’t know beforehand – that there was an enquiry going on as to whether or not there the then Home Secretary had breached the Ministerial Code.

That Inquiry was supervised by the propriety and ethics team within the Cabinet Office, who do a peerless job, but I wasn’t aware of that at all. So the key element in the Cabinet Office, a key team, was shielded from my scrutiny and my ability to both know what was going on and then ask questions about its effectiveness. At various differed times, in the run-up to that UQ and afterwards, I sought, by talking to Number 10 and making clear my frustrations, that we needed to fundamentally alter how the Cabinet Office worked. And indeed I expressed my views, including to Dominic Cummings, sometimes in very direct terms, about the need for change and reform in the way in which the Cabinet Office operated.

Lady Hallett: Mr Gove, we will look in due course at many of the suggestions that you made in relation to reform of the Cabinet Office structure but, again, why did this revelatory understanding about the state of the Cabinet Office not occur whilst you were Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, that is to say, between July of 2019 and February of 2020? It must have become apparent to you, while you discharged that important ministerial responsibility, that the government department for which you were at least indirectly responsible was failing?

Mr Michael Gove: Well, the first thing is that my responsibility as CDL was to make sure that the inadequate preparations that we had made for our departure from the European Union were ramped up, and that was the principal focus of my work. It meant enlisting additional people from outside the Cabinet Office to come in. Already I was aware that in one area, a central area of government responsibility, government was not configured as it should be.

I was, during that time, increasingly aware of some of the inherent dysfunction within the Cabinet Office but it was only when I assumed full responsibility as MCO that it became clear to me quite how dysfunctional the structure of the organisation was. And as I mentioned earlier, there were parts of the Cabinet Office that, perhaps rightly, considered themselves not to be responsible to or accountable to me, or indeed anyone who was CDL or MCO. And I used to refer to parts of the Cabinet Office as the dark side of the moon because they were obscured from my gaze.

Lady Hallett: If you were increasingly aware, as you say you were, why did you take no steps prior to March 2020 to address the problem?

Mr Michael Gove: I was appointed to be MCO, I think, on 13 February and I think within weeks I was making clear to Number 10 and others –

Lady Hallett: No, I mean, I apologise, between July 2019, when you were Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, and March 2020, when you had your feet under the table of that new ministerial responsibility?

Mr Michael Gove: Again, it’s a nature of – or a feature and in the nature of cabinet government that you can make observations to the Prime Minister and to others about the weaknesses that you discern in other parts of government but there are delineations of responsibility –

Lady Hallett: I apologise for interrupting. Did you make those observations between July 2019 and February 2020?

Mr Michael Gove: I made some observations informally about some features of how the government machine was operating but at that time I was prioritising what I considered to be the role and mission that the Prime Minister had given me and which I believed was absolutely critical.

So as I arrived as minister for the Cabinet Office alongside being Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, I had concerns but I wanted to familiarise myself with the shape and structure in greater detail before then making recommendations for change.

Normally, in previous Cabinet roles, when I have arrived in departments and I believed that there needed to be change, I’ve taken a couple of months before instituting what some of those changes are, because I wanted to make sure that I properly understood why things are the way they are before then arguing for change. When I arrived at the Cabinet Office it was rather quicker.

There is a principle in politics, a principle of Chesterton’s Fence: sometimes the existence of a particular institution of protocol seems irrational but before you remove it you need to understand why it might have been put there.

That applies in other government departments. Don’t immediately rush to change things before understanding why they were there. As you say, while I was Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster I became increasingly aware of the need for change and then, as Minister for the Cabinet Office, I sought quickly to familiarise myself with those aspects of the operation of the Cabinet Office that I had not been directly responsible for beforehand and became even more seized of the need for changing how it worked.

Lady Hallett: You are not suggesting, of course, that dysfunctionality, if revealed in the heart of a government department, is something that should not be addressed?

Mr Michael Gove: No, it absolutely should be addressed but my point is one borne of experience which is, you need to understand why things are the way they are. That things which at first or even second glance within government, or within any institution, which may seem a barrier to progress or may seem illogical must have seemed at one point, logical to someone.

So you need to understand why things are the way they are before then saying, “Right, this needs to change, the justification has fallen away, the logic behind this decision no longer applies”.

Lady Hallett: Was it also apparent to you from February 2020 that there were very serious systemic issues in the heart of Number 10? The Inquiry has heard a great deal of evidence about the toxicity, the atmosphere in Number 10, the behaviour of people in Number 10. You will be familiar with the references in the Cabinet Secretary’s WhatsApps to it being like taming wild animals, nothing in Mr Case’s past experience had prepared him for the madness, he had never seen a bunch of people less well equipped to run a country.

That could not have been hidden from you as Minister for the Cabinet Office, could it?

Mr Michael Gove: I think Mr Case’s evidence –

Lady Hallett: Well, he hasn’t given evidence yet.

Mr Michael Gove: I think that WhatsApp refers to circumstances later in our response to Covid, but I entirely understand your point.

I think it is the case that almost every Number 10 operation has had, by its nature, strong personalities. Sometimes those personalities clash. Sometimes under tension humans express themselves in ways which, with the benefit of hindsight, they regret.

It is certainly the case that under Boris Johnson there were strong personalities in Number 10, but those strong personalities had been responsible for helping to secure not just an election victory but an end to the logjam in Parliament over Brexit, and many of those strong personalities needed to be assertive in order to deal with some of the other challenges that we faced.

Lady Hallett: But you accept, do you not, that this was an issue going beyond personality clash: the behaviour, the style, the personalities of the people in Number 10 had a direct impact on its functionality, on its ability to perform in the face of this unprecedented crisis. You would accept that proposition?

Mr Michael Gove: Well, I think that you’re never going to get a perfect team of personalities all of whom are beautifully aligned and amongst whom there is perfect harmony. You will always have – it’s in the nature of politics – strong views, sometimes punchily expressed.

The key thing, I think, is: overall, does the system accommodate a diversity of opinion and then, once a resolution is reached, does it implement that policy quickly and effectively? And I think the nature of politics the nature of decision-making in any organisation under pressure means that people do sometimes need to be, you know, a little bit direct.

Lady Hallett: The evidence, Mr Gove, suggests – well, the point is not that a council of perfection should have been expected on the part of Number 10 but that it was dysfunctional, that it was chaotic, that in terms of its ability to produce policy, as you have described it, to implement government decision-making, it was, to use the words of Mr Cummings himself, dysfunctional?

Mr Michael Gove: I think that there were – Mr Cummings’ written evidence goes into great length about many of the frustrations that he felt, even before he entered government, about the way in which it worked. I share many, if not all, of his concerns and views about some of the weaknesses in the way in which government operates. But I think that it’s in the nature of anyone who’s a reformer that they will feel the need to test the effectiveness of delivery and then want to seek to improve it, sometimes by being exacting and tough but, one would hope, always with an understanding of the human factor as well. And I think that the question of how effective government was and is, is best discerned from a detailed look at its response to different crises.

Again, I would not want to pre-empt the committee’s conclusions at all but I think I would argue that the government of Boris Johnson, when it came to preparation for Brexit, executed that well, when it came to the vaccine roll-out, executed that well, but there are other areas which I know the Inquiry will look at where it would be quite wrong to award ourselves high marks.

Lady Hallett: I’m going to press you on that, Mr Gove. In terms of the government’s overall response in those early months to the crisis and deliberately not addressing the issue of vaccines, the government response was deficient. There was a chaotic and dysfunctional element inside Number 10, inside the Cabinet Office, and the government, whether you put it in terms of – using your words, in terms of output or delivery, was significantly off the mark was it not?

Mr Michael Gove: I think it was the case that there were specific failings, and we can go on to list them, but I would add two things. The first is that governments across the developed world were dealing with a novel virus and governments across the western world scrambled to appreciate quite how devastating the impact of this virus would be on their healthcare systems, on their economies and on vulnerable people within their societies. So of course mistakes and errors were made by the UK government and some of them were unique and specific to the UK government. But I also think that we need to remember that governments everywhere made errors.

This is not to excuse me from my responsibility for the mistakes that I made, it’s simply to say that, when dealing with a crisis of this kind, one needs to appreciate that for democratic politicians everywhere there were sudden and accumulating pressures which some dealt with better than others, but also the very nature of the virus and the nature of the response required became more and more apparent over time as more and more evidence came to light. As we’ve seen from the evidence presented to the Inquiry.

Originally there was scepticism about asymptomatic transmission. As we’ve seen from the evidence presented to the Inquiry, there was a strong body of scientific evidence that suggested that, for example, to lock down earlier than we did would have tested the patience and the endurance of the British public in a way that was not sustainable.

Lady Hallett: Can I interrupt you there to say of course we’re going to look at some of the decision-making, important decision-making, and the information available to the government but, before we move on from this topic, Mr Gove, you would accept that however eloquently advanced those observations in relation to the performance of other governments, it can only be proffered by way of mitigation. They are not an answer to the basic charge – I don’t mean that in a legal sense – that there were failings in the heart of the government machine, its departments, its centre, its operations in Number 10, that directly impacted upon its ability to respond to the crisis?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes, but I think that it’s important that we are specific and that we look at specific incidents.

So it’s understandable that people will express themselves in WhatsApps in the heat of the moment, or even in evidence in placid recollection they will express themselves with frustration, sometimes anger, about what they see and what went on. That is human. What is also human is making mistakes.

The key thing is were we – were individuals, case by case, operating in a way that was cavalier, irrational or foolish? My contention would be that if we look in detail at each of the processes of decision-making, we can understand that many of the weaknesses were as a result of systemic factors, other weaknesses were a result of people’s preferences, instincts and judgments leading them in a particular direction which, with the benefit of hindsight, was wrong.

Lady Hallett: Indeed.

The DHSC, you must have been in a position to form a view in a general sense about its ability to respond to the crisis. Evidence has been given in this module from Mr Cummings, from Lord Sedwill, also by Sir Patrick Vallance, with particular reference to his diaries, to the effect that between February and May 2020 the DHSC was overwhelmed by the scale of the crisis.

I don’t wish to engage with you on the merits of the lead government department model. We must focus on the practical response, the practical ability of that department to be able to respond to the crisis.

Would you agree with that proposition that it was indeed overwhelmed by the scale of the crisis?

Mr Michael Gove: I think I would put it in a slightly different way. I think that – and I feel I am having to go back to the lead department model, not as a shield behind which DHSC should be protected from criticism but just broadly to contextualise.

The first thing I would say I have a very high opinion of the then and current permanent secretary that department, Sir Chris Wormald, with whom I worked at the Department for Education. The other thing I would say is that I also, and I know not everyone testifying to this Inquiry has, I also have a high opinion of Matt Hancock as a minister.

However, I believe that too much was asked of DHSC at that point. And it goes to the heart of one of the challenges that I mentioned earlier. We should collectively have recognised that this a whole-system crisis at an earlier point and taken onto other parts of government the responsibility for delivery that was being asked of DHSC at that time.

I think with the benefit of the hindsight those within DHSC felt “we can do it, we can meet this hour”. And I think that while that degree of commitment and leaning in is admirable in spirit, the truth is that at an earlier stage we should have broadened responsibility. We did, in due course, with the setting up of the ministerial implementation groups, the Covid-19 Taskforce and so on, but I do believe that should have happened earlier.

Lady Hallett: You have said that there may have been an element in the DHSC of “we can do it”?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Lady Hallett: In Sir Patrick Vallance’s diaries there are references to Mr Hancock appearing to want to keep too much to himself.

Mr Michael Gove: Mmm.

Lady Hallett: That in the face of the operational mess, as he describes it, into which the DHSC descended, there was a failure on Mr Hancock’s part and on the part of the permanent secretary to tell the rest of government how it was. They kept too much to itself – or to themselves. Would you agree with that proposition?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes, but I think that, as I’ve just described, it was a desire to rise to the occasion and a wish to not evade responsibility actually on their part, but there should have been arguably a greater degree of challenge at an earlier stage.

And it was case that I, and I’m sure others as well, used COBRs and used other opportunities, emails, messages and so on, to try to ensure that the right questions were being asked and that DHSC, if it wasn’t able to deliver in a particular area, sought the help of other government departments or had the oversight and scrutiny that other government departments could bring.

Lady Hallett: Regardless of their intentions, and they may have been honourable, you would agree that a failure to move fast enough, a failure to keep the rest of the government informed as to the crisis faced by the DHSC was a significant failing in itself? That is not how the system is meant to work.

Mr Michael Gove: Well, I would take it one step back, which is that I think it is the case that there was a noble intention on the part of DHSC, but it is not as though DHSC was the sole repository of information about what was going on with the virus.

One of the things that we were all doing was both listening to the thoughtful advice from the Government Chief Scientific Adviser and the Chief Medical Officer but also seeing what was happening on our television screens, reading material that was open source and widely shared. So we could form a judgment about whether or not the whole government response and the DHSC response was appropriate.

So, again, we could make a judgment about the need for ventilators, seeing what was happening both in the Far East and in Italy. It didn’t need – it should not have needed one single government department to prompt questioning from others within government about the approach that we were taking. And, indeed, as I think my evidence points out, I benefited from reading outside government briefings in order to be able to bring to bear the sorts of questions which I believed it was necessary to ask.

Lady Hallett: Let us look then at some of the documents to which you were privy and the meetings which you attended in the early days of February 2020.

Just by way of introduction to this topic, and to explore your understanding as to what – in general terms, what general state the United Kingdom was in.

Professor Sir Chris Whitty has stated that he was under no illusions that the United Kingdom was well set up to meet the challenges of a major pandemic, because he knew that investment in healthcare had been suboptimal, he knew that the planned flu plans, such as they were, wouldn’t necessarily stand up to the challenges of coronavirus, and of course he was aware there was no sophisticated or scaled-up test and trace system, in contradistinction to some other countries.

In general terms, Mr Gove, in early February were you aware of those concerns? Was that a viewpoint that you shared? Were you under any illusions as to the general ability of the United Kingdom to respond to this crisis?

Mr Michael Gove: I think it was only later in February that I began to feel a sense of concern about how well prepared as a country we were. Prior to that (a) I didn’t have the MCO responsibilities, but (b) the general sense was that we were relatively well prepared as a country. Those were the assurances that we were being given across government, and I broadly took those on trust. I think there were some ways in which the government, as a result of exercises and steps that we had taken beforehand, was, you know, in a position to deal with aspects of the crisis, other areas which we were clearly weaker.

But no, I didn’t have the prescience to see in early February that we were not well prepared. I think was only later in February and early in March that my concerns about our response mounted.

Lady Hallett: Of course there was no real change in relation to those deficiencies?

Mr Michael Gove: No.

Lady Hallett: The healthcare system was what it was, the pan flu plans had been prepared in 2011 and had not been significantly altered, and there was no sophisticated, scaled-up TTI system.

So to that extent, Mr Gove, why were you not made aware of those salient features, those pre-existing aspects of the government’s ability to respond?

Mr Michael Gove: I think because, again, I trusted and I think others within government would have trusted the Department of Health and those with whom it all worked in that area.

Even after I took on MCO responsibilities, which was, as we discussed, in the middle of February, I could not immediately, I think, have scrutinised every single contingency plan across government and tested it with the rigour that might have been deserved.

Lady Hallett: Of course.

Mr Michael Gove: And, of course, we were in the middle of an evolving crisis. And as I mentioned earlier, and this is well known, while the plan for pandemic flu that had been developed was – you know, had many strengths and virtues, it was in the nature of the virus that we faced that it presented a different set of challenges from those that pandemic flu presented.

Lady Hallett: Indeed. But you would therefore accept that it turned out your trust in the system of government, your trust in, as you’ve described it, in the understanding that, structurally, United Kingdom was well placed to meet the challenges of this new virus, were misplaced. It turned out we were not?

Mr Michael Gove: We were not as well prepared as we should have been ideally. I think that is true. Again, it’s in the nature of the fact that the virus was novel. And, indeed – I think this probably goes beyond the remit of the Inquiry – there is a significant body of judgement that believes that the virus itself was man-made, and that that presents a particular set of challenges as well.

Lady Hallett: That forms no part of the terms of reference of this Inquiry, Mr Gove, to address that somewhat divisive issue so we’re not going to go there.

Mr Michael Gove: But I think it is important to recognise that the virus presented a series of new challenges that required both the science to adjust and science, by definition, adjusts on the basis of accumulating evidence both about the operation of the virus and its effect on particular elements within the population.

Lady Hallett: Well, we’ll come to that quite separate issue in a moment.

There was a Cabinet meeting on 6 February, INQ000056137. You were an attendee. We can see your name in the left-hand column on the first page.

On page 6 there was a reference to a tabletop exercise. We should be able to see that reference – perhaps not on this page – oh, yes:

“There would be a tabletop exercise the following week. Colleagues should attend personally or designate a junior minister as a dedicated departmental minister.”

That may have been, I think it probably was, Operation or Exercise Nimbus that took place on 12 February. Did you attend Exercise Nimbus?

Mr Michael Gove: No.

Lady Hallett: What learning was communicated to you about the outcome of that tabletop exercise to which there had been reference in Cabinet?

Mr Michael Gove: I do not recall any specific reference to Exercise or Operation Nimbus. I do recall that after I acquired the responsibilities as MCO a series of conversations with Katharine Hammond, the director of the Civil Contingencies Secretariat, about some of the specific responsibilities that the Cabinet Office had.

One thing I would say, which again goes to some of our earlier points, in the conversation I had with Katharine, again great public servant, quite a lot of the conversation was preoccupied with excess death management. A very sombre and important subject.

The sense that I had was that the Civil Contingencies Secretariat was dealing with those issues that other government departments felt they did not want to or should not be leading on, so it was dealing with, as it were, not the whole sweep of questions that it should be dealing with, and I was struck by the fact that Cabinet Office, instead of assuming that broader co-ordinating role which I would have assumed that it did, was instead being expected to deal with admittedly a hugely important section of our response rather than the whole of the response.

Lady Hallett: What other matters, what issues, should it have been dealing with?

Mr Michael Gove: Well, my belief, and this is what eventually came to pass, is that it should have been the case that Cabinet Office should have been in a position, with the resources and the structure, in order to be able to more rigorously interrogate and then take control of the response to crises that other government departments, as lead government departments, had allocated or had been allocated – allocated to themselves or had been allocated, I should say.

Lady Hallett: Therefore, we may presume from your evidence that it did not do those things.

Can I ask you what your understanding was, in a very broad sense, about the nature of the work done by the CCS, because the material, as you rightly identify, shows that the CCS, the Civil Contingencies Secretariat, was concerned with planning for excess death management?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Lady Hallett: What a terrible euphemism. It was dealing with issues such as body bags –

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Lady Hallett: – and the care for and the looking after of dead bodies?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Lady Hallett: It was concerned with the promulgation of a pandemic – in fact, a flu pandemic bill. It was concerned with the search capacity within the NHS and with the financing of the care sector.

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Lady Hallett: But there was no consideration of possible countermeasures at that stage or, in a broad sense, of infection control matters?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Lady Hallett: Is that the area to which you are referring when you say there were areas it didn’t address?

Mr Michael Gove: Part of it. But it’s even more a prior question, which is: if you have a lead government department and the Secretary of State for that lead government department chairing COBR, he is asking of other government departments for a variety of things. So if I were Secretary of State for Health and it were a pandemic or if you were –

Lady Hallett: Slow down a little bit, Mr Gove, you are racing away now.

Mr Michael Gove: Forgive me.

If either of us – if my Lady were Secretary of State for Health and chairing COBR, any of us would ask of other government departments, “What are you doing?” So one would ask of the Education Minister, “Are we certain that policy X is being followed in schools?” One would ask of the Defence Secretary, “Is it possible that we can deploy the military in this occasion?”

But the Health Secretary him or herself is not being questioned or held to account in that process, and I believe that that’s the wrong model, that the Health Secretary – or the Home Secretary if it’s a terrorist outrage, or the Environment Secretary if it is an animal or plant disease outbreak – should not be the person chairing COBR but the person reporting to COBR, and it should be a Cabinet Office minister or the Prime Minister who acts as the chair, interrogating all government departments, seeking to ensure that ancillary departments support the lead department but also questioning the lead department on its responsibilities and management.

Lady Hallett: Was there a specific issue in this regard in relation to the Health ministerial implementation group, because Mr Hancock chaired that MIG and therefore was, to some extent, in the way that you described, marking his own homework?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes. And I would say as a structural weakness, because, as I mentioned earlier, I have a high opinion of Mr Hancock and believe that many of the decisions that he made were right and displayed foresight and wisdom.

Lady Hallett: You have acknowledged that when you discussed these issues with the Civil Contingencies Secretariat –

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Lady Hallett: – and we must presume from the fact that you said you approached them and you spoke to them, that you were engaged in this issue, it was something that you were looking at, was it apparent to you that there was no real debate about infection control being carried out within the CCS, that it was focusing on – and I don’t mean this disrespectfully – ancillary issues such as the management of dead bodies, legislative proposals for dealing with public order in the face of a flu or coronavirus pandemic and, admittedly, surge capacity within the NHS? In central government terms there was no real consideration of how do we stop this virus from spreading, of what infection control measures need to be thought about and then put into place.

What was your reaction?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes, I would not want to overstate either my knowledge or my prescience. All that I felt when I was talking to Katharine is (a), as you say, the whole issue of excess death management is sombre, chilling, scary. Also, why is this assuming so much of the Civil Contingencies Secretariat’s time and time in this conversation when there are so many other aspects of dealing with this emerging pandemic that require to be addressed.

What I could not say, because I did not know enough, is who’s dealing with X, who’s dealing with Y, who’s dealing with Z. Because appreciating the need for infection control, non-pharmaceutical interventions, therapeutics and so on was something that I only became more acquainted with as the crisis developed.

Lady Hallett: In this Cabinet meeting you will see, two or three lines above the reference to tabletop exercise, the words:

“The central point to make was that the Government had a plan to deal with this illness, and this was guided by science.”

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Lady Hallett: I don’t intend you ask you any questions about the doctrine of following the science but what was the plan, as far as you understood it, that the government had in place to deal with the illness? What plan? You must have asked yourself.

Mr Michael Gove: Yes, and the plan, and again this was emphasised in COBR, was a plan to delay and contain the spread of the disease. The disease, however, overwhelmed that plan, to put it mildly.

Lady Hallett: How delay, how contain, Mr Gove? What was the plan for delaying, for practically stopping the spread of the virus into the United Kingdom and then containing it thereafter to the extent that – delaying it thereafter to the extent containment was lost? What were the nuts and bolts of that plan, as far as you understood it to be?

Mr Michael Gove: That we should use testing and contact tracing in order to monitor the spread of the disease and that – seek to isolate those who were infected.

Lady Hallett: You understood, of course, that that system dealt only with index cases, a relatively small number of travellers who had come into the United Kingdom –

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Lady Hallett: – and that there was, beyond the first few hundred, absolutely no system for testing, tracing and isolating.

Mr Michael Gove: Quite. And not only was the system at that time proven to be inadequate and overwhelmed, there were subsequent problems with testing and contact tracing throughout the pandemic.

I would only add, however, that the initial evidence that ministers were presented with was that there was a low likelihood of asymptomatic transmission and obviously we subsequently discovered – we all discovered that was not the case.

Lady Hallett: That is to do with the overarching understanding of the characteristics of the virus, but focusing on what the Cabinet was told –

Mr Michael Gove: Yes –

Lady Hallett: – by the CMO about the nature of the plan, this was plainly a matter of the gravest concern and you were being assured, “Don’t worry we’ve got a plan”?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Lady Hallett: And I want to ask you what was your understanding of the mechanics of that plan beyond, “Well, we’re going to contain it and delay it”?

Mr Michael Gove: That principally, but also that we had as Chief Medical Officer one of Britain’s foremost epidemiologists, that we had a robust system within the NHS of providing surge capacity at certain moments, and that we had stocks of some of the drugs that might prove efficacious and of PPE. Of course it was in the nature of our preparation that our preparation was for a flu pandemic and that the PPE and drugs that we had were aligned with that type of pandemic, not the coronavirus pandemic, as it turned out.

Lady Hallett: Even at that stage, Mr Gove, it was known to everybody there was no antiviral or no therapeutic for this coronavirus so that could have been of little solace.

Mr Michael Gove: Mm.

Lady Hallett: In terms of how it was envisaged that if the virus spread beyond the handful of travellers and index cases, infection control measures could be put into place, what debate was there?

Mr Michael Gove: That debate only intensified or really took place later.

Lady Hallett: I’m so sorry to interrupt. There was no debate about the nature of the existence of infection control measures at this stage in early February?

Mr Michael Gove: Well, there was an observation or a series of observations about what was being done in east Asian countries and particularly in China. And, again, a central question that I know many of us will be asked to address is the wisdom or efficacy of lockdown.

But I think as the CMO, CSA and others have said, lockdown was an unprecedented departure for a country like the United Kingdom with its traditions of liberty. Normally, it would be the case that those who were infected and visibly so would be isolated, not an entire population being locked down.

It was a very, very significant step, I believe right and justified given the nature of the virus, but nevertheless a momentous one. And, again, we were looking at emerging evidence at that time and, again, I would stress that the burden of the advice that we were being given in early March was that thinking about locking down the population was not just a momentous step and a significant departure from what had gone before, but a policy that would have to be introduced with care because we could not expect the UK population to endure those restrictions for too long.

Lady Hallett: We will return, of course, to the issue of lockdown. But for present purposes, it wasn’t of course a decision that was made until 23 March.

Mr Michael Gove: Indeed.

Lady Hallett: And not debated, in fact, at a serious and high level until probably two weekends before the weekend of 14/15 March.

Mr Michael Gove: Mmm.

Lady Hallett: You accept, therefore, Mr Gove, that whilst debating the spread of a new coronal viral outbreak, acknowledging as you have done already that there was a dawning realisation that there were no practical measures that could stop its spread, no TTI, sophisticated TTI system, that the virus, once it got out of China, would be impossible to be limited, to be kept away from our shores. There was no debate about infection control, prosaically, “How do we stop the virus from spreading throughout this land?”

Mr Michael Gove: I would say two things. I’m sure there was debate going on in SAGE, in other government advisory committees, amongst medical experts, epidemiologists and public health experts. I’m sure that debate was going on. I could only rely on the advice that was given to government ministers, broadly, and also to what you or I or anyone could read through open source information.

And at the time, in public debate, there were not many voices who were urging the type of action that we subsequently embraced and I think it was only because of the situation in Italy, in Lombardi, and the effect of lockdown there, that we had a real existing example in a Western European country of the application of the types of policies that we subsequently had to embrace.

So I search in vain for the individual or individuals who, well in advance of early March, were clear about what was required. I think I mentioned in my evidence that the former Cabinet Minister, Rory Stewart, invoked the example of dealing with Ebola in calling for very firm measures. But I believe in Rory’s case, I think one of the most prescient figures in the debate, that was only early in March that he was making that case. Admittedly of course, and to be fair to him, he was, having been a government minister, also outside government.

Lady Hallett: You’ve referred of course to the outbreak in northern Italy. To get our chronological bearings, the first lockdown was imposed in northern Italy in ten municipalities on 21 February.

Mr Michael Gove: Mmm.

Lady Hallett: So we will come back to this some time before the comparable decision was taken here.

Another document before the break, please, the Civil Contingencies Secretariat was tasked on 25 February with drawing up plans for central government for dealing with this coronal viral outbreak.

