PHT000000151 – 5 March 2025
(10.00 am)
Sir Gareth Williams
SIR GARETH RHYS WILLIAMS (continued).
Questions From Lead Counsel to the Inquiry for Module 5
(continued)
Lady Hallett: Mr Wald.
Mr Wald: Thank you, my Lady.
Mr Rhys Williams, just to recap where we had got to
yesterday afternoon, you had been driven to the use of Anglo Saxon when you learned of the VIP Lane, and you gave evidence to the effect that the involvement of ministers or what you describe as ministerial pressure proved to be, to some degree, a distraction; do you recall?
Sir Gareth Williams: Yes.
Lead 5: Yes?
Sir Gareth Williams: I think –
Lead 5: Just two questions arising out of that. Can I be clear or could the Inquiry be clear as to what it is you mean when you say “ministerial pressure”?
Sir Gareth Williams: That’s – thank you. Yes, I think that’s important. I think what I said yesterday, what I say again today, ministers, or more particularly their offices, because ministers rarely do this themselves, their offices chasing for an update is one thing, annoying, gets in the way, causes noise, wastes people’s time. That is very different from how some people are using the phrase “pressure” meaning a minister putting pressure on someone to take a particular order and progress it and take it to contract for non-logical reasons.
Lead 5: Yes, so you made that distinction yesterday, but your numerous references within your written evidence to “ministerial pressure” I take to mean that there were instances in which the contact that was made did result in pressure coming to bear on those who were responsible for making decisions in relation to procurement; is that right?
Sir Gareth Williams: I don’t think that translated into pressure on “take this offer over that offer”.
Lead 5: Well, no, you’re answering a question that I’m not putting to you. You’ve referred to ministerial pressure, you’ve told us that there are different grades or ranges of intervention from ministers or their offices, but whichever they are, it must mean that they resulted in pressure. You used the phrase in your evidence.
Sir Gareth Williams: Everyone was under enormous pressure to buy as much PPE or ventilators or whatever it was, laptops for schools, or whatever the subject was, because of the nature of the crisis.
Lead 5: But Mr Rhys Williams, that’s not ministerial pressure.
We subdivided the forms of pressure. First and foremost
is the pressure that results from the urgent need to
provide those on the front line with vital PPE.
Sir Gareth Williams: Mm-hm.
Lead 5: We are not now discussing that. Ministerial pressure
came through periodic interventions in the procurement
decision-making process; that’s right, isn’t it?
Sir Gareth Williams: Well, I wasn’t in the teams that actually made decisions apart from the ventilator team, which were – I think we’ll come to later. So I’m not aware of ministers directly talking to the people in the cells –
Lead 5: All right –
Sir Gareth Williams: – but there was overarching pressure the whole time: “Civil Service go faster.”
Lead 5: We’ll hear from some of those individuals who were in those positions tomorrow, and perhaps I’ll leave those questions, then, for them.
But so far as distraction is concerned, I just want to put up on display, if I may, INQ003339149, and page 4 of it.
Apparently, this is – just so we situate ourselves within the document, it’s a PMO (Prime Minister’s Office) update of 16 April 2020, and we can see, can’t we, in the right-hand column, key points – if you can find your way in the third section, four down:
“VIP escalation is obstructing progress of more viable opportunities for larger/scalable manufacturers.”
Is that what you were referring to yesterday when you gave evidence to the effect that ministerial intervention was proving to be a distraction?
Sir Gareth Williams: So it’s not one of my documents and not a meeting I was at –
Lead 5: No, but it’s a reference to something that I’m asking you.
Sir Gareth Williams: Yes, so that sort escalation, that noise generation distracts people answering questions. They’re the elected representatives, so you have to answer their questions, but if it takes time away from the job at hand, that’s possibly not best use of their time. And I think that’s probably what the writer was talking about there.
Lead 5: You either answer their questions or you set up a system that discourages the asking of those questions or that automates responses, or that you avoid the introduction of a system at all that invites that form of intervention; that’s right, isn’t it?
Sir Gareth Williams: That would be the ideal world, but ministers are elected – you know, they are the elected Members of Parliament and I think they – I wasn’t – I’ve never been a minister, but had someone sent in an offer that was brilliant, that they’d just – their office pushed on to the teams, and for some reason the teams had overlooked it, hadn’t done anything with it, and later it had turned out that that was the life-saving offer that would have saved hundreds of people, and they’ve done nothing, their office wouldn’t let them get into that position. Their office would be chasing those things.
So I agree with you, in the ideal world – and I agree with what Professor Sanchez-Graells said yesterday, in the ideal world, you just say, “Don’t worry, we’re working on it”, but that’s not a response that meets as such favour – or met with much favour with ministers. And I can see why, because they were on the telly every night having to answer for why there was no PPE in hospitals, why there was no ventilators, why there was no this, that and the other.
So yes, but I think that’s unrealistic.
Lead 5: Mr Rhys Williams, you were watching the telly most nights and you were aware of criticism that was raised in relation to the introduction of the VIP Lane, and it’s for that reason that you commissioned or you – more accurately, as you pointed out yesterday, you asked for the commissioning of two GIAA reports, isn’t it?
Sir Gareth Williams: As well as the ones I did myself, yes.
Lead 5: As well as the – now, I’m not going to ask you about pricing because we’re going to deal with pricing with a later witness. I am, relatively briefly, going to ask you about the two GIAA reports now, if I may.
The first was commissioned in August 2020. Yes?
Sir Gareth Williams: Yes.
Lead 5: And it was to look into allegations of cronyism surrounding the VIP Lane. Yes?
Sir Gareth Williams: Yes.
Lead 5: It led to the –
Sir Gareth Williams: And proper process – and whether we were following proper process.
Lead 5: Yes, I’ve put those together.
Sir Gareth Williams: Yes.
Lead 5: That led to the phase 1 report, which was published in October 2021, 1 October 2021. So fairly swiftly produced?
Sir Gareth Williams: It would have been better if it had been swifter, but yes.
Lead 5: It was able to be as swift as it was because it looked at a relatively limited number of specific contracts?
Sir Gareth Williams: Yes, I asked the GIAA to pick the six that they felt were the most poisonous and worthy of investigation. And I didn’t choose the six, I don’t believe. They did.
Lead 5: Six is – the six “most poisonous” ones, as you put it, is a relatively small sample size, isn’t it, to draw general conclusions about the VIP Lane?
Sir Gareth Williams: They did another six – I would rather it was a larger sample but they – in GIAA 2 they did look for pricing against the whole dataset of hundreds of contracts, and that’s what’s in those pricing graphs.
Lead 5: Let’s have look at the – some of the GIAA phase 1 reports.
It’s INQ000478823 if I could have that displayed, please. And we want, within it, the summary of the findings, “VIP channel”. It’s page 7 of 17.
Do you see, a little bit further than halfway down the page there:
“One of the new procedures introduced was to have a high priority mailbox … serviced by a dedicated team, which would review offers of PPE from a reliable source.”
Yes?
And then what follows are these words:
“Examples of sources included senior politicians, ministers, senior executives of Government organisations and MPs.”
There’s a confusion there, isn’t there, because those individuals, senior politicians, ministers, senior executives of government organisations, are not the source; they are the referrers, aren’t they?
Sir Gareth Williams: Yes, it depends what the audit team meant by the word “source”; do they mean the referral, do they mean the company behind it?
Lead 5: Well, it must mean to “review offers of PPE from a reliable source”, “examples of sources”. Just using the language as it is commonly used, you wouldn’t say that because a minister has referred in a company, that minister is the source of PPE, would you? You’d say that that minister is a referrer?
Sir Gareth Williams: This is not my document, so, yes, I –
Lead 5: Well, it’s not your document but it’s one that you refer to extensively in your evidence that you asked that be commissioned, and that gave you the comfort that the VIP Lane was unproblematic. Yes?
Sir Gareth Williams: Yes, I’m also, if you look at the – in the bold above, the “Phase 1 Summary of Findings”:
“… controls had been designed and established that were proportion to the need …”
So …
Lead 5: You assumed, didn’t you, Mr Rhys Williams, that because an offer had come in via a particular referrer, that that offer was inherently more credible or more solid than offers that had come in by other means?
Sir Gareth Williams: No, I didn’t write that report. So the – each team – and there are varieties of Opportunities teams, seven or eight, and the VIP team, they each triaged all the offers they got so where we talk about there’s been some comment about ministers triaging, I don’t believe that was the case. Some of the offers might have been – they might have winnowed out some the obviously bogus ones, but the triaging one was done by the officials, so they just dealt with their – they dealt with their inbox. I mean, I wasn’t in the team, so you’ll get much more on this from Max and Chris.
Lead 5: Mr Rhys Williams, it’s right that you didn’t write the report but you did write your witness statement, INQ000536362 and you wrote, within it, paragraph 75, which is page 24 – 25, I beg your pardon.
While it’s being located, I’ll just read back to you your own words from what I thought was – and I think is paragraph 75 of this statement:
“It might reasonably be anticipated that the kind of offers which had been escalated to ministers and senior officials were coming from businesses with serious offers and that the referrers recognised them as such before sending them on.”
Do you recall those words in your statement?
Sir Gareth Williams: Yes. But they were still triaged by the officials.
Lead 5: They were triaged after they’ve gone in to the HPL?
Sir Gareth Williams: So what I intended to mean by that is that – so it might be anticipated – so it’s more likely that businesses are going to contact ministers than – I think you have to look at the nature of the people in the non-High Priority Lane, who those offers were from. A lot of those were from individuals – again, my colleagues can talk more to the detail of that. So I think it’s more likely that it was businesses that had got in touch with ministers and, therefore, more likely that they were able to deal with it. But that wasn’t a decision stage. Most ministers, most offices just shuffled the referral to whoever they thought was the most appropriate person.
Lead 5: But, Mr Rhys Williams, that is, if I may say so, an answer to my earlier question. You did make the assumption, and you’ve now given the reasons you made that assumption, that offers that came in through the – I can see it’s on the screen now, at the bottom of 75:
“It might reasonably be anticipated that the kind of offers which had been escalated to ministers and senior officials were coming from businesses with serious offers, and that the referrers recognised them as such before sending them on.”
That is what you assumed and we’re going to have a look at it in a moment whether there is a basis for assuming it. You started a moment ago to give the reasons you assumed it, but it is what you assumed, isn’t it?
Sir Gareth Williams: Yes, but – sorry, I’m not quite clear what you’re getting –
Lead 5: It’s a very simple question, if I may say so, Mr Rhys Williams. There was an assumption on your part that offers coming in via the HPL were inherently more credible or more solid, or more promising than those that had come in by other means. A moment ago you started to give the reasons why you had made that assumption but it was an assumption that you made, wasn’t it?
Sir Gareth Williams: No, I’m saying here it’s coming from businesses. It’s perfectly possible that the business came up with non-useful offers. But the word here is – I think the key word is “businesses”.
Lead 5: Well, there were business offers –
Sir Gareth Williams: Well, sorry, I wasn’t in the HPL team that then did the triaging when they actually looked at the detail of each of these offers. We’ve talked before about why it’s inevitable that a group of people, a group of offerors, were likely to get in touch with ministers and MPs and people in the Health Service and the health family that they knew, and I think those offerors were more likely to be businesses than they were citizens. That’s, I think, all I’m trying to say.
Lead 5: Once again, you’re giving explanations for an assumption that you made. I’m asking for the answer first. You can then give whatever clarification or elaboration that you wish to afterwards but, for whatever reason, it may be because more – a disproportionate number of businesses came to minister referrers, for example. You did make an assumption that the offers that came in via the HPL were more promising, were more credible, were more solid, than those on average that came in by other means, didn’t you?
Sir Gareth Williams: I think the – I think the sentence here refers to the stats above, so this is analysing the stats ex post not ex ante.
Lead 5: All right, I’m going to move on, Mr Rhys Williams. Can we go back to the GIAA report – it’s INQ000478823 – and it’s findings, back to page 7. Just below the paragraph we were looking at, or two below:
“Approximately 450 companies came through this high priority mailbox … of which 45 were awarded contracts, giving a conversion rate of 10%.”
Yes?
Sir Gareth Williams: Yeah.
Lead 5: So “conversion rate” means the comparison of either offers made or in fact here it is suppliers to contract secured?
Sir Gareth Williams: Yes, it’s an important distinction to make and I think yesterday Professor Sanchez-Graells made an error when he said that it was 90% of the offers were HPL, and I regret in your opening statement, as well, you, I fear, may have mixed up “companies” and “offers” because here it’s 450 companies whereas on Monday you used 450 offers and you compared offers in the non-HPL with companies in the HPL, and we talked about this offline. I think this is an important distinction because lots of companies gave multiple offers.
Lead 5: They did, and I’m going to come on to this. I gave a figure in opening of 17, a conversion rate of
Sir Gareth Williams: Yes, and I think that number is not quite right, or I think it’s wrong by a factor of 3 or 4, because you took 450 companies in the HPL and 20,000-odd offers in the non-HPL. So I suspect, though colleagues will have the actual data, there’s more like 2,000 offers in the HPL and therefore you should have compared 2,000 – anyway –
Lead 5: Do you reject this number, Mr Rhys Williams, the
conversion rate of 10?
Sir Gareth Williams: No, at the time this was written – I think it changed,
you know, by the time the pandemic had finished. So
yes, 90% of HPL offers were rejected; 10% were
successful.
Lead 5: All right. I’m going to come back to the 17 times
conversion rate in a few moments because I want you to
have a full opportunity to look at the figures. In
relation to GIAA report, due diligence decisions were
not fully recorded, were they?
Sir Gareth Williams: No, they owned – we all accept the paperwork was not as
good as it should have been in peacetime.
Lead 5: That’s right, that’s a fair summary. You say at
paragraph 4.442 of your corporate statement, we can go
to it if it is necessary but it may not be necessary:
“As part of the due diligence, the directors of times, rather than 10 times? 17 potential suppliers were checked by the Markets and
Suppliers team using an HMRC tool that flagged whether
they were politically exposed persons. The results of
these checks, positive or negative, were recorded on the
due diligence report, forwarded to the closing team.”
Do you recall that part of your evidence –
Sir Gareth Williams: I can’t find it but I’m sure you’re right.
Lead 5: This only runs checks on directors, doesn’t it? It’s
a fairly narrow search?
Sir Gareth Williams: Yes, probably.
Lead 5: With hindsight, do you think that the HMRC tool was too narrow a check on due diligence?
Sir Gareth Williams: Haha! Well, I think it was the best, probably, that the team could find at the time and I think there are very few tools that – I mean, a directorship is something that Companies House record and therefore HMRC data will pick up and other data the commercial function would pick up. Management below directors is rarely in a useful database.
Lead 5: You asked that another GIAA report be commissioned, didn’t you, that dealt more specifically with due diligence?
Sir Gareth Williams: Well, I asked them to, when they did the first six – and you made a good point earlier about sample size but six is all they said they could do – I asked them to do another six because there was still plenty of noise and I wanted to be as thorough as their resource would allow.
Lead 5: Did you likewise select the six most poisonous cases for the GIAA Phase 2 report?
Sir Gareth Williams: Perhaps “poisonous” is a loose word. I asked them just to pick the ones that they thought most concerned them, rather than me giving them a list. I don’t believe I did that.
Lead 5: We understand from your evidence that two contracts were selected at random and four were requested for review; is that right?
Sir Gareth Williams: Yeah, but – on which one? On?
Lead 5: The Phase 2 report.
Sir Gareth Williams: Phase 2. Possibly, yeah, I mean, if that’s what the evidence pack says.
Lead 5: In some cases, no due diligence had been carried out?
Sir Gareth Williams: So I think you need – if that’s what it says then it’s right. I think you need to separate – what sort of due diligence are we talking about? Are we talking about financial due diligence, which did take us a week or two to set up, because we didn’t have access to those. We talked about systems before but we didn’t have access to all those systems.
So what was – what then went forward to DHSC to decide whether they took the order or not, would have been a pack with some financial due diligence in it, late increasingly, as we went on, or without it, and then it was for them, on a balance of risks point – this goes back to the red flags from the Transparency International of Mr Bruce yesterday – for DHSC to decide balance of risk, do we take that offer? We probably wouldn’t in peacetime, but do we take it now?
Lead 5: Let’s have a look at the relevant section to the second report, to the Phase 2 report, it’s INQ000501951, page 7 of 51:
“Our review found due diligence processes on a company’s background and financials was documented and due diligence was carried out before an application would go to the Clearance Board … However, where due diligence identified potential issues, in some cases Limited documentation had been retained on the Defence Share to evidence how the issues raised were resolved, or where documentation existed, it would take a significant amount of time to locate and access. Also, we found some counter parties had due diligence done on them, but others had not, therefore Cabinet Office should consider being clear about what processes and checks …”
It’s put in rather binary terms within the report, isn’t it?
Sir Gareth Williams: Yes, and that’s my point. Earlier we weren’t doing financial due diligence; later, we were.
Lead 5: Okay, but two of the sample size here had none done at all?
Sir Gareth Williams: If that’s what the report says, then yes.
Lead 5: All right.
Sir Gareth Williams: I’m not denying – it would have been ideal to have had financial due diligence from day one but we weren’t able to set that up.
Lead 5: You also looked at dropout rate analysis, didn’t you?
Sir Gareth Williams: That’s right, yes.
Lead 5: You wanted to know what the funnelling down was, HPL compared to non-HPL?
Sir Gareth Williams: Yes, so this was – the first analysis I did was the pricing analysis and then, second, it occurred to me that we should look to see where there were two streams giving an unusual rate of dropout, were – by which, as you go through different steps, my Lady, was a pinch point where suddenly all the low priority ones vanished, which might indicate a bias of some description.
Lead 5: I think the quickest way to understand the result of that analysis is to look at a graphic that you’ve included within your corporate statement.
It’s INQ000497031, and page 192.
You’re familiar with this graphic. It was put up on display during the opening.
Sir Gareth Williams: Indeed.
Lead 5: And in broad terms it shows that the funnelling down is quicker, isn’t it, on non-HPL offers at every stage?
Sir Gareth Williams: Yes. When this was put in – I didn’t create this chart. The one I worked on personally was split by category, which is more useful. This is an aggregation. So it may be, I don’t know, it may be that some granularity is lost. But yes, what you see here is that the non-HPL ones failed the earlier phases quite quickly. So the initial sifts of, you know, what size company, is this a large order, they fell out, as you would probably expect, from the nature of the people that were proposing them, that there were lots of very small – but worthy, well intentioned, but very small offers that would have failed the – or did fail in that initial sift. You know, a volume thing, or maybe they were the wrong product. So yes. That’s not … this didn’t surprise me.
Lead 5: And what you should also bear, is this not right, Mr Rhys Williams, and we’ll see this in tomorrow’s evidence – if that could just stay on the screen for a moment longer – is that in the HPL offers, you had periodic interventions from ministers or their offices, chasers, “How is this offer progressing?”, and so on and so forth, whereas you wouldn’t have that on the blue funnel at the top of the page, the non-HPLs; that’s right, isn’t it?
Sir Gareth Williams: You have to talk to the team. I suspect some of the larger non-HPL offers – I mean, bear in mind we spent almost exactly the same amount on non-HPL as we did HPL offers, so I suspect some of the larger ones, once they got known about, would have been chased. But, yes.
Lead 5: Do I need –
Sir Gareth Williams: HPL –
Lead 5: I will talk to the team, of course, and others will too, in questioning tomorrow, but do I need to talk to the team – by which you mean Mr Cairnduff, Mr Hall, yes? – to understand whether the interventions were as frequent outside of the HPL than they were within the HPL? Is that evidence that you can help us with?
Sir Gareth Williams: The HPL was set up deliberately to handle ministerial office requests.
Lead 5: Of course.
Sir Gareth Williams: So yes, my assumption, therefore, is that most of the ministerial interest was in those offers, but there were some very large offers came through the non-HPL, normal – the other eight-stage things from China, which, as I say, when they were large and, you know – I suspect, I do not know – Mrs Lawson would know, Emily Lawson would know – those briefings to the Prime Minister, I suspect they gave examples of offers that they were looking at. So I think you’re right in terms of where the balance was but I can’t say.
Lead 5: All right, now we’ve – that’s all I really wanted to ask you about the GIAA reports phases 1 and 2, save for this: they were done several years ago, they were done, both of them, with small sample sizes?
Sir Gareth Williams: Yeah.
Lead 5: And they were done with other suboptimals, if I can put it that way, in relation to due diligence, we’ve looked as an example, but they were, I think you were indicating, the best that could be done within that relatively short timeframe when you asked that they be commissioned; is that fair?
Sir Gareth Williams: Yes, the pricing analysis they did covered everything, but they only looked at, six plus six, contract and process in detail.
Lead 5: All right. Since that time, a lot of data, information, evidence, has been made available about the HPL, about the VIP Lane, to this Inquiry. You’re obviously aware of that?
Sir Gareth Williams: Sure.
Lead 5: Yeah. and it deals with a great many more cases than the six plus six that the two GIAA reports looked at, yes?
Sir Gareth Williams: Absolutely, I readily concede the Inquiry’s got much more information on this than I had at the time, or in fact, you know, now.
Lead 5: Yeah. And that information includes, does it not, witness statements from 36 of the referrers in? Were you aware of that?
Sir Gareth Williams: You sent me some tables last night. Is that what you’re referring to?
Lead 5: Well, a bit earlier than last night, but nonetheless you’ve been looking at some tables and I’m going to take you to them.
But before I do that, were you aware that the Inquiry has sought and secured a number of witness statements from referrers into the VIP Lane.
Sir Gareth Williams: Referrers? So –
Lead 5: Referrers, yes.
Sir Gareth Williams: Yes, I felt sure you would.
Lead 5: Yes, we’re going to look at referrers and we’re going to look at caseworkers, so we’re going to look at the two ends of the process, as it were.
Of those 36 referrers, just over two-thirds, 67% of them, tell us they had conducted – well, let’s have a look at the pie chart that results from that witness evidence.
It’s INQ – thank you very much, it’s there already:
“Evidence of referrers in respect of suppliers which were awarded contracts.”
67%, just over two-thirds, of referrers into the VIP Lane tell us that they can …
Sir Gareth Williams: That they’ve done no due diligence.
Lead 5: That they’ve done no due diligence.
Sir Gareth Williams: Yes, and that’s, I think, my point before. Their offices just shuffled the incoming to whoever they thought was the relevant person in the PPE team to deal with without comment. That doesn’t surprise me at all.
Lead 5: So on that basis, whether it’s a company offer, an individual offer, whatever type of offer there is, there is no objective basis for concluding that the offer that had come in via a referral in was inherently more credible or solid, to use the language that you did in your witness statement? There isn’t a basis for that, is there?
Sir Gareth Williams: As I say, they’re more likely to be from businesses. But that’s why the HPL team, the high priority team, was there to triage these offers to see if they were any good.
Lead 5: Another way of assessing the quality or the inherent credibility or solidity of offers that came in via the VIP Lane is to analyse the performance of the contract compared to the performance of contracts outside the HPL within a given timeframe, and that timeframe must be the same for both. Yes?
Sir Gareth Williams: Yeah.
Lead 5: Whether there were problems with the contract or whether the contract performed as it was supposed to do?
Sir Gareth Williams: Yes.
Lead 5: Well, you may be aware that the Inquiry has obtained a lot of data from the DHSC providing information about PPE; are you aware of that?
Sir Gareth Williams: You sent me that last night, yes.
Lead 5: Can we turn, then, to Inquiry document INQ000582366, and it’s page 4 of that, paragraph 1.5.
“Performance issue.”
And we’re looking at the top here:
“High Priority Lane.”
And “No” means it’s an offer that’s come in outside the High Priority Lane, “Yes” means it’s come in through the High Priority Lane.
Were there performance issues? Yes, there were. For non-High Priority Lane offers, in 39% of the cases. And that’s compared to 55% for High Priority Lane offers.
So we’ve dealt with the due diligence aspect, whether referrers in simply passed them on, as you’ve acknowledged was normally the case.
We now look at performance. On that second basis, on that second measure, there is no objective basis upon which to conclude that offers that came in through the VIP Lane through referrals were performed better or were therefore inherently more credible or more solid or more promising. That’s right as well, isn’t it, Mr Rhys Williams?
Sir Gareth Williams: This isn’t my data, it’s DH –
Lead 5: Of course not.
Sir Gareth Williams: – data. So I think the question is what sort of performance issue, and I suspect DH have a breakdown of it: was it an invoice incorrect, was it Customs declaration done wrongly, or was it quality, as in quality of product? And I don’t think this jumps out.
What did jump out to me last night when I looked, was China Buy, which is mainly direct from manufacturers – so the HPL and things that came into – as I understand it, the things that came into the HPL/non-HPL channels were mainly intermediary type stuff, but it’s quite interesting that China Buy is mainly manufacturers and you see that lower down, 54 plays 55. You’d have thought that manufacturers would have had the best paperwork, the best quality. So I – but I can’t really – I’m happy to give some observations but I – this isn’t my data.
Lead 5: This is high level, and you’re right that this chart does not identify – it would be a very much more complicated chart, if it did – the nature of the defects in the contracts, the reasons for performance failures. But what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. If there are performance issues inside the HPL and performance issues outside the HPL, the details of which are unknown in both cases, one can, broadly speaking, make the comparison that is made in this chart, can’t one, because what you say would apply also outside the HPL, wouldn’t it?