If we have that, please, INQ000146569, we can see a document dated 28 February which was sent to the Prime Minister. We can see the reference in the top right-hand corner.

“[Prime Minister], this is a short update paper on domestic plans on coronavirus. Attached is the full action plan Matt wants to publish on Tuesday [and] which COBRA will review Monday.”

That is a reference to the action plan which ultimately was published on 3 March.

Mr Michael Gove: Mmm.

Lady Hallett: If you could scroll back out, we can see dated 2 March that the CCS is saying, in paragraph 1:

“Covid-19 looks increasingly likely to become a global pandemic, although this is not yet certain.”

I’m not going to debate with you, Mr Gove, when it became understood that there would be a global pandemic, but that was the position taken by the CCS.

“However, a global pandemic will require a step up in our response, as we use additional legal powers, public messaging and difficult policy decisions to delay the onset of any peak and mitigate the worst impacts …”

If we could scroll back out, we can see then in paragraph 3:

“Preparations are well underway, COBR is meeting regularly and our best scientists are advising on when this step up will be needed … we may need to share more of our planning …”

Then to get your bearings, if we could scroll back out on page 2, at 7, 8 and 9, we can see strategic and tactical aims set out: protect lives, contain the infection, delay the peak?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Lady Hallett: “We need to strike a balance between taking precaution steps and overreacting.”

So two questions, please. Were you privy to this document? Was this sent to you?

Mr Michael Gove: Well, I appear to be on the cc list but –

Lady Hallett: You do.

Mr Michael Gove: I am not certain. I would have to check with my office that I actually received this document in this form.

Lady Hallett: There was another variant of this document, of course one without the note on the top, the handwritten note, which is why I have taken you to it.

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Lady Hallett: But do the best that you can then. There are repeated references to the preparation that would need to be done, a clear plan of activity that would be required, and to the strategic and tactical aims.

Mr Michael Gove: Mmm.

Lady Hallett: At this time, at the end of February, which is over a week after the lockdowns had been imposed in Italy, were you struck by the absence of detailed infection control plans, the practical measures, which ultimately of course were imposed? Did it strike you that their omission from this core document, from the Civil Contingencies Secretariat was significant?

Mr Michael Gove: I think it was only a week after that the week commencing 9 or 10 March that my concerns began to mount significantly.

Lady Hallett: There’s a reference to overreaction in paragraph 9:

“… as cases spread across the world the risk of overreacting is reducing.”

There was a meeting with the Prime Minister, which again you may not have attended, on that day, 20 February, and his Private Secretary’s notebook refers to the fact that the Prime Minister stated the biggest damage would be done by overreaction.

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Lady Hallett: What was your view at this stage, around about the end of February, on the danger of overreacting?

Mr Michael Gove: I recognise the case. I do not believe that it was at the end of February. I believe that it was just a little bit later, as I say, on the week beginning 9 or 10 March that I became convinced that the danger was under reacting, not overreacting.

But I think that the Prime Minister’s view that on past occasions we had seen, foot and – not so much foot and mouth, forgive me, Freudian slip – BSE, that we had seen an overreaction. I think his natural concern was that if we paralyse the economy, there would be undoubted costs, there were undoubted costs, and before taking such a grave step we need to be absolutely certain that it was justified.

As I say, at the time, at this precise point around the very end of February, I was inclined to give substantial weight to the Prime Minister’s concerns.

It was only in the succeeding days that I became more and more convinced actually that action was required, and that was partly because of what I had seen happening in Italy, partly also material that had been sent to me by friends outside government, that led me to believe action was needed.

Mr Keith: My Lady, is that a convenient moment?

Lady Hallett: It is certainly. 11.30, please.

(11.14 am)

(A short break)

(11.31 am)

Mr Keith: Mr Gove, during the course of the morning I was asking you some questions about dysfunctionality at the heart of central government, in particular in some of its government departments. I asked you, I said I’m going to press you in relation to the areas in which you said it would be wrong to award yourself and the government high marks and you said: “I think it was the case that there were specific failings, and we can go on to list them …”

Rather rudely I didn’t ask you to list them. Could you list them please.

Mr Michael Gove: I don’t think I can exhaustively. I think that – I believe that we were too slow to lockdown initially, in March. I believe that we should have taken stricter measures before we eventually decided to do so, late in October. I believe that while it was admirable that we succeeded in building testing capacity so quickly that the strategic approach to who should be tested and why and what the tests were for, was not as rigorously thought through as it might have been.

I am also concerned that we did not pay enough attention to the impact particularly on children, and vulnerable children, of some of the measures that we took.

I also believe that the approach that we took towards PPE procurement deserves, at the very least, reflection.

Lady Hallett: Thank you.

On 2 March, there was a COBR. It was first one chaired by the Prime Minister.

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Lady Hallett: INQ000056217.

Do you believe that the Prime Minister should have chaired earlier COBRs, not for the purposes of reaching different outcome in terms of the work done by COBR, Mr Gove, but in terms of giving a greater impression that the crisis was being taken seriously, or are you agnostic on this issue?

Mr Michael Gove: Not quite agnostic. In an ideal world, the Prime Minister or another minister who was not the Secretary of State for Health – this is not a personal comment about Matt Hancock, simply about the role as we discussed earlier – could have chaired it but I do believe that the Prime Minister chairing it on Monday 2 March was wise and right.

Lady Hallett: Page 5, paragraph 2:

“The CHAIR invited the Government Chief Medical Officer (CMO) and the Government Chief Scientific Adviser (GCSA) to provide a situation update. The CMO said that contract tracing for the source or investigation for the last two cases in the United Kingdom had not been successful and that in both France and Germany there was now sustained community transmission.”

So this is 2 March, it’s about a week or ten days after a lockdown has been imposed for the first time in the ten municipalities in Italy. There have been cases within the United Kingdom since the beginning of January – 30 and 31 January in fact, and COBR, the primary crisis response body for the United Kingdom is being told contract tracing for the source of infection for the last two cases had not been successful and there is sustained community transmission in France and Germany.

Did you, experienced Cabinet Office minister as you were, understand that, in effect, containment had been lost, that the virus was here and was spreading?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Lady Hallett: There was an action plan published the following day, you have referred to it earlier, INQ000057508, the Coronavirus: action plan. This was – and we’ll come to this in a different context later in the course of your evidence – a document, a publication, to which all the devolved nations had contributed.

At page 10 on paragraph 3.9 there is, set out, the broad strategic approach of the United Kingdom Government:

“Contain: detect early cases, follow up close contacts, and prevent the disease taking hold in this country for as long as is reasonably possible.”

If it does take hold, “slow the spread in this country”.

Did COBR, which was sighted, of course, on the publication of this action plan, consider the degree to which containment had already been lost, that the virus was in the United Kingdom and it was spreading, there was sustained community transmission and therefore that a strategy based in part upon containment was a failed strategy?

Mr Michael Gove: I think it’s fair to say that there was a dawning realisation that the spread of the disease would mean that moving from “contain” to “delay” was becoming more and more imperative, certainly on my part and I’m sure on others.

Lady Hallett: Did anybody think to ask themselves: what is the point of publishing our sole strategic document on a basis which may simply not turn out to be correct?

Mr Michael Gove: I think it was the case at that time that there was a growing realisation, but it was not universal – this was a document, of course, agreed by all four governments into which a degree of close working had gone and this was the plan overall as had been drawn up in the weeks and days beforehand.

So I think it’s fair to say that in laying out how the government sought and planned to approach the pandemic, that it was right to show our working, as it were.

Lady Hallett: On page 4 at paragraph 1.1 there is a reference to the United Kingdom being “well prepared to respond in a way that offers substantial protection to the public”. That turned out not to be the case.

Mr Michael Gove: Certainly we were not well enough prepared, no.

Lady Hallett: Going back to the COBR document, to the day before the meeting of COBR, INQ000056217, on page 5, paragraph 3:

“Continuing the CMO said that interventions to delay the spread of the virus must not be implemented too early in order to ensure maximum effectiveness. [SAGE] was looking at [social distancing measures] and exploring measures that both Hong Kong and Singapore had utilised.”

Now of course, as it happened, you are well aware, that on 12 March the first countermeasures were ordered to be imposed. There was an order that those displaying symptoms of coronavirus had to self-isolate for seven days.

What was COBR’s position in relation to the CMO’s suggestion that infection control measures, perhaps of that type, isolation, self-isolation, possibly hand washing, possibly social distancing, should not be imposed too early to ensure maximum effectiveness? Was there a debate about the good sense or otherwise in that proposal?

Mr Michael Gove: Not at that COBR, no, that I recall. There was, I believe, understandable respect for the CMO, as I mentioned earlier, Sir Chris is a very distinguished epidemiologist and dedicated public servant, and the view, the broad scientific consensus at that time, was that to impose measures that we now know of as lockdown would have tested the patience of the public, that they would not have endured for long, and therefore they needed to be applied at just the right time.

Lady Hallett: This was not, with respect, a reference to lockdown or, at least not least lockdown, because it’s measures for social distancing and exploring measures.

Mr Michael Gove: I think the reference to both Hong Kong and Singapore was clearly a reference to east Asian jurisdictions that had very, very tight measures, analogous to lockdown.

Lady Hallett: Not just a lockdown, correct?

Mr Michael Gove: Not just, no.

Lady Hallett: So the CMO told COBR that whatever these measures for social distancing were, they should not be imposed too early and COBR accepted that proposition?

Mr Michael Gove: At the time, yes.

Lady Hallett: Page 6 there is a reference to “Next steps”:

“Summing up the CHAIR said the Government’s response must be guided by science and protecting the vulnerable. The CHAIR said that COBR will continue to meet on a regular basic.”

Why was there no debate on the merit or efficacy of specific measures perhaps of the type that the Chief Medical Officer had had in mind?

Mr Michael Gove: Well, no such measures were put to COBR at that time. I think that the CMO – I can’t obviously know what all his thinking was but I think the CMO was preparing us for the need for such measures in the future rather than listing the sorts of measures that needed to be implemented with rapidity later.

Lady Hallett: Bluntly, why did no-one on COBR, the primary crisis response body for the United Kingdom Government, say to the Chief Medical Officer, “It’s obvious containment is lost or is about to be lost, this fatal virus to which there is no vaccine or antiviral is here and is spreading, what in practice needs to be done to prevent the spread of the virus throughout this population?”

Mr Michael Gove: I think it was case that we accepted the broad view at the time that – from the CMO and others, that there was a limit to what could be done to contain the spread, and the reason there was a limit is that lockdown measures, or analogous measures, were unprecedented in their application in the UK, and the public, as I mentioned earlier, would not endure them for long.

So the argument at the time was: such measures may well be required, but we have to be careful not to introduce them too early because that will only mean that they will have to be lifted and that will lead to a second wave.

Lady Hallett: Mr Keith, I am sorry to interrupt, I hope I haven’t stopped your train of thought.

Going back to the reference to the Chief Medical Officer’s advice to COBR, I can’t remember, forgive me and I haven’t got my notebook with me, whether that passage was put to Sir Chris and whether he accepted it was a fair reflection, because it seemed to me that he appeared to be advising caution against any measures, including lockdown, and we can understand the reasons in relation to lockdown, and I just wondered if –

Mr Keith: Yes, indeed the general proposition was put to him but not that sentence. So, my Lady is quite right, there is an issue as to whether or not “measure” meant measures or meant the lockdown measure.

Lady Hallett: Exactly, and whether it meant things short of lockdown like social distancing, yes.

Mr Keith: Obviously, I am not in a position to give evidence and of course I can’t. You have received a fair amount of material already as to what the general state of play was about the understanding of what measures might in due course be imposed, so I think a sensible place to land in relation to this is that no part of government was saying, “These are the lists of measures which you need to be considering”, there was a general sense of: be careful.

Lady Hallett: It’s just that Mr Gove just said that the public might get tired of them. Well, things like washing hands, we know that that has no downside. So I just wondered whether – can you remember, Mr Gove, did the CMO cover the broad spectrum of measures or was your impression he was talking about measures as draconian as lockdown?

Mr Michael Gove: I think that he was preparing us for the possibility that there might need to be draconian measures, hence the reference to Hong Kong and Singapore, but at that stage the broad advice was as, my Lady says, to wash one’s hands.

To jump ahead slightly, and it may not be helpful, I believe the Cabinet met the following Tuesday, on 10 March, and in the Cabinet minutes a point is recorded as having been made. I believe this is a reference to a point or a question I asked them.

I by that stage was concerned that the measures we were taking were not sufficient, that the hand washing advice, obviously valuable in itself, was not enough, and I think the Cabinet minutes record my saying that we needed to look at what other countries were doing and we needed to be clear that there was a potential divergence of scientific opinion that needed to be taken account of.

I wanted to balance both respect for the CMO and CSA, distinguished scientist I’m not, but with a desire to say: we do need to recognise that the course that we are on needs to be altered.

Mr Keith: And of course, advice is advice, as the scientists and the CMO himself and GCSA have been at pains to tell the Inquiry. The ultimate decision-makers were COBR and, of course, above COBR, ministers, and, above ministers, Prime Minister.

One final question on this point, and it is a question prefaced in my Lady’s question to you –

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Lady Hallett: – there was a general understanding, of course, that there were measures available. In past pandemics there have been the closure of schools, there has been hand washing, as my Lady says. There are quarantines which have been contemplated and imposed in the past, self-isolation of not just individuals but households, indeed the very measures that did come to be imposed at a later stage.

There just doesn’t appear to be any debate at all about the nature of those measures, whether it was lockdown or any of these other well understood measures. Do you agree?

Mr Michael Gove: Not that week but the next.

Lady Hallett: And of course you did have a growing concern, as you said in your statement, about whether or not tougher measures were required and that goes to the same point.

On 10 March you emailed Mr Hancock and Mr Cummings , INQ000263380, and you detailed a list of questions that you required answers to:

“Just following up from Cobra yesterday.

“I think the DHSC team … are … doing a great job [but] … I wanted to follow up on some of what was being discussed yesterday …”

And you raise a number, if I may observe, of very good questions. You ask about resilience, and the food and hospitality sector, what to do about people who have mild symptoms, ICU capacity, equipment and, over the page, education, 111 calls, hospital organisations, screening, temperature screening:

“Ditto on public gatherings – I am all for schools etc staying open, but what is … the published scientific reasoning of, say, Spain, that suggests they may have the closure of schools in Madrid wrong?

“We must of course be guided by science, but that involves testing the propositions and weighing up different choices.”

Cognisant of the fact that, of course, advice is advice and you are the decision-makers.

These questions, Mr Gove, appear to indicate that you were raising them because they had not been properly ventilated in COBR, they were not being properly addressed by government which is why you were reduced to writing to Mr Hancock and Cummings directly and saying, what about these issues? Why had the system required you to have to take this step?

Mr Michael Gove: I think in fairness the email followed on from a COBR discussion in which some of these issues –

Lady Hallett: It did. I read out the first line, “following [the] Cobra yesterday”.

Mr Michael Gove: Yes. So I had a chance to reflect on some of the discussions that we had had then and these were questions consequent on that. It will often be the case that in a COBR or a Cabinet Committee meeting, certain issues will be raised, and then, as I have a chance to reflect afterwards, other questions occur to me which need to be addressed to follow up, and it seemed to me the most timely and efficacious way of driving change was to email both the Health Secretary and the Prime Minister’s principal adviser direct. And, again, both at the beginning and at the end I stress that some of these questions may already have been addressed and therefore if what I’m saying is superfluous or off beam, I apologise, because I recognise that there would be activity going on within the Department of Health and indeed decision-making within Number 10 that I might not be sighted on.

Lady Hallett: Mr Gove, none of these questions are formulated in terms of – the point was made yesterday – or something was said yesterday and I just want to follow up with a question. It is this: these are all, if I may say so, very good but obvious questions, concerns, that you’ve got. There is nothing here that suggests that they were debated in detail or at all the day before, specifically each of these questions.

Mr Michael Gove: Many of them were, including, as I mention, the 111 line and equipment overall. Because both Dominic Cummings and Matt Hancock were in the meeting I would not have needed to have said in the email, “as we discussed” or “this is issue was raised”. I don’t believe all the questions that I ask followed on from everything that was discussed at the meeting. I think there are one or two that occurred to me because of other concerns that I had as more material became apparent to me.

Lady Hallett: INQ000275436 is a WhatsApp group concerning yourself and Mr Cummings.

If we can have page 3, “Michael Gove” at the top, and then there are reference to “Dom”, obviously Dom Cummings. At 19:48 on 4 March, so two days after the COBR:

“You know me. I don’t often kick off. But we are fucking up as a Government and missing golden opportunities. I will carry on doing what I can but the whole situation is even worse than you think and action needs to be taken or we’ll regret it for a long time.”

Expand, please.

Mr Michael Gove: I was concerned at that stage about the ability and structure of the Cabinet Office, overall, to deliver on the Government’s priorities. Covid was in my mind but it wasn’t the principal thing that I was messaging about. It was about the Cabinet Office overall, including its ability to deal with Covid.

I apologise to you and to the Inquiry and to the public for expressing myself in the way that I did. I’m sure that you’ll understand that this sort of thing happens.

Lady Hallett: Speaking for my part, no apology is required.

But the point is, Mr Gove, you were obviously concerned about the general position of the Government?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Lady Hallett: On 4 March what was the most pressing concern of Government?

Mr Michael Gove: Well, it was the coronavirus, but I was concerned about the Cabinet Office overall.

I don’t want to suggest that I was a perfect clairvoyant – very far from it – but it was the case, and I think I also emailed Mr Cummings around this time as well to point out some of what I believed were the defects in the way in which the Cabinet Office operated, and I made the point then that the situation with coronavirus would only further expose the weaknesses in how the structure of Government was set up.

Lady Hallett: 11/03/2020, 18:53:45, Mr Cummings refers to the Cabinet Office in terms which he has, in fact, repeatedly referred to it, but he says this:

“They told us they had plan.”

And you say.

“Indeed.”

What plan? A plan for what, Mr Gove?

Mr Michael Gove: I believe that Dom was referring, then, to a plan for the pandemic.

Lady Hallett: Right. You were the Cabinet Office minister on 11 March, on the breaking of the coronal viral wave upon this country, you were speaking to the Prime Minister’s chief adviser and you are agreeing that the Cabinet Office appears to have a deficient plan or no plan for addressing this unprecedented crisis. That is a terrible state of affairs, is it not?

Mr Michael Gove: It is a deeply regrettable state of affairs. I mentioned earlier that, on assuming responsibility overall for the Cabinet Office, I sought to initiate change and, as I say, I assumed responsibility on 13 February and then immediately sought to recruit additional personnel from within and without the Civil Service to support change, ordered a zero-based review of the Cabinet Office, asked for an improved analytical function and, as the first WhatsApp of 4 March indicates, I wanted to alert Dom to what I considered to be the scale of change necessary.

Lady Hallett: Page 4, there is a reference to “act today” – yes, at 12:03 – 12 March, 23:00, 11 o’clock at night – I’ve now lost – ah, yes, at the bottom of the page, if you could scroll back out please – well, there we are.

“Michael Gove”, you send to Mr Cummings a link for, what appears to be an article or piece of information entitled, “act today or people will die”.

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Lady Hallett: You were under no illusions about the seriousness of the Government’s position, were you?

Mr Michael Gove: No.

Lady Hallett: You were concerned that were not more stringent steps to be taken and were the Government not to act more speedily, people would die?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Lady Hallett: All right.

Mr Michael Gove: And in particular, the reference to that article by Tomas Pueyo – the article had been sent to me by friends who worked outside government.

Lady Hallett: You mentioned that earlier, that you had been provided with information from outside government, but was this material that friends had sent you in relation to a possible response to the coronavirus crisis or related to steps that the government, they believed, should be taking?

Mr Michael Gove: Tomas Pueyo’s article was intended to act as a wake-up call to governments across the west. So it wasn’t specific to the UK but the arguments that he made about coronavirus weighed with me. I’d read other material beforehand that had provoked concern but this seemed to me to be the best, clearest and most urgent expression of the need to act, of anything that I had read and I wanted to make sure that it was shared across government so that people could see, essentially, the reasoning that had reinforced my conviction that we needed to act.

Lady Hallett: This is not a hindsight debate, is it? Your friends and your colleagues outside government were sending you material imploring the government, or imploring you, to act. They were doing so on the basis of information material which was available to them and no doubt, in large part, publicly available; is that correct?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes. And I deliberately sought information from friends outside government, whose opinion I trusted, because I wanted to make sure that I had alternative sources of information to test the views that were being expressed by government colleagues and others.

Lady Hallett: Yes. Evidence has been given to the Inquiry to the effect that there was, over the weekend of Saturday 14 and 15 March, a change in strategy.

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Lady Hallett: Regardless of whether it was a real change in strategy or whether it was a scaling up of an existing strategy, and whether or not there is a distinct conceptual difference between mitigating the impact of the virus and suppressing it, what in your view was the driver for that change in approach, that dawning realisation over that weekend?

Was it the information from SAGE in relation to the workings of and the work done by Imperial College and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, was it the CMO, was it Mr Cummings and Marc and Ben Warner and Helen MacNamara and Imran Shafi who had met to discuss the crisis and their understanding of the emergency? What was the push? Where was coming from?

Mr Michael Gove: I think the fact that you cite so many examples shows that there was a convergence of thinking, in different institutions, from different individuals, about the need to act.

I was not aware of Neil Ferguson’s work until after that weekend. In fact, I don’t think it was shared publicly until after that weekend. A great deal of weight has been placed on Professor Ferguson’s work as influencing government decision-making. I think it’s fair to say that I and others had come to these conclusions before that.

What weighed with me were the numbers.

Lady Hallett: Why was the drive, such that it was, or the dawning realisation on the part of various parts of government and the people within it, not coming from the DHSC, the Department of Health, the lead government department responsible for health?

Mr Michael Gove: I do believe that that weekend, as I recall, the Secretary of State for Health was also, like me, keen on the exercise of greater caution when it came to dealing with the virus and was, like me, I believe, an advocate for very uncomfortable restrictions on civil liberty in order to deal with the health emergency.

Lady Hallett: The Secretary of State himself engaged in what became, of course, the lockdown debate and the need for more stringent measures, but why wasn’t, institutionally, the DHSC, its officials, its advisers, its civil servants, responsible, at that stage, the lead government department for the response to the crisis, not driving the government machine forward to this conclusion?

Mr Michael Gove: I believe it was the case that the Secretary of State and others within DHSC would have been pressing upon Number 10 and the Prime Minister the need to act at that time as well.

Lady Hallett: Well, I’m afraid I need to press you. You say you believe. Have you seen emails or communications from the DHSC, institutionally, to the Prime Minister saying, “We’re behind the curve, we’ve missed a trick here. We are delayed and there is an urgent need for more stringent measures and we need a change in strategy”?

Mr Michael Gove: No, but my recollection of the conversations that I had around that time was that the Secretary of State was of that view and I should say that I’m pretty certain that he would have communicated that in conversation with the Prime Minister.

But, again, I would not have been in all of those conversations and one of the reasons why I texted and emailed as I did was to alert people to my concerns and to hope that if they were, as I believed both Dominic Cummings and Matt Hancock were, if they were of similar mind, to feel strengthened in their desire to push forward with these restrictions because they would know that they had my support.

Lady Hallett: On 12 March, as we know, there was self-isolation for individuals who were symptomatic for seven days?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Lady Hallett: After the weekend, on 16 March, COBR decided that there needed to be further, more stringent measures, and you will recall the household isolation for 14 days, reduced contact advice, over 70s particularly must ensure that they reduce contact?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Lady Hallett: And there was a warning about the need to move to shielding imminently.

On the 18th, COBR decided to close schools from the 20th, just in very general terms, Mr Gove.

Did you have any direct dealings with the Prime Minister during the course of that week as to whether or not those more stringent measures needed to be applied? I ask you this because the evidence from Mr Cummings has been that there was a widespread view – he said pretty much everyone – considered the Prime Minister to be oscillating – I’m not using his word but that’s the sense of it – in relation to his response.

What was your assessment of the Prime Minister’s intent, state of mind, as to whether these measures should be countenanced?

Mr Michael Gove: I think the Prime Minister found the decisions difficult. It’s not that he found decision-making difficult, it is that a decision to restrict freedoms in an unprecedented way went against his instincts and the principles that governed his political outlook.

The Prime Minister at the time, Mr Johnson, was someone who was a liberal in so many senses, and certainly someone who found the idea of restricting free association deeply difficult, deeply opposed to his world view, and therefore, as I think everyone knows, to contemplate such a big measure, with the inevitable costs, was a decision of huge weight. I believe that the evidence was clear that such a decision was unavoidable.

Lady Hallett: Again, I’m sorry to interrupt. You say, “decision”. You appear to be relating your answer, therefore, to the lockdown decision. I’m asking you about the stringency of the measures during the course of that week?

Mr Michael Gove: I think that almost every restriction of liberty, including the closure of schools, was one that the Prime Minister would instinctively have felt unhappy with. I don’t think any of these decisions were taken lightly.

In terms of the Prime Minister’s decision-making style, the oscillation referred to, it’s in the nature of the way that Boris Johnson worked that he wanted to see thesis/antithesis, that he was – he preferred gladiatorial decision-making rather than inquisitorial. He wanted to see the two cases or the three cases rehearsed in front of him or even rehearsed in his own mind.

I know that he would sometimes run argument A and articulate it himself and then run argument B and articulate it himself in order to weigh in his mind which was the stronger argument.

For some people, that style of decision-making or that way of running meetings was difficult to take, but I’d known the Prime Minister for some time and appreciated this was the way he needed to process information in order to get to an outcome. And every political leader, every distinctive political leader will have their own way of operating that needs a certain amount of space and respect, even if you disagree with their conclusions.

Lady Hallett: This was a public health emergency at its core?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Lady Hallett: By that week, the evidence – or rather, the advice from SAGE, from the CMO, the GCSA, from the DHSC from Cabinet Office, from Number 10, was, to use your word, unanimous. There was no real argument as to whether, for good and obvious public health reasons, these measures had to be contemplated. They were matters of life and death.

So there wasn’t really a thesis and an antithesis position here, Mr Gove. All the public health advice on a public health crisis were pointing in one direction. So on what basis could the Prime Minister push back and say, “Well, I’ve got material which does point the other way”? There was no public health material pointing the other way, was there?

Mr Michael Gove: Well, the first thing is that just a few weeks beforehand –

Lady Hallett: No, I’m not beforehand. I’m talking about that week.

Mr Michael Gove: No, quite, but in order – as your evidence shows I was in a different position at that time to the Prime Minister. However, in fairness to him, just a few weeks beforehand the point had been made that to impose these measures was –

Lady Hallett: Too early?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes. Was problematic. And I think – he is the ultimate decision-maker and therefore I think he, any Prime Minister, is entitled to test propositions and to think: is the restriction of liberty and the economic damage, consequent upon lockdown, worth inflicting on people in order to prevent the spread of this virus?

I believe that the evidence was clear but I think it only fair to the ultimate decision-maker that they have as chance to reflect on the momentous nature of the decision and to consider arguments against it.

Lady Hallett: I need to suggest to you, because of the material which has been received and the evidence which has been given, that it wasn’t just a question of testing the opposing argument. The material was, as I’ve suggested to you, and of course it’s a matter for you, all one way in public health terms. The suggestion has been made that he didn’t just test the opposing arguments, he was incapable of making a decision or at least not sticking to a decision that he had already made.

Is that a fair suggestion, would you say, in light of your experience and your closeness to the government machine at that time?

Mr Michael Gove: No, on this occasion I believe that it was a reluctance to embrace a decision rather than an inability to stick to one, because again, as we discussed, the Prime Minister had a view that overreaction was often a greater danger. He also had a principled attachment to maximising individual liberty. Therefore, it was difficult for him – both from the point of view of his outlook on how to handle crises and the set of principles by which he guided his political life, it was difficult for him to contemplate something like this, especially when we had been told, as I say, just weeks beforehand, that these were measures that should only be applied for a limited period and at the right time.

So the Prime Minister eventually concluded this was the right thing to do. I believe that that ultimate decision was right and I believe that he made the case for it in public well. If it took him a little longer to come to that conclusion than others, we can consider the impact of that, but I don’t think it was the case that he was oscillating, I think it was the case that he was weighing things before coming reluctantly but firmly to a conclusion.

Lady Hallett: And this, may we presume, doesn’t derogate from your earlier evidence to the effect that the government machine as a whole maybe nevertheless have acted too slowly? Personally, by the Prime Minister, he, you believe, took the decision, the ultimate decisions, in that week and the week after timeously?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes. Yes. And again, I – the Prime Minister is the ultimate decision-maker but no Prime Minister takes decisions in a vacuum. My view, it is with the benefit of hindsight, is that we should have acted earlier, but that means it is incumbent on all of us who believe that to look and think: did we say or do enough sufficiently early in order to enjoin upon the Prime Minister the need for action?

I mentioned, for example, briefly, Rory Stewart earlier, whom I believe was prescient, but Rory was only calling for the sorts of steps that we required in public on 12 March. Again, he was making it clear that we needed to act that day. That was the same day I shared the Tomas Pueyo article privately.

So the consensus for action became firmer and clearer in that second week of March, with the benefit of hindsight if only it had been firmer and clearer in all our minds earlier.

Lady Hallett: Yes.

Mr Michael Gove: But I don’t think that one can single out the Prime Minister at the time for criticism. We all deserve our share retrospectively of criticism.

Lady Hallett: You chaired the COBR on Friday, 20 March.

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Lady Hallett: Could we have INQ000106263, which is a paper on additional measures.

These are the measures which were put in place on that 20th to try to achieve the overarching objective of a 75 per cent reduction in non-essential social mixing.

If we just look very briefly at page 1, paragraphs 2 to 4, we can see that there is a general position on compliance set out, and the history of the government steps taken are set out from Monday 16 March.

If you could scroll back out to paragraph 3, there is a reference to “latest public polling data”, which shows the number of people who claim to be engaging in socially distancing behaviours.

Then over the page, page 4, paragraph 4:

“The mixed picture means that there is merit in considering further measures to increase compliance.”

There’s a reference to overnight polling. And then:

“As such, it is proposed that measures apply to the whole [United Kingdom].”

There were some positive indications. If we go back to the first page, it’s obvious, Mr Gove, that tube travel was down, West End footfall was down, Google Places data showed significant drops.

So the position on the Friday appeared to be, is this correct, that there was significant material showing that compliance was up but it was just not enough, it hadn’t reached, in broad terms, the 75 per cent reduction in social distancing that was required.

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Lady Hallett: As a general proposition is that right?

Mr Michael Gove: Absolutely.

Lady Hallett: All right. Why didn’t the COBR consider expressly waiting to see whether or not the measures which had been put in place on Monday the 12th would have effect over a longer time period? There is an acceptance that it’s not good enough but why could COBR not have waited and, by extension, by analogy, why could not the ultimate decision on Monday 23rd have been delayed a bit more to see whether or not these compliance figures would continue to go in the right direction and reach the right levels?

Mr Michael Gove: Because the virus was spreading exponentially and the risk was that the NHS would be overwhelmed.

Lady Hallett: We will come to look at the NHS in a moment but was the debate on the Friday about the hard data presented in relation to the impact on the NHS, hard data relating to the likely mortality rates that would continue to go up if the measures were not imposed, and on the need or the possibility of waiting further? The Inquiry well understands exponential growth and evidence has been given by Professor Sir Chris Whitty as to what it means in practice.

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Lady Hallett: Unless you get on top of exponential growth it will continue and it will continue relentlessly until the country is completely overwhelmed and the death mortality rates are absolutely intolerable.

But it is a curve, it is a degree. Why was there not more debate about the alternative of waiting to see whether or not this would work?

Mr Michael Gove: Because those of us who were taking decisions understood where we were in terms of the growth of the virus. The whole point about exponential growth, as we know, is the famous analogy of a grain of rice on the first corner of a chess board. By the time that you get to the final other corner of the chess board then you are talking, in terms and in numbers, literally unimaginable.

So therefore as you move from 1 to 2 to 4 to 8 to 16 and so on, if you leave it for another day or another week, the numbers are so significant and so huge that you know that you have left it too late.

And as Chris Whitty and Dame Angela McLean made clear, the measures that you take have a time lag before they begin to take effect. So you have the curves going up and up and up and the measures not beginning to take effect for some time, so therefore you do need to hit the curve at the earliest possible point when you know that growth is exponential.

Lady Hallett: You all knew that there was exponential growth. That this nature of this virus. Once control has been lost it will spread, inexorably, exponentially?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Lady Hallett: You knew that on 12 March when the first measures were imposed and on 16 March and then on 20 March?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Lady Hallett: But notwithstanding your understanding of the risks of exponential growth, you were still prepared the a government to try those measures. You didn’t say on the 12th or the 16th, “Well, the central feature of exponential growth is it’s going to be terrible and it will overwhelm us unless we have a lockdown”, you were prepared to countenance measures short of a lockdown. Why didn’t you give longer for those measures to work on the premise that on 12 and 16 March you knew you were dealing with an exponential crisis already?

Mr Michael Gove: I think it was the case that both in the communications that I had with people on the 12th and also, as I think Imran Shafi’s notes of the meetings that occurred that weekend show, I was pressing at the time for the most vigorous action as early as we possibly could.

Lady Hallett: Can I interrupt you there. Are you saying, therefore, that you would have countenanced and you believed that it was appropriate to impose a lockdown perhaps on 16 or 20 March?

Mr Michael Gove: Oh, yes.

Lady Hallett: Right. What about the week before?

Mr Michael Gove: Well, I came to the conclusion during the week, as I mentioned, of 9/10 March that it was necessary. And as I say, the Tomas Pueyo article I think crystallised that imperative in my mind more than perhaps anything.

Lady Hallett: Do you recall in the COBR meetings that you chaired and attended in the week of the 16 March for a lockdown to be imposed that day?

Mr Michael Gove: I don’t believe that I did, but I do believe that my communications to other decision-makers shows the position that I took. But I would not have wanted to – given that the nature, certainly when I chaired COBR, was to act as a chair rather than an instigator or an advocate, my instinct would have been at that point to seek consensus and to give effect to collective government policy.

Lady Hallett: Mr Gove, sorry to interrupt, you have obviously referred to the article that had some influence on you by the sounds of it. Did you have access to other material from, for example, scientists who advised against a lockdown? Did you get that kind of material to consider?

Mr Michael Gove: Later on, yes. I mean, I paid attention to the arguments put forward by people like Carl Heneghan and the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration and others.

I think that – obviously their point of view I respect but the propositions that they put forward I think were just undeliverable. The idea that we could shield the elderly and allow young people free reign, I think, given the nature of multigenerational households and so on, it would not have been effective in mitigating the virus.

But the second thing is that quite a lot of people have understandably said Sweden managed those things better but again the public – sorry, forgive me.

Many of those who advocate that we should have gone down the Swedish route misunderstand what Sweden did. Sweden was able to reduce social mixing by a greater degree of reliance on wide societal acceptance of those restrictions. We, as this COBR paper points out, were seeking societal – what’s the word? – compliance with those measures, but we knew that would not be enough and it was too late. And indeed, as I think the evidence to the Inquiry points out, Anders Tegnell himself, when he was invited to speak to the Prime Minister, said, “You should act”.

So, again, people – I understand how this happens having been a journalist, people in the media will sometimes paint a picture of what’s happening in order to create a greater sense of drama or divergence. So: Sweden, libertarian nirvana; Britain, lockdown dystopia.

Actually the approach taken by both countries is more similar than many would like to admit.

Another point as well, if I may. People also sometimes make the argument that there was a tension between the economy and health. Now, obviously lockdown creates problems for the economy. But, as I subsequently wrote in an article in The Times to explain our reasoning, if we had allowed the pandemic to develop without taking the steps that we did, the NHS would have been overwhelmed and that would have meant an impact on economic activity far greater than that that we had to endure. So when people talking the trade-off between the economy and health, when you have the virus you need to respond in a way that protects both the health service and the health of the nation and the economy.

Mr Keith: Can I ask you just for the few remaining questions on this subject to focus on that week of 16 March.

Mr Michael Gove: Of course.

Lady Hallett: You said when you chaired COBR your position was that you should act as a chair rather than an instigator or advocate you wanted to seek consensus.

The material shows, Mr Gove, quite clearly that over the weekend of Saturday 14 March, and also latterly in October/November and then again in December , you made no bones at all about the need for the particular measure under consideration, ultimately lockdowns 2 and 3. You made your position on what should be done perfectly plain. Having acknowledged that your own view was that a lockdown was required to be imposed in the week of 16 March, why did you, in these COBR meetings, one of which you chaired, not say, “I, Michael Gove, believe the only way forward, the only sensible route, is to lock down now to save lives”?

Mr Michael Gove: I believe that I had communicated by views clearly in every forum where I could. It’s in the nature of ministerial life that sometimes you chair a meeting of a subcommittee or a Cabinet committee and your job there is to act as the neutral chair seeking consensus, and sometimes you are an advocate for a particular position, your own departmental position or your own deeply felt position, and I had been asked by the Prime Minister to chair that COBR and I was acting, as it were, under instructions, and I felt that that was the right thing to do to serve the government collectively.

Again, it’s –

Lady Hallett: In hindsight, do you regret that you were not more forthright in what you plainly and genuinely believed was the right course of action to take?

Mr Michael Gove: Generally, people have always been unhappy when I have been more forthright in the past, but on this occasion I should definitely have been more forthright.

Lady Hallett: This was a matter of life and death?

Mr Michael Gove: Absolutely. And that is why I believe that I should have been.

Lady Hallett: Thank you.

The decision to implement the national lockdown was of course taken on that Monday and there was a COBR.

Can we just very briefly look at INQ000056213, which is the minutes of that meeting.

Just by way of quick observation, if we look at the first page we can see, of course, that there are a number of ministers there.

Over the page – I should say, Mr Gove, that that minute doesn’t reflect your attendance but you believe you were there?

Mr Michael Gove: I believe I was, yes.

Lady Hallett: Over the page we can see officials dialled in, and then on page 4, paragraphs 1 to 3, we can see the “Current situation update”, and there is more information given about compliance.

It wasn’t too bad. As with the COBR on the Monday, compliance was there in large part, but the park attendance over the weekend had shot up. You can see that in the paragraph 3.

Standing back, this penultimate decision-making body – obviously the Prime Minister had the whip hand, but this penultimate decision-making body discussed compliance rates, but there was very little by way of debate over the economic and societal harm that would be necessarily done if these measures were to be imposed over the terrible balancing exercise inherent in that decision, but also, again, no discussion at all as to whether or not more time should be given for the measures which it, COBR, had imposed the very week before, on the Friday, three days before. Why was there not more debate about waiting to see whether or not those other measures, earlier measures, which by implication must have been sensible and well judged measures, could be taken to have effect?

Mr Michael Gove: Well, again, it was clear, certainly to me, that those measures had been inadequate. I think at the time that I was sceptical that they would be enough but understood why people thought that this was proportionate.

By definition, when you are dealing with any sort of crisis, you use whatever data comes to hand, whatever feedback there is in order to adjust your response. Sticking inflexibly to a set of measures when those measures are clearly inadequate would be an error.

Lady Hallett: Why were they inadequate? If only three days had passed and compliance was going up, just not fast enough –

Mr Michael Gove: Well, quite.

Lady Hallett: – why were they inadequate? Might they not have become adequate two days hence?

Mr Michael Gove: I think you have answered your own question, that compliance was not going up fast enough and that more evidence was accumulating about the spread of the virus.

Lady Hallett: Well, no, you knew already it was an exponential spread?

Mr Michael Gove: Mmm.

Lady Hallett: You didn’t know any more about what the ultimate outcome would be, because that rested upon whatever decisions you might take on that Monday.

But the basic feature hadn’t altered. It was still an exponential growth?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Lady Hallett: You put measures in place which you in good faith believed would do the trick, and only three days had passed, one weekend, before you then moved to the next, ultimate level, a lockdown?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes. And as we discussed, my view was sterner measures earlier, and I think both the accumulating evidence but also the force of argument made it clear that more action was required.

So if the conclusion that you are seeking is did we adopt measures knowing that they were inadequate, I profoundly feared they would not be enough but, of course, in any debate within government you make your case and accept that you will not always prevail.

Lady Hallett: Finally on this topic, the NHS. There was very little debate in the COBR of that day, the penultimate decision-making body, about the impact on the NHS, and in light of the time I’m not going to take you through all the material.

Perhaps we could just have up on the screen a summary of the material referring to the likely impact on the NHS. It’s INQ000274026.

If we just very shortly look aft this document INQ000274026 and scroll through to this time, which is round about 21, 22, 23 March, so pages 5 or 6., there are – perhaps a one more page – there are multiple references to the likely impact on the NHS being either “overwhelmed” or “overtopped” or “collapse”.

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Lady Hallett: Then if we go forward one page, on page 8, we can see on 21 March at a Covid meeting the Chief Medical Officer gives figures about how ITU in London might be overwhelmed.

If we go forward one page further, the chief executive of the NHS responds: dealing with a worsening situation but how the NHS is aiming for more ventilator beds, more surge capacity, how it’s going to make more hospitals available, and so on and so forth.

Then, over one more page, to 22 and 23 March, references to a major drive to free up capacity, occupancy now at the lowest than in more decades, continuing at the bottom of the page, planning for ramping up ventilators.

Then finally, over one page, to page 11 – I’m sorry it’s rather a long question – references to doubling to the risks that the NHS would not cope.

So, in light of all that, two questions, please.

Firstly, to what extent did that COBR body on the Monday look at the hard data relating to the actually anticipated impact upon the NHS, the figures, the ICU beds, the ventilators and so on, or did COBR just assume that if it didn’t act in the way that it advised the NHS would just bluntly collapse?

Mr Michael Gove: Several things. Firstly, one did not need to know the precise nature of capacity within the NHS to be influenced by the broad argument that continued exponential growth would overwhelm it.

Lady Hallett: Right.

Mr Michael Gove: By definition. There would be a level of growth that almost no health system could have coped with if the virus was left unchecked or if inadequate measures had been put in place. Both before and after I and other ministers sought information and were informed about the precise nature of the capacity constraints within the NHS.

And, again, when we talk about beds we have to recognise that for intensive care beds you need not just equipment but trained individuals: doctors, nurses, others. So NHS capacity constraints are driven by the number of specialists and by the equipment as well as by physical capacity as well. We may go on to talk about the Nightingale hospitals that were built. Well, it was an amazing feat. I think the inference that some people drew was you could somehow magic up significant additional capacity with the NHS at rapid speed.

The truth, of course, is that what you are fundamentally relying on is not just ventilator capacity but the capacity of trained clinicians, staff.

Lady Hallett: I don’t wish to get into the debate about the actual mechanics of the NHS. The question is this: there was, it appears, a general assumption that if these steps were not taken, the additional or the final step of lockdown was not taken, then on account of exponential growth the NHS would ultimately at some unknown point in the future collapse?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Lady Hallett: There was no alternative in that sense. What debate was given as to the difference, the distinction between the likely impact on the NHS under the Friday 20th measures as opposed to the lockdown measure being advocated on the Monday? Did anybody in COBR say, “Well, hang on, what will be the practical difference in terms of the impact on the NHS of this final step as opposed to the measures which you imposed on the Friday?”

Mr Michael Gove: As I recall, I think everything revolved around whether or not we could suppress the growth of the virus or whether the virus would continue to grow exponentially. If you suppress the growth of the virus, reduce R below 1, then you can begin to see at some point of coming down and the pressure removed or at least reduced on the NHS. If it goes up, i.e. if you are not managing to take R down below 1, then sooner or later the NHS will be overwhelmed until you get it back below 1.

Lady Hallett: So are you saying then that what COBR concluded was that only this final ultimate step would suffice to bring the R rate below 1, that you couldn’t just gamble that the earlier measure on the Friday would be sufficient?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Lady Hallett: You had to take that final step because only that would give you the sufficient degree of sureness that you were doing everything you could to bring R below 1?

Mr Michael Gove: Exactly.

Lady Hallett: Can we now then turn, please, to an entirely different subject, which is the structures within government for responding to the crisis, because you became chair of what was then known as Covid-O, and also I want to look at the degree to which you liaised with the devolved administrations, which is another extremely important issue.

I am just going to try to summarise the position structurally, and if you just indicate whether or not you can agree then we can move on swiftly to the nub of the issue.

COBR, the devolved administration health ministers attended initial COBR meetings, then of course the First Ministers attended, Mr Drakeford from 18 February, the remainder from 2 March; is that correct?

You attended 16 COBRs between March 2020 and February 2022. You sent a note to the Prime Minister on 30 November 2020 highlighting the shortcomings of the COBR machinery. I think you had been forced out of COBR because the video technology didn’t work?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Lady Hallett: Just this simple question, please. Had there been any changes to the machinery within COBR, within the corridor and the room, or the rooms, particularly the Cabinet office, between March, when the crisis crashed upon this country, and November, when you wrote that note to the Prime Minister about the shortcomings in the machinery? Had there been changes? Had the room been updated at all?

Mr Michael Gove: I think there were some changes. And I think, though I would have to check, COBR can refer both – please forgive me – to one single physical room but also to the act of convening people, and – I’m not sure how much I can say actually –

Lady Hallett: Well –

Mr Michael Gove: But there is more than one COBR room.

Lady Hallett: The Inquiry understands that.

Were there significant changes to the machinery, the data links, the video –

Mr Michael Gove: Insufficient.

Lady Hallett: – and so on – were there changes between March and November?

Mr Michael Gove: I believe there were, but they were clearly insufficient.

Lady Hallett: Right. You took part in what was called the “quad”. That was a group of ministers comprising the Prime Minister, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr Hancock and yourself in the early part of the crisis. From March there was instituted the 9.15 meetings in Downing Street which were chaired by the Prime Minister; is that correct?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Lady Hallett: They took place between 17 March and 15 May. You note your statement that those meetings were important but there was a limit on what they could do because of the exigencies of time, the need to update the Prime Minister, deal with the daily events of government and so on.

Then you chaired what was known as the general public services (sic) ministerial implementation group, the GPSMIG, and that was convened between March and May; correct?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Lady Hallett: You raised in emails to other ministers and to the Cabinet – of that – Mark Sedwill in the Cabinet Office, your concerns about whether or not the right governance structures were in place, and in part as a result of your raising of those concerns about the MIGs, in May the MIGs were done away with and there was then a system known as Covid-S and Covid-O; is that correct?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Lady Hallett: Did you have in March 2020 email correspondence with an adviser in Downing Street called Munira Mirza, who I think was in charge of the policy team there, about the way in which the MIGs were operating, in particular the health MIG which was being chaired by Mr Hancock?

Mr Michael Gove: I believe I did, yes.

Lady Hallett: All right. But it matters not because in the end they were done away with.

Mr Michael Gove: Mmm.

Lady Hallett: Covid-S and Covid-O. Covid-S was chaired by the Prime Minister?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Lady Hallett: But he also chaired Covid-O occasionally?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Lady Hallett: But you were the main chair. And those meetings started in June and Covid-S went all the way through to February 2021?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Lady Hallett: Would it be right to say that Covid-O, the body you chaired, convened over – or around 150 times between May 2020 and September 2021?

Mr Michael Gove: I believe so. 145.

Lady Hallett: We have heard evidence that Covid-19 Taskforce was the secretariat for Covid-O?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Lady Hallett: Helen MacNamara raises this issue in her witness statement. She says if there is to be a criticism of Covid-O and Covid-S – and, Mr Gove, the evidence quite plainly shows that Covid-S and Covid-O operated at a much better level than their predecessors – her concern would be that they were quite narrow, that the full Cabinet were better at bringing in a wider perspective, a body that is “more grounded in consequences and in the complexities of the world as it is”.

Would you agree with that, that if there is a deficiency, there was a deficiency, they were quite narrowly comprised bodies?

Mr Michael Gove: No.

Lady Hallett: Why not?

Mr Michael Gove: I think that for effective decision-making when you’re dealing with a crisis, the Cabinet as currently constituted – and this is no reflection on individuals, simply on size – is unwieldy. So when dealing with crises there are always tended to be inner Cabinets, war Cabinets or similar.

Now, one can argue that perhaps the wrong people are around the table but I think that the Cabinet for the – as a structure, given the need for rapid action, as I say, doesn’t meet the need of the hour. We saw that in, for example, the Falklands war where decision-making needed to be take in a nimble way by the Prime Minister, her then Foreign Secretary, Defence Secretary and Chancellor.

Lady Hallett: Why do you say then in your witness statement that there was, in fact, a need to bring the wider Cabinet into decision-making and, when it was done, it was occasionally too little, too late?

Mr Michael Gove: Well, there are several points there. The first thing is that you do need to have, first of all, a strategy team, an inner Cabinet of whatever composition. Then you need Cabinet committees in order to give effect to operational decisions, hence Covid-O.

I think it is the case that when you have worked out what those decisions are, you do need a broader Cabinet discussion in order to ensure that there is appropriate buy-in, that there is political consent, that there is collective agreement. But all of these things are matters of judgement and they exist across a continuum.

So what I would say is the reason why we moved away from the MIG model is, as we alluded to earlier, there’s a danger in having a department mark its own homework – again, no reflection of any individual. Covid-O allowed oversight across government of how each individual department was seeking to deliver towards the agreed goal.

The Cabinet’s role, overall, I think one can look back at and say there were certain moments when Cabinet should have been involved earlier in some of that decision-making but sometimes there was an understandable need for speed.

Lady Hallett: That’s perfectly plain. There was nevertheless, though – there were occasions when Cabinet should have been more involved than it was, and you accept that. Was it the case, as we can see, that in relation to 23 March decision to impose mandatory “Stay at Home” orders, that was of course announced to the country on the Monday, Cabinet didn’t sit until Tuesday 24th. In relation to the second lockdown, the decision was effectively debated and resolved at a Covid ministerial S meeting rather than by Cabinet?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Lady Hallett: And in relation to the third lockdown, the driver for that decision came from a collective decision from the United Kingdom Chief Medical Officers that the whole country had to go into level 5. Would you agree with those as statements of fact?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Lady Hallett: Right. You, in a glorious message chain in September 2020 –

Lady Hallett: Sorry, if you are moving on, Mr Keith, I have been asked to break at quarter to but it’s entirely whether –

Mr Keith: That’s a perfect moment.

Lady Hallett: Is it?

I am sorry, we have to keep breaking, Mr Gove.

Mr Michael Gove: Not at all.

Lady Hallett: I have also been asked to take a 50-minute lunch because we have so much to get through today. We’re determined to get through your evidence today, Mr Gove. So I shall return at 1.35.

(12.46 pm)

(The Short Adjournment)

(1.35 pm)

Lady Hallett: Mr Keith.

Mr Keith: Could we have, please, INQ000265763, which is a WhatsApp from yourself to Simon Case on 7 September at 15:21.

Mr Gove, rather delightfully you pose:

“A daft laddie question – is the [Prime Minister’s] day structured in the way you would want to enable all the decisions that need to be taken are taken in a timely way? Are the right people in the room in every meeting to drive progress …

“Are the right [cross-Whitehall] arrangements in place to ensure … rigorous implementation”, et cetera.

Bearing in mind that this is dated 7 September, so now some months after the institution of the Covid-S, Covid-O system, do you know what was done in response your questioning, bearing in mind that the Cabinet Secretary, Simon Case, says the answer to all your questions is no? Did you follow up on this? Do you know what changes were made systemically to the Prime Minister’s day structure and the routes of information that were provided to him?

Mr Michael Gove: I don’t in detail. The principle of the daft laddie question is one I think –

Lady Hallett: I’m so sorry, could you just confine yourself to answering the particular question, which is: do you know what happened to the concerns that you raised? I think the Inquiry understands the benefit and the merits of a daft laddie question.

What happened?

Mr Michael Gove: I don’t know. I was communicating with Simon shortly after he was appointed as Cabinet Secretary, and these were just some prompts culled from my observation of how things were operating.

And of course Cabinet Secretary is the principal policy adviser to the Prime Minister and I thought that Simon might want to satisfy himself on some of these points.

Lady Hallett: As far as you can tell now, were there any changes in terms of the Covid-S, Covid-O structure or the Prime Minister’s day-to-day meeting arrangements or to the personnel who habitually and by constitution would be providing the Prime Minister with information on a daily basis.

Mr Michael Gove: I don’t think there were any changes to Covid-O or Covid-S, and indeed I wasn’t referring, I think, to Covid-O or Covid-S. It was just a gentle nudge to Simon, as he took on that role, to satisfy himself and – because I knew, as a new Cabinet Secretary, he would have the Prime Minister’s confidence – if he felt that changes needed to be made, then I am sure that would carry weight with the PM.

Lady Hallett: You were the Minister for the Cabinet Office. You refer in that email or the WhatsApp to, are there the right cross-Whitehall arrangements in place?

Mr Michael Gove: Mmm.

Lady Hallett: “x-WH” is cross-Whitehall?

Mr Michael Gove: Mmm.

Lady Hallett: So you raise an issue of some significance in terms of the systematic arrangements in Whitehall?

Mr Michael Gove: Mmm.

Lady Hallett: Why did you not follow it up?

Mr Michael Gove: I think you referred earlier to the Prime Minister’s own day. In terms of the right cross-Whitehall arrangements, I think part of that was just making sure that there was a flow of paper to the Prime Minister and that he had the right information necessary in order to be able support me and other ministers in their work.

Again, I think it was also right that the new Cabinet Secretary should satisfy himself. I think the cross-Whitehall arrangements that I was referring to, as well as making sure that Prime Minister’s paper flow was managed properly, was also a reference to making sure that some of the implementation, that was partly Covid-O’s responsibility to fulfil, was done properly.

Lady Hallett: Were you asking about the Prime Minister’s daily structure and the provision of information to the Prime Minister because you were concerned about the way in which he was making decisions as part of this process?

Mr Michael Gove: I wanted to make sure that the office and the system around the Prime Minister was operating as effectively as possible, and I worried – I wasn’t taking a definitive view, but I worried that perhaps the mode of operation in Number 10 was not what it might be.

Lady Hallett: A number of witnesses have commented upon, to use your phrase, the mode of operation in Number 10 Downing Street around this time. It appears to be quite well understood. It was obviously a point of some concern for a considerable number of significant players in the government machine. It wasn’t really resolved ever, was it?

Mr Michael Gove: I think that over time the government machinery improved in the way in which we dealt with the pandemic and we’ve examined some of the weaknesses at the beginning.