Sir Gareth Williams: There could be different mix in different channels of different issues. I don’t know that from looking at this.
Lead 5: These are averages?
Sir Gareth Williams: Quite.
Lead 5: But do you have contrary evidence upon which to base a conclusion to say that VIP-referred offers performed better within the same time period as non-VIP Lane ones?
Sir Gareth Williams: No, but I wouldn’t have. That’s all for DH. This is looking ex post, the question is ex ante, that’s why these – that’s why all the offers were triaged in the same way. I said yesterday we were already in the place of having inconsistent treatment of offers because to the China Buy Team we’re looking at one set, in – and we covered that yesterday. So I am happy to ask one of my ex-team to work with DH to unpick this data a little bit but I don’t think I can help unpick an average.
Lead 5: All right. You gave evidence yesterday afternoon to some degree on speed, and I asked you whether the speed of processing was advantageous and you raised a point, I think for the first time in any of the evidence that we’d seen, that slowness of processing may be advantageous if it happened to coincide with a moment of need for whatever was being offered. Yes?
Sir Gareth Williams: I think it’s in one of my evidence packs but I would struggle to find the paragraph, but I’ll get it to you, but I think I –
Lead 5: I may have missed it, in which case I apologise. In any event, broadly speaking, generally speed of processing would be more advantageous than slowness of processing, subject to the exception that you raise; is that fair?
Sir Gareth Williams: Yes, and the distribution of the speed. If everyone was in a day or two and a different group was within a day or two, that might be one thing, but I suspect that the range of speeds going through, which is why I didn’t try to do the analysis at the time, because I just think we would have got mired in rubbish data, the distribution of how long things take, I think, is probably – and luck, frankly, on whether this vendor took a week to turn around a question that we’d asked them, or that vendor took a day to turn around a question or an hour to turn around a question, compared to our internal processing, which is I think the valid or the – you know, very justifiable question that you’re answering. I don’t think we know the speed of our processing rather than the total time.
But again, this is not my – you know, Chris Hall I think has spent more time on the timing data, and the analysis he’s done is they were broadly comparable, HPL/non-HPL, good offer to contract.
Lead 5: All right. In high-level terms, then, because if Chris Hall is going to be able to give the more detailed evidence, we can ask him about that, but the reason why speed is advantageous is that we’re dealing at that time with a very volatile market, a fast-moving market, and the sooner you can get an offer to an eventual decision maker, the better, usually?
Sir Gareth Williams: Correct.
Lead 5: I mentioned some guidance and you expressed some reservations about caveats within that guidance. I think, in fairness, we should look at it now. It’s INQ000477274, page 2.
Sir Gareth Williams: Sorry, what’s this from?
Lead 5: This is guidance on progressing offers, 7 May 2020.
Sir Gareth Williams: This is instructions to people in the teams.
Lead 5: It’s an internal document, I think – exactly – to inform the likes of Mr Hall when dealing with offers.
Sir Gareth Williams: Yes.
Lead 5: Yes? Did you produce it?
Sir Gareth Williams: Not me personally, no. This was probably written by Andy Woods or one of the people running the Opportunities teams.
Lead 5: With your involvement?
Sir Gareth Williams: No.
Lead 5: Without, okay. That may be why you’re not on top of the detail of it. But let’s have a look at that detail now:
“Closing Team
“An opportunity should only be progressed if …”
Then we go down, various different criteria here, and then the penultimate bullet:
“The offer is less than two weeks old. Offers more than two weeks old are generally not credible in the current market and should not be progressed unless you have expressly confirmed with the caseworker that they remain valid.”
Now isn’t that fairly clear? It may be something that you were not familiar with at the time or you’re not familiar particularly with now but, on the face of the document, it’s fairly clear, isn’t it, that a speedier process for an offer will place it at an advantage, for this reason – amongst others, for this reason alone, if one is to focus on this reason.
Sir Gareth Williams: So this is the Closing Team, so this is after technical assurance, after all the other processes. So I think it is a fair point they make: if the thing is old, talk to the case worker, who might well go back and check that the offer was still on the table or hadn’t been sold to somebody else.
Lead 5: It is a fair point that they make. Is it a fair point that I make, Mr Rhys Williams, that, if you can as far as here in the process within your two weeks, then you’re in with a shot? Then you might be one of those that is part of a conversion rate, the 1 to 10 conversion rate? That’s fair also, isn’t it?
Sir Gareth Williams: Yes, but it also says “unless you have … confirmed with the caseworker that it remains valid”, so –
Lead 5: Of course, there may be exceptions.
Sir Gareth Williams: Well, I don’t know if there were exceptions or routine. The average time, according to Chris Hall’s analysis, and apologies if I quote this wrongly, I think it’s three and a half weeks. So that would slightly imply that anything over two weeks, lots of things were being referred back to the caseworker but I don’t know that. You’d have to talk to the team on the ground.
Lead 5: All right, let’s go back to some of the charts that arise out of the evidence obtained from the 36 referrers, the witness evidence that was obtained from referrers.
It’s INQ000475005, and page 2.
You can see there, can you not, Mr Rhys Williams, that 61 of the referrers did chase for updates?
Sir Gareth Williams: 61%.
Lead 5: Excuse me, 61% of the referrers did chase for updates?
Sir Gareth Williams: That’s the problem, yes.
Lead 5: That’s the problem: why is that the problem?
Sir Gareth Williams: Because that’s the noise that gets generated.
Lead 5: Indeed, it’s a problem because it’s a distraction, and it’s a problem because it brings to the fore offers that may or may not have otherwise been to the fore. If you’re getting emails from referrers, particularly senior referrers or their offices, it’s only natural, it’s only human, isn’t it, to prioritise that, to use the word that features in the HPL, the High Priority Lane?
Sir Gareth Williams: So two things to say, I mean, yes, the intention is no one would – I’ve said already, it would be much better if there was no ministerial office chasing but I think that’s unrealistic. Procurers in government are trained to ignore things outside of the matter of the contract or the subject of the offer, and we had a particularly bruising court case that we lost, the NDA lost, £100 million that cost us because the procurement team were seen to be non-consistent.
So everybody knows to ignore stuff outside of the – you know, the case in question. But we were where we were, and so I can see why the team decided that an HPL was a better – a single group of people handling these chasings was a better way of doing it, certainly higher calibre people, rather than disaggregating those referrals on a cab rank basis to Opportunity team 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, you know, round and round and round, which was then, given that the requests were bound to come in, the 61%, you’d then have to work out who you’d given that – referred that to, find someone in that team who’s probably, you know, more junior.
So this a lesser of two evils problem, and I regret it. There are – in my recommendations there are a number of ways where I think we could avoid this scenario, but –
Lead 5: Mr Rhys Williams, you say that everyone knows to ignore the noise. You mean the caseworkers, don’t you? Those on the receiving end of these messages, these emails, whatever?
Sir Gareth Williams: Well, respond to them but not take, you know, not take heed of them.
Lead 5: Okay. The Inquiry –
Sir Gareth Williams: They’ll use their own judgement, is perhaps a better way of putting it.
Lead 5: Use their own judgement. The Inquiry has taken evidence or has surveyed those caseworkers. It was provided with 20 names of High Priority Lane caseworkers by the Cabinet Office, you may be aware –
Sir Gareth Williams: I wasn’t but –
Lead 5: – and it surveyed 17 of them, yes? Now, the team, it reached levels of as much as 38 in number, didn’t it, for the High Priority Lane?
Sir Gareth Williams: I’m not across that detail but, yes, if you can say –
Lady Hallett: 38 what?
Mr Wald: 38 individuals working within the VIP Lane.
Lady Hallett: Thank you.
Mr Wald: Let’s display now, in order to see the result of that survey, INQ000581860, and we start with the representation of the answer to this question:
“Did any referrers to the HPL contact you directly?”
15 responses were given and 53.3% said yes, to that?
Sir Gareth Williams: Yeah, I think that’s the mirror of the previous pie chart.
Lead 5: It should be approximately, shouldn’t it?
Sir Gareth Williams: Yes.
Lead 5: Let’s just zoom out again, so that we can be clear:
“Where an individual indicated that they were not contacted or unable to remember, they were not required to fill in the remaining questions.”
I draw that to your and the Inquiry’s attention because the next pie chart does therefore deal only with the 53.3%, those that were contacted.
Sir Gareth Williams: Uh-huh.
Lead 5: All right. If we could move, then, down to the next one, is it page 9? There it is, yes:
“The survey also asked the following question:
“Do you consider contracts in the HPL were treated differently throughout the process to contracts awarded outside of the HPL? (For example in speed … due diligence, assessments of value for money.)”
Now you say that caseworkers knew to ignore this stuff, the incoming requests for updates and other forms of intervention but it looks from this survey result that 66.7, two-thirds, just over two-thirds, of those that responded in the affirmative, that they had been contacted by referrers, did consider that the processing of contracts was different as a result of those interventions.
Sir Gareth Williams: I’m not sure it quite says that, it says – but this is the whole purpose of the HPL, to respond to requests, and we discovered earlier that the non-HPL didn’t have as many requests. So the whole purpose of the HPL was to respond to ministerial requests. So it depends – I don’t have the detail below this, you’ve put “for example”, but if that’s in – if you gave those as those are the only examples you wanted a yes to, then that’s fine, but one answer that would get a yes is “Yes, we responded to the referrers and that didn’t happen in other non-HPLs”. I don’t know, I wasn’t – I haven’t seen the survey detail.
Lady Hallett: Just before we go on, Mr Wald. Just so I follow: 20 people surveyed because I find percentages can sometimes be sometimes a bit misleading.
Mr Wald: 17.
Lady Hallett: Well, basically it talked about 20 on the previous page but anyway.
Mr Wald: Names of 20 provided.
Lady Hallett: Let’s take 20 because it’s easier –
Mr Mansell: Okay.
Lady Hallett: – if it’s 17 then my figures will be even more complicated – of which 53 – so just over half, so they were contacted.
Mr Wald: Yes.
Lady Hallett: So that would be 10, if it were 20.
Mr Wald: It would be.
Lady Hallett: Then 66.7% didn’t think they’d be treated – so we’re down to about six. So when we’re talking individuals, we’re talking five individuals, roughly? I’m looking at Mr Stoate, if he knows those figures.
Mr Wald: It was closer to 10. There were 15 responses, you can see there, above on the pie chart. So we’re talking about 10, two-thirds of that is 10.
Lady Hallett: In which case, my maths really is failing me. I’m going to have to take this away and think about it. I think it might be more helpful if we did try to work out how many individuals, because I find percentages, you know, if you had 100% of people surveyed and you only surveyed ten people it’s – you know, it doesn’t give you much help, does it?
Mr Wald: Yes, it’s not an enormous sample size. As I understand this pie chart, it’s two-thirds of 15, so 10.
Lady Hallett: Yes, but the 66.7% is of the 53.3%, isn’t it? Isn’t that what you just told us?
Mr Wald: No, I’m sorry, I – that’s not right. That applies to other pie charts, and those other pie charts limit the number of responses. This one we know the actual number of responses, because it’s indicated –
Lady Hallett: The 15.
Mr Wald: – on the screen and on the slide. It’s 15 responses.
Lady Hallett: So these aren’t 15 people who said they had been contacted, which the first pie chart showed us? This is not relating to the first pie chart?
Mr Wald: That’s right. 15 responded, and all of them had been contacted, and a quarter of them, approximately, said no, they didn’t feel like the result was anything different within the HPL, but two-thirds said, yes, they did think that there had been different treatment as a result of that contact.
Lady Hallett: I think I’m getting a bit confused here. Could someone just take – we’re taking up time and it’s not fair on Mr Rhys Williams. So if someone could try and work out for me exactly what these figures mean, in terms of individuals, roughly. I appreciate 7.1 individuals doesn’t exist, but just to give me a vague idea of how many individuals, as opposed to percentages.
Mr Wald: We’ll certainly do that, my Lady.
Lady Hallett: Thank you but before we move on that –
Sir Gareth Williams: I’m sorry, and what element of difference because I think that’s important. I would be disappointed if that meant that people had progressed things faster for no otherwise meritorious reason.
Mr Wald: Well, this is –
Sir Gareth Williams: But they were there to respond to requests. So …
Lead 5: This is the point I wanted to raise with you, Mr Rhys Williams. You said earlier that everyone knows to ignore this stuff, to use the phrase that you did. Everyone knows to use their judgement, rather than to respond to ministerial intervention, or contact, or communication. What is clear from this slide is that that isn’t what was happening:
“Do you consider contracts in the HPL were treated differently through the process outside …”
To say yes to that implies, does it not, that something different was done, in relation to speed and due diligence and assessment or value for money?
Sir Gareth Williams: Or other elements. I don’t know. I mean, I’ll have to talk to the ten people who ticked the blue box.
Lady Hallett: Can I just ask a question, Mr Rhys Williams. The professor yesterday suggested that one of the ways you might have been able to deal with the update, the pressure – let’s call it “pressure”, in inverted commas, for ministers, saying what’s happening, was basically to tell the ministers to back off, in other words to send a message out, I don’t know, from Number 10, or wherever, “Look, nothing is going to happen, you can put as much pressure on as you like but everything is just going to keep going on so, just stop wasting our time”. Did anybody think about doing that rather than setting up the High Priority Lane?
Sir Gareth Williams: Much of the pressure emanated from people in Number 10, so I think, that’s just – find 100 civil servants and ask them that question and see how much they smile. I mean, I just –
Lady Hallett: What, it just is not realistic to tell ministers to back off, or tell – (overspeaking) –
Sir Gareth Williams: Well, and it’s –
Lady Hallett: – to back off, certainly?
Sir Gareth Williams: Well, if it’s not interfere – and Mr Wald makes a great point, and these questions are absolutely appropriate, for a minister to ask a question that directs – what’s called in Civil Service speak, directs you to do something is a very high stakes thing. But asking for an update, these are the elected representatives we work for Parliament, we work for them. They have a right to scrutinise our speed of work and make pithy comments about how we’re doing it in all sorts of shapes and forms. And that is uncomfortable sometimes, but I – this is a slightly more philosophical question, but I think in our structure, you know, civil servants report to their ministers and then have to respond to questions for them.
Lady Hallett: It’s part of the DNA?
Sir Gareth Williams: Yes, and I tried to draw the distinction yesterday. In normal times, you publish a timetable of when different award stages – again, when perhaps you go from five vendors down to three, down to two, down to one, and after those decision meetings have been had then it’s appropriate to update the minister, or whoever, outside of the decision-making process but who has a legitimate interest, subject to confidentiality, and so on and so forth. But this was not that environment; this was chaos, every minute.
Mr Wald: Thank you, my Lady. Just two more points on the graphs, if I may.
You commissioned the two GIAA reports because of concern or reports in the media about cronyism, there were allegations about cronyism that you were concerned about and wanted to investigate, isn’t that the case?
Sir Gareth Williams: I wanted to know if I had overlooked something, yes.
Lead 5: Yeah. Those reports allayed your concerns, didn’t they?
Sir Gareth Williams: Insofar as they could do. I did a couple of other exercises myself that – we’ve discussed one of them, we haven’t discussed the pricing one.
Lead 5: The Inquiry was also concerned and conducted its own analysis, and the result of that can be displayed INQ000475005 at page 3.
You were aware, were you not, that the successful awards were overwhelmingly, so far as we know, from referrals in of those that were members or supporters of the Conservative Party, the then Government?
Sir Gareth Williams: Sorry, the question is in several bits there. So this chart, I think, is talking through things coming through the HPL –
Lead 5: It is?
Sir Gareth Williams: – rather than the total –
Lead 5: The HPL.
Sir Gareth Williams: – the total footprint.
Lead 5: It’s looking at the degree to which successful contracts through the HPL were affiliated politically to the Conservative Party, rather than any other party?
Sir Gareth Williams: Well, I think most of the referrals came from ministerial offices, so there’s no surprise they were conservative at the time. So I think the question is, “Was it causal”, which is a very good question to ask.
Lead 5: The result of this analysis doesn’t surprise you, is that what I take from your last answer?
Sir Gareth Williams: Well, I think it’s only encouraging that more came through the Civil Service and probably by Civil Service you also mean NHS. I’m not sure you can draw a huge amount from this.
Lead 5: It doesn’t concern you, Mr Rhys Williams, that there is no representation of referrals in relation to successful contracts through the HPL from any other party? That doesn’t, to you, signal some problem with the HPL process?
Sir Gareth Williams: I think it is more than not believable that civil servants would winnow out a good offer because it came from the Labour Party. I would be appalled. I just – I just can’t believe that.
Now, you’ll talk to colleagues to find out, you know, why – it might be a good question to them – referrals that came from non-Conservative sources, what was the issue with those offers? I don’t have that detail. But civil servants are trained to be apolitical in – the sort – they’re trained to look at the offer.
Lead 5: All right.
Let’s go back, as I said I would, to the figures. You’ve made your comments about the 90% figure from Professor Sanchez-Graells of yesterday. I’m not going to go back to that. I do want to go back to –
Sir Gareth Williams: I think it was 30 –
Lead 5: – the 17 times conversion rate that I mentioned in opening.
Let’s start, if we may, with INQ000528391.
It’s a witness statement, not yours, but of Mr Jonathan Marron, who is due to give evidence after you today.
Page 192, table 11.
Sir Gareth Williams: Yes.
Lead 5: We see there, within the HPL, 430 potential suppliers.
Sir Gareth Williams: Okay.
Lead 5: 51 were awarded contracts.
Sir Gareth Williams: And you used 430 in your chart that drove the 17 and a half by –
Lead 5: No, well, let’s take it in stages –
Sir Gareth Williams: – for – for offers, not suppliers.
Lead 5: Mr Rhys Williams, would you allow me to take this in stages, because it’s not obvious stuff and it needs to be –
Sir Gareth Williams: No, this is really complicated. That’s why it’s important to get it right.
Lead 5: Please allow me – if I get it wrong, you’ll say so, but wait for me to do so, if you wouldn’t mind.
430 potential suppliers, 51 suppliers awarded contracts. That is a conversion rate, in terms of suppliers, of 11.86%. Yes?
Sir Gareth Williams: And that, I think, correlates with the 10% that was from the dataset but only halfway through the pandemic, so I assume this is for the full pandemic data.
Lead 5: Non-HPL, many more potential suppliers – we’re still talking about suppliers –
Sir Gareth Williams: Yes.
Lead 5: – 15,194. 173 suppliers awarded contracts.
Sir Gareth Williams: Yes.
Lead 5: That’s a conversion rate of 1.13%, with suppliers.
Sir Gareth Williams: Yes.
Lead 5: Which gives an overall conversion rate comparison of ten and a half times, roughly ten, focusing on suppliers. Yes?
Sir Gareth Williams: Yeah –
Lead 5: Now the reason for the 17 times conversion rate, it arises out of a focus not on suppliers but on offers, because, as you know, some suppliers secured multiple contracts.
Sir Gareth Williams: And lots of suppliers made multiple offers, yes.
Lead 5: Yes, exactly. So let’s have a look at that.
Sir Gareth Williams: I’m just remembering that the table you put up in your opening statement had 430 in a box called “Offers”, not suppliers, and you’re comparing that with 22,000 – I didn’t screenshot it – of non-HPL offers. So I suspect, my Lady, that the HPL companies beneath it were probably bigger – this is back to who they contacted – were bigger and therefore likely more offers per company, but I don’t know that. That’s just – and, you know, that is an assumption.
Lead 5: The total number of offers rather than suppliers is significantly higher than the number we looked at earlier. It’s 24,000, I’m –
Sir Gareth Williams: That sounds about right, yes.
Lead 5: Yes. Of which 430 were offers in the HPL?
Sir Gareth Williams: No, 430 is the number of suppliers in the HPL. They would definitely have had more than one offer per supplier, and therefore – I think you just picked somewhere – I think it would be good if your analyst or Chris Hall or someone from DH could get together because these are really important numbers and to put out that it’s 17.5 times more likely, I think it’s probably a factor of 3 or 4 less than that. We need to get to the right answer, and there are lessons to learn about the data and I’m not trying to hide behind that.
Lady Hallett: I agree, Mr Wald. What concerns me is that there could be a misleading headline if we don’t get these figures correct –
Mr Wald: All right.
Lady Hallett: – and that misleading headline would be unfair to everybody.
The Witness: Sorry, I shouldn’t – I wonder do you have the slide that you gave us on the opening statement because I think that would make the point that I made.
Mr Wald: I’m not sure I can summon it up at a moment’s notice but certainly we will take up the suggestion of trying to agree the figure.
Lady Hallett: Well, maybe if we take the morning break now, I don’t know how much – I appreciate that Mr Stoate is going to take over the questioning. How much more questioning have you got of the witness, Mr Wald?
Mr Wald: Not very much, a matter of a few minutes.
The Witness: My Lady, this is quite complicated. Perhaps we could write to you once we have all got together about this. Analysing this is really difficult and I don’t –
Lady Hallett: I understand that, don’t worry. I’ve certainly got that point, if I’m not following the figures.
I think I’ll take the break now and the team can consider how much progress we’re likely to make asking these questions at the moment before doing the work you suggested. I shall return at 11.20.
(11.06 am)
(A short break)
(11.20 am)
Lady Hallett: Mr Wald, where have we got to?
Mr Wald: My Lady, we’ll see if we can get any further on this. And if not we will, as you suggest, Mr Rhys Williams, we’ll take it offline, we’ll try to agree figures.
You did ask that the representation, the doughnut diagram that was used in opening, be displayed. So shall we start with that so that we can understand your concern?
Sir Gareth Williams: Sure.
Lead 5: It’s INQ000474992.
Sir Gareth Williams: Yes, and that’s what I’m getting at. In the top right there, my Lady:
“High Priority Lane offers (430).”
That’s, I believe, a transcription error, whatever, whereas the 23,570 on the left-hand side, at 9 o’clock, I think that is much more likely to be actual offers, whereas the 430, I believe, is suppliers.
And I think the offers number is more like 2,000, 2,500, something like that, but I defer to my colleagues.
Lead 5: If it were offers, if, contrary to what you’ve just said, it were offers, then it would affect the conversion rate, wouldn’t it?
Sir Gareth Williams: No –
Lead 5: If that is correct – you say that that relates to suppliers, and that of course is what Mr Marron says in his evidence. We looked at his table.
Sir Gareth Williams: I’ve not seen his –
Lead 5: Well, but –
Sir Gareth Williams: – table, but I think – can I put it the other way round: I think it is much more likely that there was one offer per HPL supplier. Only – exactly one. I think that’s –
Lead 5: No, no one is suggesting that. Let’s just –
Sir Gareth Williams: Yes, you are –
Lady Hallett: Well, except on another map – sorry, forgive me, haven’t we got 430 as the figure for suppliers under the High Priority Lane? Isn’t that the point –
Mr Wald: That’s my point, my Lady.
Lady Hallett: In other words, it’s a bit of a coincidence you’ve got 430 suppliers in one map and 430 offers, I think is the point that Mr Rhys Williams is making.
Mr Wald: The source of the figure of 430 for suppliers is the table we looked at before the short break.
Sir Gareth Williams: I think that is right, 430 suppliers. I think the offers number on this slide is perhaps where the transcription has gone wrong.
Lead 5: Let’s have a look at the source of the 430 figures for offers rather than suppliers, then.
Could we have INQ00565970, please.
(Pause)
Lady Hallett: It doesn’t look as if we’re going to resolve this swiftly. We’ve got many other questions, I know Mr Stoate has, for Mr Rhys Williams. I think we’d better move on.
Mr Wald: All right, my Lady.
Lady Hallett: We’ll try to resolve it offline with your assistance.
The Witness: Thank you, my Lady.
Could I make one final comment, while the team are changing over, which we’ve not talked about but which I think is relevant? So in the early days of the pandemic, we bought everything, and there was maybe criticism that we bought too much. That’s a slightly different thing. We bought everything we could. And the market what’s called cleared. So if we didn’t buy it, someone else bought it. There was no surplus PPE anywhere on the planet for the first few months, I don’t know the date exactly, but the market cleared.
So it is surprising how few, like half a dozen or so, I talk to them in my evidence pack, my Lady, of people complained that we did not take their offer.
So I think – we went through, or the team went through, all the low priority ones, and, as we’ve discussed, we bought everything we could. And so I think there’s a – the pricing point, I don’t – I know we’re going to talk about – when I’m not here, but I – I don’t understand where this 80% increase in costs number has come from and I – hopefully when you see the charts, you will make your own mind up. But also, very few other people complain.
So I don’t see where – the process has its faults, as I’ve been very open about. We were where we were in terms of process. And Professor Sanchez-Graells is very right to make the comments that he did on that.
All the product that was sold by anyone who offered anything. It went to us or other countries. I don’t think HMG lost out materially on price, although that’s – obviously you must make your own mind up. And the process was not perfect but the GIAA and Boardman said the process was – you know, there were data gaps, for reasons we’ve discussed, so I – but I think that market clearing and limited number of complaints – suppliers to government complain at the drop of a quarter hat, and there were half a dozen or so.
Lady Hallett: Thank you.
Mr Stoate.
Questions From Counsel to the Inquiry
Mr Stoate: Thank you, my Lady.
Mr Rhys Williams, I’m going to ask you – I’m going to pivot to a completely new topic, if I may.
Sir Gareth Williams: Goody.
Counsel Inquiry: I’m going to ask you questions focused on the procurement of ventilators during the pandemic.
Just a few background questions first. Given the nature of Covid-19 as a disease, and its impact on respiratory systems, and of course, as you’ve told us, looking across from the UK to the EU, to Europe, the availability of ventilators during the pandemic was initially thought to be critical for treating those suffering from the disease; is that right?
Sir Gareth Williams: I believe so, yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: In very simple terms, I think I use your phrase here, ventilators, we’re talking about medical devices that move air into and out of a person’s lungs and which were used or could be used to take over the body’s breathing process when Covid-19 caused the lungs to fail and allowing the patient time to fight off the infection and recover?
Sir Gareth Williams: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: You say that in early March – this is in your statement of 2020 – the advice from the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) was that in the reasonable worst-case scenario, excess deaths from Covid-19 could be 520,000 within three months, and that some 781,000 people would require ventilation at some point while hospitalised. Yes?
Sir Gareth Williams: Those are SAGE’s numbers, not –
Counsel Inquiry: Yes, but they’re what you cite to us.
Prior to the pandemic, the purchasing of ventilators, along with most other medical equipment, was carried out by individual NHS trusts; is that right?
Sir Gareth Williams: Yes, subject to what we talked about yesterday with SCCL doing mainly commodities –
Counsel Inquiry: Yes.
Sir Gareth Williams: – but I believe equipment was mainly bought by trusts directly.
Counsel Inquiry: You note in your evidence there was no central list of how many ventilators were held by the NHS or what model or specification they were?
Sir Gareth Williams: That’s correct, that’s what I’d learnt at the time, yes.
Counsel Inquiry: And you observed this:
“We had not anticipated the need for ventilators and so started the pandemic with many fewer than I believe is the case for other countries (on a per capita basis) which … meant that we were always going to be scrambling to rectify the situation.”
You say:
“Not having an inventory of how many ventilators: what type, age, state of repair and where, made trying to estimate how many we would need even harder.”
Yes?
Sir Gareth Williams: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: So you’ve given us those very large figures from SAGE. In your evidence you say:
“In March 2020 …”
Looking right at the beginning of the pandemic.
“… it was tentatively estimated by DHSC and [NHS England] that the NHS had access to something like 6.000 to 8,000 ventilators …”
Yes?
Sir Gareth Williams: I believe so, yes.
Counsel Inquiry: But that, on that reasonable worst case scenario we looked at, 30,000 would be required by April of 2020, and some 90,000 required by November of 2020. In other words, the modelling you were receiving indicated that the number of ventilator beds required would exceed supply both soon and essentially potentially very significantly so; is that right?
Sir Gareth Williams: Yes, by – in their final case, 82,000.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes. Briefly, the manufacture of ventilators is a complex process, isn’t it?
Sir Gareth Williams: Yes, they are complicated machines.
Counsel Inquiry: And very different from many of the PPE sectors which will obviously receive attention from the Inquiry. It’s a sophisticated combination, isn’t it, of electronics, batteries, software, gas delivery systems, monitoring alarms, many moving parts?
Sir Gareth Williams: Yes, about 300 or so to 500 bits/components per – depending on what the model, is my Lady.
Counsel Inquiry: You say in your evidence, at this early stage, global demand for ventilators – because of course everyone was seeing the same thing, weren’t they – meant that there was no confidence that significant number of ventilators could be sourced from existing producers and it was likely to be difficult to purchase the key materials to buy all those parts; is that right?
Sir Gareth Williams: Yes. And I should add also, you know, a number of countries had export bans. So – yes, so.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes, this was a global problem, wasn’t it, not just a UK problem?
Sir Gareth Williams: Indeed.
Counsel Inquiry: Looking at the UK though, there were, as you say, no large-scale domestic producers of any ICU – intensive care unit mechanical ventilators in the UK or domestic companies with current lines of ventilators licensed for sale. This is looking at March 2020; is that right?
Sir Gareth Williams: Yes, there was one company, UK company, Diamedica, who did have a product sold, I believe, in Saharan Africa but that was not licensed for the UK, but it was a UK company. But that’s not an ICU ventilator, there are different flavours of ventilators, which we might get into.
Counsel Inquiry: No, we don’t need to get into that for these questions but there might come a point when we do. But summarising this, you’ve now got very significant excess death estimates, very significant estimates of how many ventilators needed, many fewer of those ventilators available, an overheated global market and no domestic production of those devices; is that right?
Sir Gareth Williams: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: As such, is this correct, your focus – and this is where you come in, effectively, isn’t it – your focus became domestic production of ventilators?
Sir Gareth Williams: Yes, we always knew that was going to be a very long shot but there were no other options available and to put – this is a different statistic that you haven’t mentioned but is relevant – there was a chart that we all saw at the beginning of the Ventilator Challenge period that looked at cases and number of ventilators, the 6,000 to 8,000 that you mention, and I think I’m right in remembering that they – someone reversed out the numbers and said, well, after two weeks at, you know, projected rates, which were projected rates, 3,000 people a week would die through lack of ventilators.
Counsel Inquiry: Putting a date on it, 12 March, what you tell us is that the Secretary of State for Health, Matt Hancock, had a call with the Prime Minister, Boris Johnson and the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Michael Gove, along with members of the Government Commercial Function, discussing an urgent need for ventilators, and it’s at this point the idea arose of getting a group of UK-based companies together to assist with manufacturing more of them; is that right?
Sir Gareth Williams: Yes, I wasn’t at that meeting but one of my colleagues was who came back and talked to me about it immediately afterwards.
Counsel Inquiry: The next day you emailed Patrick Vallance, the Chief Scientific Adviser, and Steve Oldfield, the Chief Commercial Officer, at DHSC seeking their views on an idea to assemble a team of engineers basically to design and make a new simple, mass-manufacturable ventilator; is that right?
Sir Gareth Williams: Yes, of a very simple sort. So I’d been thinking overnight what could we do – so I used to run a company that made toilet hand dryers so I knew a bit about the technology and I was meaning something that might be for home use, very basic, but we could hopefully make hundreds of thousands of. You’ll probably come to this but I was rapidly educated by the clinicians that this was not what they wanted.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes, we’ll come to that but still at this very earlier stage, you spoke to Sir John Manzoni, Chief Executive of the Civil Service and Permanent Secretary of the Cabinet Office, discussed a two-pronged centrally led approach to your securing – I think you were fairly rapidly educated because you tell us at this stage what was actually needed was more high-end ventilators for the NHS; is that right?
Sir Gareth Williams: That’s right, yes, the doctors were very clear that they didn’t need what they referred to as “bag squeezers” and this is because, my Lady, the ventilators – the patient is unconscious at the time, you’ve got tubes going down into you. That’s rather different from a mask on your face which pumps air into, which that still goes through your lungs, and therefore your body can still protect yourself, and that was the education point that I rapidly understood.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes, yes. These two prongs of this two pronged approach, firstly, first prong: buy as many ventilators as possible from the UK and global suppliers, that was an exercise led by the Department for Health and Social Care, with a joint unit to secure overseas opportunities, which included the FCO and the Department for International Trade?
Sir Gareth Williams: That’s right, yes, we should carry on – they had already been trying to buy as many as they could but we should absolutely reinforce that and put more people into it and try and buy as many as we could in the market, obviously.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes, and, secondly, to work with suppliers and manufacturers here to increase the production of ventilators in the UK, and that became what we now know as the Ventilator Challenge; is that right?
Sir Gareth Williams: Correct.
Counsel Inquiry: That was led by the Cabinet Office; is that correct?
Sir Gareth Williams: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: Forgive me –
Sir Gareth Williams: Well, it was me and my team.
Counsel Inquiry: You, because you’ve already told us, you had a procurement role and a private-sector engineering background?
Sir Gareth Williams: And I’d worked in medical devices as it happened and, you know, I didn’t know anyone else around who could do it so I allocated myself to this.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes, it fell to you. You became the Senior Responsible Officer and the Accounting Officer for the Ventilator Challenge; is that right?
Sir Gareth Williams: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: You tell us you dedicated most of your time until mid-April, and a still very significant amount of your time until the end of June, to that Ventilator Challenge; is that right?
Sir Gareth Williams: Correct.
Counsel Inquiry: Looking, then, at how this worked, you tell us that the approaches being taken to meeting Challenge, as it’s being now called, first, identify and increase the production of existing designs and, secondly, develop new designs; is that right?
Sir Gareth Williams: Because there were designs in – there was a – Smiths, who were excellent engineering company, had a – what’s called a transport ventilator, which is a low-end one. It’s not – you can’t use it, you know, for an extended period of time and they were UK based, and had a UK licence so, obviously, we wanted to scale them up and they wanted to scale up as fast as they could. But that was never going to cover the gap between what we could buy in the market, which was a few hundreds, and, you know, these thousands that were then predicted.
Counsel Inquiry: In both cases, either increasing the production of existing designs or developing new designs, you tell us it was necessary for any such machines to secure the approval of the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency, the MHRA; is that right?
Sir Gareth Williams: Absolutely.
Counsel Inquiry: Before they would be put into production and receive contracts for manufacture?
Sir Gareth Williams: Absolutely, yes.
Counsel Inquiry: The aim at this stage clearly very ambitious, if we’re looking back at those SAGE statistics and what you’re told by NHS England, essentially to make 30,000 ventilators in eight weeks; is that right?
Sir Gareth Williams: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: In its early stages, a team called passage consulting was enlisted to undertake project management; is that right?
Sir Gareth Williams: Yes, PA are a well-known management consultant but they’re more about product development and operational than other well-known strategy consultants, let’s say. And I happen to know, because I worked with them before, that they had a medical base in Cambridge and Cambridge is a centre of medical device developers. So – and PA were already contacted to government. So it was frankly a logical and quick route to get the external expertise that we were going to need because we needed a lot of people on this overnight immediately, with knowledge of the people we were going to be working with.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes, you also tell us in addition to them, various design consultancy companies were contracted to deploy teams of scientists and engineers to support the supply chain and procurement and to assist in scaling up as quickly as possible. That was sort of the early work of the –
Sir Gareth Williams: Two in parallel and that’s what was unusual here. Normally you design the thing and then you work out how to scale it up. There was no time for that, so we engaged a whole lot of design teams, these medical device companies around Cambridge, and others that came in, at the same time as we were trying to work out if they came up with something that works, in the MHRA’s eyes, in the clinicians’ eyes, how would we scale it up to make – well, essentially triple the UK stock, which we’d obviously acquired over many years.
Counsel Inquiry: You tell us on 16 March, the Prime Minister convened a meeting with around 60 leading manufacturers and suppliers to encourage them to participate. You describe that as the “targeted call to arms”; is that right?
Sir Gareth Williams: Yes, because it’s quite a small industry, medical devices in the UK, and there are – we wanted to get urgent attention to senior people in those companies that we were serious about what – on one level what we were trying to do was impossible. No one had ever thought that this was doable, so we needed people to participate and they were all keen to. So the meeting that the Prime Minister convened, that I was at was a mixture of medical device companies, the design companies, and the people who were likely to be able to help scale it up, and that’s, you know, the major manufacturers of volume product, car companies, aerospace companies, and one of the things that we asked them to do was who else do you consider would be useful to get into the tent? And that’s what I mean by targeted call to arms, rather than what happened with PPE where we just, you know, everyone in the country was invited to ring in, which, you know, we discussed yesterday.
Counsel Inquiry: There seemed to be something of that, you say on the same date, 16 March, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, BEIS, did publish a wider call for businesses to help make NHS ventilators. You describe it in your statement as the “wider public request for help”. That received over 5,300 offers of support, eventually.
You said yesterday in your evidence that “nearly broke the back of the team”?
Sir Gareth Williams: So those – my Lady, those 5,000 or so, all well meaning, were mainly making components, components for air-conditioning systems, which is a similar problem but different, so they were relevant but they weren’t designers of ventilators. We’d pretty much got that group, and they weren’t the large manufacturers because we’d already identified Ford and Airbus and, you know, the obvious large manufacturers. But nonetheless, obviously, we had to go through each and every one because there might have been a nugget in there that we had missed, and it – you know, so we went through all 5,000, obviously.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes. You discussed some of that with Mr Wald yesterday. In terms of how the Ventilator Challenge selected its designs, okay, so the proposals and prototypes that came to it, you established something you called the Technical Design Authority, the TDA, yes, to make recommendations on proposed suppliers ventilator designs to ministers based on clinical observations; is that right?
Sir Gareth Williams: That’s right, the TDA was a mixture of clinicians, me, a couple of people from PA and the MHRA representative.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes, so in this Technical Design Authority, you’ve got the MHRA for regulatory oversight and approval; is that right?
Sir Gareth Williams: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: You’ve got senior clinicians, led by Professor Ramani Moonesinghe, the national clinical care director.
Sir Gareth Williams: That’s right.
Counsel Inquiry: We’ll be hearing from her later. She gives clinical sign-off, so not regulatory but clinical sign-off, and she tell us in her statement her role here was ultimately to decide go and no-go, in terms of designs in the Ventilator Challenge; is that right?
Sir Gareth Williams: Yes, but she and – she had a group of brilliant doctors working with her, also told us what they wanted in terms of the spec and they – while the spec was signed by the MHRA and, as luck would have it, the document person who was the MHRA rep had also been an anaesthetist in his prior career and so knew what he was talking about, so the clinicians generated the spec with the MHRA explaining what we wanted – what they wanted and, of course, over time as we learnt more – perhaps we’ll come to this – that spec did evolve, as we learnt more about the disease, in the weeks – days and weeks that followed.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes, the initial spec wasn’t the one at the end, was it, because understanding changed, and so forth?
Sir Gareth Williams: The balance within the spec. There was a particular thing you may remember, my Lady, on the telly seeing patients having to be rotated because they generated a lot of mucus on their lungs, and that would – I think, for the clinicians – I don’t speak for them, Ramani will talk to this, I’m sure – I don’t think they had expected that. So the initial spec didn’t include machines – the requirement to deal with that mucus. But later that became a key, key item so that – the spec evolved over the days and weeks – and couple of weeks.
Counsel Inquiry: Just finally on the Technical Design Authority, you’ve got MHRA senior clinicians and you also tell us Professor Tom Clutton-Brock, director of the Medical Devices, Testing and Evaluation Centre (MD-TEC), which actually carried out the testing of these prototypes and machines; is that right?
Sir Gareth Williams: That’s right. So he was part of – he was not part of the MHRA but he was an approved testing house, and I think what is really noteworthy here is the MHRA, the clinicians and Professor Tom, were all trying very hard to not just wait for a design to come and then assess it, like marking an exam; they were coaching all the teams on what they wanted, “We don’t think this will work, have you tried this? Have you talked to them? That might work. You can solve that problem by doing this”.
So it was a very – the regulator had absolutely the right to say no, and that’s vital, but there was a coaching to get an answer relationship and I think that was a large part of why we were able to do this so fast.
Counsel Inquiry: This might be obvious but you do tell us in your statement:
“As ventilators are used to push air into the lungs of unconscious patients it is incredibly important that they were clinically safe.”
Was that the basis of the reason for this Technical Design Authority and the way you’d structured it?
Sir Gareth Williams: Well, I certainly – so if it was a normal procurement with an established spec and you would always have evaluators who knew the subject matter – I knew nothing about ventilators worth talking about – and so the clinicians and the MHRA were the absolutely key determinants of whether they thought a machine would work. Now, it had to work, or be likely to work when it was – when the design was completed, but it was also vital, my Lady, that we were able to scale it up.
And so simple designs, what’s called design for manufacture, was also a big issue, as was: do we think we can get all the components to assemble this enormous piece of Lego? 400 components per each. Because we might have a brilliant design that was scalable, but if we couldn’t get one part of it, a ventilator with 399 parts is useless, obviously.
Counsel Inquiry: So if I’ve understood your evidence, the way you tackled that aspect, the clinical and the safety aspect, from a commercial manufacture point of view, the idea was to match companies with experience of manufacturing sort of high-spec products at scale, with those who had the expertise in designing actual ventilators; is that right?
Sir Gareth Williams: Correct.
Counsel Inquiry: So you give the example of pairing Penlon, a medical supplier, with Ford and McLaren motor company, Siemens, Airbus and others who could manufacture at scale. That’s how you proceeded; is that right?
Sir Gareth Williams: Exactly and we also forced each of the companies with a design to give us what’s called their bill of materials, the list of componentry, so that we could avoid someone accidentally, but for good intentions, buying all of the oxygen valves, their machine then not working or, even if it did work, if someone had all the oxygen valves and someone else had all the flow meters, you still couldn’t put the kit together. So we were very clear that we needed to control the components.
Counsel Inquiry: You say you did this – in terms of the Cabinet Office’s input to achieving that, there were dedicated points of contact at the Cabinet Office, and you went about making staff available – staff of project management and design specialists, supply chains support, manufacturing development support, legal support and cost and auditing support to provide tailored advice. So they were all they’re through the process; is that correct?
Sir Gareth Williams: Yes, the design contracts were led on what’s called time and materials. We will come back to how we were contracted, I suspect, but we needed – we required all of the suppliers to prove their costs, and we said we would pay reasonable costs, reasonable and provable costs, and we used a team from the MoD, who’d do this the whole time for defence equipment, to go and audit the fact that their – their hour rates were reasonable and had been what they had been pre-pandemic and we weren’t being gouged and that the components really had cost what they said and the meter for this or, you know, the tool for that had cost what they had said it had cost.
Counsel Inquiry: Cabinet Office support could, on occasion, be financial, couldn’t it? You give the example of advancing sums of money to design teams to enable them to buy components that either had long lead times or were in danger of selling out?
Sir Gareth Williams: Correct.
Counsel Inquiry: In terms of how many designs came through the process, they were sort of whittled down, weren’t they, through this iterative process –
Sir Gareth Williams: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: – by the Technical Design Authority; is that right?
Sir Gareth Williams: Yes, though three or four or five did join through a – a week or so later. And bizarrely, one person we kicked out, on their own dollar, progressed their design and came back in with a much more improved thing, which I think just shows the determination of the people in the team to cooperate and get a result, for the UK.
Counsel Inquiry: Um –
Sir Gareth Williams: So it wasn’t – all I’m trying to say is it wasn’t a complete pyramid; there were people coming in and out and joining later as they caught up.
Counsel Inquiry: A whittling down but a slightly more nuanced one, perhaps?
Sir Gareth Williams: Correct.
Counsel Inquiry: In the end, is this right, three companies – can you recall, actually, before I go there, how many designs did you start out with and – can you recall? I’ve seen different numbers, 18, 19.
Sir Gareth Williams: Well, I would say it was 30 or so to start with, but some of them were of the bag squeezer type which the clinicians rejected, you know, as soon as they saw the video: “No, not remotely.”
So there was probably 15, 18 or so that we took into serious – that we spent money with, let’s put it like that.
Counsel Inquiry: In the end, after the process of the Technical Design Authority evaluation and progressive reduction, as you describe it, and the number of prototypes being supported, and taking into account, as you’ve summarised – can I summarise it this way – the evolution of the technical specifications and regulatory requirements as more was understood about Covid-19, and taking into account forecasts in relation to demand –
Sir Gareth Williams: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: – how many were needed or likely to be needed, and, you say, commercial considerations. What do you mean by commercial considerations?
Sir Gareth Williams: So did they have – did they have – were they likely to get the bits? Later, when it looked – towards the end of the programme, my Lady, when it looked like we did have, amazingly, not – it was amazing to get one viable design; the fact that we got seven at the end of the day was extraordinary – the – we did ask the clinicians what mix of units would they like? We talked about transport ventilators versus ICU ventilators. How would they like us to buy that to optimise what they thought they needed at the time? But that was a very late – that was a later consideration.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes.
As you say, three companies – so, in terms of the numbers, three companies ended up being awarded a total of five contracts. They were the successful ones. Another four had clinically viable prototypes, but because demand by then – by that stage had reduced, in terms of the number of ventilators needed in the NHS, no – those other four didn’t receive contracts. Are they the sort of final figures?
Sir Gareth Williams: They didn’t receive build contracts. Yes.
It’s perhaps worth explaining a little bit.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes, please do.
Sir Gareth Williams: So the MHRA is allowed – they have emergency procedures and they’re allowed to authorise devices in a rush to meet an emergency need, but once it looked – it really looked like the three that we will come on to were able to manufacture the volume in the appropriate way with appropriate designs, then the MHRA were clear that they could not extend that emergency umbrella to the remaining designs.
Now, as it happened, we managed to get all three of the products that we did manufacture what’s called CE marked, with a little quality symbol, so – which allowed them then to be used in non-emergency mode after the end of the pandemic, which obviously is much more useful for the NHS.
Counsel Inquiry: Is it correct that ultimately only companies that, at the start of the pandemic, had a complete or – a complete but unlicensed design, or a design that could be adjusted to the specific needs of Covid-19-related care, did in fact obtain contracts through the Ventilator Challenge – (overspeaking) –
Sir Gareth Williams: No –
Counsel Inquiry: – supply of ventilators?
Sir Gareth Williams: – I wouldn’t put it like that.
Counsel Inquiry: Okay.
Sir Gareth Williams: So, three manufacturers. Breas had a new product – they’re an established ventilator company in Switzerland and we essentially arranged a licence with them and we paid for them to build a second line alongside their first line in Sweden. There were no export bans from Sweden, so that worked. So that is – well, that was a new product, they just launched it, but it was a new product from an established player, so that’s why we had confidence it would work.
The Smiths product that we stood up, that’s the transport ventilator, they did amazing things. I think they multiplied their volume by, I forget exactly, five or six. Astonishing. But they were not useful in hospitals. They were useful in the ambulances and for moving people around in the hospital but they’re not useful for more than a few hours.
I’m sure Ramani will give you a – much better on that. The big volume that we got was from a company called Penlon. Penlon made previously a very small volume of anaesthesia machines, which I don’t think – actually, even them – were licensed in the UK at the time, and by luck, their product was modular, so we were able to take one module from this machine, one module from that machine, one module from that machine and bolt them together. So, to say – so that was a new product in the MHRA’s eyes. I mean, it would be a bit like taking the gearbox out of one car, the engine out of another car and the tires off – is that a new car? Yes, probably. But it had components – so it’s not quite as clear-cut as your question.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes, well, I certainly didn’t mean to imply any criticism, in –
Sir Gareth Williams: No –
Counsel Inquiry: Just in terms of –
Sir Gareth Williams: – it’s –
Counsel Inquiry: – what came through the process, really. You talked in some detail there about the three companies that got it. Were any entirely new ventilator models procured as a result of the Ventilator Challenge –
Sir Gareth Williams: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: – or was it all –
Sir Gareth Williams: Yes, the Penlon one was a new product.
Counsel Inquiry: Okay. Based on a previous design, is that – as you’ve said?
Sir Gareth Williams: Well, several previous designs for doing something different. So it’s like saying, well – to use the automated example – you know, taking three different bits of a different tractors and making a sports car out of it.
Counsel Inquiry: Understood.
Sir Gareth Williams: It’s a massive – Ramani and other colleagues will talk about the detail but this is a massive piece of work they did.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes, in terms of what the Ventilator Challenge achieved, is this figure right, I think 14,000 ventilators were produced in three months during the early pandemic?
Sir Gareth Williams: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: That number was deemed to be sufficient to meet, along with ones acquired from abroad, some acquired overseas, and we’re looking at that later, that was sufficient to meet the NHS demand, wasn’t it?
Sir Gareth Williams: Yes, that plus the 6,000 to 8,000 they had, the NHS had, plus the few thousand that they bought.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes.
Sir Gareth Williams: That got it to the 30,000 that the ministers asked us for.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes. I think it – well, I think in the end it was 18,000, but by then the demand had reduced to 18,000 –
Sir Gareth Williams: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: – so the target was met, in what looks, in large part, by the procurement through the Ventilator Challenge?
Sir Gareth Williams: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: You may have seen or may be aware, we’ve received witness statements from some of the suppliers and manufacturers. Many of them talk of quite significant pride in being involved in the Ventilator Challenge.
Sir Gareth Williams: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: Does that reflect your overall experience of what was done?
Sir Gareth Williams: It was extraordinary.
Counsel Inquiry: To give a flavour of that, millions of components sourced, purchased and shipped from suppliers across the world, often in direct competition with other countries facing similar challenges, in very short timescales.
Sir Gareth Williams: Yes, I think 40 million – we bought 40 million components to do this.
Counsel Inquiry: Testing equipment built and quality assured, sometimes from scratch, presumably?
Sir Gareth Williams: Yes. Particularly at Smiths they had to replicate their lines and that was a big difficulty for them, was building the testers for their line.
Counsel Inquiry: Manufacturing space previously used for non-medical industries, things like, as you said, automative or aeronautical engineering, converted at speed to house new manufacturing lines building ventilators?
Sir Gareth Williams: Yes, Ford, Airbus, Siemens, all stood up new lines.
I think the important point there is it’s not just the space. The reason we went with the industrial partners, to call them that, my Lady, that we did, was that they were coming from industries that had manufac – quality systems that are used to traceability.
So obviously in aerospace, you want to know where the wheel comes from that goes on your aeroplane – I’m taking a bad example – but in the medical industry, that is similarly vital. And so we’d – and we were focused on people who were used to really tight quality management, because obviously that was crucial for the product we were trying to make.