Lady Hallett: I don’t mean overall, I mean in relation to the Prime Minister. To use your words, in terms of the operations around the Prime Minister, concern was expressed about how it was working in Number 10, not the Covid-O, Covid-S structure, not the Covid Taskforce but Number 10 and the Prime Minister?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes, but I think concerns about how Number 10 has operated have been a perennial feature of almost all governments. And departmental or Cabinet ministers will sometimes express concern that the Prime Minister at the time is not necessarily always receiving the best advice or that meetings are not policed in the right way.

Lady Hallett: Another entirely separate point. Helen MacNamara in her witness statement says that there was a disproportionate amount of attention on the part of Covid-O and other bodies given to more male pursuits in terms of the impact of restrictions and then the lessening of the same, and she refers to football, hunting, shooting and fishing.

Could we have up on the screen, please, a WhatsApp from a WhatsApp group to which you were party as the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, INQ000275431.

There was a considerable debate within the Cabinet Office and Covid-O, was there not, about whether or not shooting and hunting should be enabled to be exempted from the rules that were then in force, the rule of six, in September 2020.

Mr Michael Gove: I think that the evidence in front of me is from a different WhatsApp conversation.

Lady Hallett: There are two WhatsApp conversations. This is INQ000275431, which is a CDL PPS JG AH one.

Mr Michael Gove: Oh, yes.

Lady Hallett: And there’s a second WhatsApp group called “Shoot rules group”, which we will come to in a moment.

There is a redacted interlocutor who says:

“[Somebody] was horrified and said would cause huge issue. I presume you are strongly in favour of exempting [hunting] but in way that it doesn’t appear on face of regs.”

And you say yes.

Then this:

“… we need to be VERY [in capital letters, VERY] careful on how it is presented.”

Mr Michael Gove: I’m sorry, yes.

Lady Hallett: Before you answer, I will show you the other WhatsApp group. INQ000094541. This is called “Shoot rules group”, and the particular passage, on 19 September, on page 1, shooting is exempted from the regulations concerning rule of six:

“Regs made. Shooting fine. No upper limit. Not yet entirely clear on hunting.”

Then there’s a reference over the page to:

“Amazing what a bit of lobbying can do.”

What lobbying led to this exemption for shooting and hunting?

Mr Michael Gove: Well, firstly, I think if we go – if we can call back the original WhatsApp exchange I would be grateful.

Lady Hallett: Yes, of course. It is INQ000275431.

Mr Michael Gove: I think it’s on the second page.

Lady Hallett: It is.

Mr Michael Gove: I haven’t got it on the page in front of me here.

Lady Hallett: It’s –

Mr Michael Gove: Ah, yes, exactly, I’ve got it now.

Lady Hallett: “Hi [Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster] …”

Which is you.

Mr Michael Gove: Firstly, it was the case that there were an enormous number of areas of restriction or exemption that we had to police throughout, and hunting, shooting, fishing or other rural pursuits were a peripheral part of the consideration that was given. So it was also the case that we had to think about everything from the way in which choirs operated to whether or not, as was notoriously the case, a scotch egg was a substantial meal. In attempting to draw the line in a way that gave people appropriate guidance, all sorts of activities crossed my radar.

Lady Hallett: Of course, I’m so sorry to interrupt, Mr Gove.

Somebody in government said to you, the Chancellor of Duchy of Lancaster:

“I presume you are strongly in favour of exempting [hunting and shooting] but in a way that it doesn’t appear on [the] face of [the regulations].”

Is that a reference to the regulations which would have provided and did provide for exemption for hunting and shooting?

Mr Michael Gove: Well, the clear thing there was to make sure that all outdoors sports were treated in a way that was fair and universal. So I didn’t want to get into or restoke an argument over hunting.

You will note that I subsequently said, this is my own personal view, “Shooting is defensible economically and environmentally. Fox hunting not so much…..”

I think you can infer from that what my view of the respective activities might be but overall our individual organisations, the Countryside Alliance or others, might well lobby for their particular activity which they champion. My own view was that we wanted, as much as possible, to have sort of horizontal rules, so that whether or not it was rugby league or lacrosse or hunting or shooting, that the same sorts of rules applied to outdoor activity and that those rules covered the full of range and gamut of activities that might be taking place.

Lady Hallett: Mr Gove, somebody in your department suggests that an exemption be given in a way that doesn’t appear on the face of the regulations. That a sleight of hand is applied.

Mr Michael Gove: No.

Lady Hallett: Instead of saying, “That’s not appropriate. If there is going to be an exemption for shooting and hunting, for perfectly proper reasons, the rural economy and so on and so forth, then it should be done openly”, but you say yes.

Mr Michael Gove: Well, the critical thing is that I was specifically clear that we should be thinking about exemptions for all types of outdoor activity and that we should not, both for clarity overall but also for public debate, not running through different types of sport and different types of activity.

You will see from the later discussion on shooting that I make the point about the rule of six. What I was anxious to do at every point was to ensure that there was consistency and fair treatment for different types of activity.

Later on I think in here there’s a reference to freedom of religion or belief. Again, when we were discussing religious practices and what restriction should be placed on public worship, I wanted to make sure that we weren’t getting into a discussion about different types of religions worship on the basis of different types of church or religion. I wanted to make sure that we had a defensible general regime.

Lady Hallett: Was consideration given to hiding an exemption for religious practices on the face of the regulations?

Mr Michael Gove: No, but the key thing is that there were discussions, sensitive discussions, about the nature of religious practice and whether or not, in certain faith settings, it would be more difficult to see some of the regulations that we believed were necessary being applied.

So I was looking at the full range of different types of activity in which people engage in order to make sure that, wherever possible, we weren’t thinking about the specifics of an activity as a reason to provide an exemption, we were thinking about allowing people, pursuing activities that you or I might approve or disapprove of, to go ahead in a way that was, if legitimate, covered by general regulation. I should stress –

Lady Hallett: – (overspeaking) – I think, Mr Keith.

Mr Michael Gove: I should stress –

Mr Keith: Mr Gove, I think we should take our steer, if I may say so, from the chair.

Lady Hallett: By all means stress what you would like to stress, Mr Gove, but then we going to have to move on.

Mr Michael Gove: I should stress that the exchange on shooting, on which I was a part, took place all in one day in a matter of a few hours. So, again, I can entirely understand why shooting and hunting, because they are matters of public contention and debate, might preoccupy you or preoccupy the Inquiry, but given the whole range of activities that we were thinking about regulating and constraining, it seems curious to alight on these.

Lady Hallett: They are not preoccupying me, Mr Gove, I can assure you.

Mr Michael Gove: Thank you.

Mr Keith: And, Mr Gove, I may say – what I now need to say, I have asked you no questions about the merits of either pursuit. The Inquiry has no interest in either of them. I’ve asked you about why a government official appears to want to conceal the exemption on the face of the regs, which is an entirely different point.

Well, I am afraid I impermissibly have commented, but I do so only in relation to your observation.

Mr Michael Gove: Well, I hope I have made it clear that what we were seeking to do was to provide comprehensive and horizontal regulation rather than sector-specific.

Lady Hallett: We’re now moving on.

Mr Keith: We’re moving on. Devolved nations.

I want to explore with you, please, some of the legal, technical and structural problems or issues that presented themselves to the UK Government in terms of liaising and dealing with the devolved administrations, who, of course, form a vital part of the United Kingdom.

Legally, coronavirus was essentially a public health emergency and health is a devolved matter, so was it that feature that gave rise to the debate about the extent of the devolved settlements and devolution?

Health was a matter for the other nations of the United Kingdom but it was the United Kingdom Government in the driving seat in terms of responding to the crisis.

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Lady Hallett: That gave rise to ultimately quite a conceptual debate about the extent of devolution.

The United Kingdom Government had on the statute books the Civil Contingencies Act 2004 which had a never used provision that allowed it to produce emergency regulations, which would require governors being appointed for parts of the United Kingdom. It also had on its statute books the Public Health (Control of Disease) Act as well as the new Coronavirus Act which came to pass.

Why did the Government not use the Civil Contingencies Act? Why did it use the Public Health (Control of Disease) Act and then, when it came into force, the Coronavirus Act?

Mr Michael Gove: Several reasons. The Civil Contingencies Act was designed to deal with events like a terrorist attack which paralyses national infrastructure. The powers within it are draconian and to take that step, to cross that threshold, also requires a Civil Contingencies Act to be actively renewed, and if it falls away, if the immediate nature of the crisis, the immediate sudden impact, as it were, diminishes, then the case for maintaining it diminishes too. So it was thought better to have bespoke legislation.

I note that Michelle O’Neill, Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland, argues that we should have used the Civil Contingencies Act. I find it ironic because, for someone coming from an Irish Republican tradition, the Civil Contingencies Act would undoubtedly have seemed to be an unduly draconian way of dealing with the issues in front of us.

Lady Hallett: So that we’re clear about it, the Act itself requires ministers, it’s a mandatory provision, to appoint emergency co-ordinators –

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Lady Hallett: – in the event that the provision in the Act is used whereby secondary legislation –

Mr Michael Gove: Mm.

Lady Hallett: – regulations can be introduced. So that’s a very draconian and almost nightmarish step.

Mr Michael Gove: Exactly so.

Lady Hallett: There is also a provision in the Act, is there not, which requires the event, in respect of which one is passing the regulations, to be unforeseen?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Lady Hallett: So, in essence, a judgement call was taken that this was a step too far. It was the nuclear option, it had never been used, this was not the time to do it?

Mr Michael Gove: Precisely so. And the unforeseen element is, again, it’s debatable, and we did have that debate with government lawyers, to what extent was the pandemic unforeseen? And the general view was that, as I say, a terrorist attack, by definition, would be unforeseen but the gathering storm of a pandemic might not meet that threshold.

Lady Hallett: Indeed.

The United Kingdom Parliament has always retained sovereignty, in the context of dealing with devolved nations, to legislate over devolved issues but there is a convention, is there not, the Sewel Convention –

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Lady Hallett: – under which the government will not seek to pass legislation dealing with devolved matters other than with the consent of the devolved nations themselves. Was it thought that that, again, itself, was an unpalatable alternative, that that really wasn’t a sensible route for the government to go down?

Mr Michael Gove: With respect to the Civil Contingencies Act?

Lady Hallett: No, with respect to legislating in the face of the crisis over public health matters which were, necessarily, devolved matters?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes. As a general rule, the Sewel Convention governs how government operates. We do not normally legislate on devolved matters without the consent of the devolved administrations.

Lady Hallett: In terms of the decision-making structures which had to be put into place to address the various aspects of the coronavirus crisis with devolved nations, was there a choice faced by the government: either it brings the devolved nations fully within its own intra-United Kingdom United Kingdom Government decision-making structures, Cabinet, COBR, Covid-S Covid-O and so on and so forth, even where other parts of the United Kingdom Government may not be represented, or you then try – or instead you try to bring them in on an ad hoc basis as and when they are required to be there? Was that the fundamental choice faced by the government?

Mr Michael Gove: You have crystallised it. It was ultimately, again, as with so many things in the government, a continuum. There were a couple of occasions, I recall, when Cabinet colleagues bristled at the fact that sometimes the devolved administrations were involved in discussions and influencing decision-making in fora which they were not represented in. So there was a sense amongst some Cabinet colleagues that, “Well, you know, we’re the principal body of the executive of the United Kingdom Government and yet you are discussing these things with Nicola Sturgeon, Michelle O’Neill, Mark Drakeford, et al”. So balancing was important.

My own view is that overall we benefited from bringing in the devolved administrations as early as possible during the whole pandemic.

Lady Hallett: You are, of course, aware that in the additional witness statements from Ms Sturgeon and Baroness Foster and Mr Givan that their position is that they feel that they weren’t really brought properly into the decision-making structures. It was more of an information route, that they were there to be told what the government had decided and it was a question of giving them information about those pre-existing decisions. Is that a fair analysis do you think or not?

Mr Michael Gove: Not completely, though I do understand their point of view. Again, in Nicola Sturgeon’s supplementary evidence she says:

“I am asked if I agree with Michael Gove’s comments that committee meetings involving the devolved administrations worked reasonably well and were collegiate.”

Yes, she says, “I broadly agree”.

Now she also goes on to say that there were some particular suggestions that she made about policy which the UK Government didn’t follow up but she didn’t necessarily expect us to do so. And again, it’s in the nature of devolution that, you know, decision-making on a UK-wide level will be taken by the UK Government. It’s better if that’s informed by the views of the devolved administrations. And I always thought, in broader discussions in Cabinet or in other committee meetings, to make colleagues aware of how devolved administrations felt. And when I felt they were making an argument of merit, I would regard it as my duty to pass that on as clearly as I could.

Lady Hallett: The reality is, isn’t it, that different parts of the United Kingdom will approach the same problem in different ways. It may be differences in terms of the epidemiological position that they have reached in terms of the healthcare facilities, in terms of what the position on the ground is in each of those nations. So there were bound to be difficulties in terms of an absolutely common approach. It was unrealistic.

Mr Michael Gove: Yes. I think that is right.

If I may, I make one other point. You quite rightly point out, obviously, that health is devolved and public health is devolved, but there is a distinction, I think, between two different types of public health intervention. On the one hand there’s the straightforward public health intervention, like keeping ourselves healthier, how much fruit do we eat and so on. That’s quite properly a matter for the devolved administrations.

But when you are dealing with a pandemic and a pandemic which is raging across one island, Great Britain, then I do think that there is a case for saying that there can and should be certain UK-wide powers exercised at the centre.

I think it is an open question, to draw that distinction between two different types of public health interventions because, again, one of the points that Michelle O’Neill makes, very fairly, is that the island of Ireland is a single epidemiological area. It was always regarded so in terms of animal health and a fortiori in terms of human health. So, again, these are difficult issues to manage and I wouldn’t say that this was a view that I hold passionately but I do think that the whole question about how you can ensure that the UK Government, short of the Civil Contingencies Act, can say, “Look, we need to override some of the independent decision-making you might make”, I think that’s worth considering.

Lady Hallett: Being on the coalface, as you were, of the interface between the United Kingdom Government and the devolved administrations, did you look, at any time, at the nature of the advice that was given by SAGE, to which of course the devolved administrations were party, in terms of whether it was overly England-centric? You will know from the witness statements that a number of witnesses have said that it appeared to them that the commissioning of advice in SAGE, because it was done generally speaking by the Cabinet Office, was too England-centric. Do you have a view on that?

Mr Michael Gove: Not a strong view, no, but I think it’s the case that – look, it’s in the nature of our university system that you will have people at Imperial, at Oxford, elsewhere, who will come from different parts of the United Kingdom, indeed from outside the United Kingdom. So I think there are few more cosmopolitan environments than the medical faculties and the science faculties of our leading universities. So I don’t think so, no.

Lady Hallett: Another issue which has been raised in the witness statements concerns the fiscal levers of power which are available to the United Kingdom Government. Whereas public health is devolved, the means by which you can address a public health crisis are reserved to the United Kingdom Government in terms of the money, in terms of the fiscal resources made available.

The devolved administrations raised concerns repeatedly, did they not, about that dichotomy, that they were the ones along with England facing the crisis but the means of providing money to support them rested with the United Kingdom Government.

Was that issue ever resolved or did it just tend to rumble on?

Mr Michael Gove: It was a background issue. It did rumble and it goes into the heart of one of the challenges with devolution, which is that the Executives in devolved administrations will sometimes want to implement policy but it’s the Exchequer that ends up paying for it. Devolved administrations, particularly the Scottish Government, do now have tax raising or lowering powers, so there’s a greater degree of flexibility and there’s flexibility over borrowing.

In addition, there is now an inter-ministerial group across the United Kingdom called the FISC, which enables some of these issues to be resolved between the Treasury and finance ministers.

I sympathise with the leaders of devolved administrations. The way in which devolution exists means they are somewhat constrained in their ability to act at certain moments on what they think is right, but these devolved arrangements are designed to ensure that there is an appropriate level of both discretion and responsibility at each level, and there will always be, between central government, devolved administrations or between central government and local government, sometimes, concern that this subsidiary tier of government doesn’t have the tax raising powers necessary.

Lady Hallett: Mr Gove, we’re focusing on coronavirus. The additional tax raising powers of the Scottish Government, in particular, is a power open to it but it wasn’t a power that was first and foremost in the response to the coronavirus crisis. We’re dealing here with a massive need for fiscal resource from central government to all parts of the United Kingdom. So that really isn’t, with respect, relevant to this issue.

Mr Michael Gove: Yes, it is.

Lady Hallett: Well, the question to you is this. Ms Sturgeon wrote to Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, of course, on 23 September, as you are aware because the material has been disclosed to you, raising again what she perceived to be the lack of levers within the jurisdiction of the Scottish administration to be able to provide economic support. It is reliant and it remained reliant on the United Kingdom Government.

Does the fact that she wrote, along with her colleagues in the devolved administrations, to the Prime Minister indicate that this problem was incapable of resolution at the Chancellor of Duchy of Lancaster level? It was a significant problem for the devolved administrations?

Mr Michael Gove: Well, understandably, the devolved administrations would have liked to have had more money, and they would have liked to have had more money in order to implement public health measures that they considered appropriate. But it’s always the case, and this was my point, or nearly always the case, that devolved administrations or, in England, local government, would like to have additional resource, but they don’t have to worry about the broader fiscal framework and fiscal judgments upon which markets and others, you know, will make their decisions. So, in that sense, that is why it is important to put it in context.

One other thing that I would say – two, in fact.

It is the case that the Barnett formula ensures, quite rightly, that Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland receive funding more generous per capita than England, and on top of that it is also the case that –

Lady Hallett: Mr Gove –

Mr Michael Gove: No, no, let me finish. No, I think it is important.

Lady Hallett: No, Mr Gove –

Mr Michael Gove: I think it is critically important that I make this point that furlough was –

Lady Hallett: No, no, Mr Gove, I ask the questions here, please –

Lady Hallett: Pause, please. Just pause.

Mr Keith: You are aware that my question is framed in the context of whether or not there was a significant problem in the context of the coronavirus crisis and whether devolved administrations felt that this issue of fiscal support was properly addressed. The question was not designed to elicit political views on the Barnett formula or the amount of support given to the devolved administrations.

Mr Michael Gove: I’m dealing in facts, Mr Keith, and they are facts which are relevant.

Lady Hallett: Mr Gove, if I’ve –

Lady Hallett: Mr Keith, let Mr Gove just – as long as you can answer it shortly, Mr Gove, because we need to move on again.

Mr Michael Gove: The essence of the charge is that the devolved administrations did not have enough resource, it is the case –

Mr Keith: No, I’m so sorry to interrupt. I have not asked you about the quantum of support. I am merely asking you to acknowledge that there was a problem that rumbled on, that was required to be addressed, was taken to Prime Ministerial level, of course, because it is in the nature of the devolved structure dealing with a national crisis that this sort of fiscal issue will arise. That’s all I’m seeking to adduce. I don’t want a lecture on the merits of the Barnett formula.

Was there a problem which the United Kingdom Government had to grapple with in the context of the response to the crisis?

Mr Michael Gove: The problem was simple. The devolved administrations understandably wanted more money. The case was that they were – indeed, the whole of the United Kingdom had, from the Treasury and from the Chancellor of the Exchequer, a generous response.

Ultimately, if the thrust of the question is does the devolution settlement work, it does, because of the basis on which the Exchequer funds the different parts of the United Kingdom is fair.

Lady Hallett: Now turning to some of the other structures.

COBR, it is obvious from the material that devolved administrations were invited to attend COBR. It wasn’t an access of rights but they did largely attend – or they attended many of the COBRs.

In due course, COBR faded out of the picture somewhat as Covid S and Covid-O took over. Do you assess – they didn’t attend Covid-S but do you assess their attendance at Covid-O was sufficient, the body that you chaired?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Lady Hallett: Over time I think the Cabinet Secretary – well, he wasn’t then the Cabinet Secretary, but the permanent secretary at Number 10, Simon Case, opined on whether or not the devolved administrations should have a right of access to Covid-O as opposed to their attendance being the exception rather than the rule. Do you recall that?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes, I think I do.

Lady Hallett: Is that what, in fact, eventuated? They did attend not of right but by invitation, but the large proportion of the Covid-O meetings?

Mr Michael Gove: I believe so.

Lady Hallett: The evidence shows also that the alternative structure of the JMC – and we needn’t go into the detail of it – wasn’t invoked but that there was a process by which you offered to have regular calls with the devolved administrations.

The evidence appears to suggest that it took a very considerable amount of time, in fact from May through to November, for a regular system of liaison to be set up through the calls which you held and also that the First Ministers were not, as it happened, invited to Covid-O on a standing basis until October.

So there was a hiatus between May and the autumn when DAs were, to a very considerable extent, out of the loop. Would you agree?

Mr Michael Gove: No.

Lady Hallett: Why?

Mr Michael Gove: Because there were regular calls of a variety of kinds with my officials and officials in devolved administrations. Covid-O and COBR and, indeed, the JMC are simply a range of mechanisms, others exist, in order to ensure that the devolved administrations and others were part of our broader conversations.

Lady Hallett: There were of course, Mr Gove, meetings on other various levels. We have had evidence of course from Professor Sir Chris Whitty about the liaison at the health level. I am asking you about your level in government. The JMC process was not operated at all. You, to be fair, put into place a process by which you called the DAs regularly but that process didn’t, it appears from the correspondence, start until the late autumn, and meanwhile, at Covid-O level, the First Ministers were not invited on a standing basis until October.

That’s from your very own witness statement.

Mr Michael Gove: Mmm, mmm.

Lady Hallett: So was there, in fact, a hiatus between May and the late autumn in which the DAs, at this political level, did not get the same degree of access to the United Kingdom Government that they had had hitherto and thereafter?

Mr Michael Gove: I think “hiatus” implies halt. I think there was a diminution but not a halt.

Lady Hallett: All right. Well, we can live with diminution.

You would say, no doubt, that you put into place the process of calls because you recognised that there was a need for it?

Mr Michael Gove: Oh, absolutely.

Lady Hallett: Why, in general terms, and we have all the letters and the correspondence, but there are letters to you from the devolved administration First Ministers, 22 April, 29 April, 21 May, 11 June (inaudible) September, all saying, to you, to use Mr Drakeford’s words, “I have repeatedly called for a predictable rhythm of engagement”. Why did it take so long to set up that process?

Mr Michael Gove: Well, I think we did have a good level of engagement. I think it was not that level of predictability that Mark initially wanted but I had the opportunity to talk to Mark, in the margins of the British-Irish Council last Friday, I explained that I was going to appear, and reflected then on the nature of our engagement, and he felt that while it was not perfect, it was good.

Lady Hallett: Mr Gove, you know very well it’s not your place to give hearsay evidence, an account from another witness. We’re asking you about your views.

The correspondence shows that Mr Drakeford in particular, was (unclear) to try to get the Government to agree this process, and it took many months to do so, even though it was a fairly regular process – or a fairly easy process of telephone calls, which he knew, in the devolved administrations?

Mr Michael Gove: And those did take place.

Lady Hallett: Well, you are familiar, no doubt, with the correspondence which shows Mr Drakeford repeatedly asking for the United Kingdom Government’s intentions for communications with the devolved governments to be made clear: “COBR has been stood down, there are plans to scale back the SAGE arrangements. I have called repeatedly for a predictable rhythm of engagement.”

Do you agree that?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes, and I wrote I think on 21 May to Mark Drakeford –

Lady Hallett: Yes, that’s before –

Mr Michael Gove: Yes, after 12 May. And then I note a variety of calls with First Ministers thereafter as well. So pretty regular contact.

Lady Hallett: To what extent were there difficulties in the relationship with the devolved administrations concerning the substance of public communications, so public health messages?

Mr Michael Gove: The one occasion that I remember is the Scottish Government had its own acronym, FACTS I believe, and they were anxious to ensure that their approach, using that acronym, took precedence over our Hands Face Space communication, and there was some disagreement over that. Given the UK-wide nature of the BBC and our principal broadcasters and so on, I was of the view, others in government much more strongly, that it was right to use Hands Face Space and that the evidence for the Scottish Government’s different approach was not strong.

However, the First Minister of Scotland argued that she commanded a level of confidence in her handling of the pandemic within Scotland that meant it was appropriate for her to use that particular form of communication. I think both views had legitimacy.

Lady Hallett: Had there, overall, been a perception on the part of the devolved administrations that England-centric announcements, Mr Gove, were not sufficiently understood by the United Kingdom Government to be limited only to England, that there were pronunciations about public health messages and communications and so on that appeared to be assumed by the United Kingdom Government to be applicable to the whole nation, rather than just England? You are aware of the material from the devolved administrations saying they felt you overstepped the mark in terms of the application of these messages to the whole nation?

Mr Michael Gove: I don’t believe that it led to any particular detriment to the effective delivery of policy, though, of course at times either the Scottish or the Welsh Government or the Northern Ireland Executive might have felt they could have communicated things better but, on the whole, when you are dealing with, as I mentioned – as we acknowledged – earlier, a virus whose impact is same across the United Kingdom, then the clarity of communication of, for example, Hands Face Space, I believe, is helpful.

Lady Hallett: Was the Scottish Government informed, in advance, of the change in the United Kingdom Government messaging from ‘Stay at Home’ to ‘Stay Alert’?

Mr Michael Gove: I don’t believe so.

Lady Hallett: So that’s a pretty good example of there being a failure of communication. The major public messaging of the United Kingdom Government from ‘Stay at Home’ to ‘Stay Alert’ was not discussed or debated with the Scottish Government in advance.

Mr Michael Gove: I don’t believe it was but then I don’t believe that it resulted in any particular detriment to the handling of the pandemic.

Lady Hallett: It’s an obvious point. Why was it not discussed in advance?

Mr Michael Gove: There were many, many things that we sought to discuss with the Scottish Government and the devolved administrations but not every communication was exhaustive. And it is the case, again I don’t want to make too much of a political point but I think this is just a matter of fact that –

Lady Hallett: Why was that particular important change, perhaps one of the most important changes in public messaging in the course of the crisis, not communicated to the Scottish Government first?

Mr Michael Gove: Well, we communicated a great deal. We didn’t communicate everything to the Scottish Government. And I want to be fair, the first thing is, there were – I am sure have been failures in what we communicated to the Scottish Government and other devolved administrations at times but it is also the case that the Scottish Government – and I admire the way in which Nicola Sturgeon handled Covid generally – but the Scottish Government was led by – is led by a political party that has a desire to generate, at particular points, causes for grievance or objection to the UK Government’s constitutional position and broader policy position. So it will be the case that there will be a temptation for some in the Scottish Government and in the Scottish National Party to exaggerate the impact of a mistake or an error in order to feed a broader political mission.

Lady Hallett: Do you acknowledge, Mr Gove, that Nicola Sturgeon and Mark Drakeford and Arlene Foster robustly reject any notion that they acted for such purely venal political motives?

Mr Michael Gove: Well, again, I would draw a distinction.

Lady Hallett: Do you accept that they say that in their witness statements to this Inquiry?

Mr Michael Gove: I do.

Lady Hallett: Right.

Mr Michael Gove: But I also think that, again, it is a matter of fact that Mark Drakeford and Arlene Foster belong to political parties that believe in the maintenance of the United Kingdom and Nicola Sturgeon does not.

Lady Hallett: Consideration of vulnerable and at-risk groups in decision-making. Another important area of your work was the chairing, for a while, of the GPSMIG –

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Lady Hallett: – and its focus on vulnerable children and the non-shielding vulnerable.