Counsel Inquiry: Finally, training, devised and implemented for hundreds of people, staffing new manufacturing lines, as well; is that right?
Sir Gareth Williams: Yes, that was astonishing. We used some really novel new tools for explaining designs to people on the line, and we also designed training for each of the – it might have been the seven products, or a long list, that was in the same format, to try to make it as easy as could possibly be, given these were new machines for the NHS, so that the training materials, the trainee videos were all done in the same way, same format, so that a nurse in the middle of the night could, you know, find what they needed to make the machines work properly.
Counsel Inquiry: The project, is this right, achieved, in manufacturing terms – manufacturing and commercial terms – in a number of weeks what would ordinarily have taken years?
Sir Gareth Williams: I think Penlon made, in eight weeks, what they would normally have done in 20 years, yes.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes. You’ll understand that the focus of some of my next questions is to understand whether lessons can be learned from this programme, and you will have seen some of the comments made by the Module 5 experts and others, so you’re aware of some of that.
Sir Gareth Williams: Mm-hm.
Counsel Inquiry: First I want to ask you about the involvement of the appliance designer and manufacturer Dyson in the Ventilator Challenge. I ask this partly because you say in your fourth witness statement:
“I am only aware of one contract, the contract with Dyson … where I was asked to but a contract in place against the commercial guidance.”
Sir Gareth Williams: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: You said in your evidence yesterday and today, it’s a distinction you’ve drawn a few times now, when asked about ministerial pressure, you said:
“… pressure can take several forms and I think a minister chasing ‘Have you done this yet?’, is one thing. Their office more usually chasing up, ‘You said you would have done this by now, have you?’, that is also annoying but fair.”
Then you said this:
“That is very different from a minister saying ‘Buy this from them’ which is not right and, in my experience, only happened to me in one situation …”
Were you referring to the Dyson situation?
Sir Gareth Williams: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: You were. I also ask about this because the witness statement provided to the Inquiry by Dan Webster – do you know Mr Webster?
Sir Gareth Williams: Yes, Dan is one of the Complex Transactions Team that was working with me on this.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes, deputy director of the Complex Transactions Team, says:
[As read] “I was aware at the time that there were political sensitivities around Dyson because, as I understood it, James Dyson [that’s the Chair, isn’t it, to the company] was a donor to the Conservative Party.”
Sir Gareth Williams: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: Was that known to you as well?
Sir Gareth Williams: I didn’t know he was a donor, but he is – he has a very active PR department, so, you know, he was making a lot of – a lot of noise. We had agreed with all the other participants not to issue any press at all. The reason – my thinking on that was these were very small companies – not – Dyson is not a very small company, Dyson is a huge company – but with the smaller people I did not want them doorstepped by gangs of journalists when these were – these are companies of 10 or 20 or 30 people. They did not need that. So we’d agreed with everyone there’d be no press. But that wasn’t the case with Dyson.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes. We’ll come back to that, I’m sure.
I’m just going to go through it in stages, if may, in terms of the time, and I stress that the focus of my questions is the system in place, the procurement system, the system – the Ventilator Challenge that you put in place, how that responded to this example, and what lessons we can learn in future. Okay?
Sir Gareth Williams: Mm-hm.
Counsel Inquiry: So that’s very much the tenor of these questions.
The statement provided to the Inquiry by Clare Gibbs – I think she’s your successor; is that right?
Sir Gareth Williams: Not actually – but she ran the suppliers team and – my successor was appointed three weeks ago, so she was covering part of my role –
Counsel Inquiry: Your interim –
Sir Gareth Williams: – in the interim, perhaps is a better word.
Counsel Inquiry: Your interim successor. Fair enough.
She tell us, on 13 March – and I go to that date because obviously it’s very early on in your –
Sir Gareth Williams: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: In fact it’s the same day that you sort of had the germ of the idea for the Ventilator Challenge, wasn’t it? She says on that day there was a call between Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, and James Dyson about ventilators.
Same day that you sent your message to Steve Oldfield and Patrick Vallance suggesting this group of engineers, getting them together.
In your message to Steve Oldfield, you specifically mention Dyson. That’s the only manufacturer you mention:
[As read] “Maybe to work with, eg, Dyson, and a few others, to see what might be possible, urgently.”
Why did you suggest Dyson at that very early stage?
Sir Gareth Williams: So, Dyson, fantastic company, they do the products we all know: plastic tubing, air movement, filters. And the product I was thinking about sort of from 2.00 in the morning on the 13th until 6.00 in the morning was, you know, a mask, some filters, a fan, how to get extra air into the – this is betraying my – this is a good reason why I’m not a doctor. So I was initially looking for people in that space who could do that sort of work.
We also talked to Gtech, who are a competitor of Dysons.
Counsel Inquiry: Another appliance manufacturer; is that right?
Sir Gareth Williams: Correct, yes. And so – and they are very good at scaling up manufacturing. But they went through the same process – I’m sure we’ll come on to – as everyone else, and as – we can perhaps talk through how their design developed and where it passed and where it failed.
Counsel Inquiry: What I wanted to ask you was, Mrs Gibbs – it’s Mrs Gibbs, is it? – tells us there was this call on this day, and the same day you email saying, “Let’s work with, for example, Dyson”; did anyone suggest Dyson to you? Anyone political suggest Dyson to you?
Sir Gareth Williams: No, but they’re an obvious company who move air at speed. So they were separate. But I think – they’re a famous UK industrialist. JCV and, you know, Dyson come to mind as famous UK entrepreneurs who are brilliant, so I – the Prime Minister didn’t share his thoughts with me, though I think this –
Counsel Inquiry: Not at that stage?
Sir Gareth Williams: A separate discussion, yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: Moving on a week, 20 March. By 20 March, is this right, Dyson has clearly undertaken some design work, which had been looked at by the Ventilator Challenge.
Can we have look, please, at INQ000233775.
Can we see here – just zone out for one minute please, Lawrence. Can we see the top of this?
This a meeting readout of the daily procurement meeting of 20 March. It might be obvious –
Sir Gareth Williams: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: – the daily procurement meeting was?
Sir Gareth Williams: So this is part of the confusion with the MIGs that you will have heard about. So initially all procurement was supposed to be running through the Cabinet Office but this meeting I think changed its name pretty quickly to focus just on ventilators, and the other things that we were left with. So you should – you shouldn’t read into that that we were buying everything, but you can see from here that was the initial purpose at – or intent at this particular time. And you can see that from the attendees. Melinda Johnson from DH, Steve Oldfield from DH.
Counsel Inquiry: And crucially, for the purpose of these questions, you. You were there.
Can we focus in, Lawrence, please, on the section entitled “Ventilator update”.
“Gareth …”
That’s you presumably, is it?
Sir Gareth Williams: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: “… updated on the ventilator situation.”
Looking a few lines down:
“As of today, Gareth is most optimistic he’s been all week.
“Matt Hancock [that’s the Health Secretary, isn’t it] said that James Dyson had been in touch, complaining about speed. His design had not been one of the better reviewed products.”
So do I read this correctly: someone has looked at the Dyson prototype or model or proposal, and –
Sir Gareth Williams: Yes, and – it’s –
Counsel Inquiry: – at this very early stage it’s not received favourable feedback?
Sir Gareth Williams: Another example of ministers and speed.
So, yes, the TDA had looked at an initial schematic, and we might – I don’t know if you’ve got that in your system, it’s quite a detailed point, but the initial design from Dyson had some biggish – or generated some big concerns –
Counsel Inquiry: Mr Rhys Williams, can I – I’m hesitant to interrupt. Can we come to that point in a moment, please. I’m going to take it in stages if I may.
Sir Gareth Williams: Sure.
Counsel Inquiry: Just looking at the action point:
“Make sure Dyson gets clear feedback on what they need to do to advance their ventilator design.”
Sir Gareth Williams: That’s the point I was making, that this was an iterative process, so that would have been, you know, from the MHRA or from Dr Tom about what the design did need to do and what was not going to be appropriate.
Counsel Inquiry: Right. Okay.
Conversations –
Sir Gareth Williams: But that feedback was going back to everyone.
Counsel Inquiry: That was my next question.
So that’s not specific, is it? You’ve not singled them out saying, “Make sure they get feedback on how to improve their design” –
Sir Gareth Williams: We were working with everybody 24 hours a day on helping them with things that didn’t work and sharing things that did work.
Counsel Inquiry: That was a wider point. Okay.
Same afternoon, can we look, please, at INQ000048399.
This is –
Sir Gareth Williams: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes, you may have anticipated. This some of Dominic Cummings’ WhatsApps, to a group involving –
Sir Gareth Williams: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: – seemingly the Prime Minister, the Health Secretary, him, and some others.
Can you see this message here? This is a message the afternoon of the 20th, so same day as the daily procurement meeting we were just looking at.
Boris Johnson messages this:
“Dyson freaking.
“Action this day.”
A couple of minutes later the Health Secretary, Matt Hancock, says:
“I have also received the same. I will talk to Dyson and Michael …”
I presume that to be Michael Gove.
“… and sort it.
“At the heart of this problem is [Cabinet Office] trying to do things like buy ventilators that are core DHSC responsibility. It’s why I was clear this morning that we need to take responsibility for these things here – with Michael [Michael Gove] checking progress – not have people falling over each other.
“Despite that, the ventilator project is going well. We will fix.”
A few questions that might be obvious.
“Dyson freaking.
“Action this day.”
From Boris Johnson.
Did that type of message, or indeed that specific message, reach you?
Sir Gareth Williams: No, and I only saw these, you know, as a result of the Inquiry’s – this document was released to me, you know, as part of the Inquiry in the last month or so. I think what you see in that middle paragraph with the three lines in it, is what I talked about earlier, with who – which minister was responsible for what, at what stage. And so – perhaps there’s a misunderstanding going on here because always, DH was buying the ventilators, but DH hadn’t set up a design and make team, whatever, and that had been thrown to me.
So I think maybe there’s a couple of different strands in that middle paragraph.
Lady Hallett: That’s rather an ungrateful assertion if I may say so.
The Witness: Sorry?
Lady Hallett: It looks rather an ungrateful assertion by Mr Hancock.
Mr Stoate: Yes, if I may say.
The Dyson-specific point is this: the Prime Minister is emailing his Health Secretary saying the manufacturer is “freaking, take action this day”. Dyson-specific, did that pressure at this point reach you and your procurement colleagues?
Sir Gareth Williams: No, there’s one further down in this page, which I didn’t know about at the time but the first time that we had pressure on, you know, related to Dyson was on the 25th.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes.
Sir Gareth Williams: Apart from everyone was constantly – all the teams were constantly chasing for updates.
Counsel Inquiry: Thank you –
Sir Gareth Williams: But that was, you know, much the same for each of them.
Counsel Inquiry: We’re coming to the 25th shortly and I know you’ve seen that message. That was the Dyson-specific question. Broader question: were, in your view, people falling over each other? Were there issues with how this was organised or set up?
Sir Gareth Williams: That’s –
Counsel Inquiry: That’s the Health Secretary’s view but I’m asking you for your personal reflection, your comment on it?
Sir Gareth Williams: So – you may have covered this in an earlier module, my Lady, but I sent a note to the Cabinet Office or one of the Cabinet Office delivery team members asking if we could have a little bit crisper clarity about which ministers were doing what because on a couple of days I remember I – there’s a note I think for me to Manzoni, it took me until 1.30 in the afternoon before I could get back onto the ventilator or whatever I was actually supposed to be doing because I’d spent all the other time in different ministerial update groups. And so I would read that problem into the “falling over each other” comment.
Counsel Inquiry: Right.
Sir Gareth Williams: But you’d have to ask Mr Hancock.
Counsel Inquiry: All right. Well, sticking with Matt Hancock, the diary entry – you’ll be aware of his pandemic diaries, I’m sure?
Sir Gareth Williams: Only recently. You sent me some –
Counsel Inquiry: I did.
Sir Gareth Williams: – some extracts.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes, one extracts from the 25th, you’ve mentioned the 25th, so around this time, this is what Mr Hancock writes:
“James Dyson, the vacuum manufacturer, has been contacting numerous people in high places to ensure that he has a prominent role.”
This is referring to the procurement of ventilators.
“He’s continually on the phone, including to Boris, pushing to take part.”
We’ve moved on now to the 25th. Were you beginning to feel that kind of pressure?
Sir Gareth Williams: No, I wasn’t aware of that.
Counsel Inquiry: Can we look, please, at –
Sir Gareth Williams: But there was a certain amount of press.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes.
Sir Gareth Williams: I don’t – so, you know, I was reading that press and, you know, there we are, that’s a pity, Dyson have published, everyone else said they wouldn’t but, you know, there we are.
Counsel Inquiry: All right. We can see, can’t we, what is suggested is contact, continually on the phone, to people in high places. Boris, the Health Secretary, others. You weren’t aware of that?
Sir Gareth Williams: That didn’t get told to me directly but it’s entirely likely and I think it did come up in some of the press articles.
Counsel Inquiry: All right. Can I look at another WhatsApp message I think you referred us to this one, in fact and I’m referring you back to it.
Yes, thank you, INQ00048399, page 14.
7.53 in the morning, a message to the same group:
“Dyson has a ventilator ready to go. We can have 3,000 a week in three weeks made in the UK. It’s safe, effective, and loses less oxygen. Rhys Williams has blocked it under the misapprehension that oxygen passes through the motor. That is total bollocks.”
I don’t know if that counts as Anglo Saxon.
“As far as I can see, we haven’t actually ordered a single UK-produced ventilator. We are at risk of fiddling whilst Rome burns. I spoke to Matt [that’s, I assume, Hancock] and James Bethell [Lord Bethell] about it and I’ve escalated the issue to everyone I can think of. When you see Matt this AM, you need to ask about Dyson ventilator and what is blocking it. Sorry but I’m on a mission. Dyson knows what he’s doing and won’t risk his global brand reputation delivering dodgy ventilators.”
Well, you can see what the Prime Minister thought of your apparent blocking of this design. Were you blocking this design?
Sir Gareth Williams: It’s a lot to unpick in that short set of bullets.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes.
Sir Gareth Williams: So what this came from, and I believe the Inquiry has got it, there was an email from Lord Feldman, which went to the Prime Minister, to Lord Agnew, then to me, in pretty rapid succession. I could give you the INQ number if that’s helpful, but within that there’s a schematic – so schematic, my Lady, just a drawing of a wire diagram of how the Dyson machine was going to work. And yes, it is true that the oxygen did not go through the fan. So the MHRA and the clinicians were very clear – I’m sure Ramani will talk to this – crystal clear that you can’t get air that’s put into a patient, because it’s bypassing their lungs, through a mechanical object, even as good a fan as the Dyson fan, because if bits come off it, oil, bits of fan, material, they get injected at high speed directly into your lungs, and this is completely unacceptable.
So it is true that on the schematic that came with the email that probably generated this text – WhatsApp, the oxygen doesn’t go through the fan but the air does and they are then mixed. So at the time that this was written, the Dyson design was not going to pass the MHRA’s standards.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes.
Sir Gareth Williams: And I – you’d hear from them about that, no question, but that’s my clear understanding at the time. But that’s not to say that they couldn’t fix it, as they eventually did. But so, whether Dyson – Dyson, in the form of Sir James – understood that level of detail with his product design, I can’t speak to. Whether his team had told him that, I can’t speak to. The Prime Minister clearly believed that there was a product ready to go.
In my humble opinion, having looked at it and having heard what the MHRA said, I didn’t think that machine, in its current state – I wasn’t blocking it, I was trying to encourage them to solve this and a number of other problems with the design at that stage.
Counsel Inquiry: “Sorry [says the Prime Minister], I’m on a mission. Dyson knows what he’s doing.”
Were you feeling that kind of pressure at this stage?
Sir Gareth Williams: No.
Counsel Inquiry: All right.
Sir Gareth Williams: But I –
Counsel Inquiry: You say –
Sir Gareth Williams: The Prime Minister couldn’t possibly have taken the time to understand that, to open that schematic, let alone, I suspect, understand it. It seems harsh to say but he was just – I suspect he was just going with what he’d been told by Dyson. Now, had that been true, a big caveat, then to be able to make 3,000 a week in three weeks, bearing in mind we’d only been going by then less than a fortnight, so 3,000 in five weeks would have been beyond unbelievably brilliant.
So I think – there’s context here. This obviously – the 25th, I believe, was only two days after lockdown – the first lockdown started. So basically the country was still in complete panic. So I can see why some of the language here is quite emotive.
Counsel Inquiry: You say, same day, 25 March, we’ve got this message, the same day you say that there is – I don’t know if this is Civil Service Code, perhaps you can help us:
“… a robust discussion about placing an order with Dyson in advance of clinical approval being security.”
That was the same day.
Sir Gareth Williams: There were several meetings that day on the subject of the TDA, and it was – yes, the Civil Service Code was – yes, it was a blunt meeting. Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes. After which you – that afternoon, you send this email. Can we look, please, at INQ000496699. This is an email from you to the Chief Executive of the Civil Service and Permanent Secretary of the Cabinet Office, Sir John Manzoni.
“CDL”, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster – just pausing there, the most senior minister in the Cabinet Office; have I got that right?
Sir Gareth Williams: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: “CDL …”
That’s Michael Gove, isn’t it?
Sir Gareth Williams: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: In capitals, you’ve written to Mr John Manzoni:
“… INSISTENT we place an order with Dyson … contingent on passing clinical and passing MHRA approvals … they are working at full speed already … but if that’s what CDL wants …”
Sir Gareth Williams: So ministers can direct civil servants to do things and that has to be written down and it’s very clear when a direction is happening. And in the meeting – there were several meetings in the day and I think this is after the second or the third meeting, I think there were five, I or others – I can’t remember, I think it was me but it could have been someone else – I suspect Mr Gove came into that meeting having seen that text and believing that the product was ready to go. I believed very differently.
I felt that a better option from – rather than the Minister directing me to place that order, was to suggest or agree that we placed an order contingent on it being – on it passing. What I was really trying to protect was an order being placed which (a) turned everyone else in the Ventilator Challenge off because they would go “Oh, okay, well if there’s 10,000 going to Dyson, we pay as well pack up”, which would not have been what we wanted, but also it was vital that the MHRA, you know, still controlled the approval and not approval.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes.
Sir Gareth Williams: And if I’d been told to place an order non-contingently, then my worry was that that might have led to poor product making it into the market.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes, Sir Gareth, we’ll come to those step by step but, at this stage anyway, this is 13.02, we can see from the email:
“CDL INSISTENT we place an order …”
It’s a contingent order but, as you say, “if that’s what CDL wants …”
You’ve got concerns, haven’t you, at this stage?
Sir Gareth Williams: Well, there are two parts of that sentence and there were several emails between me and Manzoni. So I couldn’t get hold of John in the meeting where this discussion was had but neither could I get hold of Graeme Tunbridge, who I believe you are hearing from, who was the MHRA rep’s boss, neither could I get hold of June, who was Chief Executive of the MHRA, hence the idea of a contingent order.
I think the second part of that was a complaint. We’re not work fast enough, we’re not testing things fast enough, there must be no bottlenecks in the process, which, I would agree with. I don’t believe there were bottlenecks in the process. We had not at this stage had a product to test from more or less anybody, and so that’s –
Counsel Inquiry: Sir Gareth –
Sir Gareth Williams: – that’s commenting there on the full speed but everyone was already working 24/7.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes, we’ll see that evolve through the next email. Can we look please, just a few minutes later, INQ000533247. This is an email from Richard Hornby, we can see his signature there, Chief Financial Officer of the Cabinet Office, to colleagues. So this is a few minutes later:
“Please accept this as authorisation to raise a purchase order for £100,000 in favour of Dyson … prototype ventilators. Gareth Rhys Williams has been instructed by the CDL to proceed at pace. Description and conditions will come from Gareth and Dan.
“Thanks and happy to discuss.”
Yesterday you told us two things. A minister saying, “Buy this from this person”, and/or saying, “Buy this quicker, do this quicker”, would be wrong. This is both: instructed by CDL to fill this contract and to proceed it at pace.
Sir Gareth Williams: That might be why Rich wrote it. Rich was the Finance Director so the procurement people in the Cabinet Office, as I discussed yesterday, worked for Rich, so they were the only people that could raise a purchase order. I wasn’t able to do that.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes. It’s more your comment on the fact that are you normally instructed to proceed at pace on a particular contract: buy this and do it quickly?
Sir Gareth Williams: No, and – but what we achieved by having the contingent point is that we kept the – underpinning that good product – sorry, that the product that had not been passed by the MHRA was still not going to be bought and that is the key point which the CDL agreed to.
Counsel Inquiry: That afternoon, I think you were in touch quite a lot with Professor Moonesinghe, the Clinical Care Director, who is the senior clinician on the Design Authority, with concerns about some of the risks, as you saw them, with the Dyson design. You’ve talked about the air mix. One email you sent to her simply said:
“Did you hear the bit about not having the alarms?”
Sir Gareth Williams: Okay, so that was a meeting where Sir James Dyson was asked to come along by CDL, I think that was about 12.00-ish, or something of that nature, 12.20. No, 3.00. There were lots of meetings on that day.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes.
Sir Gareth Williams: And Sir James, or one of Sir James’ team said that the prototype that they were apparently going to send us that day, which was the subject of have we got enough capacity to test it, and that was a concern that CDL had – yes, we did, but that was his concern – also was missing alarms. So these things, my Lady, are used over a period of days and they need to have alarms if someone pulls the power plug out, if they run out of oxygen. A whole range of alarms. These are not difficult to do. But the machine must have them.
And when we were describing the status of the Dyson product in that meeting – and there’s a picture which is quite instructive, I don’t know if you –
Counsel Inquiry: I do, but yes.
Sir Gareth Williams: The fact that it didn’t have alarms rather goes against the idea that this machine was ready to go. It’s not to say that they wouldn’t manage to achieve the alarm design in a three-week period but it was non-proven at that stage, in my opinion.
Counsel Inquiry: That same day a letter was in fact sent to Dyson signed by you placing, as you say, a contingent order for 10,000 co-ventilators on terms that Dyson gained clinical and MHRA approvals; is that correct?
Sir Gareth Williams: That was the –
Lady Hallett: Could you pause there for a second. Just winding back a little, you’ve got the Prime Minister being fairly waspish and accepting what he’d been told by Sir James Dyson, maybe Sir James Dyson had been told that by his team, I’m not being – whatever. You’ve then got Michael Gove instructing you to fulfil – to agree a contract with Dyson. They’ve obviously just accepted the message that has come from the Dyson company. Did anybody come to you and ask you what you said about what was happening before you were given the instructions to proceed with this contract? Did they check with you whether they were being given the right information?
Sir Gareth Williams: Yes, so in the series of meetings we had, I’d said – I think I made the point we haven’t yet seen a prototype so it may be ready to go but from the drawings that were sent in to the Prime Minister which then found their way to me – and they were very similar to ones that I’d got by a variety of other routes, and I don’t know if we’re going to show it – there’s a picture of their prototype at that stage, which, my Lady, was what was called a bread board, so imagine a bread board and you just put the bits, the components on it, and nail them down with pins and you wire them were up, you know. It was not – you know, Fraser, the PA guy describes it as, you know, works like, looks like, is like. This is – a bread board is very early stage –
Lady Hallett: So my question is really –
Sir Gareth Williams: Sorry I made that point and I said, “The pictures I’ve seen are only of the bread board and I would be amazed if these were ready to go”.
Lady Hallett: Had you given that advice before you were given instructions to proceed with the contract?
Sir Gareth Williams: Well, that’s what I think led to the agreement that it should be contingent and what bridged the gap between ministers perhaps being told, believing that it was ready to go by an eminent industrialist, and me saying, “No, I don’t think so”, and there are other notes where I say, “If it was indeed true” – and I’ve put this in my evidence to you, my Lady – “If it was indeed true that it was ready to go, we absolutely had to buy it”. But it would have been better, in my opinion, at the time to have let it run through the process and do as we did with everyone else. But I don’t think it made any material difference because he didn’t actually get an order because, as we may come to, the product didn’t eventually pass those tests.
Lady Hallett: Sorry, I just want to rewind just again slightly.
The email to which Mr Stoate took you a moment ago said that the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Mr Gove, had instructed you, directed you, to enter into this contract; no reference to contingency. So my question really is: at what stage were you able to give the advice that this wasn’t a project that was ready to go and so, in other words, were you being directed to enter into the contract before you’d that the opportunity to give the advice?
Sir Gareth Williams: That was the next sentence that would have happened, which is why I came up with the contingency part, but I think all the emails, the one from Rich that you just put up, that had the contingent point in it. My note to Manzoni had the contingent point in. So I think we’d got past that stage, by lunchtime on that day.
So I’d – no one – we weren’t going to – it would have been entirely wrong to have had a non-contingent order, in that case.
Lady Hallett: All right. So you think you had given advice because that’s why you wanted contingency in there, nonetheless you were directed to enter into the contract?
Sir Gareth Williams: Yes, it would have been better to have let the process wind forwards but I can quite understand if the politicians believed this was, you know, game changing, two days into lockdown, why they wanted, you know, to make sure we were making progress.
Mr Stoate: But, Sir Gareth, even your contingency came under significant pressure, didn’t it? Can we just look, please, at INQ000497116. This is the same evening.
Right? So we’ve got the “instructed to proceed at pace” email at 1.10, this is the same evening. Can we see at the top there it’s Wednesday, 25 March, 18.38 from Mr Gove’s private secretary:
“Many thanks for the call with [Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster] and Lord Agnew.”
He was the Procurement Minister, wasn’t he –
Sir Gareth Williams: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: – in the department?
“Please find actions below.”
First bullet point:
“Sir James Dyson and team to start buying the components needed to make their product …”
Fifth bullet point, and this is the one I wanted to ask you about:
“MHRA and [Gareth Rhys Williams] to ensure that by the end of Friday, the Dyson product has been tested and approved by MHRA, a small number of products have been provided to hospitals for human testing, and the final product has started to be manufactured. [Gareth Rhys Williams] to immediately escalate any blockages to Ministers.”
If I may say, Sir Gareth, you managed to negotiate in a contingency but the readout here he says, fine, but by the end of Friday, tested, approved, batches in hospitals for human testing and manufacture beginning. Dare I suggest it’s completely unrealistic, isn’t it?
Sir Gareth Williams: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: Not very long after –
Sir Gareth Williams: Sorry, and perhaps to explain, having seen the breadboard, having scene the schematic, and what is also important to realise, my Lady, you have to manufacture these with a quality management system. We talked about the other manufacturers. The way Dyson works is not in that industry and so to set that all up in a couple of days was just never going to happen, in my opinion.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes.
Sir Gareth Williams: But I didn’t read into that that the MHRA must approve it where they wouldn’t if they weren’t otherwise going to approve it. I read that more as there must be no blockages, get every tester you can to quickly assess this product and, if indeed it passes, get it done by Friday, underlined –
Counsel Inquiry: All right.
Sir Gareth Williams: – rather than allow any blockages or delays to creep into the process.
Counsel Inquiry: All right –
Sir Gareth Williams: So I think it was accepted that the thing needed to pass the relevant tests.
Counsel Inquiry: Well, it simply says:
“… to ensure that by the end of Friday the Dyson product had been tested and approved.”
In any event, a couple of hours after that, INQ000534490, you emailed Sir John Manzoni again, in these terms:
“Suggestions what to do?
“I do feel that the [Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, that’s Mr Gove] is being unreasonable – even if he is correct that we delayed anything, which I don’t believe he is at all, his tone is … regrettable. But see below. It would appear that the Dyson sample is not yet ready to be shipped, by them. MHRA could have been testing something else this evening. In the meanwhile we are getting, of course, more test rigs for them so that is no bottleneck.”
Yes?
Sir Gareth Williams: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: I may not need to ask you more about that but what we can see, when we trace it through, is that the next day Sir John Manzoni felt it necessary to email the MHRA directly, didn’t he? He intervened personally.
Sir Gareth Williams: Well, John sent a note around to everyone. By that time I’d talked to Graeme Tunbridge and others to make sure that (a) we were standing this up as fast as we possibly could because I thought we were, but it’s always a fair thing to assume that you’ve overlooked something, and so I wanted to convince myself that there weren’t any blockages as was being alleged by a variety of people, and … yeah, so …
Counsel Inquiry: The following day, after Sir John Manzoni’s intervention, INQ000497116. This a response from Graeme Tunbridge, who you’ve mentioned, Director of Devices at the MHRA, referring to Mr Manzoni’s intervention. He says as follows:
“The MHRA’s Clinical Director of Devices, Duncan McPherson, joined a call yesterday with the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (CDL), James Dyson, John Manzoni and others in the Cabinet Office to discuss Dyson’s proposal for a ventilator. The Dyson proposal involves a totally new design, built in manufacturing facilities normally used for standard industrial products (or potentially decommissioned from producing electric cars); for this reason it wasn’t intended to be pursued because of the risk involved and the additional work that would be required to ensure that the ventilator produced at the end is meeting appropriate standards. James Dyson expressed his concerns with the ministers and you will also have seen that he has been speaking to the press this morning.
“The readout from CDL’s Private Office and response by John Manzoni are below – in short, you will see that CDL was keen to progress forward with Dyson’s proposal to a timescale that is totally unrealistic, based in part on promises made by Dyson that are already not being fulfilled. In addition, however, CDL [Mr Gove] did not appreciate the level of risk involved in the manufacture and use of ventilators and wanted to circumvent the expedited regulatory process that has been put in place”, and it goes on there.
In his witness statement to the Inquiry, Sir Gareth, Sir John Manzoni says this, at his paragraph 62:
“I recall I was concerned that by virtue of the meeting being called by the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, indirect pressure was being placed on the MHRA to approve the supplier’s design at the stage of selecting suppliers to progress in the Ventilator Challenge. I felt that I had to and did intervene in this meeting to ensure that the MHRA approval system, as the regulatory system, was properly applied and to protect the integrity of the process.”
Sir Gareth Williams: That’s exactly the same point about why I was insistent on an order contingent on passing the standards and it was helpful of John to row in behind that.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes, on one view, it might be said that this was an example of the regulatory system you had been trying to ensure the integrity of working, wasn’t it? The MHRA stood on its process and, not very long after this, MD-TEC, Professor Clutton-Brock, did send the report saying the Dyson model did not meet the essential safety requirements?
Sir Gareth Williams: Yes, and I started sending those test reports, because there were multiple test reports, well for all the machines. But for Dyson’s, I sent them direct directly to Sir James, so he could see firsthand what the concerns were of the clinician fraternity so there would be hopefully less confusion or less misunderstanding about what wasn’t – what was and what was not likely to be acceptable.
Counsel Inquiry: The story does continue somewhat into April though, doesn’t it? Can we just look, please, briefly at INQ000512992. This is an email chain between you and Lord Agnew, the Procurement Minister.
Sir Gareth Williams: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: Towards the bottom of – I think over the page, in fact, one of the things you write to Lord Agnew is a list of likely candidates to be struck off –
Sir Gareth Williams: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: – as in ventilator candidates in the Ventilator Challenge who are going to be whittled out through that process.
Sir Gareth Williams: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: You say one of them is Dyson.
Sir Gareth Williams: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: If we go back up to the top and look at Lord Agnew’s point (c), please, his response to you is as follows:
“We are going to have to handle Dyson very carefully. I accept that contractually we can walk away as he hasn’t delivered by the due date. I also accept that we have an indemnity battle ahead. But just killing off his design (assuming it gets through the MHRA) won’t be an option. I suspect we’ll have to buy a few machines, get them into hospitals so that he can then market internationally being able to say they are being used in UK hospitals.”
Just pausing there, what was your reaction to the receipt of this email, to that suggestion?
Sir Gareth Williams: Well, it – it’s worth explaining a little bit of background before this note. So Dyson – the Dyson team took away the advice from MD-TEC about the fan and the air flow and they fixed it and they fixed a lot of the alarms. That was all good. On the other hand, what also happened was what we talked about before where the clinicians realised about this problem with the mucus on the lungs and a couple of other things which then, even the improved Dyson machine was not looking like it’s – the underlying structure, the underlying way it worked said to the clinicians, and Dr Tom particularly, they’re not going to be able to bridge that gap.
That’s why the TDA was ranking, so every TDA we ranked the machines to see, you know, where we were – you know, in the way we discussed.
So I felt at that time, when we still hadn’t – so the contractually – the contractual point, the contingency, my Lady, is that they were supposed to be in production by 13 April. Yes, 13 April. So they weren’t going to hit it by then. So the order would have fallen away.
Now, the point here about the buy a few machines, assuming it gets through the MHRA, I –
Counsel Inquiry: Well, yes.
Sir Gareth Williams: So I’d –
Counsel Inquiry: So that he could then market –
Sir Gareth Williams: So my view –
Counsel Inquiry: – internationally, being able to say they were being used in UK hospitals?
Sir Gareth Williams: Yes, well, so the MHRA wasn’t going to be able to approve – what we managed to achieve here was making sure the MHRA held the pen, and they were very clear, as I explained at the beginning of this piece, my Lady, that the MHRA was only allowed to give emergency licence for the volume that we needed for our emergency purposes.
And, by this stage, it was already looking like – we hadn’t got them but it was looking like the other ones we had would be sufficient to cover what we needed and, therefore, I was pretty confident that the MHRA was going to stop issuing licences and, therefore, this was a non-point.
Counsel Inquiry: Lord Agnew continues:
“I also probably have more faith than you that he [James Dyson] will be somehow able to upgrade his machines to get higher up your graph of functionality. We should not underestimate his enormous design firepower even if new to the medical devices industry. I fully accept you are likely to disagree with me but we both need to accept that it will be a bigger decision than we can both make. Remember he got a personal call from the PM. This can’t be ignored.”
What did you understand to be the significance of a personal call from the PM? What did that mean to you?
Sir Gareth Williams: Well, you’d have to – the PM – you know, we haven’t talked about it, but the PM went off on a number of visits to lateral flow suppliers, so, to be honest, I would shrug on that. It either passed the standards or it didn’t pass the standards, and I was not part of the standard setting or evaluation team, that’s not my skill set. So this was all with the MHRA. What we had got by this stage was complete acceptance by everybody that the MHRA held the pen.
On the other hand, if the MHRA decided to approve it – if, nothing to do with me – then if ministers wanted to pay for us to get a few machines in the way that Lord Agnew is talking about, then that would be the subject of ministerial direction but we never got to that point because they never got the MHRA approval.
Counsel Inquiry: “So that he can market them internationally being able to say they are used in UK hospitals”; that would be appropriate, would it?
Sir Gareth Williams: Well, lots of people will trial something in the UK and then leverage off that. That’s a matter for Dyson. By this stage they were not planning to make in the UK but to make in Singapore, where they had a big manufacturing facility and, to my mind, that just underlined how unlikely it was that they would get permission from the MHRA because the MHRA needed to inspect the facility and be confident that it had the quality management system that we discussed earlier in place. And, of course, travelling to Singapore would have been more or less impossible during the pandemic.
So this was – this, for me, was in the realms of quite hypothetical. Not that they weren’t trying very hard. So, you know, Lord Agnew is absolutely right, Dyson are a brilliant company, you know, brilliant designers but, in this case, we were trying to do what normal companies do in five or seven years, in a matter of weeks. So we shouldn’t be – you know, they did brilliantly to get this far but they didn’t have a product that made it far enough in the time.
Counsel Inquiry: Well, can you complete the story for us? What did become of Lord Agnew’s suggestion that a few be purchased to use in UK hospitals so that Dyson could market them internationally to be able to say that they were being used in hospitals?
Sir Gareth Williams: It didn’t happen because the MHRA didn’t approve any, and maybe sensing that or for whatever reason, there’s a series of emails from Dyson where they folded the project and there’s a whole discussion on licensing where I was looking to recoup taxpayers’ money if they were going to do that, if the MHRA gave them permission. But, in the event, that all became academic.
Counsel Inquiry: You say in your fourth statement this sentence:
“Industry wishes to sell products or services to Government and part of our job is to ensure that if Government wants those products or services, a process is used to assess the potential contract and to keep people with conflicts out of the decision chain.”
Sir Gareth Williams: Sorry, I –
Counsel Inquiry: Well, tracing through what Mr Webster describes as the political sensitivity in relation to Dyson, we’ve seen the involvement of the Prime Minister, the Health Secretary, the most senior minister in your department, that’s Mr Gove, the Procurement Minister, Lord Agnew, all trying to, seemingly, place this regulatory system under pressure.
In terms of your maxim, as it were, there – industry wants to sell us stuff, we try and keep people with conflicts out – can you be assured that happened in this case?
Sir Gareth Williams: Yes, because the decision maker in this case was the MHRA, my Lady, and they were crystal about it, and Dr Tom, who ran the testing group, and Ramani and her group of clinicians. So I think I wrote that paragraph trying to distinguish, to answer a different question from the Inquiry on conflicts of interest, where I think I was saying that suppliers don’t have a conflict of interest, they have an interest. So we shouldn’t be surprised that suppliers pester everybody to get an order. That’s what suppliers do. Of course, we should have anticipated that but that doesn’t mean they get an order. They have to prove that they deserve the order and that’s the job of the procurement team.
So I don’t think – so, I don’t think Dyson had a conflict of interest. He had an interest, obviously.
Counsel Inquiry: You’re aware that Professor Sanchez-Graells has offered a comment on this?
Sir Gareth Williams: On the procurement methodology, yes.
Counsel Inquiry: Not just –
Sir Gareth Williams: Ah – okay.
Counsel Inquiry: – the procurement methodology but specifically – can I look, please, at INQ000539153. This is part of Professor Sanchez-Graells’s report, the last paragraph there:
“Favouring Dyson [he says] due to the political pressure ministers were under would have been clearly problematic and, in my view, beyond being objectionable, it would have raised serious questions as to its legality. It would also have raised questions on the origin of the political pressure, given that the decision was made [as we’ve seen] by the Secretary of State”, in other words the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster.
Do you have a view on that?
Sir Gareth Williams: Well, yes, that’s why we ended up down the route that we did, but in the end, at the end of the day, Dyson got no money from the public purse and didn’t make any product. So had that happened, had that pressure translated into an otherwise – a product, that would not have been approved, being approved and then marketed, then absolutely everything that Professor Sanchez-Graells said I would absolutely agree with.
Counsel Inquiry: It would have raised serious questions as to its legality?
Lady Hallett: Had it happened.
Mr Stoate: Indeed.
Lady Hallett: The evidence of this witness is that it didn’t. Well, we know it didn’t. It didn’t get the contract.
I think we’ve pursued this enough.
Mr Stoate: Professor Sanchez-Graells also talks about the procurement method generally, in respect of the Ventilator Challenge.
Sir Gareth Williams: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: He says in his summary box, page 20 – I think it came up on the screen yesterday – in very short order, he’s not convinced it was the best or the proper procurement process to have used. Do you have any comment on that? I wanted to offer you an opportunity to give us your view on that.
Sir Gareth Williams: Yes, I disagree with him completely, with respect. 3,000 people a week after two weeks. The minimum time, assuming everyone processes the papers and the offers instantaneously, which is not the case, with a complex procedure like competitive dialogue or competitive procedure with negotiation, the average for those, my Lady, in the last year or two, I asked colleagues to do that, is 415 days to run the process. We had the first product from Penlon, a new product, in less time than the minimum legal requirement to run those complex procedures.
Now, his argument that, well, normally designing one of these things takes five to seven years, therefore in that you would have had plenty of time to run a procurement procedure: well, yes, but the whole object of the exercise was to get product in a fortnight and we got product in a month, which, no credit to me but to the thousands of people who worked on this, it was just beyond astonishing. But to force us to use a procedure that would inevitably have meant at that time 6,000 people would have died because we’d used – not used the emergency regulations, I think it would be very hard to justify that. I think this was exactly what the emergency procedure was for.
Counsel Inquiry: So, Sir Gareth, looking at what we’ve gone through in this brief time, how you established the challenge, what the challenge achieved in such a short period of time, the pressure, the stresses and strains it came under, and some of the comment and criticism that’s been made of it, drawing that together as briefly as possible, what would you say were the key lessons in the event of a pandemic in the future that requires the scaling up of any type of complex medical technology? Let’s put ventilators aside, whatever it be. Give us your key lessons or recommendations for the future.
Sir Gareth Williams: Well, the key one is start with enough product. Whether that’s PPE or ventilators or some other machine. And we very nearly ran out of – and Ramani talks about it – syringe drivers, which are what we used to inject it. So has the NHS got however many they feel they need, and a bit, in a pandemic store ready to go at the start? And this whole problem was generated – I think, in February, the DH/NHS thought they needed 60,000, so in a way that wasted a month.
So second lesson would be, as soon a gap appears, tell people, like me, who were mad enough to try to do what we did do, because that would have given us an extra month and maybe we would have got a better product, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe. But this method, this rapid down-select is then what was very useful for the vaccine programme which used – and I think the point was Treasury, the Civil Service machine, normally you don’t procure like this. You’d do a test, you’d then try and scale up one, and la, la, la. Here we were with this pyramid effect that you talked about, really worked and that’s exactly what Kate Bingham and the team were able to do with vaccines, what we’re doing at the moment with small modular – what my ex-colleagues are doing with small modular reactors.
This is an unusual way of thinking for government, it’s a much more industrial, commercial way of thinking about product, and there’s been a number of criticisms about the amount that was wasted on the products that didn’t work. Fair enough. We’d have loved to have known which ones were going to work but we had no real way of knowing.
The net of it was that the machines we delivered, even allowing for the R&D cost, were less, were cheaper than the machines bought on the market. This was an astonishing success and I think the lesson is we can do this if we try but, obviously, we’d rather not be in the position that we started with.
Mr Stoate: Thank you, my Lady.
Lady Hallett: Thank you.
I think there’s one question from Professor Thomas, who is hiding behind that pillar. He’s not going to be hiding for long.
Questions From Professor Thomas
Professor Thomas: Can you hear me?
Sir Gareth Williams: Yes, indeed. I can see you as well.
Professor Thomas: Good morning, I represent FEMHO, the Federation of Ethnic Minority Healthcare Organisations.
Just a little context behind my question. I am sure we can agree that the procurement of personal protective equipment, PPE, during the pandemic was not just a logistical challenge but also a critical test of our commitment to equity and inclusivity in healthcare practices. I’m sure you’re aware that it’s well documented that ethnic minority healthcare workers faced disproportionately higher risks during the pandemic, particularly due to inadequacies in PPE, and we’ve heard a lot of evidence in relation to this.
So my question to you is this: given your role and responsibility, it’s essential for an organisation like FEMHO to understand how the Cabinet Office navigated these complexities, particularly adhering to the Public Sector Equality Duty under the Equality Act 2010.
So, as such, given this unprecedented global health crisis, number 1, firstly, could you please explain how the Cabinet Office ensured that its legal obligations under the Public Sector Equality Duty were met during the procurement activities for PPE?
That’s the first question.
Sir Gareth Williams: Shall I answer that, first of all?
Professor Thomas: Yes, please.
Sir Gareth Williams: So the Cabinet Office, per se, my Lady – Mr Thomas, weren’t buying things directly. The staff, mainly from the Complex Transactions Team but other people from Cabinet Office that we posted into the PPE buying teams, were working under the instruction of the Department of Health. So they had no role to play in what they were asked to buy. They were told what was required and they bought it.
So the Cabinet Office didn’t really play a role in the way that the question is framed, I think. And the same for ventilators. We were just – we were – built what the clinicians asked us to build.
Professor Thomas: All right. So let me come on to my last question, I think you may have answered it but I’ll put the question to you, just in case.
So was there any specific measures implemented to align the procurement processes with the requirement of the Public Sector Equality Duty to ensure that the needs, particularly of ethnic minority healthcare workers, were adequately addressed?
Sir Gareth Williams: The short answer is no, for the reason I gave, that the demand that we were asked to buy came from the Department of Health. So I would not – and I don’t think any of my team would have known which products were useful for which minority group or majority group. So we just took what we were told to buy by the PHE or, as it turned into, UKHSA, and bought that. So –
Professor Thomas: I understand that. But you accept that the Public Sector Equality Duty did apply to the Cabinet Office?
Sir Gareth Williams: Well, the contracts were placed by DH, the – so I’m not sure that I do, with respect, because the people that were employed by the Cabinet Office were working, you know, under DH management and to acquire materials, PPE, that DH required.
So we had to assume the number, the types that they asked for, it was a matter for their consideration. None of the buyers would have been remotely qualified to – you raise very real concerns. I’m not diminishing the concerns at all and, you know, I think later or as the pandemic progressed we all realised that there were fit issues with that product, but that specification of the product was outside of what the Cabinet Office people were able to –
Professor Thomas: All right. I think we can end it here. We can agree on this, we can agree on, if I’ve understood your evidence correctly, there was no specific oversight by the Cabinet Office of those who were buying in or putting in the orders for the equipment? Would that be fair?
Sir Gareth Williams: Um –
Lady Hallett: I think what you said was that, essentially, yes, of course the Public Sector Equality Duty applies to all government departments but, essentially, it was the DHSC upon whom it would have been particularly relevant in this instance?
Professor Thomas: I shall pick that up later.
Lady Hallett: Thank you.
Professor Thomas: Okay, thank you.
Lady Hallett: That completes our questions for you. You’ve been very modest about your role in the Ventilator Challenge, but as you say, it was an extraordinary achievement, and I think a huge amount of the credit plainly goes to you. So whatever other people say about procurement generally, as far as the Ventilator Challenge is concerned, on behalf those who needed them, may I thank you for all that you and your colleagues did.
The Witness: Thank you very much.
Lady Hallett: And thank you for all the help that you’ve given to the Inquiry.
The Witness: Thank you.
Lady Hallett: I shall return at 2.00.
(1.01 pm)
(The Short Adjournment)
(2.00 pm)
Lady Hallett: Mr Sharma.
Mr Sharma: My Lady, the next witness is Jonathan Marron.
Mr Jonathan Marron
MR JONATHAN MARRON (affirmed).
Questions From Counsel to the Inquiry
Lady Hallett: I hope you were warned we might not get to you until this afternoon?
The Witness: I was.
Mr Sharma: Mr Marron, could we start, please, with you confirming your full name.
Mr Jonathan Marron: I am Jonathan Marron.
Counsel Inquiry: Mr Marron, you have provided four witness statements to the Inquiry. I’d be grateful if you could confirm that they’re true to the best of your knowledge and belief?
Mr Jonathan Marron: They are true to the best of my knowledge and belief, yes, I confirm.
Counsel Inquiry: Prior to the pandemic, you were Director General in DHSC for Prevention, Community and Social Care.
Mr Jonathan Marron: That’s correct.
Counsel Inquiry: And your involvement in PPE commenced on 18 March 20, when you took on PPE responsibility at the Reasonable Worst-Case Scenario Oversight Board. Is that correct?
Mr Jonathan Marron: Yes, broadly. So at that board a set of things were discussed. There were a couple of particular actions relating to PHE and the government’s PIPP stock. I took those actions away to resolve. That was the start of my involvement in PPE.
Over the course of the next two or three weeks I became more and more involved, and eventually became the DG responsible for PPE in the Department of Health and Social Care.
Counsel Inquiry: And DG means Director General?
Mr Jonathan Marron: Sorry, Director General, my apologies.
Counsel Inquiry: I’d like to start, please, with the stockpile, if we may.
Could we have up on the screen INQ000528391.
This is a table, Mr Marron, which is taken from your witness statement. This is the amount of PPE within the PIPP stockpile as of 3 October 2019.
You can see on the left-hand side the “Product Type”. And then, across the top, the “PIPP Stockpile Target Volumes”, the “PIPP Quantity”, the “[Percentage] of PIPP Target Volume”, and then what’s called the “JICJIT Split”.
Would you help us, please, Mr Marron, with what the figures in the second-to-last column and then the final column say?
Mr Jonathan Marron: I can.
If you don’t mind, may I just take one moment just to add my condolences to all of the people who were affected by Covid, and indeed to thank all of the workers on the front line who did so much to keep us during that period. Our thoughts about all of this work that my team and others were doing on – were really with the people in the front line, those who were affected. I just think I would just like to say that before I start and then I will turn to the question.
Counsel Inquiry: Of course.
Mr Jonathan Marron: Apologies.
So I think the columns you’re asking me for are the last two. So the first one, entitled “[Percentage] of PIPP Target Volume”. So PIPP is the Pandemic Influenza Preparedness Programme. So essentially this is the stockpile that the government held in case of a pandemic, an influenza pandemic, at the base of our planning.
What the number then tell you is, of the target volume, how much we thought we should hold against the pandemic influenza, we actually held. And this is of 3 October 2019.
So as you can see, there is a – some of them we are at target volume or indeed over, or in some cases there is significantly less stock from the target volume.
This comes around with a – the stockpile was originally created in 2009 in response to swine flu and it was on a rolling programme of updation. So there were a set of contracts that were delivered in 2020 that would have brought some of these under-target areas –
Counsel Inquiry: Sorry to interrupt, I wonder if you would slow down a little for the benefit of the transcript.
Mr Jonathan Marron: My apologies.
So the areas that are below target, so, you know, significantly less than 100%, in many of those cases there were contract processes in place to buy more stock that would have seen the stockpile brought back up to target over the course of 2020.
Counsel Inquiry: But as at 3 October 2019, it’s right, isn’t it, that there are significant deficiencies in the stockpile in respect of aprons, which is at 21.9%, and gloves, which is at 24.4%. And then at gowns and clinical waste bags, it was at 0%.
Mr Jonathan Marron: Yes. That is all correct. Can I mention gowns? Because I think gowns is a particular case.
Counsel Inquiry: Of course.
Mr Jonathan Marron: So from the 2009 decision to – gowns were not start of the stockpile. I believe in July of 2019 NERVTAG, the expert advisory body, advised that gowns should be part of the stockpile. This was agreed in the Clinical Countermeasures Board in October of 2019, and the procurement –
Counsel Inquiry: The Clinical Countermeasures Board is what, please?
Mr Jonathan Marron: The board that oversaw the management of the PIPP stockpile. So it was accepted that gowns should be added, and that a plan was in place to procure gowns for the stockpile. That procurement was under way but was not complete by the time the Covid pandemic hit the UK.
Counsel Inquiry: I think that is perhaps, now, the infamous procurement contract that took nine months to fulfil?