In relation to children, what sort of issues did the GPSMIG consider in those months between March and May? Were they issues such as free school meals, the risk of exploitation and abuse, and so on and so forth? Give us an idea as to what issues came in front of you.

Mr Michael Gove: Exactly those. So, knowing that children would be out of school, a variety of factors arose. Eligibility for free school meals, of course, is linked to relative poverty. Children out of school who would have the support of a free school meal when in school, not having it because they are out of school, that creates an issue and it’s an issue for some of the poorest families in our society.

It is also the case that children being out of school will mean that the ability of professionals, teachers and others, to detect if a child is at risk of abuse or neglect diminishes. The risk of domestic violence and the risk of children either being witness to it or being the victims of it increases. Also, younger children are risk of being – having their development disrupted because they’re not in an environment where they are being socialised.

Lady Hallett: The committee dealt with such issues, as I have suggested, children, non-shielding vulnerable people and disabled people?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Lady Hallett: When that committee was effectively disbanded in May 2020, where did that consideration go over to? To which body were those functions transferred?

Mr Michael Gove: Principally, Covid-O.

Lady Hallett: Did those issues remain with Covid-O thereafter, Mr Gove?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes, but it was also the case that the MIG was created early on in the fight against the virus. At that point, we had to rapidly adjust in order to make sure that public services were aware of the new and in some cases unprecedented strains they were under. By the time that Covid-O and indeed the Covid Taskforce had been established, the nature of what was required and some of the big policy questions had been identified, and to a greater extent we were looking at the effectiveness of delivery and, for example, I think it was the case that we’d already agreed that free school meals would be made available to children during holiday and other periods, vouchers and support, in order to take account of some of those earlier identified questions.

Lady Hallett: Can we have INQ000083956, please, which is a briefing dated 19 October.

On pages 8 and 9, I believe, there’s a reference to a fairly serious observation made by you about the failure of some departments to respond to your proposed debate concerning packages of interventions to tackle disproportionate, immediate health impacts.

You say in the second paragraph:

“It [is not now going to] be possible to announce an ambitious package of interventions in the Minister for Equalities’ oral statement …”

Could you give us, please, some flavour of the extent of your disappointment or the failure in terms of the responses from the other departments? You refer to a number of failed responses and to a number of departments. How did this come about?

Mr Michael Gove: I think, in a way, the letter speaks for itself, and of course we’re dealing with the specific impact on the most vulnerable in our society of this virus.

I should say that –

Lady Hallett: Mr Gove, I’m very sorry, in light of the time and, dare I say, your propensity to comment politically, can I ask you, please, just to answer the question, which is, how was it that the departments that you criticise came to fail to respond to your call to contribute to this package of interventions on which you were working?

Mr Michael Gove: Well, that is a question that requires extensive political commentary.

Lady Hallett: My Lady will stop –

Lady Hallett: You are not the first politician to make political commentary during the course of this Inquiry. If you keep your answer as short as possible – it’s time apart from anything else, Mr Gove, as you understand.

Mr Keith: Structurally, just in terms of government administration, why had these departments fallen short? Just in terms of their work product, they had failed to do what you had asked them to do and you were disappointed by their response. Why, administratively, had they dropped the ball?

Mr Michael Gove: Well, when I talk about political commentary, I don’t mean partisan, I mean –

Lady Hallett: Just answer.

Lady Hallett: He is going to.

Mr Michael Gove: I will but the key thing is that the question requires extensive answering. There’s a tension between being brief and answering your question properly.

I note, Mr Keith, that you want us to keep our answers brief, but if it’s also the case that you want them to be answered effectively, then I’ll have to go on at some length.

Mr Keith: Mr Gove, what –

Lady Hallett: – (overspeaking) – Mr Keith –

Mr Keith: I have heard some in terrorem threats in my time –

Lady Hallett: Mr Keith, is there a different way to ask the question?

Mr Keith: Yes.

Mr Michael Gove: I would say it was a promise not a threat.

Lady Hallett: Mr Gove, what was the ambitious package of interventions you had hope to announce?

Mr Michael Gove: Well, there was a range of the interventions that I was keen that we should announce in order to help the disabled, to better monitor the impact of the virus on those from visible ethnic minorities and to deal, in particular, with the plight that children faced.

It is often the case that whoever happens to be the Cabinet Office minister, or indeed the chair of any Cabinet Committee, will write letters chiding government departments for their failure to deliver in a variety of areas. I have done so on everything from levelling up to reforming the planning system to a variety of other areas.

Of course this is a particularly important issue because of the nature of the pandemic and the vulnerability of the groups concerned but it is not a unique example of me, or someone doing my job, attempting to challenge other government departments to raise their game.

Mr Keith: Were you able to bring them up to the mark? Did they deliver in due course or not?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Lady Hallett: How long did it take?

Mr Michael Gove: I think that it was a few more weeks. But, again, at every stage I was progress-chasing in my role as CDL and MCO, as anyone doing that job would have and has.

Lady Hallett: Moving to an entirely separate issue, the local lockdown structure and Covid-O in the summer.

The body, Covid-O, which you chaired, played a significant role in the imposition of these ad hoc local lockdowns in the summer of 2020. The evidence shows that DHSC Local Action Committee might recommend a particular area goes into lockdown, it would go to you and Covid-O, and you would decide whether or not a lockdown should be imposed.

It is obvious and common ground that Leicester was one of the places, in fact the first place, that was made subject to a first local lockdown, and later Manchester.

Evidence has been given to the Inquiry by the Mayor, Mr Rotherham, you may have heard the evidence yesterday, that he believed that Manchester was treated – in fact, it wasn’t Mr Rotherham, it was Mr Burnham. Andy Burnham said that Manchester was treated, in his view, appallingly, not necessarily in terms of there being a public health need for this intervention, but in terms of the process by which Manchester was placed under the restrictions, the debate about the fiscal support which would be given and the speed at which it was done.

In brief, do you accept that criticism of the Covid-O local restriction process insofar as Manchester is concerned or not?

Mr Michael Gove: I think it was broader than just Manchester in the way in which it was flawed.

Lady Hallett: The reasons he advances for the failures in the system, are they of equal application to the other places that were placed under lockdown or restrictions?

Mr Michael Gove: Not quite equal but broadly related.

Lady Hallett: So were they the fiscal debate, the way in which the system, as they saw it, put them under the restrictions too fast, and their effective inability to be able to respond and say, “No you’re not doing this”?

Mr Michael Gove: I think there are three things. Firstly, I think that the tiering system overall was inherently flawed, though – I can rehearse why –

Lady Hallett: We will come to that maybe in the context of the October tiering system.

Mr Michael Gove: Of course.

The second thing is that I think that the Mayor of Manchester, Greater Manchester, has a point as, indeed, others did, but it’s one thing to suggest that you should have stricter measures and demand that the Treasury should pay for it, it is another thing to have stricter measures, as it were, imposed and then for there not to be, necessarily, the resourcing you believe is necessary. So that is the distinction between, as it were, the Sturgeon position and the Burnham position. And I have more sympathy with the Burnham position.

Lady Hallett: That system was played out in the summer and of course a number of places went into lockdown or restrictions.

There was clear advice public health advice, scientific and medical advice, from September onwards that a second wave was coming. Infections were rising, prevalence was growing and, in a sense, that we would be back to the way we were in the spring or early spring February/March.

To what extent was it acknowledged within government that the tier system, which was then –

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Lady Hallett: – applied nationally in October and then, without any form of negotiation, applied again in December, realistically would work? It’s understandable that the Government would wish to try an alternative route short of a lockdown: let’s try the tier system and see whether it works get us out of this epidemiological hole?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Lady Hallett: But it must have been obvious that there were very real severe flaws in its design and in its application. All places would end up, epidemiologically, leveled up at the highest level. That was the nature of the beast?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Lady Hallett: So when the government gave considerable time and energy to putting this system into place in September and October, October it was announced on the 14th, did you not assess that this was a waste of time, a flawed exercise, that it would never provide the solution that you thought it might?

Mr Michael Gove: I was sceptical and grew more sceptical about its efficacy and believed and I think I advocated for an approach which was more England-wide.

I should say, in talking about the tiered approach, we earlier made the point that the devolved administrations at certain points went their own way, entirely understandably, but again the history of the pandemic shows that what starts in Essex, as it were, doesn’t stay in Essex, and across the whole island of Great Britain you will find that, sooner or later, to use your phrase about levelling up, the virus will level up overall.

Now, it may well be that at different points the approach of the Welsh Government or the Scotch Government might have been wiser than the approach the English Government, but ultimately, sooner or later, within an epidemiological area, you will find that unless appropriate restrictions are in place the virus will spread, and hence the weakness of the tier system.

Lady Hallett: The tier system was announced, in fact, on 14 October.

Mr Michael Gove: Mmm.

Lady Hallett: As it happened, the second lockdown was imposed on 4 November, so the tier system wasn’t, in fact, permitted to work for very long.

Mr Michael Gove: Indeed.

Lady Hallett: One of the reasons you accepted in your statement that it didn’t work is that it was always going to be a great deal more difficult to apply a tier system when the general levels of prevalence, the levels of spread of the virus were high.

Mr Michael Gove: Exactly.

Lady Hallett: Do you assess that if the government had imposed – considered and then imposed a tier system in September, thereby giving it a longer time within which to work, the prospects of success would have been greater, because it was –

Mr Michael Gove: No, no, quite –

Lady Hallett: – and it was raised?

Mr Michael Gove: No, that is possible. Again, I think, rather than necessarily being the tier system per se, because again it’s difficult to restrict the spread of the virus geographically, it’s looking at the budget of measures overall. Throughout decision-making you are reminded that there were broad restrictions on social mixing that would reduce the spread of the virus and the more restrictions you imposed the lower the spread, but of course the greater the cost in liberty.

Dividing the country up into tiers is one way of attempting to meet that budget in certain areas but not in others, but it’s also possible that we could have had a higher level of restriction uniformly across England without having specific tiers, as it were.

Lady Hallett: The point is a slightly different one. The tier system didn’t ultimately work.

Mr Michael Gove: No.

Lady Hallett: In principle, there is a chance or there’s a greater chance it may have worked if it had been imposed earlier when the prevalence, the degree of spread of the virus was lower, because that is one of the reasons – well, it ultimately (unclear) the tier system. We will never know what might have happened, but do you acknowledge, and you have referred in your statement to the fact that there is a strong case for the Cabinet having to – or should have acted earlier, that consideration should have been given to this tier system at an earlier stage, when it was more likely to work?

Mr Michael Gove: I think arguably consideration should have been given to other measures. So rather than introducing a tier system earlier, introducing other restrictions earlier.

Lady Hallett: Such as?

Mr Michael Gove: Well, some of the restrictions that we subsequently were compelled to consider before we went back to full lockdown. So, again –

Lady Hallett: With respect, the tier system was the penultimate procedure restriction before the lockdown on 4 November?

Mr Michael Gove: No, quite, but I think that – the tier system, as we said, was one way of imposing restrictions on some but not all. I wonder if, rather than going for the tier system earlier, there might not have been other non-pharmaceutical interventions that we could have used on an England-might basis before then.

Lady Hallett: In relation to the lockdown decision itself, are you in the camp of arguing that the United Kingdom Government should have gone earlier in recognition of the inevitability of the second wave, in recognition of the fact that the later you leave it to apply that sort of restriction the greater the rollercoaster effect and the greater the damage?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Lady Hallett: You must have reflected long and hard on that momentous decision. Are you able to identify a time in which you reasonably assess it should have been imposed?

Mr Michael Gove: I can go back and reflect on all of the exchanges I had, but I think it was some considerable time beforehand when I was talking to my colleagues, including those in my private office.

I think it is the case that Sir Patrick Vallance’s diaries also indicate that I was what you might call more hawkish or at the more cautious, depending on your point of view, end of the spectrum in internal debates.

Lady Hallett: Yes. They are mostly reflective, however, of your position in the November and December in the run-up to the third lockdown, and I’m concerned with the second one?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Lady Hallett: Well, did you say you did call openly for a second lockdown at an earlier stage than that at which it was imposed?

Mr Michael Gove: I think that I was pretty clear, and I would have to go back again through all of the exchanges that I had with my colleagues, but I think it was pretty clear to those in my private office team the concerns that I had and the way in which I sought to communicate them. And certainly in the discussions that I had or that we had in the Quad it would often be the case that the Health Secretary and I would be reinforcing our shared view, broadly shared view, on the need for tighter restriction.

Lady Hallett: Mr Gove, Sir Patrick Vallance’s diary entries do indeed show that during the tier system you expressed very considerable reservations about its practicality, its efficacy, you doubt whether it will work –

Mr Michael Gove: Mmm.

Lady Hallett: – and you make the point about the epidemiological levelling up. But you don’t appear in that fortnight or three weeks before 4 November to be openly calling for a lockdown, the ultimate measure. Would you accept that?

Mr Michael Gove: Well, I think that anyone could infer in the room from what I was saying that if I didn’t believe the measures that we had were enough, then it was clear that we should go further.

Lady Hallett: Well, that, if I may say so, remains to be seen.

INQ000136684 is the paper which set out the data that formed the foundation for the final lockdown measure of November:

“The situation is deteriorating.”

Paragraphs 1 and 6, if we can scroll back out – we can’t see paragraph 6 on that page so we’ll just have paragraph 1, thank you.

Paragraph 1 deals the with the NHS being under increasing pressure.

“… SPI-M have assessed that the NHS will, on 30/11/20, surpass fixed and surge bed capacity, even after electives are cancelled.”

If we can just go to the next page, paragraph 6, we’ll see a further reference to the demand for NHS acute beds:

“Even if we act now, it will take 3-4 weeks to play through into hospitalisations.”

And so on.

May I suggest to you that when it came to this lockdown decision, there was in the material, in the paperwork relating to the ultimate decision, a greater attention to the figures and facts relating to the likely impact on the NHS. There was specific consideration given to what would happen to the NHS if these measures were not imposed. Would you agree?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Lady Hallett: The document also paragraph 8 expressly addresses the economic consequences of the move:

“There is an argument that costly action now may avert more costly action later.”

Casting your mind back to the analogous thought process and decision-making on 23 March, it’s notable that that issue, “costly action now may avert more costly action later” was not debated or, in fact, referred to at all.

Is that because by November there was a far greater understanding of the reality that the earlier you imposed this sort of measure, the earlier you will be out of it, and overall less economic damage may be done?

Mr Michael Gove: I believe so, though it was still the case that I had to prosecute that case with some vigour.

Lady Hallett: And afterwards the diary entries from Sir Patrick do make it very plain that you are continually calling for caution in terms of the process which is applied in December following the second lockdown and on the approach to the third lockdown.

Would it be fair to say that the government found that decision-making process as difficult and as – well, as anxious and as – well, really impossible as it did the first level of decision-making in March? Do you agree that the government found it exquisitely difficult to make the decision about whether or not where there should be a second lockdown?

Mr Michael Gove: It was certainly difficult for the reasons that I alluded to earlier. During the course of September and October, there were other conversations, and in those conversations one could see again the Prime Minister’s hope that the worst might be behind us, and also the concerns that I and others had that the very conditions for a difficult second wave were growing and that timely and serious action needed to be taken.

And I was just looking back at the exchanges with people in my private office at that time and some of the points that I was making at that time to them about the arguments that I would be making in the Quad and elsewhere, on the CDL PPS JG AH chat group.

Lady Hallett: On 14 December, Sir Patrick Vallance records in his notebook these words:

“[Prime Minister] now worrying about Christmas (too late!) Agreed that reframing advice about Christmas needs to take place. Gove says measures from last year show we have been …”

And then he quotes the words “too lenient & too late”, and again in inverted commas:

“… we cannot make the same mistakes yet again.”

If you used those words, what mistakes yet again were you fearful that the government would make?

Mr Michael Gove: Allowing too much social mixing.

Lady Hallett: And by implication not taking the decision to impose a lockdown early enough, which is what your position is in relation to the second lockdown?

Mr Michael Gove: I think it is both coming quickly to that decision and making sure that that decision is strong enough.

So with reference both to tiers and more broadly the phrase “go early, go hard” has been used, and my view is that too often we didn’t go early enough and didn’t go hard enough.

Lady Hallett: On 2 January you sent a private note to the Prime Minister setting out your view that there was no alternative but to adopt a strategy of maximum suppression. Why, in the context of this extraordinarily complex government process, with committees and reporting lines and COBR and Covid-S and CTF and Covid-O, was it necessary for you to send a private note to the Prime Minister expressing your views on the ultimate decision, which was to impose a third lockdown?

Mr Michael Gove: I wanted to make sure that it got to the Prime Minister direct and without any interference.

Lady Hallett: Pause there. Interference by whom?

Mr Michael Gove: Well, I wanted to make sure he saw my own unvarnished opinion, that it was laid out in black and white.

It’s sometimes the case in conversations and exchanges like this that you can’t always say everything that needs to be said, so sometimes a document is the crispest and clearest way of doing so. It was the case the document had been assembled by the help of my team in Cabinet Office. It was also the case that a copy of the document was passed to the Prime Minister’s private office as well.

Lady Hallett: You were the chair of Covid-O, you were a senior minister, you’d been a member of the Quad, you had a variety of means at your disposal to send messages through to the Prime Minister, through your private secretary, through your principal private secretary, through whomsoever. Why did you have to resort to your Gmail account to sent the Prime Minister your views as a fellow government minister on the most important issue facing the nation that day?

Mr Michael Gove: In many different arenas, in many different fora, as you say, I had the chance to express my view, and I would always use as many as I could in order to get my view across when I considered it necessary.

You asked me, quite rightly, I think, to reflect earlier if I hadn’t been vigorous enough in stating my view. At some points in the pandemic I suspect I wasn’t. On other occasions I felt that it was necessary to adopt a not just belt and braces approach but a by any means necessary approach, to make clear what I felt.

Lady Hallett: You assessed that it was necessary to make your views particularly plain to the Prime Minister?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Lady Hallett: Because you were concerned that, for obvious reasons, he may find the alternative approach preferable to yours. You wanted to make sure that you got your way in terms of his decision; is that the nub of it?

Mr Michael Gove: I wanted to make sure that he was clear about what I thought. I think it’s fair to say that it wasn’t about getting my way, it was about doing what I believed to be right. But of course these are perhaps different ways of describing the same intent.

Lady Hallett: Yes. You wanted the last word and you wanted to make sure that he would do what you believe was in the best interests of the country?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes, I think it’s the responsibility or duty of any minister if they are dealing with a situation like this to try to make sure that the government does the right thing. Of course I’m not the ultimate decision-maker. I’m not saying that in order to evade responsibility –

Lady Hallett: No, no.

Mr Michael Gove: – but just to be clear that, quite properly, at certain points, once a decision has been taken, even if you didn’t agree with it, you’ve got to get on with implementing it to the best of your ability.

Lady Hallett: Why had you not – and you specifically told this Inquiry – why had you not, on 20 March, when the analogous decision was being made in the spring, not expressed your views then as plainly as you did on 4 January but instead took the consensus approach that you’ve described in terms of chairing COBR?

Mr Michael Gove: Well, I think I could at certain times, as I said earlier, have been more vehement but I think it is also the case that in the – in Imran Shafi’s notes of the conversation in the weekend preceding that, that it’s pretty clear that I was forceful, sometimes terse, in urging rapid action at that point. And I think – well, again, you made the point that I shouldn’t introduce evidence that’s relates to conversations which are not in front of us, but I think that others, if questioned, would say that that weekend I was certainly very clear about the need to act but I also wanted to acknowledge that, while I had a strong view, it was for the Prime Minister ultimately to decide and it was only right that he should hear from others who took a different approach.

Lady Hallett: And the final topic, very briefly, do you commend, in your witness statement, a number of lessons learned dealing with such matters as training and the requirement for ministers and officials to take part in exercises and the overarching need to ask, and I get the final word, “daft laddie” questions?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Mr Keith: There we are.

Lady Hallett: Mr Gove got the final word, Mr Keith.

Mr Gove, I’m sorry I can’t say it’s time to go. I’m afraid we’re going to take a ten-minute break now and then we have an hour of questions for you. I’m really sorry –

Mr Michael Gove: Not at all.

Lady Hallett: – but I must allow the core participants to ask important questions.

Mr Michael Gove: Of course.

Lady Hallett: And then for everybody else to understand, we then, at 4 o’clock, will start the evidence of Dame Jenny Harries, I think she has been warned, and we will try to finish this evening at about 5.00.

So I shall be back at 3.00.

(2.50 pm)

(A short break)

(3.00 pm)

Lady Hallett: All right.

Mr Wilcock: Mr Gove, I represent the Northern Ireland Covid Bereaved Families for Justice campaign, and I’m sure you will appreciate that they would welcome concise answers to the questions I am about to ask so that you don’t, unintentionally I’m sure, give the impression that the clock is being run down given the limited time we have.

My questions are all on what you describe in your witness statement as your role in managing the devolved nations and my starting point is expert evidence that we have already heard from Professor Ailsa Henderson, that I’m sure you are familiar with, that in her opinion the UK Government took positions on intergovernmental relations and how the devolved administrations should be integrated within a UK-wide response to the pandemic that were driven not necessarily by what would be best able to respond to an epidemiological event, and that there was a desire to structure intergovernmental relations for ad hominem reasons, and she quoted there’s a clear effort to control or handle one of the First Ministers in particular, there is a fear of federalism, there’s a fear of leaks, there is a perceived kind of venality or self-serving nature to the motives of the devolved administrations and never reflection that this might also be true for all actors.

Is there any truth in her analysis?

Mr Michael Gove: Some.

Lady Hallett: Which bits?

Mr Michael Gove: You have asked me to be concise. I’ll try to be. Again, I have no desire to run down the clock and if it would help the Inquiry I am more than happy to come back at any point. But I think the key thing is with the devolved administrations we have different personalities and different parties represented but I do believe that overall – and certainly it seems to be the case that the evidence from all the First Ministers attests to this – that generally the meetings were cordial, generally we made progress, generally there was an understanding of the importance of proceeding on a UK-wide basis and I think that the frequency of conversations that I had with leaders of the devolved administrations, well over 100, attests to the fact that government as a whole took seriously the importance of co-ordination and consultation.

Lady Hallett: Well, Professor Henderson quoted specifically a fear of federalism, a fear of leaks, a perceived kind of venality, of self-serving nature to the devolved administrations; and you said that there was some truth to what she said. Which one of those four is there some truth to?

Mr Michael Gove: Well, I think with respect to fear of federalism, the Prime Minister, in his own evidence – former Prime Minister, Mr Johnson – says that it was important to recognise that there was a difference. There is a difference between the UK Government’s role and the role of the devolved administrations but I think that while the Prime Minister was clear about that, the effective operation day to day and co-ordination of activity was good.

Lady Hallett: Can we have INQ000091348 on screen, please.

While that’s going up, Mr Gove, it is a read-out of a call that you had on 22 April with, amongst other people, the Secretaries of State for Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and then – they are described in the document as TOs.

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Lady Hallett: I think the TOs are the civil service departments’ territory offices for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Lady Hallett: So before we go to the read-out itself, can you look at the email on the first page from someone in the Northern Ireland office where in the second paragraph it was said that:

“Going into the meeting there was a concern that the Cabinet Office [whose role you have told us about was to co-ordinate government policy] were seeking to take ownership of DA handling and the Union strategy more widely … we’ll clearly need to keep a close eye on this.”

Were you aware in April 2020 that the Northern Ireland office was concerned that you and the Cabinet Office were seeking to take ownership of DA handling and Union strategy in the early months of the pandemic?

Mr Michael Gove: I wasn’t aware of any concern but I think the second sentence in that paragraph:

“… CDL [that was the role I had at the time] seemed keen to press ahead with instituting a regular meeting with himself, the [devolved administrations] and the [territorial offices] during Covid-19.”

Again, under questioning from Counsel to the Inquiry, the point was made that some felt there wasn’t enough conversation.

Lady Hallett: Yes.

Mr Michael Gove: I think that what this shows is that even though, of course, there was a spectrum of opinions, I personally was keen that we should involve the devolved administrations as closely as possible.

Lady Hallett: So I think the short answer was, yes, you were aware in general terms?

Mr Michael Gove: I, again, was aware that, of course, territorial offices wanted to make sure that they were fully involved in those conversations as well but my intention was to ensure that both the territorial Secretaries of State and the respective First and Deputy First Ministers were involved as well.

So, again, my aim throughout was to have the maximum possible sharing of information and discussion.

Lady Hallett: Well, let’s have a look at the read-out itself, if we may, Mr Gove. We can see that you started the call by explaining that the reason for the call was effectively a stocktake and that whilst to date, that is April 20, the four nations had “marched more or less together in response to Covid” you felt that there was a temptation for the DAs to “jockey for position eg on their sensitivity to health issues”.

You have touched on this earlier, but given your evidence that it was reasonable for the devolved governments to take decisions locally, why did you use the particular express “jockey for position”?

Mr Michael Gove: Well, again, there had been some concern that had been expressed by other people in government that, for example, the – one First Minister had communicated the results of a COBR before others had a chance to communicate it, and the view had been expressed to me, that there was a risk or a danger that the need for coherent UK-wide communications could sometimes be vitiated or compromised by some, in some of the devolved administrations, moving to the microphone before others, as it were.

But again, as I think the document makes clear, I said that I was open to regular weekly meetings and it was important that the UK Government was not high-handed in –

Lady Hallett: Absolutely, and I am going to come on to that to be fair to you. That is a valid point.

But going back again, leaks aren’t unique in the Dies.

Mr Michael Gove: Indeed.

Lady Hallett: They are common in even very recent governments, aren’t they?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes, they absolutely are, and I am sensitive to that. Again, one of the points I made earlier – and I will try to summarise it briefly – is that overwhelmingly I don’t just have respect for but I approve of the way in which each of the First Ministers and Deputy First Ministers handled things. I don’t want to criticise them but there were occasions and moments when the political position, particularly of the Scottish Government, gave rise to concern and/or suspicion that they may, while still obviously seeking to do the right thing, if there was an opportunity additionally to make a political point, that temptation was there.

So, as I say, it was an issue that was real but at the margins. Overall, I think the Scottish Government worked very well with the rest of us and did well on its own terms.

Lady Hallett: So as you pointed out already, you then went on to say that you had:

“… a responsibility to make sure the right policies [to combat Covid] are in place, using the strength and resources … “

And you were fairly open to the suggestion from Mark Drakeford for weekly meetings between FMDAs because you didn’t want the UK to seem high-handed.

If you look down the page to see the contributions of the Secretaries of State for Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales, do you agree that they were rather less concerned with any appearance of being high-handed and at best more cautious about such meetings?

Mr Michael Gove: I think they completely understood my position. I think that they were accurately reflecting one or two of the concerns not just they but other colleagues had had.

So, again, Secretary of State for Northern Ireland fairly made the point, which I briefly alluded to earlier, that First Ministers were sometimes privy to decision-making and involved in decision-making before other Cabinet ministers and, again, there was a balance to be struck but they were reflecting that concern but I think it was in the context of a thoughtful and reflective conversation on the pros and cons of particular types of engagement.

Lady Hallett: Now, Professor Henderson’s point was, I think, that structures were made because of concern about the individuals. You have spoken about concerns you had about the First Minister for Scotland. Can we go to the next page, please, and about 14 lines down we can see the Secretary of State alleges that:

“The default position of [the Sinn Fein] dFM [Michelle O’Neill] will be to agree with the approach in [the Republic of Ireland].”

Mr Michael Gove: Mmm.

Lady Hallett: Now, Mr Gove, you will know the group I represent consists of a broad church of people from within all traditions within Northern Ireland but did it occur to you, when Mr Lewis said this, that not only did he only name one side of the political divide within Northern Ireland but that, as you said, there was much to be said, you have already said this in evidence, for the response in the north of Ireland to take account of the approach in the south, given the Common Travel Area and the open land border?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes, and I don’t think that either of those two things are mutually exclusive. So I think, absolutely, whatever the political tradition or party of any member of the Executive in Northern Ireland, all of them were aware of the nature of the Common Travel Area, the nature of the island as a single epidemiological area and the particular challenges that that raised, but I think it was fair and legitimate of the Northern Ireland secretary to point out that it’s in the nature of Sinn Fein, as a distinct political party, to approach issues with a set of particular assumptions.

It’s – again, I’m seeking not to criticise because again, I appreciated the hard work that Michelle O’Neill and other Sinn Fein ministers put into dealing with the pandemic – I don’t want to criticise them at all, but I do think that being aware of the political traditions from which people spring is helpful in recognising why some arguments may be made.

Lady Hallett: So you agree that at least some of Professor Henderson’s points about structure being made for ad hominem reasons rather than as to combat, is this an example of an ad hominem approach or not?

Mr Michael Gove: I draw a distinction. I don’t think it’s ad hominem, per se. I think it’s recognising a structural, political or ideological factor. Again, without wanting to draw too broad an analogy, when other countries, Germany, for example, which, of course, has a fully federal system, had negotiations between the federal chancellery and the respective lender, one of the factors there was an acknowledgement that certain parties would come at these questions from a particular position. So an SPD-led Minister President would take a different view from a CSU Minister President.

Lady Hallett: In Germany?

Mr Michael Gove: In Germany.

Lady Hallett: And – it may not be ad hominem per se but it’s ad hominem in effect, isn’t it?

Mr Michael Gove: No, I don’t believe so because, again, I think that it’s not a reflection on an individual or their qualities. As I say, I think that in my experience everyone whom I encountered with executive responsibility from the DAs behaved with the public interest first and foremost, but it’s difficult for politicians, elected politicians, to set aside completely the perspective, sometimes unconscious, biases that they bring to the table.

Lady Hallett: Mr Wilcock, I am afraid you are getting very close.

Mr Wilcock: I am getting very close to the end.

Lady Hallett: Are you asking the questions on behalf of the TUC?

Mr Wilcock: I am. But would you please allow me to ask two more on behalf of my main clients?

Lady Hallett: We have got to move on. I’ve got a witness waiting who has been here and Mr Gove has been in the witness box all day, so I’m afraid everyone is going to have to speed up, and I’m going to ask other people who have been allocated longer times to see if they can shorten their questions.

Mr Wilcock: Well, my Lady, it’s not the questions necessarily that cause –

Lady Hallett: I do understand, Mr Wilcock, of course I do.

Mr Wilcock: If we go on to the next page and look at the first underlined section to see how you responded to these interventions, and we can see, can’t we, that you say that you had heard the Secretaries of State for territorial office’s caution and that the regular meetings won’t mean that the devolved administrations agree on the approach to Covid and that regular meetings could be a potential federalist Trojan horse.

Mr Michael Gove: Yes, and I think that was reflecting the concerns that had been expressed by others.

Lady Hallett: Absolutely. So my question really is this: given your initial openness to regular meetings in the way of making sure the right policies to respond to Covid were put in place, wasn’t this fear of federalism another example of Professor Henderson’s description of a desire to structure government for ad hominem reasons?

Mr Michael Gove: No, I don’t believe so. It was the case that, as I say, other colleagues expressed their concerns, and I was reflecting in the read-out the nature of the concerns, but they didn’t impede the regular conversations we had.

And also the evidence I think from all of the First Ministers and Deputy First Ministers were occasionally expressing frustrations, does converge on the point, and they all of course come from different parties, that broadly there was a good level of co-operation and collaboration. And indeed I think Professor Henderson makes the point that there are positive lessons in the UK experience in her conclusions.

Lady Hallett: She does.

Finally, if we look at the second underlying section, can you see that you conclude this meeting with an observation about there being a “fair point about handling the DAs” and a suggestion that officials could be involved in any meetings to “diffuse tensions” and that you would not commit to the weekly meetings that you had initially been fairly open to.

Did that non-committal coincide with what you told us this afternoon with the diminution of access between the devolved administrations and the political level of UK Government?

Mr Michael Gove: I think there were two things –

Lady Hallett: I think you can probably answer this “yes” or “no”.

Mr Michael Gove: One of the reasons why there was a diminution in contact was because as we moved out of the first lockdown over the summer there was less of a need to have the intensity of meetings that we had had beforehand. So it wasn’t a policy decision driven by a desire to speak to the DAs less, it was partly because throughout the summer, as we were coming out of lockdown, the need for the tempo of meetings across all governments diminished.

Lady Hallett: Whatever the desire, it coincided with that diminution, yes or no?

Mr Michael Gove: It did, but coincidence and – no, sorry, correlation is not causation in every case.

Lady Hallett: Indeed. Understood.

They’re all the questions I wish to ask you on behalf of the Northern Ireland families. I have also been asked you ask to some questions on behalf of the TUC. All of these questions relate to the financial support for self-isolation Test and Trace Support Payment scheme.

Now on 17 September 2020 you sent a WhatsApp message to Rishi Sunak stating the following:

“Dear Rishi,

“So sorry to trouble. On the isolation support payment question I support the overall idea strongly. I think the proposal to route money through LAs is a mistake and I cannot accept any scheme that is not UK-wide. Can we walk? All very best, MG.”

Then Mr Sunak responds:

“Sure. Please call.”

Why did you support the idea strongly?

Mr Michael Gove: Because I believed that critical to contact tracing and critical to the effective management of the disease was making sure that there were appropriate isolation payments for all those who needed to self-isolate, particularly, obviously, those who were the lower end of the income spectrum.

Lady Hallett: Is that your answer?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Lady Hallett: Why did you think that the plan to route the money through local authorities was a mistake?

Mr Michael Gove: Because I believed that it was a UK-government responsibility.

Lady Hallett: How did Mr Sunak respond to the issues you raised with the proposed Test and Trace Support Payment scheme?

Mr Michael Gove: I didn’t recall the full detail but as Chancellor he was always sympathetic to the arguments that I would make about the effective operation of the payments that people needed. And as I think it’s a matter of record, as I briefly alluded to when Counsel to the Inquiry was questioning me, the furlough payments overall – they are different, of course – were among the most generous levels of financial support anywhere in the western world.

Lady Hallett: I didn’t write the question but I suspect it was aimed at: how did he respond to your suggestion that such support be put in place for that particular scheme?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes, and I think that – I can’t recall the exact detail but we did have a system of support for those who had to self-isolate and who were poorer. It’s an open question about as to whether or not it was generous enough.

Mr Wilcock: Thank you very much.

Lady Hallett: Thank you. I do understand. Sorry I interrupted.

Mr Wilcock: Not at all.

Lady Hallett: Ms Heaven.

Questions From Ms Heaven

Ms Heaven: Mr Gove, I represent the Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice Cymru, and I think you have heard the warnings about time so I will take as I can.

I want to start, please, by asking you about some of the evidence the Inquiry has from Mr Johnson.

Obviously he hasn’t given evidence yet so this is from his witness statement, my Lady.

I will paraphrase, it’s paragraph 186 from his witness statement and he says this:

“It was clear from my earlier experience that the DAs needed to be handled with care, given the powers they had to diverge. I wanted to reduce the risk of political point-scoring …”

He then says in his view:

“It [was] optically wrong, in the first place, for the UK Prime Minister to hold regular meetings with other DA First Ministers …”

So I’m just paraphrasing there.

My question is this, I want to focus on your state of knowledge and, in particular, in 2020 if we can, did you understand at this time that Mr Johnson was reluctant to meet regularly with the leaders of the devolved administrations and that this was a deliberate choice made by him largely for presentational reasons; in his words it was “optically wrong”? Were you aware at the time that that was his position?

Mr Michael Gove: I think in fairness to Mr Johnson, and he goes on to explain in his witness statement, that it was more than just optical or presentational.

Ms Heaven: Practical as well I think he says.

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Ms Heaven: But just focusing on the optical and presentational, because that is a reason he gives, were you aware at the time that that was one of the reasons why he didn’t want to meet regularly with the First Ministers of the devolved administrations?

Mr Michael Gove: It seems to me that what the Prime Minister wanted to do was to divide responsibility and labour appropriately, and as one of his ministers charged with a co-ordination function is seeming natural and logical for me to take on this role.

Ms Heaven: Let’s move on then, because we have limited time.

I want to ask you then about Mr Drakeford’s comments. He has also given some comments in his supplemental witness statement, in paragraph 16:

“I consider that Mr Johnson’s comments at paragraph 186 of statement that the “DAs needed to be handled with care” betrays a cast of mind. It appears to me that his thinking, as the then Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, was not that the UK Government needed to co-operate effectively with the devolved governments as equal partners who should be properly involved in decision-making, but that they had to be handled with care like a set of unruly, unreliable adolescents whose judgments were flawed.”

So, just reflecting on that briefly, and the “handled with care” aspect, can we just be clear in terms of the answers that you just gave, are you agreeing that there was some concern that if the DAs were given information too early on that they may leak it or indeed that they may act early, in other words, go first? What – was that actually a concern?

Mr Michael Gove: It was a concern because I think there was one occasion quite early on when one particular First Minister did, it was perceived by others, move to the microphone in advance of, you know, the agreed communications roll-out. Some people were sensitive to that. I thought overall in the greater scheme of things that that was not a particular significant concern but, as I say, that was my view.

Ms Heaven: We’re moving on now to my next question, which is communications, and I haven’t got time to go into multiple examples. It’s about the timing of communications, whether or not there was proper briefing to the DAs before the UK Government announced measures, and I want to look at one particular issue and that’s the standing down of COBR.

Mr Keith raised a moment ago with you that one of the complaints that we’ve heard in this Inquiry is the lack of clarity, and this is from the DAs, in public health messaging by the UK Government about the geographical application of some of the measures, and also a concern about measures being announced without notice to the devolved administrations.

So, on that note, can we please have up INQ000216507, please. Do you see that that there?

Mr Michael Gove: Mm.

Ms Heaven: So this is a letter from yourself to Mr Drakeford 21 May 2020, and just for context this is your response to a letter that you had received from Mr Drakeford on 12 May where he is asking for toes regular and reliable engagements.

So in this letter essentially what you are doing is you are agreeing that there needs to be a common approach. If we look at the second paragraph there, you say you “would like to work together” and you make the point about “realign[ing] public perceptions of our approach”, and then there is talking about social distancing. And a little way down there there’s an emphasis on the importance of collective public messaging.

And if we go then to paragraph 3, you give this assurance:

“Going forward, I hope we can each share our emerging strategic thinking as early as possible so we have the opportunity to align approaches ahead of announcements.”

I think then that’s when you reaffirm your commitment to the regular meetings. Do you see that that there?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Ms Heaven: So with that in mind I’m going to fast forward now, please, if I may, to INQ000216519.

This is a letter to yourself and Mr Drakeford, 11 June 2020, do you see that there?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Ms Heaven: Thank you.

So I’ll just read it through and then I’ll ask the questions:

“I am writing to ask the UK Government’s intentions for communication with the devolved governments about the response to Covid and the recovery phase.

“COBRA last met on 10th May and heard from the Prime Minister on Thursday 28 May, when he said that you would follow up later that week. There was no subsequent communication, and in a call with the Secretary of State for Wales on 3 June I asked about the UK Government’s intentions in respect of the COBRA machinery. Through official channels we learn that COBRA has been stood down, and that there are plans to scale back the SAGE arrangements.”

I will come on to the next bit in a moment but just pausing there, is it correct then that this decision was made, COBR was going to be scaled back, and Mr Drakeford not only didn’t hear about it from you but indeed he didn’t hear about it in advance?

Mr Michael Gove: Well, I think that there were a number of communications between myself and the Welsh Government over this period. Yes, of course there were some occasions where decisions were taken in advance of the Welsh Government being fully involved. I should say that there were some occasions where decisions were taken, entirely properly, by the devolved administrations without our input as well.

Ms Heaven: But isn’t the standing down of COBR and indeed, I think, the scaling down of SAGE, which is also referred to here, isn’t that something that should absolutely have been told to the First Ministers of the devolved administrations in advance?

Mr Michael Gove: Well, I think it was the case that involvement with the devolved administrations was more intense through the MIG process than simply through the COBR process.

COBR, as I mentioned earlier, both describes a room and a process. The key thing is – whether it’s COBR, and indeed I think Mark himself says:

“To be clear, I am not arguing that the COBR machinery should continue.”

I think the overall question is: was it the case there was frequent and sufficiently frequent contact? I think certainly frequent contact, but again the First Minister will have his own view about the adequacy of that frequency.

Ms Heaven: Let me just quickly move on then.

If we look back at that letter, please, he is also raising another concern, isn’t he, and that’s “very significant announcements this week with minimal or no prior communication”, and bearing in mind we’re on 11 June here so we’re a month after that letter where you promised, effectively, effective communication, and he references:

“… 4 June mandatory face coverings on public transport

“… 5 June … face masks in NHS facilities.”

And:

“… bubbling for single person households.”

So, again, and certainly from his perspective, decisions were being made on very important topics, were being communicated, and the devolved administrations were not being given advance notice, certainly on these topics.

Is that fair as at 11 June 2020?

Mr Michael Gove: Well, I think that – I’m just looking at my own evidence, I can see in paragraph 56, prior to this there was a:

“… COBR meeting on 9 April, attended by the devolved administrations, it was agreed that it was too early to lift the restrictions in place and that a decision would not be taken until the end of the following week.”

And then a call with the devolved administrations was arranged on 15 April, and then I go on to talk about the broader conversations that I had subsequent to that, including, in due course, a – on 23 June, chairing a call with the First Ministers of the devolved administrations to discuss the decisions regarding social distancing, the Cabinet were going to be asked to make that –

Ms Heaven: Okay –

Mr Michael Gove: – all of these are examples of involvement and, in some cases, the devolved administrations knowing and being involved in decisions before others –

Ms Heaven: Mr Gove, I appreciate there may be other examples but my Lady has the letter, so I think we’ll very quickly move on for one final question.

Mr Michael Gove: My point is that, while I do not deny that there were moments in the rhythm of our approach when the frequency of meetings for the devolved administrations was not what it might be, overall I think that there was a good frequency of meetings.

Ms Heaven: Okay. Finally then we have a reference to the First Minister for Wales having to request a SAGE advice to you, I know this is very specific and it’s testing your memory, on 5 May 2020 because there was apparently concern being expressed that SAGE papers were not available.

First of all, do you recollect this and do you recollect there being any requests earlier than May 2020, certainly to you, for SAGE information, because of course we understand the CMOs were communicating by that point?

Mr Michael Gove: Exactly.

Ms Heaven: So, first of all, do you recollect that? Do you accept that? Do you find that confusing, that you were being requested to SAGE on 5 May 2020?

Mr Michael Gove: My understanding was, as you say, that the Chief Medical Officers were meeting and talking regularly and also that the health ministers were meeting and talking regularly as well, that Matt Hancock and the representative health ministers, Vaughan Gething I think at this stage in Wales, were meeting and talking separately.

For me, the key question would be: was there any specific information that wasn’t available to officials or others within the Welsh Government? So was there a new and emerging set of findings that they were not – that were not shared and not given in a timely fashion.

My understanding is that everything that needed to be shared was shared. There was a very good level of sharing.

Ms Heaven: I think I have run out of time now, so thank you very much.

Lady Hallett: Thank you, Ms Heaven.

Ms Mitchell.

Questions From Ms Mitchell KC

Ms Mitchell: Mr Gove, I appear as instructed by Aamer Anwar & Co on behalf of the Scottish Covid Bereaved.

I would like to take you back to a Cabinet meeting in July 2020. Now, by this time the first wave was over, the second wave was still to come, and this Inquiry has heard evidence that there was no pandemic plan, about the dysfunctionality in those critical months before July, infighting, misogyny, failure to understand science, maths, graphs, dithering, trolleying, all resulting in a deadly delay before implementing lockdown.

It’s against the background of these four months into the pandemic that you present a paper at a meeting of the Cabinet on 21 July 2020 called State of the Union.

If I can have INQ000089054 up on screen, particularly paragraph 2.

Do you recognise this document?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Ms Mitchell KC: Is that a document written by you?

Mr Michael Gove: It would have been written by my team.

Ms Mitchell KC: And did you present this document at the Cabinet meeting?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes. I think – if I can go back, did you say that it was 12 July or 20 July?

Ms Mitchell KC: It was 21 July 2020. It’s the front page we’ll show you.

Mr Michael Gove: Okay, yes.

Ms Mitchell KC: Now at paragraph 2 we see that a comment is made that:

“In Scotland, only 27% of people think the UK Government is putting in place the right measures, but 70% of respondents believe the Scottish Government is putting in place the right measures …”

If we could move on to page 5, please, the top paragraph, which is available, that should be on your screen, it says:

“We need to change perceptions of our response to COVID-19. There is a real opportunity to outline how being part of the Union has significantly reduced the hardship faced by individuals and businesses across the UK, and will continue to do so.”

Then it notes that satisfaction with the government is low.

You have said:

“Building on the working of the Treasury, we need to generate further, tangible examples of where we have acted in the interests of citizens from all across four nations, and all departments should review their COVID-19 responses to identify examples that could be utilised in future communications.”

Now, in your answer to Mr Keith’s question posed earlier, you expressed the view that the Scottish Government – being led by a political party that has a desire to generate, at particular points, causes for grievance or objection to the UK Government’s constitution. And you also said, if there was an opportunity additionally to make a political point, that temptation was here.

From this document it appears that you are suggesting that the UK Government considers that the pandemic was an opportunity to emphasise the strength of the Union, that you were suggesting that a political point could be made.

Was it in fact the UK Government playing politics with the pandemic response?

Mr Michael Gove: No, of course not. The first thing that I would say is that the mismatch in figures there occurred at a time when the approach of both the UK Government and the Scottish Government was very similar, and we had been working effectively together.

To my mind it was important that we communicated that the UK Government was operating effectively and operating in tandem with the Scottish Government, the Welsh Government and the Northern Ireland Executive, but it’s also the case that the strength of the United Kingdom in dealing with the pandemic was a material benefit to all the countries within the United Kingdom. We would not have been able to provide furlough, we would not have been able to roll out the vaccine in the way that we did if we had not been operating as one United Kingdom.

Ms Mitchell KC: So what I wish to pose to you was whether or not what you are trying to get across there was political in terms? You are wanting to emphasise the strength of the Union?

Mr Michael Gove: Well, I wanted to make sure that facts were clear. It is a fact that the furlough scheme was generous. It is a fact that the Barnett formula provides additional resources for other parts of the United Kingdom. It is a fact that we would not have been able to roll out the vaccine at the speed that we did without being part of the United Kingdom. And I think it is important, at a time of strain, that people have possession of the facts in order to be able to understand the situation in which we find ourselves.

Ms Mitchell KC: I see. And the document that’s there before us, that’s your way of doing that.

Can I move on to question 2, please. The First Minister of Scotland was asked to express her opinion on your view that devolutionary arrangements didn’t lend themselves to an obvious mechanism to bring the devolved administrations into the decision-making process.

Now, we don’t need her response up for speed of time, but what she says is she agrees there wasn’t a pre-existing mechanism. However, she says the problem in her view was not the lack of the mechanism but the difficulty the UK Government had in treating the devolved administrations as equal partners. As long as they see it, to quote the former Prime Minister, “as optically wrong”, they will not be prepared to deploy the flexibility necessary to make any mechanism work effectively.

Now, this Inquiry has heard evidence from those at the heart of government that COBR meetings attended by the First Minister were Potemkin in nature, a charade carried out to give the impression that the Scottish Government were involved in the decision-making process whilst decisions were taken elsewhere in secretive meetings.

What I want to ask you is, firstly, do you agree that UK Government had difficulty in treating Scotland as equal partners in the crisis?

Mr Michael Gove: No.

Ms Mitchell KC: Did you show that by making decisions which were taken elsewhere and not within COBR?

Mr Michael Gove: No.

Ms Mitchell KC: Was the UK Government prepared to deploy the flexibility necessary to make the mechanisms work effectively?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Ms Mitchell KC: In doing so, can I ask in what way, when we’ve heard specifically that decisions were taken elsewhere and presented at COBR as a fait accompli and the devolved administrations were asked whether or not they agreed to that, was treating people or treating the devolved administrations as equal partners and also deploying the flexibility to make their mechanism, their ability to input into those decisions, work effectively?

Mr Michael Gove: I’m sorry, could you repeat the question.

Ms Mitchell KC: Yes, certainly.

What way did the UK Government show that they were treating Scotland as equal partners and deploying the flexibility necessary to make any mechanism work effectively, in circumstances where decisions were being taken outwith COBR and being brought to COBR as if those decisions were still to be made to allow the devolved estimations to agree?

Mr Michael Gove: Well, in response to questions from our colleague who is acting on behalf of victims in Wales, I made the point there that, at least – I mean, I can turn to one occasion but there were many occasions where the First Ministers and representatives of devolved administrations were acquainted with decision-making before the Cabinet. I should say that the UK is not a federal state and a critical thing is that any comparison –

Ms Mitchell KC: With respect, I wonder if I could stop you there, Mr Gove. It’s not the analysis that I’m looking for, just the response to the questions.

I wish to move to my third –

Mr Michael Gove: But, with respect, your questions are prosecuting an argument. You are making a series of points from an ideological point of view and I am seeking to make sure that context is provided for the committee.

It is the case that, for example, quite properly, the Scottish Government and the Welsh Government would take decisions themselves within their cabinets. UK Government ministers were not invited to be observers or participants in those discussions, neither should we have been.

Ms Mitchell KC: And that’s –

Mr Michael Gove: But it is important to –

Ms Mitchell KC: – Inquiry, Mr –

Mr Michael Gove: It is important to appreciate the unique circumstances of –

Ms Mitchell KC: Mr Gove –

Mr Michael Gove: – the UK constitution, and in those circumstances, as we’ve rehearsed earlier, flexibility is required and flexibility was shown.

Ms Mitchell KC: Mr Gove, I’m moving on to my third question.

You have highlighted, in your view, the importance of clarity in respect of the public health message. You have also highlighted, in response to one of my learned friends, that one of the concerns that was being expressed to you, there was a risk or danger that the need for coherent UK-wide communications could be vitiated or compromised by some in the devolved administrations moving to the microphones before others, as it were, that was your response.

Mr Michael Gove: Mm.

Ms Mitchell KC: This Inquiry has had the opportunity to consider an expert report from Professor Ailsa Henderson.

INQ000269372. I wonder if I can have up page 49, paragraphs 151 and 152.

Now, this is an analysis of the UK Government’s public health response, and do we see about three-quarters of the way down, paragraph 151:

“An analysis of the texts of prepared speeches throughout 2020 shows those speaking on behalf of the UK government did an incomplete job of outlining the territorial scope of their data, information or guidance.”

And it goes on to talk about the fact there was no mention of the First Minister’s of the devolved administrations.

Moving on to paragraph 152, about three or four lines down it explains that when ministers were giving messages, more typically they outlined the guidance for England alone but that the devolved administrations would offer their own guidance. It gives examples:

“Reference to reopening retail, which was England only, was made less clear by referring to re-opening ‘British high streets’ … [and] On 23 June [Mr] Johnson clarified that the measures applied to England only, then set out rules … for ‘the British public’.”

What impact do you consider the UK Government’s use of “UK” to mean England had on the Scottish public’s perception of the UK Government’s response to the pandemic?

Mr Michael Gove: I think at best marginal. I think that people across the United Kingdom would have had a pretty clear understanding of the different responsibilities of their governments.

Ms Mitchell KC: So that when the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom refers to rules only for England and then advises that these are rules to follow for the “British public”, the people in Scotland would be aware that that didn’t apply to them?

Mr Michael Gove: I think the people in Scotland are very well aware that there were, later in the response to the pandemic, different approaches in Scotland. I think the fact that the First Minister had daily press conference would have meant that there was pretty clear communication.

Again, I think that a critical question here is: as Professor Henderson and others have pointed out, the fact that the UK Government is both responsible for issues in England and also has UK-wide responsibilities as well, that is not entirely unique but it is certainly a specific constitutional arrangement. Within that, I think that the need for the best possible and most coherent communication of course is important but, as we touched on earlier, there can sometimes be a tension, and the tension I mentioned was the clarity of Hands Face Space and the credibility, adduced earlier, of the Scottish Government. So how do you decide between a clear UK-wide message which is more effective or a Scottish Government message which is less effective but which is being conveyed by a more credible advocate?

Ms Mitchell KC: Would you agree that the duty of the UK Government was to provide information which was clear to everybody within the United Kingdom, making clear what the rules were in Scotland and the rules were in other parts of UK, and that was the most critical factor?

Mr Michael Gove: It was certainly an important factor but I would also say that at different times there was confusion, I myself remember being interrogated at different times, about – as – the questions I mentioned earlier, like whether or not a scotch egg was a substantial meal. The reason why we needed to refine messaging is that decisions were often being made by different administrations at pace. But more broadly I would characterise the approach both of the UK Government and the devolved administrations as one of effective functioning collaboration.

One could home in on someone mixing up the phrase “English” and “British” at one time, but if that is the gravamen of a charge of high-handedness on the part of the UK Government, then I would argue that that is, as – considering the matters with which is the Inquiry has to deal, perhaps not the most significant.

Ms Mitchell KC: Mr Gove, the expert witness simply says there was little attempt to outline what applied to UK-wide and what applied only to England. The phrase “this country” was employed frequently to mean England or Great Britain or the UK. There wasn’t clarity in the UK Government’s handling of this matter.

My Lady, I’ve got no further questions.

Mr Michael Gove: Can I just say that –

Lady Hallett: I think you have answered that question, thank you very much, Mr Gove.

Thank you, Ms Mitchell.

Right, Mr Friedman.

Don’t worry about turning your back, Mr Gove, because we need your voice into the microphone.

Questions From Mr Friedman KC

Mr Friedman: Thank you, my Lady.

Secretary of State, I act for four national disabled people’s organisations.

Can I ask you to look at INQ000083917, please.

It is an email from the Covid-19 Taskforce to, amongst others, Emran Mian and Helen Dickinson, but it’s copied to, and I’m going to summarise, departments like the Minister for Disabled People, people from the Equality Hub and Disability Unit and, about a quarter of the way down, Michael Gove Mailbox, private secretary. Do you see your address?

Mr Michael Gove: I do.

Mr Friedman KC: It’s 5 November 2020. And just on the second page, under the heading “Context” it reads:

“At the 29 October meeting of COVID-O, the committee agreed to an ambitious package of measures to prevent transmission to and within groups that have been disproportionately impacted by COVID-19, focusing in particular on ethnic minority communities. The Prime Minister and CDL also asked departments, in slower time, for a more ambitious package that can prevent disproportionate impacts from COVID-19 for people with disabilities.”