Mr Jonathan Marron: Well, the procurement contract in this case was not fulfilled at all. It was – the intention was to procure gowns in – using our normal procedure that would take nine to 12 months. That is a normal amount of time to do the market analysis and then run the full competition. Remember, of course, that was a contract not to meet an emergency requirement but a normal process of replenishing a stockpile when we had made the first decision.
Counsel Inquiry: And the final column please, those three letters, JIC and JIT, Split. What is JIC and JIT, please?
Mr Jonathan Marron: JIC is just in case, and what it essentially means is we actually held the product in a warehouse in the UK.
In Haydock, as it happens.
JIT is just in time. Here we had entered into a contract with a supplier who would then deliver the materials in the contract in the event of them being required for a pandemic. So the idea being that we will reduce the holdings in the UK, and of course reduce the costs, both of storage – and indeed these products have a shelf life, so after a particular period of time they need to be replaced.
So it was an attempt to have a more efficient way of holding stock. I’m sure we may come to it later but I think we all now know that the just-in-time contracts did not actually deliver in the Covid pandemic.
Counsel Inquiry: And on those just-in-time contracts, it’s right that none of them delivered, did they?
Mr Jonathan Marron: No, I believe none of them delivered.
Counsel Inquiry: That’s the position on 3 October 2019. I wonder if I could fast forward, please, to 28 July 2021.
And could we display, please, INQ000534966. Page 8.
Mr Marron, if I can draw your attention, please, to the figure which is highlighted in red at the bottom of table 1. This is a “Snapshot of volume and value excess stock from 7 June 2021”.
So after the pandemic, the figure here is “Excess stock plus ‘do not supply’ stock” sits at 6.9 billion units. I wonder if we could zoom out from that for a moment.
And looking down, please, at paragraph 3, it says this:
“The PPE network in the UK is currently storing 1.3 [million] pallets of PPE. This costs DHSC in the region of £300 [million] per year in operational costs … of which £120 [million] is attributable to excess stock. At current pandemic usage, we estimate that £3.8 [billion] of stock … will expire before it can be used.”
So the position prior to the pandemic was that we didn’t have enough PPE in the stockpile, and the position following the pandemic, or in the later stages of it, was that there was too much. Do you agree with that.
Mr Jonathan Marron: I certainly agree that the – the pandemic – the PIPP stockpile, was not to its target volume, and I think actually we may have a discussion about the target volume, whilst I think, based on reasonable assumptions at the time, our experience of Covid was that significantly higher volumes are required, and indeed our current holdings against a future pandemic are at a higher level than the PIPP stock. So I think – on that.
And it is also, I think, the case that our procurement of PPE during the pandemic led to having significant excess stock. Again, I think we produced on our best understanding of the model designed for PPE. The experience of the pandemic is that we did not use all of that stock. So yes, these numbers are all correct.
Counsel Inquiry: Could we have a look, please, at a table which is in your witness statement.
INQ000528391, page 231 and 232.
Mr Marron, this is the value of contracts that had been entered into that had technical and quality issues or the documents for the contracts were incorrect or incomplete.
I wonder if you could help me, please, with the figures in this schedule.
Mr Jonathan Marron: Would you like me to walk through?
Counsel Inquiry: Yes, please.
Mr Jonathan Marron: So obviously at the top it starts with the number of contracts that we’ve reported, contractual performance issues. I think we should explain how we did this. Essentially, as – if you go back, we were procuring in a pandemic scenario. The normal checking of your product in advance simply wasn’t possible. So whilst we were taking documentation and other forms of evidence from the manufacturers to suppliers, until we actually had the stock in our own hands, in the UK, it was largely – we were unable to do a proper quality check. So we were therefore cautious at what arrived in the UK.
We were –
Counsel Inquiry: Slow down, please.
Mr Jonathan Marron: My apologies. If you keep reminding me, it will help.
So we were very cautious on the materials arriving in the UK, because we wanted to ensure that we only sent stock to the front line that actually met the quality standards. So anything that arrived that we had any doubts about was put aside into what we called “Do not supply”, essentially a holding category for us to come back to and check that …
So these 176 contracts are essentially everything that went into “Do not supply”. And then as we walked down the table we explained, you know, why we went in there and what happened.
So the first block, “No. of contracts reviewed and found to be fit for purpose”, so 19 of that first 176, these were actually fine, the stock had arrived, the documentation was fine, we had, you know, not – our first check we’d been nervous but we should have –
Counsel Inquiry: Slow down, please.
Mr Jonathan Marron: Thank you.
The next block, so that’s the 400 million.
The next block, “Value of products designated safe to be used following receipt of new documentation”. Essentially the product arrives in the country, we were nervous about the documents, we went back to the manufacturers or the wholesalers. They then provided documents that met our requirements and these could then be released. So then this is another 500 million of the total that, actually, these were good.
The next block, again, so here the product was delivered according to the contract standards, so it is what we bought. But – it was. However, we bought some things that NHS doesn’t like to use, of which I think the easiest to explain is aprons. So if you go into any NHS hospital you’ll find that aprons are on a roll essentially and they get pulled off.
In the pandemic we found that quite hard to buy at times and so we also bought aprons in a box. So lots of these things are things like the aprons in a box that simply the NHS didn’t use and, you know, has – the other stock was available to it, it chose that instead. So again the contract is fine but the product doesn’t get used for that reason.
Shall we go to the next one? Next block, by the time we’ve got to this product, it’s expired. So, again, if we’d used it immediately it would have been okay but by the time it’s checked it’s not, it’s beyond it’s useful date.
Then I think then we start getting into the things where actually there were significant issues with what we’ve bought. The first block here, “Value of product delivered to contract but could not be used”, we have bought a product that does not meet the standards that are in place in the UK.
Counsel Inquiry: So, to pick it up from there, so at that point, looking at the box ahead of that, the product has been delivered according to the contract but it’s expired before use, and so that’s £322 million which has been spent on items which can’t be used; is that right?
Mr Jonathan Marron: That is correct.
Counsel Inquiry: Then if we keep following it down, another 125 million where the contract has been met, but it I can’t be used; is that right?
Mr Jonathan Marron: Yes. And if I could give an example of what might be in there –
Counsel Inquiry: Just allow me for a moment.
Then in the final box, “Contract Not Met”, and then the “Value of the claims [have been] waived or abandoned”. What does that mean?
Mr Jonathan Marron: This is the total value where we have … sorry, sir, I – I believe – can I – I believe this is the total value where the contract has not performed, and we have accepted that we will not recover that amount of the value of the contract.
Counsel Inquiry: All right. So if I add up those figures, the ones I’ve pointed out to you, at those rows, I end up, I think, with about £1.2 billion; is that right?
Mr Jonathan Marron: Sorry, can I check which rows you’ve added up?
Counsel Inquiry: Yes, so the rows 707 million at the bottom.
Mr Jonathan Marron: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: 125 million.
Mr Jonathan Marron: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: And then 322 million.
Mr Jonathan Marron: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: I’m going to take the figure that we had on the document you saw a moment ago, 3.8 billion, and then 1.2 billion, the total we have from those two documents of stock that can’t be used is approximately £5 billion, isn’t it?
Mr Jonathan Marron: I think the document you showed me before will include these numbers.
Counsel Inquiry: Right.
Mr Jonathan Marron: If we were to go back to it, I would have a better view and could say.
Counsel Inquiry: So the £3.8 billion figure you think includes these figures here?
Mr Jonathan Marron: Yes, because I believe it said it was “‘Do not supply’ stock and others”, and this would all have been in “do not supply”, so I think –
Counsel Inquiry: All right.
Mr Jonathan Marron: – I think it’s included.
Counsel Inquiry: Well, the figure we have that was spent on PPE both by DHSC and SCCL was 13.8 billion.
Mr Jonathan Marron: That is correct.
Counsel Inquiry: And the figure from the previous document was 3.8 billion; yes? So approximately a quarter of the stock that was purchased, both by DHSC and SCCL together, couldn’t be used; is that right?
Mr Jonathan Marron: Sorry, I’m trying to go back to the document you showed me previously. It was a snapshot in time, so I don’t know how much of that was then followed up – used in the two years. So we’ve continued to provide free PPE to the NHS and social care through the period after the pandemic, so we may have used some of it, but – sorry, I don’t have an exact number to confirm your position. I can certainly check. It is true there’s a significant volume that has not been used.
So, broadly – (overspeaking) –
Lady Hallett: How do we get –
Mr Jonathan Marron: – broadly, yes.
Lady Hallett: Sorry to interrupt. How do we get into the position of £320 million-odd worth of product that expires before you even get to use it? How does that happen?
Mr Jonathan Marron: So some of the products have relatively short shelf lives. And I think there the key challenge is our modelling of what we thought we would use compared to what we actually used turns out to be very different. I think it’s part of the challenge of actually – the modelling was actually a very complex and difficult task. There’s no previous experience to rely on, we hadn’t had a pandemic, so it’s not as if we could look back and say, “What did we use in the past?”
What we had to do was essentially model a whole series of things, if I can walk through. So the first, of course, was understand the pandemic itself. So for that we took the reasonable worst-case scenario estimates that came out of SPI-M. So the same models that you’ll see everybody else using. Of course there was less Covid than those models, so they’re already slightly over.
The next challenge was to take: okay, if that’s how much Covid we have, and if we take the professionally produced Infection Prevention Control guidance, which says when you should use PPE, can we convert the number of patients we think we’ll have into the number of interactions in the health service and in social care? So that’s a technical task in itself. So we modelled that with the help of external consultants.
Then the third block is to actually just manage the normal use of these products.
So if you think of the complete PPE ensemble, some of it is very rarely used in the NHS, so the FP3 respiratory mask, it had been really only used in this sort of scenario. But some of it is immensely common, gloves, aprons. Used all of the time. When we were buying, we were buying for the entire use. There wasn’t an uninterrupted BAU supply chain and then an additional one for Covid. It was all interrupted.
Our following – so the modelling for how many patients the NHS would see was based on NHS England’s predictions of how much activity there’d be in the NHS. Again, that turned out to be – the predictions were slightly higher than the forecast.
So I think as you go through the model, whilst I think we made reasonable assumptions at each stage, we ended up with a total demand that was higher than what we then saw.
And I think the real comparison if you’re looking at what we learnt from this, if we look at the second or third waves of Covid, when really there’s not a shortage of PPE, you know, we can – we can provide to the whole of the healthcare system, I think that gives us the level that actual usage was.
Lady Hallett: Can I ask a question. In relation to the stockpile, let’s call them PPE – I appreciate it may be more than just PPE – but do products go into the stockpile and stay there for an emergency or do you draw down on the stockpile for normal usage?
Mr Jonathan Marron: So I think the PIPP stockpile before the pandemic was largely held for emergency. Now, some things had been drawn down so I think, actually, if you go back to some of the earlier evidence and I believe aprons in particular, there’d been a BAU shortage and some of them had been released to help with that.
Lady Hallett: Business as usual.
Mr Jonathan Marron: Sorry, I’m doing very badly on the acronyms, I will try and do better, business as usual. So – but PIPP stock are really used for out of the ordinary events. What we’re trying to do now is have the stock rotated through, which, certainly for something like gloves, even though you want very high volumes, because they’re used at such high volumes you can push them through the stockpile without them ever – you know, they won’t ever reach their shelf life date.
For other items, you know, the respirator masks particularly, there’s such little usage of them that, essentially, you’re going to have to hold them for a pandemic, you can look at the shelf life extension at the end of their manufactured shelf life but they will at some stage need to be replaced.
So I think we are trying to think much more about what is it we can just flow through the system to get better value for everybody and then what things, actually, there’s no alternative other than just to hold the stock, just in case.
Mr Sharma: Thank you, my Lady.
Mr Marron, so we’ve covered what the stockpile looked like prior to the pandemic and we’ve looked at some of the figures as they were following the pandemic. I want to turn with you, please, to what the situation looked like when you arrived and became the Director General in the PPE Cell and took the lead for it.
The Inquiry has already heard in opening that chronology which follows the just-in-time contract failing, and the realisation that they had failed, and the movement from SCCL’s confidence that there was going to be enough provided from those contracts to realising, a short period of time later, I think a period of nine days, that, actually, those contracts were going to fail and that the UK was going to be catastrophically short of PPE. So can you explain to the Inquiry what the position was when you took your role and what were the challenges you faced?
Mr Jonathan Marron: Yes, thank you, as you’ve outlined, at the point I became involved in PPE and indeed many of the colleagues that then became the PPE Cell, we describe in our document, this came about as the Government’s response to understanding that our existing supply chain simply wasn’t going to be able to deliver the volumes of either procurement of PPE we required or indeed the distribution of that PPE to the front line that, whilst, you know, we had plans in place, we had, you know, a stockpile that we thought was going to be extraordinarily important, we needed more.
And we needed more not in four to six weeks’ time but we needed more immediately. So I think the sense as we – for that cell is that we were all absolutely aware of the position that we were in, that there were significant shortages of PPE, you know, at the end of March. We have already talked about gowns, which were an immediate problem, but –
Counsel Inquiry: Pause for a moment. When you say “significant shortages” and that you became aware of them, how were you becoming aware of the shortages of PPE within DHSC?
Mr Jonathan Marron: Can I talk through a day of how it was then and maybe that will – if I think back to March, how would my day start? I would wake up at 6.00 in the morning, I’d start by logging on to the Cabinet Office dashboard, which told us the overarching PPE, so I’d look at the number of new cases, number of hospitalisations and number of deaths – which was an incredibly sobering start.
Lady Hallett: Take your time, have some water.
The Witness: Thank you.
I then travelled to work. I had, I think, the good fortune to be part of the command cell that was in the office, and we were socially distanced but we were there, I think that made it much, much easier and helped our resilience. We would start with an 8.30 meeting where we would go through where we are in the day, so what was the action did we take yesterday, what do we know, what’s our best intelligence for where supply and demand is? By this stage we have brought together the PIPP stockpile, the material that SCCL has, there was a Brexit stockpile as well, which is in the evidence, and it’s now operating as one. We know what we’ve got.
We’re also looking on a daily basis at what we have ordered and its progress and again I think everybody understands that in this period the global supply chain was significantly interrupted, simply placing an order didn’t guarantee that it then arrived on the date that it had been promised, so the tracking through, the making sure the logistics worked, that was a major part of our –
Counsel Inquiry: Slow down please, Mr Marron.
Let me ask you this question, please. In terms of what you’ve just described, making that first order, what exactly does that mean and what does that entail? So the supply chain has effectively collapsed, the just-in-time contracts have failed and, in DHSC, what is happening in order for you and other officials to try to procure PPE on a day-to-day basis?
Mr Jonathan Marron: So I think the supply chain – the existing supply chain is not going to deliver what we need. Roughly half of all of the products we bought were bought by SCCL, and indeed their procurement team becomes the existing buy team in the PPE Cell. So we didn’t simply look for different solutions; we worked really hard on do our existing networks and existing networks work? And that’s about half of the total volume.
We have assembled in the Department of Health a team that raises up to about 450 people, essentially organised to try and do this work. There is a buy team, drawn from the government commercial service, a call from, I think, the Complex Transactions Team, Andy Wood is I think a witness following me, he ran that team, and with the complex transactions making the core of that, we then had other commercial sessions from Whitehall to give us a new buying force.
They spend their time looking at the offers that are coming through to us, trying to triage those, the ones that we think are credible then being taken through a technical and commercial due diligence phase which then allows a procurement. So that the activity is assembling a team of volunteers with commercial experience but not experience in buying PPE or healthcare, that can then start on the process of following up procurement leads that are coming in to the organisation and indeed starting on our own.
Counsel Inquiry: This team is being drawn from across government, isn’t it?
Mr Jonathan Marron: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: It’s not only officials from DHSC?
Mr Jonathan Marron: No.
Counsel Inquiry: There are people from the Ministry of Defence, for example, from the Cabinet Office and elsewhere, they are coming together to form what I think is called the PPE Cell; is that right?
Mr Jonathan Marron: That is correct. So, look, there’s lots of people came, lots of people from the Government Commercial Service, who may have belonged to different departments but had commercial expertise and then we drew on – the MoD had specific expertise in contract assurance, so we – their team came to help, and then alongside, if you like, that buy effort we have distribution and logistics effort, again with military support. SCCL’s existing distribution stays in place to do everything but PPE and delivery to hospital and we contract with Clipper through SCCL to provide additional logistic and distribution support, additionally a new warehouse –
Counsel Inquiry: Pause for a moment. So there is a PPE Cell which is concentrating on procurement within DHSC?
Mr Jonathan Marron: The PPE Cell, as a whole, I’d describe as having a Buy team doing procurement and, if you broke those down, existing Buy, essentially SCCL, continuing, China Buy working with the British Embassy in Beijing to really understand can we get close to the Chinese manufacturers? That’s a very successful route for us. A UK Make team, which eventually manages to get, I think, about 25 contracts for manufacture of PPE in the UK, and then the New Opportunities Team which is really chasing down a whole range of potential routes and avenues to buy PPE.
Counsel Inquiry: We’re going to come on to the New Opportunities Team in a moment. I wonder if we could have up, please –
Mr Jonathan Marron: Sorry could I just do the – because that’s Buy. I think we’ve then got a Logistics team that are doing two things: we’re transporting goods from China back to the UK. Normally in this market you buy your gowns or whatever else with transport. Transport was no longer available –
Counsel Inquiry: Pause for a moment, I just want to bring up a figure so everyone can understand what you’re talking about. I wonder if we can bring up Mr Marron’s witness statement, INQ000528391, page 205. Just over the page, please, if we can zoom into the top. This is an “Overview of the PPE Supply Chain” which you’ve been describing?
Mr Jonathan Marron: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: On the left-hand side are the entities you’ve been describing, so DHSC Buy –
Mr Jonathan Marron: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: – UK Make, and then SCCL.
Mr Jonathan Marron: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: Then on the right-hand side of the diagram are all of the issues with distribution?
Mr Jonathan Marron: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: On top of that, you’ve described the fact that PPE at the same time is being flown in from China and from other countries to interlock with this diagram?
Mr Jonathan Marron: That’s right.
Counsel Inquiry: But in terms of the DHSC operation, it’s centred here, DHSC Buy, it’s split into teams, and those teams are – forgive me, you were going to tell me something?
Mr Jonathan Marron: All of this is the DHSC operation, so the PPE Cell managed this entire process, and then the Buy teams in the cell managed the procurement process.
Counsel Inquiry: What is established is something which is called the Parallel Supply Chain –
Mr Jonathan Marron: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: – which we’re going to look at, and the offers that were coming in to DHSC were organised or they were triaged in something which is called the eight-stage process, which we’re going to come on to. I wonder, please, if we could have another diagram up. Page 121. If we could zoom into the top. This is called the end-to-end process, Mr Marron, a process which I think you’ll be familiar with?
Mr Jonathan Marron: That’s correct.
Counsel Inquiry: At number 1 is “Initial Data Triage”. What’s that, please?
Mr Jonathan Marron: So this is – I think the first three steps on this process are really about understanding what’s coming in to the organisation, the basic information around the offer, what has been offered what volumes, at what times. Then moving into is that what we want and should we be prioritising it? And then, of course, the third one is contact so this is, if you like, the initial triage phase of does this look like a worthwhile offer for us to continue?
And then the next stages, which are highlighted in orange in the diagram, are really the detailed stages of looking at is this the right opportunity? So in financial and commercial due diligence, really looking at the organisation we’re entering a deal with, is this is an appropriate vendor of PPE? Is it sufficient of financial status to take the weight of contract? You know, do the commercials work?
And then the technical review really looking at well, what is the product and does it meet our standards? And, of course, this was a really important phase for us of really are we buying PPE that meets the standards of the NHS?
Counsel Inquiry: As an offer is being progressed through this eight-stage process, does it have to complete one stage in order to progress to the next stage, and then so on?
Mr Jonathan Marron: So it gets through the first three, to be handed on to commercial and technical. They ran in parallel. So, if you like, there’s a process of like is this a sensible offer for us to pursue? And, if no, then we can stop without doing the detailed due diligence work. Once we think it’s worth pursuing, then the due diligence can work on both Technical and Commercial. If they are both satisfied, it moves to the final stage of closing, where really we’re looking at, well, now what are the – what is the deal on offer? Is the price within the range that we’re prepared to pay? When is delivery? The normal things you would think of in closing a contract.
Counsel Inquiry: All right. I want to have a look, please, at what lies underneath this eight-stage process. Could we bring up, please, INQ000551580, and page 14, please. This is the process flow, isn’t it, that an offer comes into once it’s received in DHSC?
Mr Jonathan Marron: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: It has to follow each and every one of these procedural steps in order for it to move on to the next stage of the eight-stage process; is that right?
Mr Jonathan Marron: This sets out in diagrammatic form the steps that a worker would go through. So there may be different routes, in so, for example, if you look at the very top, there’s a contract via – contact via email, which would then take you back to send the webform link back to the provider. Obviously start 2, if the webform comes direct, then you don’t need to do that step. So the way to think about it is you start at the start points and then follow the arrows through and it takes you through what a worker, a caseworker would do in each case.
Counsel Inquiry: Can we turn over to be the next page, please. The next page. This is a continuation, isn’t it, of the same flowchart but, in this stage, it’s at stages 3, 4 and 5, which are being demonstrated on here?
Mr Jonathan Marron: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: And if we turn over the page again, please, this is a continuation, isn’t it, of the eight-stage process? This is what’s happening underneath what looks like an elegant system. Eight steps, it looks clean and simple but, in reality, what’s happening beneath is something which is very complicated, isn’t it?
Mr Jonathan Marron: I’m not sure I’d accept that these are very complicated. I mean, what we’ve done here is set out schematically all the steps that we’d have to take. Look, for example, “Send rejection letter” is a step here, I don’t think it’s a complicated thing but it is what you must do to complete when you get to a “No”. So I would accept that, if you’re not familiar with these sort of diagrams, they look incredibly complicated but I think, actually, for somebody who was working in the – in a commercial team, this is a relatively comprehensive way of putting together the flow of what the work would have to do.
Now, that is not to say that the tasks were straightforward and easy. I mean, we were buying critical products for the protection of our health workers and our patients, and we had to be able to do that in a way that was effective. So I think ensuring that we had the right technical specs, which at times was very difficult – I mean, again, if we just reflect on normally, we’d simply buy something with a CE mark, where we could do that, great, but we were also buying obviously from manufacturers that hadn’t supplied to Europe before, didn’t have CE marks and so we needed to check that their specifications were equivalent, get derivations from our regulators and ensure that we could use those products. So it is a complicated thing to do, I would accept that. I don’t think we made an overly complicated process out of it.
Counsel Inquiry: Could we a look, please, at INQ000474996. These are infographics which have been prepared by the Inquiry, based on your witness statement, Mr Marron. In order to demonstrate at each stage the quantities of material in the context of the Decision Tree and the process charts that we’ve looked at, I’m going to take you quickly through these.
The first step, “Initial data collection”. Looking at those process charts and then putting them into the context of the numbers of offers which were being received, 24,000 is the approximate figure, across 50,000 categories of PPE from over 15,000 suppliers, all of that information is being fed in to that what I would say is a very complicated and, dare I say, labyrinthine process flow that we just looked at, and the members of staff, the officials looking at those offers, at the initial stage, would have been overwhelmed by that, would they not?
Mr Jonathan Marron: So I certainly think that we struggled to process all 24,000 offers. The steps that we were looking to do in these early phases were about trying to identify and triage the most likely offers to take forward. So it is not that 24,000 offers we attempted to put through all of the eight steps, and indeed, these first – the first three steps on the chart are really about can we identify which of these offers were the most likely to be successful?
I think if you’re asking questions about could this have been done better, I’m sure that is true. And indeed, we’ve looked at this since the pandemic, the Boardman Review particularly looked at this. And I think some higher level of both automation and indeed a higher bar to get through those initial gates, could we automatically filter out offers that didn’t have particular volumes? I think that would have been a more effective process.
Counsel Inquiry: We’ll come to automation in a moment. If I can take you, please, through this eight-stage process on here, could we have a look at slide two. The next step was “Identifying … opportunities and triaging”. That was itself accompanied by another set of guidance, and then there was a stage in which initial due diligence was conducted.
Stage 3, please.
Opportunities had to be validated, and that meant that what caseworkers were doing was they were contacting suppliers, they were having conversations with them, they were trying to get details of what was being offered, estimates on prices, lead times, researching the manufacturers, and then another set of guidance for them.
Step 4, please, “Commercial due diligence”. Another team separate from the other, a due diligence form requesting a large amount of information: company name, company number, registered address, some of which had already been collected at stage 1. So there’s an element of duplication here, is there not?
Mr Jonathan Marron: Well, I think these – the descriptions that we set out in the witness statement looked at the things we were doing. As you know, the process evolved over time. I don’t think we asked people to redo the steps that had already been taken but, in thinking about commercial due diligence, this is what we expected to have. I don’t think you can avoid looking at this information. In fact, I think we took a great deal of risk on commercial due diligence. You have to remember this was an emergency procurement. We are looking at companies that we haven’t worked with before. Some of these companies, you know, not established for very long. We needed to have a proper assessment of the risks we were taking.
We took some contracts with firms that had, you know, a limited history of PPE but it turns out from their business in China or other places had connections that did deliver PPE for us. So it was worth looking at these – can I say “unconventional providers”? Would that be an appropriate term?
But it did mean that we had to do the due diligence. I think it would be very difficult to have placed contracts, you know, with public money without looking at these challenges.
So I think the things we were looking at were appropriate. I think on commercial due diligence particularly we improved our process over time.
Counsel Inquiry: Forgive me, I’m not suggesting for a moment that DHSC did not consider some of this information. The question is as to how the information was being absorbed, how it was being looked at by DHSC, where it was being stored, what systems there were for managing –
Mr Jonathan Marron: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: – large quantities of information, which were being provided by potential suppliers within the context of a system that we’ve looked at, with all of those flows and processes and questions and, at each stage of this process, it’s right, isn’t it, that the information wouldn’t have come in in one direction? This would have been a dialogue with – or potentially a dialogue with those suppliers. For example, if a piece of information were missing, then a caseworker would have to contact the company to get it and this would be an ongoing conversation.
Mr Jonathan Marron: In terms of the storage of information, it’s certainly true in the very early days of this programme, as we, you know, pulled together a team to do the emergency procurement, I think our first DHSC procurement is on the 22 March, I think, so very early in the process. The team were relying on really recording things on Excel spreadsheets, which we absolutely understood was not the way we should be doing this. By April we moved to a tailor-made management system called Mendix, which the Cabinet Office team provided. So, at that stage, all of this information is stored on Mendix.
As we get to the end of this procurement phase and we move to a more regularised position, we then move on to the Department of Health’s database, which is Atamis, and the Mendix information has been retrospectively moved over to Atamis. Again, some challenges with that process.
Counsel Inquiry: We will come on to that. Can we move on, please, to step 4, the next stage in which the offer had to be processed was a technical review. Again, this team had another set of guidance to look at. They had to check certificates of compliance, test set data, quality management system. They had to keep up, in that bottom left-hand corner, with the technical specifications which were changing.
So, again, a caseworker in this team here that another enormous set of information that they had to absorb, to triage, to manage, and to look at; is that right?
Mr Jonathan Marron: That is right and I think having a technical phase where the people were dedicated, looking at this, I think helps. And part of this process is trying to break up those expertise, you have a – is this worth pursuing in those first three steps? You’ve got a set of commercial questions about is the risk of entering into a contract with this counterparty appropriate? And then you’ve got, actually, when we buy this PPE is it going to be what we need? And, frankly, that was not a difficult – lots of people were selling PPE that did not meet the standards of specification so doing this properly was absolutely critical to protecting frontline workers and indeed members of the public.
Counsel Inquiry: Where, then, were the bottlenecks in this system, if one part of this system had to be completed, if one step had to be completed before the next, then there were areas, were there not, in which there were bottlenecks in offers being processed, and so what this system was doing in part was doing what you suggest, which is making sure that public money was being spent properly, but what it was also doing was slowing down those offers because of bottlenecks which had been created as a result of the process?
Mr Jonathan Marron: We were certainly challenged on the capacity of the team and the speed we were going. I think we improved this over the course of the time. Indeed, you might come to the Rapid Review Team that was established to try to really accelerate the highest – the offers that looked the most likely to give us significant results.
Counsel Inquiry: Forgive me, we’ll come on to the Rapid Review Team in a moment but one of the reasons, was it not, for the creation of the Rapid Review Team was in part to deal with this problem of the complexity of the eight-stage process, that what was happening was that good offers were getting stuck within the system, they needed to be picked up, they needed to be identified quickly, and they needed to be put through the eight-stage process, and so the Rapid Review Team, when it was created in April, was there in order to deal with that problem; is that right?
Mr Jonathan Marron: Yes, but they did the same things. So it wasn’t that we dropped the stages of the process. We didn’t put in the Rapid Review Team and not do due diligence or not do (unclear). It was a way of saying, “Can we do that in a different way that would be quicker?”
So I think this is the learning of how do we really drive through our most likely deals.
And I again come to this whole process, we start from not having – this is an emergency procurement of PPE, the government stepping in because we know our existing channel isn’t going to work, and we developed our processes whilst buying PPE. So I think there is definitely a sense of things improve over this time.
And indeed, as we move to a regularised PPE model, we don’t use this model, you know, we move away to a category model rather than a steps in the process model. So –
Counsel Inquiry: Why has it moved from the steps in a process model to a category model? Is it because that’s more efficient?
Mr Jonathan Marron: We moved as we brought in – the stabilised model for PPE was led by a set of external procurement experts. They thought it would be more effective to move that model, and particularly to manage our understanding of what was required. So I think if you looked at a normal procurement model in the private sector, you are likely see a category managed model. Here we got this, I think largely in those opening weeks, because we absolutely needed to get going, and that ability to triage which offers we were taking and which ones looked most likely to provide the product we needed was important, and that allowed us to then only take the technical review and the commercial due diligence on those that looked likely, rather than having to do all of the work on all of the offers.
Counsel Inquiry: Had DHSC had any experience in creating systems like this before?
Mr Jonathan Marron: So they, I think this team was put together and its processes by the experts from the Government Commercial Service who came to do the Buy Cell. So this wasn’t designed by Department of Health civil servants, it was designed by the people who then went and ran the process.
Counsel Inquiry: Thank you. Can we move on, please, onto step 6. At the stage here, “Close terms and conditions and pricing”, at this stage there’s another level of assurance.
Mr Jonathan Marron: I think here – I think the cost assurance analysis that’s on the left of this diagram, that really is the commercial due diligence.
In the very, very early weeks the closing team were doing commercial due diligence so that’s why it features here. You’ve picked it up from that description of the early weeks. Obviously, once we had the step – I can’t remember if it’s four or five, I always think of it the wrong way round – once we had the commercial due diligence team in place, that’s where this happened.
So in the first few weeks the closing team were looking at due diligence, we then established a properly staffed commercial due diligence team and then this step was not then carried out at stage 6, this is stage – it’s either 4 or 5, the technical and commercial backstop.
Counsel Inquiry: Nevertheless, at this stage now prices are being negotiated; the supplier, if it’s in a foreign country, there has to be a liaison with the FCDO.
Mr Jonathan Marron: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: Government legal advice has to be sought. And at this stage – it’s only at this stage that the offer is discussed in detail with the supplier and so, by the time the offer has reached this stage, it’s already consumed a number of resources before it gets to stage 6.
Mr Jonathan Marron: I think the offer is discussed with the supplier in the very first stages.
Counsel Inquiry: All right?
Mr Jonathan Marron: So what we get to here at this stage is that we are confident that the supplier is somebody that we are prepared to do business with, which wasn’t always the case, that the stock that they’re offering meets our standards, which certainly was not always the case and it’s now into a closing part of the deal what is the price that we’re prepared to pay? So this really is closing the deal.
Counsel Inquiry: All right. Can we move to step 7. Now we’re completing the approval documentation, and that results in an email being sent, and we’ll come on to the next step, to the AOs, the accounting officers. And if you turn back to the preceding page, and there are the documents which have to be prepared, the terms and conditions, the order form, notice of advance payment, new supplier form, supplier letter, CaPA approval, technical documentation the Department’s requisition form, and so on.
And all of those are sent to an accounting officer, step 8, who then has to check all of those documents against the managing public money guidance?
So starting off with where we were at the beginning, all of these offers are coming through the system, the numbers of accounting officers who then have to then deal with the proposals to purchase, only number 3, don’t they? There’s only three of them. So is that another point, rather like technical assurance of which there was a bottleneck.
Mr Jonathan Marron: No, I don’t think we had a bottleneck at accounting officer. I think by this stage the eight-step process we’ve been through has provided the evidence on – you know, the way this is the product we need to buy, whether actually it is appropriate to go ahead with the counterparty, and whether it’s technically efficient. Now, I think the accounting officer needs to know those things in order to authorise the spending of what was quite significant sums – not quite, very significant sums of public money.
I do think having the accounting officer separate and signing off the appropriate deal gave us an extra layer of protection against deals that we shouldn’t have been doing and I think having that independent review at this stage a helpful step.
Counsel Inquiry: Well, we’ll be hearing from them in due course. Could I have up, please, an email which was sent by Mr Hall, who is the Interim Government Chief Commercial Officer, to Max Cairnduff, who was the Head of The High Priority Lane, it’s INQ000534626.
This is what Mr Hall is saying in the middle of the page:
“We have designed the least efficient process possible.”
Then his second comment is:
“The lag in the process and shipping is killing our demand signal.”
He makes a comment about competition and then makes a final comment about the fact that “IT [was] killing us”, he said. Do you have any observations to make about that Mr Marron?
Mr Jonathan Marron: Well, Chris is a highly-experienced procurement expert so I think we should take his comments very seriously. He was working in the team and, indeed, I think Chris is instrumental in the Rapid Review Team and trying to make sure that we are doing this properly. In one way, I’m really pleased to see that we were engaging in how we improved our processes. I mean, if you think about the time – this process was only in place between the very end of March and, I think, probably the very end – beginning of June, beginning of July so, actually, wave one, that we spent each day looking at the newspapers of just how critically short of PPE we were, we spent each evening looking at our demand signal, you know, what we thought we used, we knew was coming in, we would see the shipments we thought were coming in getting struck off our incoming list because they weren’t turning up and I think there was a great deal of concern about we should do all that we can to get the PPE that was needed.
So I think that led to two things. We were prepared to look at our very, very wide range of offers, which I think was right. Our processes were – I think people used the expression “designed in flight”, I don’t really like it but it portrays that we were trying to buy and design at the same time. We didn’t have a month to think about how we’d do it, and then start. And I think we did make improvements over those three months and then, as we got out of this period, we looked again at how we should manage our process.
As it happens, we did very little procurement of PPE. After we get to about June 2020, we simply have ordered enough. Our modelling suggested a rather larger level of demand. So I think beyond that time we really only buy gloves, which obviously the NHS uses in vast quantities anyway, so that needed to be stocked up. We may have made some small purchases of masks, but I would need to confirm that.
Counsel Inquiry: The Inquiry has heard about that 100 days and, as you say, quite right that the DHSC was trying to build a system whilst it was purchasing –
Mr Jonathan Marron: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: – PPE at the same time. Had it ever been involved in such a design and creation of a process before or was this the first time?
Mr Jonathan Marron: I think the Department of Health, as a corporate organisation, no, not at all. Whether the individuals that came to help us had been involved, I think many of the Cabinet Office and the Government Commercial Service people will have been involved in commercial deals, how to – but whether they would – I don’t think they would have been involved at this scale. Chris Hall may be a good witness to ask this question. Over this 100 days we added a range of experts who could bring logistic skills, the management of the scope of procurement processes. But again, I think the scale of what we put together over a very short period of time, I think probably is unprecedented for a government department. You know, we essentially doubled our procurement capacity versus the existing SCCL, and we went from a distribution capability, which I think was a few hundred hospitals, to being able to deliver to over 50,000 sites as we delivered PPE to every social care provider, every GP, every pharmacy in the land.
So I think over this 100 days, there was an absolute transformation in our capability to both procure and distribute PPE. And, indeed, I think if we look over the second and third waves of the pandemic, the sorts of difficulties we see on PPE in the first wave are not repeated. We’ve really managed to get a process in place that allows us to get the materials to the people who need them.
Counsel Inquiry: Nonetheless, noting what you say about buying quantities of PPE at speed, as you describe, it remains the case, doesn’t it, that the UK overboard buy a significant quantity of the PPE which it needed?
Mr Jonathan Marron: Yes, but I think we bought – we bought to both our target for what we believed demand was, which, as I have explained earlier, was a model, a model that we put together during the pandemic, which I think also bears thought. I think, you know, when you’re doing these things, the model is based on assumptions. Whether we put, you know, conservative assumptions in at each stage because we were so worried about having the PPE we needed, I think that could be looked at.
I think it’s really difficult in the height of a pandemic, when you can see the impact on the front line, on people in the country, to really think, “Oh, actually, no, we don’t need to buy this”. And I do remember we had conversations that – something along the lines of we are not going to get this right. It’s just not possible to do, so we’re either going to do one of two things: we’re either going to underbuy and we’ll get into the second wave, which we all knew was coming and we’ll have repeated scenes like we’d seen in March and April, and indeed into May and June; or, you know, if we, you know, take more cautious assumptions on demand, we will overbuy and I think we were all convinced that, actually, if that’s the choice then overbuying was better than underbuying.
Now, I’m sure we could spend more time examining, you know, the effects of our model, what we should have in future and being better prepared, and just on the future part of it, I do think that running through this experience, and really seeing how PPE is used in the front line gives us a much, much better basis for understanding what the stockpile should be and what we should buy in future than trying to work it out mathematically which, whilst I think we did good modelling, that sort of modelling is very, very hard to do.
Counsel Inquiry: If I may, to draw upon your experience, if you were going to choose one, two or three of the lessons which you learned from being the Director General in the PPE Cell, and from seeing the system being designed and from seeing the pressures and the strains it was under, what would be those three key lessons that you would suggest ought to be learned about the system which was managing and triaging the offers that were coming in, and about the processing of information generated by those offers? You’ve mentioned automation; is there anything else you would suggest?
Mr Jonathan Marron: I think the first thing, I think the biggest lesson is about our capability and resilience going into this sort of a crisis. I think lots of our difficulties came from the fact that we essentially were an emergency response bolted on top of a system that hadn’t been able to grow quick enough. So I think our real lesson –
Counsel Inquiry: Forgive me, what do you mean by that?
Mr Jonathan Marron: So the existing procurement system in health and care was a company called SCCL, Supply Chain Coordination Limited, which we talk about, and then the NHS itself procuring directly.
As you described earlier in the hearing, when we got to March, we were clear that wasn’t going to work. Now, if we had been in a position that we were able to scale that system more effectively, I think that would have been better. I think where we look at other countries’ experience, where they were able to build on their existing systems they found that easier to do than to build something brand new in flight.
So I think my first thing, I think, as a lesson is we really must look to the resilience of our existing procurement and, indeed, SCCL are taking a range of steps to be in a better position. Not least their PPE procurement is now taken back in-house – sorry, I should – SCCL had contracted out much of their work to other organisations. PPE is now an in-house team, so they’ve got a core of expertise that can explain that.
We’re also working on much better data and visibility, I think SCCL have an inventory management pilot going, so they can see frontline stocks. Not being able to see the stocks in the front line was a significant problem, I think, in the pandemic, not for the amount we bought but for the decisions we were making on a daily basis on which hospitals, which services got PPE. Knowing that, actually, they had some in stock would have made it easier to make sure it got to others. I think that’s the first lesson.
I think if we do get into this situation again, and let’s hope we do not and our systems are resilient enough, but if we need to move into this sort of broader net of catching offers, I do think that having a higher bar at the front of the system would be helpful.
Counsel Inquiry: What do you mean by that?
Mr Jonathan Marron: So the – we basically allowed everybody to fill in a webform, you know, and that included, you know, multinational corporations, who absolutely could help us and people with – well, a small business that might have some work with China but really was never going to be a credible offer. And I think our system required to us look at both of those in that first phase to triage out the ineffective ones. And I think we, in future, should think about can we add more on the company side of demonstrating what they’ve got as they come forward to allow us to have not 24,000 offers but, you know, a significantly smaller proportion of good offers? So I think that’s there.
Lady Hallett: Isn’t it difficult to set the bar? Because you might –
Mr Jonathan Marron: Yes.
Lady Hallett: – set it “How long you’ve been in business?”, you might set it, “What is the nature of your business?” But there again, you don’t necessarily just want people who can produce PPE –
Mr Jonathan Marron: No.
Lady Hallett: – because they could be people who could adapt. So how do you set the bar?
Mr Jonathan Marron: You’ve absolutely gone to the heart of the problem. I think we could look more at what volumes they could provide in speed, and I think this is a difficult thing to do because for exactly, as you say, you don’t want to rule out people that, actually, whilst at first sight don’t look like – they might be applied for PPE, their business – I mean, we had, I think, people who worked in waste, you know. Obviously, they use PPE as well, it ends up being the same stuff so, actually, they – you might not have looked at those, if you’ve looked at healthcare providers. So you do need some width but I think you could do a better job at limiting.
Final bit, just one last one –
Mr Sharma: Yes, go.
Mr Jonathan Marron: I think, as we went through this process, we spent more time trying to get upstream and get into the manufacturers directly and that we had success as we go through the months. Again, I think if you were in this position again you’d want to have better relationships with the manufacturers, let’s face it, you know, the real challenge is can you get into their manufacturing slots quickly and ahead of other people? Prior to the pandemic almost all of our business in PPE was done through wholesalers. The market was simply a commodity market, bought cheaply, through people who, you know, through intermediaries, I think that was severely challenged in the pandemic, and future model where you’ve got a clearer view of your supply chain from your intermediary right the way back to the manufacturer would be helpful in understanding where you might be able to get more supplies.
Counsel Inquiry: Can I pick up on two of the points which you’ve just made, one of which is about the effect of the call to arms on the PPE Cell. Do you have any reflections to offer on the call to arms? Do you think it was a good idea or a bad idea?
Mr Jonathan Marron: So I think I have sort of broadly three reflections. So one, people came forward in that call to arms, and through I think it was the Coronavirus Business Support website, I think, was the formal title. People came forward that we would not have reached out to. And, we secured PPE for them. So there was definitely an upside. The downside is the conversation we’ve just been having. Lots of people came forward and then it was lots of work for trying to triage which of those were credible, even if they were unusual, and which of them – actually there was nothing here for us. So I think that was the challenge.
And the third reflection is, before that website went live, we were already getting unsolicited offers of people who could provide us with PPE. Everybody knew we had a problem. It was in the newspapers every day, the politicians were highly concerned about how we were going to fix it. It was at the top of the nation’s list of challenges. So I think the scheme at least provided a way of bringing that together. I do thin if we were going to reflect on lessons then thinking about was the gateway into the scheme in fact too widely drawn, I think is the thing I’ll come back to.
Counsel Inquiry: Secondly, in relation to manufacturers, we will hear evidence next week and the week after about the strategy of the UK Make team, which found and selected two dozen or so domestic manufacturers and approached them to procure and supply PPE for the UK.
The approach of the PPE Cell and the New Suppliers Team was, by contrast, quite different. As you say, it threw the doors open to any offers that were coming in.
Was there a reason as to why the PPE Cell did not actively go out to seek manufacturers and to try to get down to the bottom of the supply chain?
And just to follow on from that, the reason for asking the question is because the more intermediaries there are in the supply chain, the higher the price of the goods become. So if you can get closer to the manufacturer, that would be a better approach. So rather than sitting – and I don’t mean that pejoratively, but waiting for the offers to come to you, to proactively go out to find the manufacturers at the bottom of many of these supply chains.
Mr Jonathan Marron: Yes, so, I absolutely agree with the premise and I think we were trying to do that.
So we went back – as we described, there are different Buy Teams in the PPE Cell. The first one was the thing we called China Buy. This was essentially a – working with the Foreign Office and the embassy in Beijing, who were working to get as close to the Chinese manufacturers as possible. So that was a very proactive – we knew that’s where the action was, and can we use the contacts of the embassy to do the best possible job there? So I think that is following the strategy that you have set out.
Obviously we continued to use the SCCL networks and their contracts. So where we had existing relationships with people, we would –
Counsel Inquiry: Pause for a moment, the SCCL networks, were those suppliers who were, prior to the pandemic –
Mr Jonathan Marron: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: – supplying into SCCL –
Mr Jonathan Marron: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: – then on the NHS?
Mr Jonathan Marron: Yes – they may have been providing to the NHS as well, but they certainly had contracts with SCCL. Actually, again, I think largely they would have been intermediaries. That’s just the way this business worked. But we pushed doors.
The Coronavirus Business Support Scheme, you know, that caught people coming in, I think we chose, largely because we knew that our existing networks weren’t delivering enough and we needed to find the unusual, and given this is a market that’s full of intermediaries in its normal business, then it felt like it was – could be appropriate. We’ve talked about the downsides.
UK Make. I think the UK Make team talked to over 500 firms in terms of identifying possibilities, and I think – as you say, I think about 25 actually became contracted to deliver PPE manufactured in the UK.
Mr Sharma: Thank you.
My Lady, I wonder if that’s a convenient moment.
Lady Hallett: Of course. Certainly.
I shall return at 3.30. We shall definitely finish you today, Mr Marron.
(3.13 pm)
(A short break)
(3.30 pm)
Lady Hallett: Mr Sharma.
Mr Sharma: Mr Marron. High Priority Lane, please.
I wonder if we could bring up your witness statement again, INQ000528391. And the bottom of page 101, paragraph 382.
There you say that:
“In progressing offers within the Parallel Supply Chain, the same guidance, criteria to assess suitability process maps [which we’ve covered], due diligence, technical assurance and financial controls were used, regardless of which team handled the potential contract, including the [High Priority Lane].”
Does that reflect your experience, when you were in the PPE Cell?
Mr Jonathan Marron: Yes. I mean, I think the very first stage we know was slightly different. The High Priority Lane wouldn’t wait for a company to fill in a form, but would ring the company. In the non-High Priority Lane, the form would be filled in first, that would be the first point of contract, and then the company would be rung.
So I think apart from that very small difference at the very first stage of – stage 1 on the eight-stage process map, we then followed exactly the same process.
Counsel Inquiry: Did you ever hear of incidents in which contracts and offers that were being progressed through the PPE Cell were not following what you’ve set out in paragraph 382?
Mr Jonathan Marron: We certainly had – we certainly had unusual – some unusual processes came up, but it wasn’t that we deviated from these steps. The one that’s in my personal witness statement that we had an unusual process, the counterparty in that case actually bought the PPE themselves and put it on a plane. So we agreed to pay for that after it arrived, once we checked it.
So I think there were some times when that’s the thing, but that’s the only one that comes to mind.
Counsel Inquiry: I wonder if we could bring up, please, INQ000551580.
This is from the document that we looked at earlier. The “Initial data triage criteria”. This says:
“Data triage criteria are reviewed and updated weekly.
“At publication efforts have been prioritised as follows: …”
And then it says:
“A product will be marked as high priority if (A + B) OR C are true: …”
Then under A and B it lists factors that you’ve described are relevant to the triaging process: company size, the volumes of the offers.
Then if you take it down to the bottom, then at C it says:
“If [a] donation or VIP (this is also captured by the VIP and destination flags in the system as well).”
Mr Jonathan Marron: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: So what this seems to suggest, Mr Marron, is that a product will be marked as high priority if A and B, so the company size and the volumes they’re offering, are true, or if C is true, if it’s a VIP offer, it went straight through. Could you help me with that, please.
Mr Jonathan Marron: My understanding is certainly that in these initial triage stages we were looking at whether the products were the ones that we thought were a priority. They did change. You know, gowns at the early stages, FFP3 masks later. And my understanding was that we were then applying those in a consistent way. And certainly as we get past this triage stage, all of these offers move to a – well, the rest of the eight-stage process we talked about, financial due diligence, commercial due diligence, and then closing, when I think the same processes were used on the same tests across those. That’s what I –
Counsel Inquiry: Why would it be that if a donation is marked as a VIP, that it therefore wouldn’t be required in the triage process to have criteria A and B attached to it? What is it about being a VIP offer that means that at that initial triage stage it doesn’t have to fulfil the requirements of being a company size of greater than 250 employees, or being able to offer a certain quantity of PPE? What is it that’s particular and unique about a VIP in C that means that that criteria is overridden?
Mr Jonathan Marron: Yes, so my understanding at the time of this is that essentially the VIP Lane, or the HPL lane as it’s sometimes called, was essentially a handling process. It was put in place – put in place – it really evolved to allow us certainty that contracts that had be – come to the attention of ministers and others, a certainty that they were being followed up. The problem we faced was, given the significant shortage of PPE, there was real concern that offers that were coming that may not be followed up and actually could have been the ones that solved the problem. There was lots of attention from ministers and others around: “Are you doing the right thing? Is this being advanced?”
The VIP Lane was our response to being able to identify those and have an easy way that allowed us to say, “Yes, that’s been progressed”, without having to ask every single member of the team whether a particular contract had gone. So we were trying to limit the number of people that were involved in that.
That – that is what I understood the process to be. Whether, then, as this developed, further things were added, this might suggest –
Counsel Inquiry: I take what you’re saying about the contact with people with a VIP connection, but this is not about contact, is it? This document sets out not, “Are you being chased by a VIP referrer?” but “If you are a VIP, you’ve come in via a VIP, there is criteria here which you do not have to obey in order to be moved on within the eight-stage process”, that you’ve just described, for which you have said that it’s there to stop the bad offers from being progressed. And yet in this document it suggests, actually, that some of the criteria can be set aside, at least at the initial stage, if you have a connection which is a VIP?
Mr Jonathan Marron: So I do think that we need to look at the first three stages, which really are together, in deciding whether we should prioritise a particular deal.
I think that my memory is that high priority – I think, over 7,000 offers were marked as high priority. So this is not a fast track through to a contract, there’s – a significant volume of our offers put this. So it is that very first stage of the triage.
Counsel Inquiry: What, may I ask, was the difference between the treatment of an offer that was marked as a VIP offer and that that was treated by the rapid response team?
Mr Jonathan Marron: So I think the rapid response team – well, again, so these are my understandings, that – I did not run these processes or indeed take any of these decisions. You have witnesses coming that were intimately involved and will be able to answer.
My understanding is that the rapid response team was developed to speed up the offers that came through this initial triage and looked the most promising.
Counsel Inquiry: And they would be sped up, wouldn’t they, on the basis of objective criteria about what the content offered?