The question is, why did the Covid Taskforce indicate to the key decision-makes as of 5 November that the PM and CDL had acknowledged that the ambitious package for disabled people could be developed in a slower time to that which had been developed and already agreed for other disproportionately affected people?

Mr Michael Gove: I think Counsel to the Inquiry earlier drew attention to the fact that I’d written a letter chastising, if that’s the right word, other government departments for not having risen to the challenge of doing everything possible for those groups. I think it would have been the case that we could have implemented, or were implementing, some of the measures that would mitigate the impact on ethnic minority communities because they were simply more ready to deliver. My recollection would be that more work was required in order to make sure that the additional policies necessary for those living with disabilities were also ready for delivery. So I don’t think it’s about a hierarchy of need, I think it’s about the preparedness of policy.

Mr Friedman KC: Just on that letter, I don’t need to bring it up, but it’s the October 2020 letter, the terrible missed opportunity chastisement where you told the chair this afternoon you wanted everybody to raise their game. Without going to it, we will have it make public in due course, but in that letter you also say you are deeply disappointed in departmental responses to date.

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Mr Friedman KC: And amongst other relevant facts, you draw their attention to the 59.2 per cent of those who have died of Covid-19 have been disabled and you also say, “time is running out to mitigate risks for the second wave”.

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Mr Friedman KC: Given all those matters, why was it right as of 5 November to be then, albeit through the words of the Covid Taskforce, tolerating a slower time for the more ambitious package for disabled people?

Mr Michael Gove: I think these things are relative and I think it’s purely to make sure that what we do roll out, and as the previous letter shows I and the Prime Minister were cracking the whip on this, in order to make sure that that which was prepared was ready to be implemented.

Mr Friedman KC: But just on that, the cracking of the whip, can you accept at least that that 5 November email and its reference to slower time, at least on one reading and regardless of what you meant, could be read as what it said, that the work for disabled people for the second wave was not quite as urgent, regardless of whether that’s what you wanted the meaning to be?

Mr Michael Gove: I think that could only have been inferred by people who are not involved in the decision-making or policy formulation process at that time. I think everyone would have recognised the stress that I and the Prime Minister were placing on making sure that disproportionately impacted groups received additional support and that policy was refined in order to help them and support them.

Mr Friedman: Thank you.

Lady Hallett: Thank you, Mr Friedman.

Mr Menon.

Questions From Mr Menon KC

Mr Menon: Good afternoon, Mr Gove. I ask questions on behalf of a number of children’s rights organisations.

This morning, in answer to questions from Mr Keith, you acknowledged that the Government did not pay enough attention during the pandemic to the impact of some of its measures on children, particularly vulnerable children. Briefly, to which specific measures were you referring?

Mr Michael Gove: I think it was the case that we did pay attention to them but there was a trade off. The specific concern that I had is, in order to reduce R below 1, we were advised that schools needed to close. And, as we touched on earlier, the closing of schools would have a disproportionate impact on poorer children and I was concerned, as indeed were ministers across government, about how we could mitigate those impacts.

Mr Menon KC: That’s not quite what you said this morning. I mean, the question was about dysfunctionality and where the government fell short, and you made the concession at that stage that the government, and I’m quoting back your words, did not pay enough attention to the impact of some of its measures on children. So I’m asking you which specific measures were you alluding to that fell short of the mark?

Mr Michael Gove: Well, again, you have given me the opportunity to clarify. I think that what I was referring to was the particular concern that we had about children at risk of abuse and neglect, children who would suffer as a result of the attainment gap growing and so on.

I think my point would be, and your question gives me an opportunity, I hope, to clarify it, that in policy there are always trade-offs and the trade-offs can be very uncomfortable, and my own – I think – the area which I think is most difficult, looking back, was the decision to close schools, for all of the reasons that are well known, but it was felt that it was necessary, and I understand why it was necessary, in order to deal with the greater evil, which was the prospect of the NHS being overwhelmed, which of course would have had a terrible impact on the country and a disproportionate impact on the poorest.

Mr Menon KC: Thank you.

Turning to an entirely different topic, was the then Secretary of State for Education involved in the key decision-making that impacted children during the pandemic or was he, in effect, largely excluded?

Mr Michael Gove: I think he was involved.

Mr Menon KC: In the actual making of decisions?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Mr Menon KC: Are you aware that the Secretary of State for Education in his witness statement at page 12 says that he did not have clear autonomy to make core decisions especially in respect of schools closing and reopening and that any input he had was limited to the implementation of decisions as opposed to the making of the decisions themselves?

Mr Michael Gove: Well, I think that when you are talking about something as important as schools closing then that’s a decision that requires collective consideration across government, and I think if I infer rightly from what, Sir Gavin’s written, it wasn’t the case that he had autonomy over schools closing, any more than the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport had autonomy over whether theatres or football matches could go ahead. It is the case that Sir Gavin did make clear his concerns at particular points, and I remember very early on, when the decision was made about school closure, that Sir Gavin was clear that it was the responsibility of the Cabinet Office rather than his own department, and I think it was a fair point on his part, to draw up the list of key workers whose children would be exempt from school closures. No easy task but one which we sought to discharge.

Mr Menon KC: So you are suggesting there isn’t a distinction between your initial answer to my question and what Sir Gavin Williamson says in his witness statement as I’ve summarised to you, you’re suggesting you are on the same page?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Mr Menon KC: I see. The former Children’s Commissioner for England, Mr Gove, Anne Longfield, told the Inquiry that there was nobody at the Cabinet table who was taking the best interests of children into account when decisions were made during the pandemic. What is your response to that assertion?

Mr Michael Gove: I am a huge fan of Anne’s, in fact I think I appointed her to that role –

Mr Menon KC: What about her comment to the Inquiry?

Mr Michael Gove: I would take a different view. I think we all had the concerns of children in our mind. I think that the evidence shows that of the many questions that I asked and the many challenges that I gave to ministerial colleagues, making sure in particular – for example, the agenda of the GPSMIG – shows that I, and I was very far from alone, was keen to establish the risks that children faced and to advocate for them.

Indeed, I think as the committee alluded to earlier, I challenged others to make sure that children eligible for free school meals should receive support during the extended lockdown in the holiday period as well. So I’m not suggesting that I was unique in that, quite the opposite. I think that Anne, passionate advocate as she is for children, I think is being – for once, I think, you know, aiming offside.

Mr Menon KC: So in terms of learning lessons in terms of how the government should act in a future crisis, do you agree that there should be somebody at the Cabinet table who has primary responsibility for children to avoid decisions being made through an exclusively adult-centric lens?

Mr Michael Gove: I don’t think decisions were made through an exclusively adult-centric lens. Quite the opposite. And I think to be fair to the Prime Minister, he was one of the people who was most concerned about school closure and the impact that it would have on children.

So I certainly don’t think that the decision are made through an adult-centric lens, no.

Mr Menon KC: We will have to agree to disagree on that.

Moving on in your witness statement you mentioned the so-called “Quad”. Did any member of the Quad have primary responsibility for high-level decision-making that impacted children, and if so who?

Mr Michael Gove: Well, the Prime Minister ultimately, but my responsibility was for the co-ordination of our response across the public services. So, insofar as there was someone who had that concern, it would have been mine. But I don’t for a moment want to suggest that either the Chancellor or the Health Secretary were anything other than alive and alert at every stage to the impact on children.

Mr Menon KC: Thank you.

Moving then from the more general to the specific and turning to the social distancing restrictions that were changed during the summer of 2020, why did the UK Government not exempt children under 12 from the restrictions, as, for example, Scotland did in July 2020, or from the rule of six as Scotland again did in September 2020?

Mr Michael Gove: I believe it was on the basis of the advice that we were given that children, while of course if they caught the disease were less likely to have severe symptoms, that children could spread the disease just as easily as you or I.

Mr Menon KC: Who gave you that advice?

Mr Michael Gove: I believe that the advice would have come from the Chief Medical Officer, Chief Scientific Adviser or others at the time. I think that the critical point that was made to us is of course when schools are closed there are consequences for children, consequences that we need to bear very strongly in mind, and of course some will say, “Well, children if they catch the disease are vanishingly unlikely to suffer serious consequences”. But children can, when they meet in schools, spread the disease amongst themselves and then spread it back to families and multigenerational households.

So the question of exempting children from – this would have been driven, I’m sure, by the recognition that children, as I say, can carry the virus, including asymptomatically, as easily as any other human being.

Mr Menon KC: Mr Gove, the Inquiry has not heard any evidence from the Chief Medical Officer or the Chief Scientific Adviser to the effect that they advised the UK Government to take a different approach in relation to children and social distancing restrictions than the approaches taken in Scotland and in fact in Wales as well, no evidence to that effect at all. Are you sure about that?

Mr Michael Gove: Well, again, my judgement on what the decision-making would have been would have been influenced by scientific advice. I can’t recall when those decisions were taken and in which meetings and who would have been there but the rationale for it is one that I have just explained.

Mr Menon KC: Well, I await to see what that research is because we’ve not heard anything about that whatsoever.

Mr Michael Gove: Are you saying that children are less likely to carry the virus?

Lady Hallett: No, wait for the next question, Mr Gove. I’m afraid Mr Menon is now running out of time as well.

Mr Menon: Thank you. Much as I would like to continue that discussion, I think I had better move on, Mr Gove, given the time I have been allotted.

Again, turning to the Secretary of State for Education, in his witness statement at page 58 he says that closing schools in January 2021 was wrong –

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Mr Menon KC: – especially for the most disadvantaged children, and, to use his words, wholly unnecessary and panicked.

Given your earlier answers about wanting maximum suppression, am I right that you disagree with him?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Mr Menon KC: I mean, do you at least agree with this, that prior to the initial school closures in the summer and autumn of 2020, the government made no contingency plans for a future closure of schools at least in part because the Prime Minister was hostile to having such contingency plans?

Mr Michael Gove: I think it was the case that we were ramping up things like, for example, the Oak National Academy in order to ensure the more effective dissemination of curricular materials online, and that happened throughout the pandemic. I may have got that wrong, that recollection may be false, but I don’t think it was the case that provision to take account of children being at home was somehow halted or reversed, but of course I stand to be corrected.

Mr Menon KC: The decision ultimately in January to close schools, can we agree at least agree on this, that that was made chaotically in that most children returned to school on 4 January for a day before the government closed schools the very next day?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Mr Menon KC: I mean, that was – surely you can agree with me that that was an extremely chaotic approach? Whatever the rights and wrongs of closing schools, that was an incredibly chaotic approach to take given the long-term potential implications of harm on children?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes, but I think it’s the case, and I’d have to check again, that on the note that I sent to the Prime Minister on 2 January I was arguing for a fairly high degree of suppression, and again I think that one of the reasons why I made that point was I was conscious that there were others who took a different view.

Mr Menon: Very well. Thank you, Mr Gove. Perhaps that can be explored further in a later module.

Lady Hallett: I think you two can keep your seminar for later.

Mr Menon: Yes, exactly, and I am conscious I have used my time. So thank you very much.

Lady Hallett: Does that complete the questioning, Mr Keith?

Mr Keith: My Lady, I am very pleased to say that it does.

Lady Hallett: Thank you very much indeed, Mr Gove. Can I just try to put your mind at rest on one issue. At one stage one of your answers associated the Inquiry, by which I suspect you meant me, with what you perceived to be the personal view of Counsel to the Inquiry, and can I assure you and others that I don’t have any settled views as yet. I will not reach any conclusion until I have considered all the evidence, oral evidence, written evidence, and not just the small section of the evidence, like WhatsApp messages, that some sections of the media have been focusing on. I will be considering everything.

The point of counsel’s questions is not to put forward any personal view of theirs, it’s to test the evidence robustly to help me. So please don’t think that any firm views – and even if Counsel to the Inquiry had a personal view, it wouldn’t matter because I’m the one that’s eventually going to make the decisions. So I just want to put at rest the mind of all of you who feel that your conduct is being criticised and the like. No conclusions reached as yet.

The Witness: If I may, my Lady, I don’t doubt for a moment that Counsel to the Inquiry is a disinterested and brilliant advocate, and I know from working at the MOJ how seriously you take your role. My only concern was, and you have been very clear about this, that the nature of questioning here might give some watching our proceedings the sense that the issues that are highlighted here are among the most important.

But thank you very much for that clarification. I am in your debt.

Lady Hallett: That’s why I gave the clarification, Mr Gove.

The Witness: Thank you.

Lady Hallett: Thank you very much.

Right, I think next witness is Dame Jenny Harries. While she is coming in I am not going to say anything, so – nobody is going to say anything while the stenographer can just rest her fingers.

(Pause)

Professor Dame Harries

PROFESSOR DAME JENNY HARRIES (affirmed).

Lady Hallett: I’m sorry (a) you have been kept waiting and that we’re not going to finish you today. I know you have some other important work you ought to be getting on with. We’ll get through as quickly as we can, but I’m afraid it’s not going to be finished today. I’m really sorry.

Questions From Counsel to the Inquiry

Mr O’Connor: Could you give the Inquiry your full name, please.

Professor Dame Harries: Jennifer Margaret Harries.

Counsel Inquiry: You are Professor Dame Jenny Harries, as with Professor Whitty and Professor Van-Tam, I am going to refer to you as Professor Harries simply for brevity.

Professor Harries, you have given evidence to the Inquiry before, you attended and gave oral evidence in June of this year to Module 1, and at that stage two of your witness statements were adduced.

You have kindly prepared two further witness statements which we will adduce now. First of all, your third statement, dated 22 August 2023. Professor Harries, this was a statement that was prepared in response to a letter sent – a Rule 9 request sent to the UKHSA, was it not?

Professor Dame Harries: Yes.

Counsel Inquiry: We’ll come to hear about your role as chief executive of that organisation but we need to make the point, don’t we, that this is a so-called corporate statement.

Professor Dame Harries: Yes.

Counsel Inquiry: So it was prepared by you and others on behalf of the UKHSA.

Professor Dame Harries: Yes.

Counsel Inquiry: Nonetheless it bears your name and we don’t need to go there but at the end of the statement you have signed it saying its contents are true; is that correct?

Professor Dame Harries: Yes.

Counsel Inquiry: Then, secondly, there is a final statement, again in your name, your fourth statement. This statement was prepared in response to a request made to your personally, was it not?

Professor Dame Harries: Yes.

Counsel Inquiry: And as we can see it’s dated 3 October of this year. Again, it’s signed by you with a statement indicating that you believe its contents to be true?

Professor Dame Harries: That’s correct.

Counsel Inquiry: Thank you.

When you gave evidence earlier this year, Professor Harries, you gave a relatively full description of your career, so I won’t go back over the whole length of what has been a distinguished career but in summary it’s right, isn’t it, that you trained initially as a medical doctor. You then had further training and you also held a series of posts in the field of public health medicine?

Professor Dame Harries: Yes.

Counsel Inquiry: Between 2013 and 2019 you were the regional director for the south of England at PHE?

Professor Dame Harries: Yes.

Counsel Inquiry: And at the end of that period you, I think, had an additional role at PHE, that of deputy medical director?

Professor Dame Harries: Yes.

Counsel Inquiry: So your employment at Public Health England ended in 2019, and that was the moment where you were appointed one of the Deputy Chief Medical Officers for England, and you held that role through until 2021 and, therefore, for the first period at least of the pandemic?

Professor Dame Harries: Yes, that’s correct.

Counsel Inquiry: As one of the DCMOs, the other of course being Professor Van-Tam, whom the Inquiry has already heard from, we heard a little from him about the split responsibility between the two posts, and tell me if I’ve got it right, that at least at the time, in early 2020, that we will pick up the story, he was responsible for health protection whereas you were responsible for what has various been described as health improvement or health promotion?

Professor Dame Harries: Yes, that’s a fair description. We would obviously support each other but that was my part of the portfolio, and therefore anything to do with the health protection primarily would go to Professor Van-Tam.

Counsel Inquiry: Again, in headline terms, health protection does include thinking about infectious viruses?

Professor Dame Harries: Yes.

Counsel Inquiry: Whereas health improvement – well, you tell us, what did that –

Professor Dame Harries: But it’s much more to do with supporting things like physical activity, good nutrition, those sorts of things. But also supporting areas of health service, the evidence base for interventions.

Counsel Inquiry: We’ll obviously come to hear evidence from you about what you did, activities that you undertook, the advice you gave during the pandemic. Is it right that that fairly stark distinction between Professor Van-Tam’s responsibilities and yours collapsed to some extent once the pandemic was underway?

Professor Dame Harries: Completely. And I would suggest probably from the end of January, actually. I came back from a very short bereavement period and was immediately into pandemic response and never really surfaced from it until I changed roles.

Counsel Inquiry: You mentioned changing roles, and it was in 2021 that you ceased being Deputy Chief Medical Officer. There’s a little complexity around the detail of you changing your role, but again tell me if I’ve got this right. You were appointed as chief executive of what was a new body –

Professor Dame Harries: Yes.

Counsel Inquiry: – the UKHSA, on 1 April 2021?

Professor Dame Harries: That’s correct.

Counsel Inquiry: But that body wasn’t yet fully operational?

Professor Dame Harries: There was just me and the chair. So that was it.

Counsel Inquiry: So a long way from being fully operational?

Professor Dame Harries: Exactly.

Counsel Inquiry: It became fully operational on 1 October 2021 and at that date it took over, first of all, certain of the responsibilities of Public Health England?

Professor Dame Harries: Yes, mostly the health protection areas.

Counsel Inquiry: Yes. And my note suggests also that some clinical and scientific areas, if that’s a sensible distinction to draw?

Professor Dame Harries: Yes.

Counsel Inquiry: Separately also, in fact, on that date, the UKHSA took over what was NHS Test and Trace.

Professor Dame Harries: Yes.

Counsel Inquiry: You had, in fact, been made head of that body earlier in the year, in May, so there was a period of time where you were, as you say, the sort of titular head of the UKHSA, without operational responsibility, and also head of NHS Test and Trace.

But it all came together in October when both of those sort of separate elements became operational within the new UKHSA?

Professor Dame Harries: Yes. And that’s important because actually I had no formal control, for example, over parts – although we worked well together and we had formal risk handover, I was not the person responsible for Public Health England, so you may find in my evidence I’m saying I was doing this or I was doing that.

Counsel Inquiry: You were never responsible for Public Health England?

Professor Dame Harries: Until 1 October. I mean, clearly worked with public health colleagues and other people in Public Health England, but I didn’t have any formal responsibility until 1 October.

Counsel Inquiry: Correct. Well, it is complex, Professor, and as we go, of course, if there’s a misunderstanding or we ask you about something at a time that you weren’t responsible for it, you’ll tell us.

Just before we leave UKHSA, it follows from what we’ve been discussing that it’s now been in existence for two years or so?

Professor Dame Harries: Yes.

Counsel Inquiry: In giving evidence to Module 1 I think you either said or at least you agreed with this description of UKHSA: A pandemic preparedness and response super-body which has a permanent standing capacity to prepare for, prevent and respond to infectious diseases and other threats to health.

Professor Dame Harries: That’s true. It has many other roles as well and the scientific one is particularly important, relevant for pandemic preparedness but actually relevant for response to all threats.

Counsel Inquiry: So I know this is one of the issues on your mind at the moment but we have heard other witnesses talk about the certainty that there will be another pandemic sooner or later and the intention is that the UKHSA will be at the forefront of the nation’s response when that happens.

Professor Dame Harries: Yes, and I think it is important that the work that we do on a daily basis – so there will be more than 10,000 public health incidents, so that may be infectious disease, it could be radiation, nuclear extreme events, when those happen – we are dealing with them all the time but we need to be able to surge up. So I wouldn’t like to think we are just a body for pandemic preparedness or we might have a very expensive resource tag with us, I think, doing nothing for quite a while. So it’s a combination of the two: being ready and managing the science at the same time.

Counsel Inquiry: Can you give us, Professor, just some idea of the scale of UKHSA, how many, roughly-speaking, employees does it have?

Professor Dame Harries: So, as you can imagine, over this period we’ve actually had the biggest single reduction in a Civil Service organisation in a single year. So we went from 15 billion down to 3 billion in one year and we’ve reduced again since then. We had 18,000 staff at the start, only 30 per cent of whom were permanently employed and we are now building to a stabilised organisation where we around 5,500 staff, and they will be – just this is very rough figures, around 2,000 of those will be in our labs. They are performing front line services and reference laboratory work and then we have health protection teams around the country as well, and scientists and public health professionals.

Counsel Inquiry: Thank you. I’m sure it is clear but the first statistic you gave, 15 billion –

Professor Dame Harries: Pounds.

Counsel Inquiry: – was not the number of staff?

Professor Dame Harries: Not the number of staff, no.

Counsel Inquiry: Thank you.

Lady Hallett: Annual budget, I assumed you meant by that?

Professor Dame Harries: At the time. It’s now considerably lower.

Lady Hallett: Yes, so it started at 15 billion –

Professor Dame Harries: Yes, our budget is now 395 million, that’s obviously in the public domain.

Mr O’Connor: Perhaps it’s obvious but the explanation for that being that, when you started it, we were still in the middle of the pandemic, all the costs associated, one imagines, with NHS Test and Trace and no doubt other emergency measures which have now been withdrawn.

Professor Dame Harries: Yes.

Counsel Inquiry: Professor, I would like to go again, almost by way of introduction, if I may, to an interview that you gave recently to The Telegraph, I think it was.

Could we go, please, to INQ000280194, and within that document go to, I think it’s page 3, please.

Part of this interview, Professor, you gave an indication of your reflections on the NPIs that were introduced during the Covid pandemic and how you saw their role in a possible future pandemic and so I’d like to pick it up, just the last full paragraph on that page. You said this:

“What we saw with Omicron and later waves of the pandemic, and even now, is that people are good at watching the data and they will take action themselves … you can see it in footfall going down. People actually start to manage their own socialisation, and the viral waves flatten off and come down.”

Then the interviewer intervenes, as it were, with a comparison with Sweden and, indeed, if we go over the page, with South Korea, but he accepts that this is a comparison that you did not make, so perhaps we can put that to one side.

But then he records you as saying that the key is to be transparent about the risks and build trusts with the public, and you said:

“The more people trust the organisation to give them early, accurate, honest and straightforward information, then, yes, the likelihood of us moving to extreme forms of transmission management reduce all the time, whether it be for coronavirus or anything else …”

Now, there are a few questions I want to ask you about that. First of all, is that a comment that you are making, purely with the benefit of hindsight or do we read into your suggestion that we may not need the same degree of prescription in future pandemics a criticism of what happened during the previous pandemic?

Professor Dame Harries: So those particular comments were based particularly around data and what we’ve seen previously and what actually UKHSA is trying to build now are data streams, so dash boards as we had during the pandemic, where people can see what’s happening, they can make their own choices and what they – you know, the public were brilliant through the pandemic and they complied often with mandated requirements. But, actually, what we saw with Omicron was there was no mandation at that time, and if you spoke and highlighted some of the evidence, and they could see it and trusted that data, then they took actions themselves.

I mean, as you say, the title for this is a problem which I sometimes have, which is I didn’t say what the title says and the implication is that I did, which is an important point, perhaps, for further conversations but I don’t think the Swedish comparison is necessarily a helpful one. I think when you actually get underneath this and you look to see many countries did very similar things, some of them mandated at some time, some didn’t. Populations are different, dense populations or travel hubs, all sorts of things.

So I think looking is really important but what we have seen in the UK, in our own culture and without mandation, is that people – if people have the information, then they will start to make choices themselves.

Counsel Inquiry: As you say, we can to leave Sweden and South Korea out of it but, nonetheless, as I think you have explained, the point you are making can be boiled down to: next time, if we can get the data right, we won’t need to impose the same degree or the same severity of mandatory NPIs; is that fair?

Professor Dame Harries: I think you will perhaps take – this was full coronavirus on this pandemic with the current population at this time. So we have what we didn’t have at the start of this pandemic was something relevant to our current culture in the last 100 years. So I think we have much more information now and we can use that as evidence. But, if we had a completely different sort of virus, something like Ebola, say, which is a touch transmission, these may not apply. We perhaps still wouldn’t have the information.

But the basic point there is, which I think for me it’s important to be transparent with the information and to share it, and that can sometimes be difficult and we may come onto some of that later.

Counsel Inquiry: Of course it’s right that the next pandemic won’t be identical. It may be very different but, nonetheless, the Inquiry has to do its best to learn lessons from the experience of the Covid pandemic and some of the evidence it’s heard, for example, from Sir Patrick Vallance, he was very clear about the lesson he drew from the experience of the Covid pandemic. His phrase was something to the effect of “Go harder than you like, go earlier than you like, go wider than you like”. That doesn’t seem to be the same as your suggestion here, which is that perhaps we don’t need to go as hard even as we went last time?

Professor Dame Harries: I don’t think they are necessarily different things. I mean, if a trusted individual with data, which the public have access to and can trust, and in a good evidence base, stand up and say, “Actually, this is what we see coming ahead, if we all do A, B, or C”, not necessarily mandated, then we may well be able to all move this curve or whatever we’re looking at this problem out of the way. So I think the “go early”, one of the interesting things is we didn’t have this data at the start of the pandemic and I think that is a really critical point, which I know many witnesses have made. We hadn’t got the granularity of the data for it to be able to reflect potentially with ministers but also with the public.

Counsel Inquiry: I won’t press you any further on that Professor Harries but we will leave it though just to look again at your words, because you do emphasise not just providing data; something a bit more than that, isn’t it? It’s establishing, in your words, a relationship based on accuracy, honesty and straightforwardness about the data with the public?

Professor Dame Harries: Yes.

Counsel Inquiry: Let me move to ask you, as you have inferred, a few questions about some of the public statements you made during the pandemic and, before we get to detail, most of the incidents I’m going to ask you about were things you said during press conferences, or the like, or interviews you gave with the media.

Was that a process you were familiar with in early 2020 or was it quite new to you?

Professor Dame Harries: Definitely not to the extent I became familiar. So every – if you are dealing with public health incidents one would normally be equipped to give a short press comment in relation to whatever incident you are handling to do a media clip, something like that. But I think this process was something that clearly I had not experienced before and I think most people don’t. You go into your job, you don’t expect to be standing at Number 10 next to the Prime Minister or the Chancellor in the middle of a global pandemic.

Counsel Inquiry: When you gave these interviews or spoke at these press conferences, you were doing so in your capacity as DCMO. In doing that, did you regard it as your role, for example, to defend government policy?

Professor Dame Harries: No. So my approach is – and this is quite difficult in terms of practical matters, when you’re doing these, because, as I think you have seen from other evidence, the speed at which policy might change or the availability of information to everybody across the system will vary. So I will not have been in the same meeting that Sir Christopher would have been or other colleagues making strategic decisions, and yet it may well be me that’s standing on the podium.

I think the other important thing is that – and I think many public don’t realise this – when you are there, the way the press conferences were handled, there would be two – I think from memory – two video questions and then questions from the press. None of those would you have any content of before you stood up. So you could be asked anything and I think, going back to your original question, no, I wasn’t. I was there as an adviser but I was also there, I felt, as somebody to try and support public understanding. If you are public health doctor, your patients are the population and so it’s an opportunity to give critical public health messages.

Counsel Inquiry: You said you were there as an adviser. Does that mean you did have some, as it were, some duty to keep in line with the government policy or were you entirely independent and you could say exactly what you thought?

Professor Dame Harries: So I’m an independent adviser, as I think you’ve heard described from CMO and others, but I’m, nevertheless, also a senior civil servant and I – you have to keep those boundaries quite clear. But I think the point about the press conferences is often we will have given public health advice to decisions. The public health advice may or may not have been taken. Ministers, quite rightly, will make a policy choice and then they will announce that policy.

Now, it could be, therefore, that a minister is making a policy which contains all of the public health advice that we had given, or I had given, and that’s probably relatively easy or a minister could give a policy decision, which I may or may not have had much awareness of before I was on the podium, and there will be public health elements within that. And I always tried, in those, to pull out, if you like, the key public health elements that were the right messages to give to the public and the ones they would expect a public health adviser to provide.

Counsel Inquiry: When you refer to the right messages to give to the public, was there ever a sense in which you were trying, as it were, to protect the public, not to tell them all the bad news, to put a positive spin, if you like, on events?

Professor Dame Harries: I don’t think it’s a matter of protection but I think this was a very, very frightening time for many members of the public and, I mean, Jonathan Van-Tam and I took slightly different roles. He had many football analogies, I didn’t. I chose to never use my professorial title right from the start because I felt that, for some members of the public, Dr Jenny would possibly be more familiar, if you like, for people going through a frightening incident.

So sometimes when you are speaking that way, and I can see it in some of the transcripts, you will have to reduce what you’re trying to say to something which perhaps is simpler, less scientifically detailed but, nevertheless, gets a key public health message across.

Counsel Inquiry: One can imagine doctors sometimes holding back on a little bit of the bad news to try and keep their patients’ morale up. Is that sometimes the spirit in which you approached this?

Professor Dame Harries: Not if it was – not if it was necessary. I mean, actually, that probably runs counter to how current doctors should act. There is a duty of candour to your patients but there is a definitely a way of framing it and having a very frightened population at the start of a global pandemic is not helpful. But I think there are many instances you will see, both outside the public briefings and within them, where I have possibly been quite outspoken and then probably had that recognised in the media the day afterwards.

Counsel Inquiry: Let’s look, Professor, at two references, first of all. First of all, can we go to your statement, please – and when I say “your statement”, unless I say otherwise, it will be your fourth statement, your personal statement – paragraph 7.65, starting at page 57.

This relates to not actually a press conference on this occasion but an interview you gave to NBC News on 11 March. The Inquiry has heard a lot of evidence about this period. We are, are we not, in the sort of run-up to the first lockdown, Wednesday, 11 March. If we go over the page, we see an extract from the interview where you said this:

“Timing of an intervention is absolutely critical. If you put it in too early you have a time period where people actually get non-compliant, they won’t want to keep it going for a long time. If you put it in too early it’s going to cause people to disrupt their lives without a long-term effect; if you put it in too late then clearly it doesn’t cut off that top piece of the peak.”

You then go on to refer to an email, which we will look at. In fact, I want to ask you to look at a different bit of that email. So we’ll bear that quote in mind, please, and go to the email, which is INQ000151565. It’s dated the day before that interview we just looked at and if we can go down a little bit further down, please, yes, that large paragraph and the bit we need is four or five lines down.

It’s the passage saying:

“Equally, if you start it [and ‘it’ is a lockdown or NPI] too early, for interventions which need to be quite lengthy not the short-termism being applied in Italy, you will lose goodwill/compliance and they become ineffective because people ignore.”

So, Professor Harries, in those one can see the similarity between what you wrote in that internal email and the interview you gave the next day. But in both, what you were expressing was the idea of the behavioural fatigue, as an argument for delaying the imposition of NPIs, which is something that was being said publicly by Sir Chris Whitty at press conferences around that time; do you agree with that?

Professor Dame Harries: Although I don’t say “behavioural fatigue”, so I would perhaps draw a distinction because I realise one of the interesting things about the Inquiry is that it forces or opens up all sorts of correspondence that I have never seen through the pandemic and the whole debate about behavioural fatigue was completely not known to me until I started looking.

Now, I have looked back, actually, and I think what this comes from – I realise there’s an argument between the behavioural scientists and the others and I recognise that Sir Chris thought that was not a helpful framing to have used but, nevertheless, in SAGE, I think what we are saying here is, and I think it might be SAGE 13, but there’s a section where it broadly says there is a logic, we know people get tired of quarantine, for example, a low robustness for evidence there but – and there is logic to the fact that, if you are holding on to something over a long period of time, people may stop doing it.

That’s not quite the same as fatigue and that point comes out in the next point that SAGE makes and I think this is what I was trying to say here.

One final point, I think, on all of this, which is not included in these sections, is the safety point about when you go into lockdown, which was really important for me. So that might be another point to flag.

Counsel Inquiry: Professor, we can explore this in detail, if necessary, but I just want to press you. It’s, of course, right that you don’t use the words “behavioural fatigue” but then I’m not sure Professor Whitty did in his press conferences. Certainly, if he did, he also used words very similar to the ones that you are describing, everyday words. The basic concept in language that you use in this email, similar to the language you used in the NBC interview the next day, if you start too early you lose good will and compliance, the NPIs become ineffective because people ignore them. Without using the words “behavioural fatigue”, that is exactly the same principle, is it not?

Professor Dame Harries: So my principle was I would use – because actually I wasn’t very often in SAGE, which was one of the problems; I was doing other meetings and I think Sir Jonathan flagged the same issue – I would use the advice that came from there and I think it was SAGE 13, on the day before this, and there are a couple of bullets in that one which describe both the fact that this is not behavioural fatigue but that there is, if you like, a plausible logic to the fact that people will – are unlikely to necessarily maintain the evidence point that they give was around quarantine.

Counsel Inquiry: A day or two after this, Professor, SAGE did address this issue head on, in light of Professor Whitty’s comments. If we can go to INQ000236391, so we see at the top this was SAGE 15 on 13 March, so on the Friday at the end of that week, after your interview, after Professor Whitty had made his comments during the same period of time. If we go to the third page of that document, Professor Whitty referred to this document when he was giving evidence last week, picking it up at paragraph 28:

“There is some evidence that people find quarantining harder to comply with the longer it goes on. The evidence is not strong but the effect is intuitive.”

Is that the point you were referring to that had been picked up, I think, in a paper at an earlier SAGE meeting? It wasn’t in the consensus –

Professor Dame Harries: I think it’s in the bullets, actually, from either the one before or the one before that.

Counsel Inquiry: We don’t perhaps need to go there but it wasn’t in the consensus statement it was in a paper that was considered at that earlier meeting?

Professor Dame Harries: Yes.

Counsel Inquiry: But they go on to say, this is the later SAGE meeting:

“There is no comparable evidence for social distancing measures that experience suggests it’s harder to comply with a challenging behaviour over a long period than over a short period.”

But then this:

“This no strong evidence for public compliance rates changing during a major emergency. There is, however, a link between public anxiety and protective behavioural change.”

So what they are saying there is just because it’s difficult to comply with NPIs doesn’t mean to say that there will be a fall off in compliance; is that fair?

Professor Dame Harries: I think that’s fair enough and nobody’s experienced this – this wasn’t an intervention that had been applied for 100 years, I think.

Counsel Inquiry: That’s contrary to the point you were making in your interview and in that email, was it not?

Professor Dame Harries: I would say quarantining and self-isolation are both – they have a different technical meaning but the impact is that you have to stay inside, in this case for about 14 days. So I think there is some fall over. I realise that’s not where other people have landed but I didn’t use the word “behavioural fatigue” and actually there is quite a lot of work ongoing now into that because, of course, we’ve come through the pandemic and people are looking at it.

Counsel Inquiry: The next paragraph, lastly:

“Difficulty maintaining behaviours should not be treated as a reason for not communicating with the public about the efficacy of the behaviours and should not be taken as a reason to delay implementation where that is indicated epidemiologically.”

Now, you had advanced it, both in the interview and in the email, as a reason to delay introducing measures, had you not?

Professor Dame Harries: So I don’t agree that – I actually agree with this completely. That was no reason not to move into lockdown.

Counsel Inquiry: So you had been mistaken in your email and your interview?

Professor Dame Harries: I’m afraid I see it a different way because I think the evidence around quarantining, there’s very little – if you ask somebody to quarantine or self-isolate, in fact many people use the words interchangeably, but I was not using that – what I was saying was you have to get the timing right to do it. It wasn’t a mechanism for not going into lockdown.

Counsel Inquiry: Getting the timing right is another way of saying do you go at this point or that point, do you delay or do you accelerate?

Professor Dame Harries: This was not the only factor in that and, in fact, I would say that the main factor, partly because of the work I was doing at the time, of getting the timing right, was around protection for people who were going into lockdown, which I think was a major concern.

Counsel Inquiry: Professor, when Professor Whitty gave evidence last week, he readily accepted that what he had said in public was really unhelpful and he said it was really irrelevant and this idea of behavioural fatigue was really irrelevant to discussions about the timing of a lockdown and it had been unhelpful of him to link it to a lockdown.

Why aren’t you making the same concessions?

Professor Dame Harries: So it may be that actually I’m not seeing the information I’ve given and maybe I need to go and look again and reflect. So the intention is not to use that as a mechanism for not going into lockdown; it is about recognising how people may be feeling about it.

Counsel Inquiry: I am sorry, you will have to explain that.

Professor Dame Harries: So if you are going into a lockdown at a particular time, people will have different emotions about that. There are safety issues, which I think, obviously, are some of the main concerns that I had, but the knowledge of going into lockdown is not – I think we’re talking here about people should have a good communication and various other things. So I don’t think we’re saying – or rather I’m saying it says here should not be treated for not communicating with the public about the efficacy of behaviours. So you do need to communicate before you do that.

Counsel Inquiry: You do need to communicate and, in your interview with the Telegraph you emphasised the importance of accurate, honest, straightforward communication, but isn’t the straightforward way of looking at your interviews at the time and this SAGE minute, that SAGE were telling you that you had got it wrong and that’s what Professor Whitty seemed to accept but you don’t seem to accept?

Professor Dame Harries: I’m not trying to argue with it particularly, I’m potentially seeing it a different way. It perhaps wasn’t what was intended when I said it, so perhaps if I have miscommunicated it then there is an opportunity for me to learn from that.

Counsel Inquiry: Let me go on and ask you about a slightly different matter but it does, in fact, involve us going back to that email that we looked at. In fact, before we do that, the point I want to come to is about comparisons that were made at around this time in March, between, on the one hand the UK and its state of preparedness, and, on the other hand, things that were going on in Italy. We’ll come and look at that email but, before we do, there were two sort of strands of evidence that the Inquiry has heard about reactions to events in Italy.

First of all, we’ve looked at a page in the book that was written by Jeremy Farrar called Spike and it’s up on screen. If we look at page 100 of that book he says, his take on the scenes from Italy, he says:

“The dire situation in northern Italy focused minds in the next SAGE meeting on Tuesday, 10 March.”

So I think that was the day of the email that we looked at. He said he relayed:

“… chilling status reports from his contacts there. It was battlefield medicine deciding who to save and who to leave to die. Doctors being traumatised.”

Then he makes this point:

“This wasn’t China or Korea or any other country 5,000 miles away. This was a sophisticated rich country on our doorstep and the Health Service was collapsing.”

So he seems to be making the point that Italy was comparable to the UK and yet they were having these terrible problems.

I said two strands because we’ve also heard evidence from Helen McNamara that her memory of meetings in Downing Street at this time was one of a feeling that the Italians were overreacting and, to use your words, “a breezy confidence that we would do better than others”.

If we look back at your email of 10 March, Professor, so this is INQ000151565, reading on from the passage we looked at before, so again that large paragraph starting six or seven lines down, you said this:

“Of course, if you have not got good command and control symptoms in your country in relation to health services, eg Italy, or ten-year background of planning for flu, you are probably starting from a rubbish position, but in the UK neither of the above apply.”

So are you the expressing your own view, as those scenes unfolded in Italy, that, really, there was no comparison between the UK system and Italy, and that Italy’s health system was rubbish?

Professor Dame Harries: Sorry, I don’t think I was declining the position the health system quite to that extent but the issue is not the health system fully but the command and control system. So one of the things which the UK has, albeit we clearly can see it needs improving, is a direct line of sight from central government, right out through health protection systems, right out to each local authority, and I think, from what I remember, that was one of the issues that was being highlighted about the Italian system, that it didn’t have the opportunity, if you like, for overflow into other parts. It was quite compartmentalised.

I would have to check on that but I think that was it. So my sense at the time was, about this time which was 10 March, the whole data thing started to change. I think I wasn’t in SAGE that day and, as you say, the pitches which started to come from Italy looked fairly unbelievable and people started to talk about – particularly, I think, with care services and as questioning why that was, and my understanding was, at the time, from the conversations, that part of it was that, if you like, the mutual support. So rather than have a single national system, which you could move people around and manage the peak, that this was not possible under the Italian system.

Counsel Inquiry: Do you think that what we might see here, your email on 10 March, might indicate that you were guilty of at least a degree of overconfidence at that stage?

Professor Dame Harries: I think looking at this now – I mean, clearly, we all learn with hindsight. I think probably I had read too much into the differentials of the health system and accounted for some of the problems at least that they were having, from the way of the system was organised rather than the fact, actually, that the virus was going to be so problematic, and I think that’s what I understood Jeremy Farrar was describing in his book as well.

Counsel Inquiry: As it turned out, neither the UK’s command and control systems nor our planning for flu served very well, did they?

Professor Dame Harries: No, along with many other countries.

Counsel Inquiry: Let’s go to a different document, please. This is INQ000274060. This an extract from a press conference you gave a week or so later on 20 March and it relates to the PPE and a question from Francis Elliott of The Times:

“Can you update us with how we are doing with protective personal equipment? There is obviously something that is deeply concerning.”

The answer you gave:

“The country has a perfectly adequate supply of PPE at the moment. That encompasses quite a wide range of different gowns, masks, gloves, all sorts of things. There have been, I think, some differential deliveries, if you like, in some areas, which has caused a degree of concern recently. That is completely resolved now”, and then you go on.

It wasn’t right, was it, that the problems with PPE had been completely resolved as of 20 March?

Professor Dame Harries: So the first statement that – sorry, this is one of these areas where I need to clarify what my responsibility was. I had no direct responsibility for PPE at all and when I go into these conferences I had to rely on information that was provided to me. So on this one, my understanding was – and I think that is actually still correct – that we did have a national supply of gowns, masks, gloves and other things. The difficulty was I had been told that a new supply system for getting them around the country, so there wasn’t differential distribution, was resolved and that turned out to be not the case.

In fact, I apologised as soon as I could when I was next on the stand, which I think was probably not until about ten days later, which is a relatively unusual thing to do from a political stand but it was something I felt I needed to do.

Counsel Inquiry: We’ve heard, Professor, detailed evidence that the problems with PPE not only were still going on at that time but, in fact, in different ways and different types went on for months into the pandemic. For example, we’ve seen an email exchange involving Helen McNamara at around this time, raising concerns about PPE for women and that not having been taken up but then being pursued in Number 10.

We saw yesterday the letter from Sadiq Khan to Dominic Raab and Matt Hancock, raising issues about supply chains and PPE on 13 April, so nearly a month after this.

Right at the start of our hearings, we saw a letter from BAPIO, which described a survey they had done of their members with a very high rate of dissatisfaction with PPE, people being disciplined for complaining about PPE, and so on.

So it simply wasn’t the case that there was no problem with PPE –

Professor Dame Harries: There was no national shortage of PPE. That is factual and I think is there. There was a distribution issue around PPE but I think the important point for me here is this is an operational issue, which was not my responsibility at all, as were many areas, which I would be asked about.

So when I go onto that stand, I have to rely on the piece of information which somebody has given me and that was why, actually, when I went on to the stand I think it was 31 March, and probably, I think contrary to advice, apologised directly to the public and said I’d made an error. That was my understanding at the time.

Because it was entirely – it’s important that, if a piece of information is wrong, that you correct that piece of information and that was the information I had been given. I have no operational responsibility for this at all.

Counsel Inquiry: Let’s move on, Professor, and look back your statement, please, paragraph 1.54, page 54. So we move forward now. I think it was 20 March, wasn’t it, and so we’re now in April, almost a month later. This was an observation you made at another press conference and we can see it in quotes there, where you said:

“The UK, regardless of the position we may be in now or commentary, has been an international exemplar in preparedness, so the fact there is a pandemic influenza stockpile is considered a very high quality mark of a prepared country in international terms.”

Now, I think we’ve just established that, by 19 April, whatever you did or didn’t know a month earlier, you knew that there were continuing problems with PPE, did you not?

Professor Dame Harries: Yes.

Counsel Inquiry: You said that you had apologised by then for your earlier statement?

Professor Dame Harries: Yes, that’s true.

Counsel Inquiry: But yet you still referred in the context of your assertion that Britain was –

Professor Dame Harries: This was not –

Counsel Inquiry: Why don’t you just let me ask the question first and then you can answer it?

Professor Dame Harries: Sorry.

Counsel Inquiry: In the context of your assertion that the UK had been an international exemplar in preparedness, you refer to a pandemic influenza stockpile?

Professor Dame Harries: Yes.

Counsel Inquiry: Why did you do that if you knew about all the difficulties there were with PPE?

Professor Dame Harries: The point I was trying to make here is that, having a pandemic influenza stockpile of any sort whatsoever, which undoubtedly the country did, was considered, not by me – this is an external objective assessment – to have been a very high quality mark of a prepared country and that assessment, I mean, clearly, the world will be reforming how it manages and assesses how good it is but that assessment came in two ways: one was from John Hopkins School of Public Health Global Health Security Index, the UK came number 2, scored 79.9 out of 100, and New Zealand came 54. So I think, you know, there’s some really interesting insight there to be learned.

Then the second one was that the UK had put itself forward to be assessed by a joint external valuation under the IHR, International Health Regulations 2005, and, in fact, was used as exemplar by the WHO for training others.

So I recognise that, in retrospect, this is – you know, feels wrong, almost, when we look back now and see but those were not my assessments at all. They were objective external assessments. So they are clearly areas which, you know, we all need to look at globally, I think and, in fact, WHO is.

Counsel Inquiry: Professor, they were external assessments that had been made before the pandemic?

Professor Dame Harries: Yes.

Counsel Inquiry: The pandemic which, by the time you made these comments in April had been ongoing for several months, yes?

Professor Dame Harries: Yes.

Counsel Inquiry: The experience of the pandemic by April had demonstrated just how far wide of the mark those external assessments had been, had they not?

Professor Dame Harries: So I agree that, in retrospect, this doesn’t look at all encompassing with that but that was what we had been graded as, as a country.

Counsel Inquiry: That may have been true, as a matter of fact, Professor, but we started this conversation with your recent interview emphasising the importance of an honest and straightforward approach in communicating with the public during an emergency. Was it an honest or straightforward thing to do to refer to earlier assessments of pandemic preparedness when events of the previous weeks and months had demonstrated just how serious the problems were and how, frankly, erroneous those earlier assessments had been?

Professor Dame Harries: Could I perhaps just read out what that statement says so it says “The UK, regardless of the position we may be in now or commentary”. So I think I am acknowledging the fact that we don’t have a good position now “has been, in the past, an international exemplar, based on external observations” and the reason for that, in the past, had been because we had pandemic influenza stockpile notwithstanding and regardless of the position we’re in now.

I don’t see those as incompatible. We clearly were not in an exemplary position then but I don’t think that’s what this statement says.

Counsel Inquiry: If in mid-April, well into the first lockdown, events had proved that the preparedness was so far short of what it had been understood to be – and, in his evidence to the Inquiry last week, Professor Whitty said that the pandemic influenza plans were, his words, woefully deficient – why was it something you thought necessary to remind the public of in a Number 10 press conference, that this earlier grading had found the UK to be an international exemplar?

It wasn’t an international exemplar. Events had proved that by then.

Professor Dame Harries: So, I mean, I don’t have the context for this, which is often quite difficult for me to make comments on statements which are provided to me and not with the rest of it but I would perhaps just repeat that it says it acknowledges the poor position we’re in now, regardless of the position we may now be in. I am flagging that historically it had. So I think I’m just saying that there is a problem there and, previously, we thought we got it right because that’s what other people told us.

Counsel Inquiry: Let me move on, and I think is going to be my last set of questions, to one more of your sets of public commentary and, to do this, let’s go within the same statement to page 145, please.

Now, we see, first of all, at paragraph 10.18, it’s

another of the Downing Street press conferences, this

time on 26 March 2020, and we see, set out below in

full, first of all the question you were asked and then

the answer you gave. These were comments about testing,

which, as with the other comments we’ve looked at, were

the subject of debate at the time.

The question then:

“I don’t think we’ve ever really had a public

explanation of why this country decided to stop testing

people who were suffering with symptoms of coronavirus

when every – well, certainly when the World Health

Organization was advocating that as a policy and many

other Asian countries have done this with great

success?” Your answer, which I will read out, I’m going to suggest

perhaps you are making two broad points and I will pause

after where I think you sort of end the first one and we

can talk about that before moving onto the second. But

the first part of your answer then, you say:

“So I think I’m going to answer in two different

sections, the first one about the WHO comment, so

I think the comment you were picking up was Dr Tedros

saying ‘test, test, test’, but, in fact, we need to

realise that the clue for WHO is in its title, it is

a world health organisation, and it is addressing all countries across the world with entirely different health infrastructures and particular public health infrastructures, we have an extremely well developed public health system in this country and in fact our public health teams actually train others abroad, we have supported WHO through their GOARN process, and some of our epidemiologists have gone out to Manilla for example to support the early response in that area, so the point there is that they are addressing every country including low and middle income countries so encouraging all countries to test of some type.”

That’s a point where I think perhaps you go onto the second part of answer. But let’s just focus on that first answer. In fact, the WHO guidance or imperative, “test, test, test”, applied to all countries, did it not?

Professor Dame Harries: It did.

Counsel Inquiry: Not just to certain countries depending on where they sat on wealth or state of preparedness or development or anything else?

Professor Dame Harries: Exactly and, in fact, if I may, I would just like to flag this completely because – two things so far. Firstly, the decision to cease community testing, which I might come back to at the end, it was not my decision it was a full clinical decision from CMO’s office, senior clinical groups, right across the system, for good reason, which I will come back to.

But this – I was quite surprised at the reaction to this because, at the time, I think around more than 80 countries of the near 200 of the WHO Member States had not recorded a case of Covid. So Dr Tedros was out, exactly, telling everybody to “test, test, test”, and I fully supported it, and so encouraging all countries to test of some type. The problem we had was that many lower/middle-income countries did not have the capacity or capability to test and so he was encouraging them both to get support, which, in fact, the UK had provided, or to start using their tests to see whether they had cases, because we had differential reporting globally and it was very unlikely that some of the countries who had not sent in a positive case were not actually reporting – had cases in their country.

So this has been completely, to my mind, misinterpreted. And, for the record, I was totally supportive of Dr Tedros’ statement. What we will come on to in the next bit is, when you come to the UK, the problem we had was we had “test, test, tested”, and we had no tests left, and then you get onto the: so what were we doing?

In fact, in the next part of the statement, we prioritised the testing and the prioritisation of the testing is exactly the same prioritisation as WHO put out in its statement nine days later, on 21 March.

So I would suggest it’s quite misinterpreted, as it’s been reported across the media.

Counsel Inquiry: Let’s look, Professor, at the second part, as you say, and then we can wrap it up with a few extra questions. The second part, you say:

“When you come to the UK, we made it very, very clear there has been a plan right the way through this which is entirely consistent with the science and epidemiology, we started with a containment phase and every early case of this disease was followed through, every contact was traced exactly as we would do for other diseases but particularly noticing this one and of course your viewers will be very familiar with the fact that we had some very strict and very successful containment facilities, but there comes a point in a pandemic when that is not an appropriate intervention, and that this point really where we moved, we moved into delay, and although we still do some contact tracing and testing for example in high risk areas like prisons or care homes, that is not an appropriate mechanism as we go forward at that point, what we need to do is focus on the clinical management of the patients first and foremost, and then additionally as I’ve said earlier on our health and care staff and first responder staff. So obviously if there was infinite testing facilities, and we are growing them at pace and we will have them, then it moves to the public, but we need to be very careful about focusing where it’s clinically most valuable.”

So, first, let me come back and ask you two or three questions. Firstly, if we can just remind ourselves, the question that you were asked was simply a question saying: we’ve never had a public explanation of why testing has stopped. The simple answer to that question was: we’ve run out of tests, we don’t have enough tests to test everyone anymore, we’re going to prioritise healthcare and other sectors.

Professor Dame Harries: Yes.

Counsel Inquiry: That was the answer, wasn’t it?

Professor Dame Harries: Yes, exactly. It’s exactly what WHO put in their guidance the next week.

Counsel Inquiry: So first of all, why did you think it appropriate, if that was the question, to start talking about the World Health Organization and suggesting that different rules apply to different countries, depending on how rich they are?

Professor Dame Harries: If I may, can I just go back. I wasn’t – that’s an interpretation. I was actually saying those middle – low/middle-income countries did not all have testing capacity and we support them as an organisation and I fully supported WHO “Test, test, testing” but, at this point, we had no more tests. Then in the second part, I am speaking to the public, at this point. So they will be getting quite frightened, seeing the pictures that you’ve alluded to, will be wanting to know that if their loved one goes into hospital, there will be a clinical test for them to diagnose.

If I may, because this is an important point, at this point, we had around 5,000 tests they were prioritised into clinical treatment and so everybody in hospitals, particularly in intensive care units, started to be tested. Now, if you look at the dates for this, the testing picked up a lot of cases, more cases than was anticipated in hospitals and, by this time, you could then start to extrapolate back what that might mean for community infection rates and, if you look at this, you’ll find it’s the same week that the changes in the numbers in SAGE went up.

So this was a high level surveillance system which then allowed us to – for the kind of – with more certainty than was there, I think, which then led to the alerts to ministers and an early lockdown.

So I think if we had not done this, we would have gone into lockdown much later.

Counsel Inquiry: Professor, we’re talking about communication and the way you communicated on that occasion. If the position was that testing had finished because you had run out of tests, why did you say there comes a point in a pandemic where it’s not an appropriate intervention?

Professor Dame Harries: For two reasons: one, the one that I have just given which is I wanted people to be assured that their loved ones would have tests in hospitals. This is – many people were listening to me directly. But, secondly, you will have heard from many other people, so Professor Yvonne Doyle, who I know gave evidence recently, that said there is a point where you no longer test and trace because the peak of the pandemic rises so quickly that it becomes unmanageable. So that point is an important one to signal to people that this is a change in and the “how it’s done” will change.

Counsel Inquiry: But you said yourself, at the end of the answer, and, as we know from history, testing is desirable if you have got the capacity. We know that NHS Test and Trace subsequently became an enormous organisation, you mentioned the billions of pounds that were spent on it.

So the point is not that it’s not appropriate; it’s that there weren’t any tests?

Professor Dame Harries: I think I said both of those things here. It’s not manageable either on the testing and contact tracing, which was the point Professor Doyle made, I think, last week or whenever she was on.

Counsel Inquiry: Saying both things, Professor, is not a straightforward way of communicating with the public, is it?

Professor Dame Harries: I will – I will leave it at that.

Lady Hallett: As will we all. I’m sorry, as I say, we will of course come back. I know you have another issue that’s been getting some publicity today, so I hope that doesn’t build up into a major issue.

10.00 tomorrow. Thank you.

(5.07 pm)

(The hearing adjourned until 10 am on Wednesday, 29 November 2023)