Mr Jonathan Marron: My understanding is the rapid response team was looking at the highest volumes offered on the products that we most meet needed, independent of where the source had come from.
Counsel Inquiry: And by contrast, the donation or connection to a VIP is not part of that objective criteria, and yet it does still have an advantage?
Mr Jonathan Marron: So, again, this is the initial data triage, the prioritisation is next. I thought we were using consistent terms over the prioritisation.
Counsel Inquiry: All right.
Lady Hallett: I mean, the fact is that, basically, if somebody was put into a process by the VIP Lane, they were passing base 1, weren’t they? They weren’t being subject to the initial triage, simply as that?
Whether or not you approve of it now –
Mr Jonathan Marron: Yes.
Lady Hallett: – whether or not it was your idea, isn’t that what was happening?
It may have been ministerial management. I suspect that’s partly to do with it. But that’s the effect, isn’t it?
Mr Jonathan Marron: Well, look, I think that – so I do think that when we were trying to set this up that we were trying to make reasoned decisions about how do we quickly move on and manage – I’m trying to find the right word, some people said “noise”, I don’t want to use the word “noise”. There was legitimate interest in – so we needed to manage that. I think as we look back on how we did this, we didn’t do it in a good way at all. I mean, frankly, we’ve reviewed it several times, the Boardman Review said this wasn’t the right thing to do, and frankly, if we’d had a better process in terms of triaging the offers, as we talked about before the break, we probably wouldn’t have needed this. I think that’s a very valid observation.
We’ve been tested in the High Court on this particular process, actually, here, that the unfairness in this very first stage was found to be unlawful, although actually our justice found – generally found that actually we would have awarded – she thought the contracts would have been awarded –
Lady Hallett: There’s no causative effect, yes.
Mr Jonathan Marron: . So I think we were trying to do reasonable things, at the time, whilst trying to do everything else. I would not do this again. And whilst I think it’s hard to show that there was a particular beneficial effect, I mean we may come back to some of the data. I know that Chris Hall has tried to do analysis on the data about whether it sped things up. I think that’s an interesting question, I genuinely don’t know.
But I certainly – the perception that we gave a channel that some people could go quicker I think has been extraordinary damaging to the reputation of the programme. I don’t think it’s reflected well on the public confidence in what we did and it would have been better that we hadn’t done it, undoubtedly.
We would have had to find a different way to manage those expectations.
Again, if this had been something that we had a run-up to and we’d thought about, I’m absolutely sure we wouldn’t have gone with this answer. But in the moment of “Bloody hell, what do I do with this?”, I think, you know, we started to pass things to individual workers. They were – also had been – worked on things that we thought were high priority, the two things got a bit merged, I think. I think this evolves as opposed to any deliberate attempt to set up a channel.
And then clearly we have, you know, been talking about it ever since, in a way that I think has been deeply unhelpful.
We certainly didn’t intend to give an advantage to people going through this way; we intended to try to find a way of handling what we thought were both legitimate concerns and things which would get in the way of our teams doing the work.
And as we talked about before the break, it was a complicated task to get this done. Getting distractions removed from people was actually a helpful thing but, in retrospect, not the right thing.
Lady Hallett: You mentioned there – don’t worry, and I’m sorry we’ve had to press you, but it is important, as you know, to a number of people.
You mentioned there about “had we thought about it before”, basically we’re going back to the contents of my Module 1 report, planning and preparedness.
Mr Jonathan Marron: Yes.
Lady Hallett: What work has been done in the Department to make sure that a mistake like this – and plainly it was a mistake, everyone seems to agree that now – that mistakes like this don’t occur next time round?
Mr Jonathan Marron: I think it comes back to some of the things we were talking about before the break. The first bit is we are building the resilience of SCCL so that it has a clearer role in the future and has the capacity to build on. I think part of our challenge here was we built a new process live, with new people that hadn’t been part of this business before.
Actually, we should just remember we did that while they were in their bedrooms. You know, this is the week of lockdown this all happens.
We were on Skype in the Department of Health at that time – I don’t know whether people remember Skype – but that wasn’t easy either; once you had more than about ten people on the call it fell off.
So the first thing: better resilience in our structures.
The second, I think we’ve learned lessons around how do you structure these sort of processes, which would reduce the need, as Boardman set out in his review, for this kind of checking it’s all right, because it’s clearly been managed in a way that’s moving things quickly. So I think going faster in your core process is very important.
Then I think, really, it’s – it’s just really clear you just – you can’t do this in your procurement process. So, I mean, I think Gareth Rhys Williams yesterday was talking about, you know, if you ever did have to do this, having a separate administrative function that would look at it and just keep it totally clean from the procurement, if you had to, would be helpful and better than the sense we’ve got of having a different process.
Now, I am – I mean, the charts say what the charts say, so I’m sure that’s there. At the time it was described to me as: basically that first bit of triage that got you from either webform or email in to “This is something worth pursuing” was slightly different, but after that, commercial assurance, technical assurance, was exactly the same process.
So we took confidence from that, and indeed the fact that the PPE Cell itself, and the Buy Teams, made no decisions on whether to award a contract. You know, they made recommendations. The accounting officer of the Department of Health, who had been wholly separate from this process, made the final decision. So that also gave us some assurance that, actually, our process was justifiable and fair.
But I mean, it’s impossible, in retrospect to say that this was the …
Lady Hallett: Yes.
Mr Sharma: Thank you, Mr Marron, we will be hearing from Mr Young during the course of these hearings.
Another subject, please.
Could we have up INQ000575086.
This is the DHSC schedule. One of the topics or themes which has been running thorough this module so far is that of data. The Inquiry requested DHSC to provide it with contract data in respect of the PPE Cell.
Mr Marron, are you all right? Would you like a break?
Mr Jonathan Marron: I’m all right, yes. I’ve just seen the table you’re bringing up, which I know is a very complicated table.
Lady Hallett: Are you looking at my face, Mr Marron? Perhaps you were.
Mr Sharma: I will try to take this as quickly as I can.
This is a DHSC schedule which sets out the PPE contracts which were entered into by DHSC, in particular in the hundred days which this Inquiry is focusing on in this module.
Each of the contracts is given an “Original Offer No.”, which is the box on the top left.
There’s the offer date.
They’re then allocated a reference number, then the contract and supplier name, which are usually the same.
Moving across, the company status, the date on which the contract was signed, the contract start date, the type of PPE to which it relates.
Sections have been redacted which are irrelevant.
If you keep scrolling across, the “Original Contract Value”, the “Current Contract Value”. And as I understand it, that’s what happened in the event there’s been an issue with the contract and so the value of the contract has been reduced.
Mr Jonathan Marron: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: The supply chain, the workstream through which it came through, which we’ve already touched upon, UK Make, China Buy, or New Buy.
The vexed issue of the “High Priority Lane”, whether it came in through the High Priority Lane.
If so, what was the Source of [the] Referral”. And then the “Actual Referrer” being the person that actually took it into the system, as it were.
And if we keep moving across, the account – the AO, the “Accounting Officer Decision Maker”, Christopher Young and Jon Fundrey – you’ll be hearing from Christopher Young during the course of this module – whether the contract was awarded directly to the manufacturer, conflicts of interest declarations, standards terms and conditions used.
We’ll keep going across.
Modern day slavery clauses, prepayment made, percentage of prepayment. And so on and so forth.
An enormous quantity of data is represented in this schedule. In respect, if I may, of some of the contracts which are the subject of the thematic reviews or case studies, if we can have a look, please, at row 18, Ayanda. One that we’ll be coming on to tomorrow.
If we just scroll across, it will be seen that, in that redacted column, current contract value is unredacted because it’s a thematic review and we’ll be considering the detail of that contract, for example, tomorrow, with Mr Blackburn, who is referred to there as the actual referrer.
Mr Marron, this schedule has been produced for the Inquiry by the Department of Health and Social Care.
Mr Jonathan Marron: Correct.
Counsel Inquiry: As I say, it contains a vast quantity of data and information. The only way in which we can understand that is by way of graphics that the Inquiry has put together. It’s based on the data contained in this schedule and I just want to take you to some of those, if I may.
The first one is INQ000565970. Page 16.
Although the schedule we’ve looked at does contain an enormous amount of data, there are contracts for which some data has not been provided. Could you help us, please, with why that is.
Mr Jonathan Marron: Yes, so clearly this has been an enormous task, and we’ve worked closely with the Inquiry to ensure that we do as much as we can.
We have found – it’s been prepared by the Department of Health and Social Care, so it’s been prepared off sources that are available for the Department of Health and Social Care in the time available, so we have been able to look at our own contract database Atamis. As I think the Inquiry may be aware, Atamis was not in place at the time we did this work, it was all stored – well, in the very, very early stages, on Excel spreadsheets, and then quickly, in April, moving on to a dedicated database called Mendix, which is owned by the Cabinet Office.
So one thing we have not done is search Mendix. I think it may be a helpful thing if the Department of Health and the Cabinet Office were to cooperate on trying to fill in the blanks from their data.
Counsel Inquiry: So one of the problems that you have is that your information is stored in different places, so it’s stored in some cases on Excel, or Mendix and on Atamis.
Mr Jonathan Marron: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: So you’re not sure which of those relevant systems has got the data or whether you’ve got access to it?
Mr Jonathan Marron: Well, I think the reality is that in this hundred-day period, the data was stored on Mendix. And if you think about the PPE Cell, which we talked about earlier, essentially this was a DHSC-governed team that drew together people from lots of different organisations.
The Cabinet Office, with their lead role in the Government Commercial Service, provided a core of those commercial excerpts, and they provided the Mendix system from the Cabinet Office.
At the time we of course had full access to the Mendix as we only had one team. You know, as we have prepared for this, we have access to the Department of Health’s corporate records but we have not been asked to cooperate with the Cabinet Office on theirs, we’ve been trying to – separate organisations. I think we could work with the Cabinet Office and fill this in but that would be a next step.
Counsel Inquiry: All right. Well, for the data that is missing, for now, from that schedule, you’ve got the statistics there for each of those categories, for conflicts of interest, as to whether they were declared. The number of contracts to which it relates is 150. I think there are 394 contracts on the schedule?
Mr Jonathan Marron: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: And that represents 40% of the total. Whether a modern slavery clause was included, that affects 131 contracts and so on and so forth.
I wonder, please, if we could turn to page 12 of this schedule. This a representation of the contracts for which prepayment was made. Prepayment was made on 256 contracts which is represented there on the bottom right-hand corner, representing 68% of the contracts by number.
Mr Jonathan Marron: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: I wonder, please, if we could turn to page 14.
Mr Jonathan Marron: Could I comment on this?
Counsel Inquiry: Of course.
Mr Jonathan Marron: I think this illustrates the position that we faced. I mean, prepayment just doesn’t normally happen, right? It’s not what government does.
You know, we’re a reputable buyer, everyone knows that we’re going to pay our bills, you don’t have to pre-pay.
In this period in the PPE market, everybody pre-paid. And if you weren’t prepared to make a payment upfront, you simply didn’t access the PPE. It was absolutely a seller’s market. As you know, the sales are concentrated in – the manufacturing was concentrated in a very small number of countries and everybody was competing for it.
So I think if we’re looking for an example of just how extraordinary a period it was, this brings it home, that you simply couldn’t do the deal unless you were prepared to take these very unusual circumstances.
And I think we’ve been clear in our evidence that in order to do business in this period we really had to take a completely different risk appetite.
We accepted doing business with firms that frankly I don’t think we would normally go anywhere near, we got pre-contract terms that we wouldn’t normally accept, and we paid prices that outside of the pandemic would not be acceptable. But that was needed in order to get the PPE that was required for the country, and I think the government was very clear in its instructions to us that we were to go out and secure that PPE.
And I think it’s a period in procurement – well, I mean, I’m not a procurement expert, but I’ve certainly seen nothing like it in my 30 years in government, and I think it just shows the efforts that we went to in order to secure PPE from a position in March where we were very, very worried about supply to a point in June or July where actually I don’t think we were worried about PPE again over the course of the pandemic.
Counsel Inquiry: You referred to contract terms.
Can we turn, please, to page 14 of the schedule. Again, all of this – this chart I mean, all of it derived from the DHSC schedule that we’ve looked at, to summarise the content of it. You’ve referred to standard government terms and conditions. So although prepayment was unusual during the course of the pandemic, it says here that 67% of the contracts that were signed, by number, 252 contracts in total, still had standard terms and conditions.
Mr Jonathan Marron: Yes, I think this reflects a set of standards and conditions that the Department of Health and Social Care used and a slightly different set from the Foreign Office, so, you know – but we were getting largely a set of standard contracts.
I think this is our standard terms and conditions in the pandemic. I’m not sure it’s a non-pandemic standard terms of conditions, if you see what I mean.
Counsel Inquiry: But nonetheless, the parties on the other side of the contracts for 67% of the cases were prepared to contract –
Mr Jonathan Marron: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: – with the government on the terms on which it had already, for want of a better word, dictated to them: “These are the terms that we would like to contract with you on, you’re prepared to agree with those.”
And that’s 252 contracts; is that right?
Mr Jonathan Marron: Yes. Now, of course, this includes contracts with the prepayment.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes.
Mr Jonathan Marron: So this is not a – so, just for clarity, this is not – if you were thinking about what a normal government contract would look like, I don’t think it’s that. This is, we had a standard set of terms that we were trying to use in these procurements and for most – well, for 67%, that was a success.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes, of course. So in each of these charts, the data has been isolated to one of those columns?
Mr Jonathan Marron: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: And in this case it’s the contract with standard terms and conditions?
Mr Jonathan Marron: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: The number of contracts it affected there on the left, 252, and then those for the others are beneath, and then the percentage is set out in the chart itself?
Mr Jonathan Marron: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: And you’re quite right, it doesn’t affect at all what the prepayment conditions were.
Mr Jonathan Marron: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: All right.
Page 18, please. One of the columns in the chart is headed “Contracts which had performance issues”. So the purpose of looking at this is to consider whether contracts which were in the High Priority Lane, compared to contracts which were not in the High Priority Lane, had performance issues. And so that’s been filtered out.
The High Priority Lane contracts are 115, at the top, the non-High Priority Lane contracts are 259, at the bottom.
For 3% of High Priority Lane contracts, the contract was terminated. For 43% there was no contractual performance issue. And for 55% there was a contractual performance issue.
Now, by contrast, for contracts were not in the High Priority Lane, the important figure is that which is on the right. 39% had a contractual performance issue.
So, at least according to the data in the DHSC schedule which this chart interprets, High Priority Lane contracts, 55% of them had a performance issue, and non-High Priority Lane contracts, only 39% of them had an issue.
Mr Jonathan Marron: So –
Counsel Inquiry: Is there anything you would like to comment on about that?
Mr Jonathan Marron: Yes. So I think we talked about contractual performance early on in this session.
Counsel Inquiry: Yes.
Mr Jonathan Marron: So this data, I think you’ve taken the column of contractual performance issues, yes or no, which I think from memory is 165 or 175 contracts in total. As we went through earlier, a substantial proportion of those contracts in the end turned out not to have a performance issue.
So I think what we’ve got here is you’ve essentially got everything that came into “Do not supply” that we may or may not have been worried about it. I think the total numbers of contracts – we’re starting with 176 as the total numbers that had an issue. If we take away those that were released, that were brought to contract, I think we are left with 40 contracts. So I think, actually, it’s that 40 contracts that we should look at if we want to look at is there a difference on the performance between the High Priority Lane and the normal.
Counsel Inquiry: Can I just ask you this question, then: if we were to take a snapshot in time of the hundred days or thereabouts that we were considering earlier, if you were the Department of Health and Social Care, looking at the contracts within the hundred days or close to those –
Mr Jonathan Marron: I wouldn’t know. So you have to remember how this worked. We were buying contracts in those hundred days, that’s when we were placing our orders. Our due diligence was on documentation. Faxed, emailed, whatever it could be. Until the material arrived in the country, we weren’t sure. I mean, frankly we were very worried that significant volumes of it when it arrived in the country wasn’t going to be up to standard, and that is one of the reasons that the buying is higher than turns out to be necessary.
So the actual point at which we understand there may be a problem is when it arrives. Clearly it doesn’t all arrive in those three months. In fact, very large proportions of it start to arrive in September and October and November of that year.
So I think the reality is, as the material comes in, we start to understand whether it’s: clearly fine, straight to the NHS and released; “Actually, ooh, we’re not so sure”, off to “Do not Supply”; and then a resolution process in our warehouses about whether that works.
Some of those things were resolved very quickly. You know, further checks, we are quite happy that this is what it says it is, it can be used. Other elements have taken longer, you’ve given back to manufacturers.
So I think it’s not a question of at a point in time you knew. If you really want to look at did the contract perform to contract standards, we have to follow this process through to the end.
I know it’s highly unusual to take that long to get to “did your contract work”, but this is a function of the way that PPE arrives, and it arrived during a pandemic.
So our focus in November/December of 2020 is making sure we are getting the things that we are absolutely convinced are good to our warehouses in Daventry, that are then distributed to the NHS. And we then prioritised that over the things that we thought might not be.
Counsel Inquiry: To follow your point, if I may, to its logical conclusion, that would mean, based on what you’ve said, that in the fullness of time, in two or three or four or five or more years, it would be possible for the contractual performance issue, the number of contracts, simply to disappear –
Mr Jonathan Marron: No.
Counsel Inquiry: – because over time –
Mr Jonathan Marron: No.
Counsel Inquiry: Am I wrong? Please tell me –
Mr Jonathan Marron: No, that is not what I’m saying. So I think we have a clear number, I think it’s around 40, of contracts that we have identified as failing to perform against the expectations. We have a dissolution team in place that is pursuing all of those contracts. Some, as you have seen from some of the exhibits, earlier we have already reached agreements on. Some we are proceeding to court cases to try to recover our money. And in others we’re still in negotiation with the firms themselves over whether to – so that is an active recovery process. But it is on 40 contracts not on 175 contracts, because actually, as we work through the 175, lots of them the problem was not a contractual one; it was we were unsure about the documentation, which turns out to be fine. We’ve bought ear looped FP2 masks – when you’ve signed the contract for FP2 masks, it’s not a contractual failure, it’s – they’re just not the right product. So I think it’s 40 contracts that we’re really worried about, not 175. These numbers are 175.
Counsel Inquiry: Is what you’re saying there, is that true in respect of High Priority Lane contracts and non-High Priority Lane contracts?
Mr Jonathan Marron: Yes. Yes, so it made absolutely no difference from the point of ordering and coming through. We have basically carried out the same due diligence ahead of buying, and the same caution on arrival in country. I mean, it was really – you can imagine that we are buying this very, very important kit that people’s lives depend on without being able to have it properly tested in advance. You know, we were obviously cautious about the way it came through the department’s warehouses.
And the other reflection, as you have already commented, we had more PPE arriving than we needed. Essentially that allowed us to push the good stuff out to the NHS quickly, and come back to this.
Counsel Inquiry: Just to be clear on this one point, the point you’re making would affect this chart of High Priority Lane –
Mr Jonathan Marron: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: – and non-High Priority Lane contracts; is that right?
Mr Jonathan Marron: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: It’s not just in respect of one category?
Mr Jonathan Marron: It’s not just in respect of one category. I think there are – sorry, I’m now reading my briefing, so this is always a bit – I think there are 21 contracts from the High Priority Lane that are in our dissolution team, and I think there are 19 from the others. So it is a higher proportion, I think, but I don’t think it’s quite the same as the graph you’ve got here.
I’m very happy to share those numbers if it’s helpful. I think they are in the table but that table is very difficult to understand, so if it would be helpful to provide a breakdown we can do.
Counsel Inquiry: I’m grateful, thank you, Mr Marron.
The next chart to look at, please, is that on page 24. The question which is answered in this chart are whether contracts were awarded to the manufacturer, and comparing whether the contracts awarded were in the High Priority Lane or not in the High Priority Lane. And the key figure from this chart is that in the High Priority Lane, 79% of contracts were not awarded to a manufacturer, ie, they’re awarded to an intermediary.
Mr Jonathan Marron: Yeah.
Counsel Inquiry: Whereas in the non-High Priority Lane, only 47% of contracts were awarded to a manufacturer.
So what that means is that in the High Priority Lane there are more intermediaries that are being awarded contracts than there are compared to non-High Priority Lane contracts; is that right?
Mr Jonathan Marron: Yes, and I think that’s what I expect. I mean, the actual size of the discrepancy I’m not so sure on, but if you think about what we were doing, the High Priority Lane is really part of that, that first stage, in that eight-stage process for new offers. So this is, we’ve opened up the Coronavirus Business Support Scheme we’re asking people to come forward who might be able to find PPE. This includes all of the unusual providers who are intermediaries largely and have contracts. We are trying to get their PPE into the country using those networks. So I think that is unsurprising.
So if you think some of the other lanes, UK Make, China Buy, we are there going to manufacturers deliberately so I think this is what I’d expect, so if you took –
Counsel Inquiry: Forgive me, you would expect that contracts in the High Priority Lane were more likely to be awarded to intermediaries?
Mr Jonathan Marron: I think I expect the whole of the New Suppliers Lane to be more likely to go to the intermediaries and I think the HPL was largely that. Now I know we have marked China Buy and some UK Make as HPL. I think those two teams worked completely separately, so I think what we’ve really done there is marked that the HPL team had an initial email and they’ve passed it on. My understanding which would be worth testing with the teams, is that the UK Make process and the China Buy process ran essentially independently of the New Supply Team.
Counsel Inquiry: Tell me if I’m wrong but, if an intermediary is involved in the supply chain, doesn’t that make the prices which are being paid for the goods higher and, therefore, that contracts, which are being awarded in the High Priority Lane, because there is a preponderance of intermediaries within them, will therefore have a higher contract price or am I wrong about that?
Mr Jonathan Marron: I think the key thing was that – well, manufacturers or intermediaries, people who had access to PPE for immediate delivery in this period were demanding much higher prices. They were often intermediaries. The challenge in the market was, do you accept to pay those prices with those intermediaries or do you not buy? So I think we were in a position that we were buying intermediaries – from intermediaries at high prices, but that was the necessary step to secure immediate supplies of PPE.
This is, I think, I understand, and again, you will ask the commercial experts, that much of the buying in normal times is through intermediaries in this market, so it’s not something where, you know, we’ve had direct relationship with manufacturers. You know, gloves, masks, these are not complicated products; they were sold as commodities on lowest price.
So I do think that initial response, where we need to get it quickly, we looked at as many people as possible and we had to look at intermediaries. You will see, I think you have an exhibit on dates, I think over the course of the period as we get better at reaching out to the Chinese manufacturers, understanding our supply chain better, bringing on UK Make, we proportionately shift to manufacturers. I think there’s high value in shifting to manufacturers if you can do it. Your point is that you delay us or that sort of cost coming out, I think you’ve also got more security, more confidence. So I would agree the premise that the more you can move up the supply chain, the better, but in the moment facing we haven’t got enough PPE, I think we were right to look at the intermediaries and we were right to buy at the prices.
Counsel Inquiry: All right, the final chance, if I may, page 32. This is looking at the average unit cost of PPE items by workstream. This comes with the caveat, if I may put it in these terms that a number of contracts in the schedule refer to multiple categories of PPE. Those have had to be stripped away because it’s not possible to separate out the different pricings. So for example if a contract had gowns and gloves, there is a single contract price. One cannot understand from the data which has been provided, which proportion of the contract is for gowns and which proportion of the contract is for gloves. So this chart on price relates only to those contracts which have a single type of PPE on them: gowns, eye protection, face masks and gloves.
It’s been separated out into the three lanes of supply, and what is apparent from this chart is that for gowns, the most expensive route of supply is New Buy. For eye protection the most expensive route of supply is UK Make. For face masks it is also UK Make. But consistently – and – forgive me, for gloves UK Make doesn’t appear – but consistently the cheapest place from which to procure PPE is the China Buy lane.
Mr Jonathan Marron: Yes, so I think there were quite a few caveats about this data so the one you mentioned, which we may be able to help, if we have enough time to look, we should break it up. But I think the other big thing, there were two things that really drove price. The first one was delivery and when you wanted it. If you wanted it immediately, it was far more expensive, so I think if we looked at breaking down when these things were delivered you would see that gowns, eye protection, face masks to be delivered in March, April, May would have had a significant premium compared to taking something in September, October, November, or indeed into the next year. So that’s one thing. So I think we would really, if we wanted to do a proper price analysis we would need to look over time and when the deliveries started.
I think the second one we would really look at is volumes. Again, this is from memory, so I may not be quite correct, but I remember very significant volume contracts being placed in China Buy, so it may be that we were buying large quantities, which brings your price down.
So I think that takes you back, actually, to the premise that you are pushing, that, if we were able to buy in large quantities from manufacturers, we should get better prices. I think that is correct but, again, in a position where we felt we were critically short, we had to look at other options and, indeed, we accepted that we would pay higher prices in order to secure the PPE that we needed.
Counsel Inquiry: Now, of course this analysis has been conducted by the Inquiry on the basis of the DHSC schedule which we’ve referred to. One of the themes that you’ve mentioned earlier was data, and you’ve referred to automation, and if I may, in my penultimate questions, just ask you, please, about, given your experience in the PPE Cell, looking at the process that was established, the experience of those that were working in the PPE Cell, and also looking at the importance of data in working out prices and quality of supply and contract performance, what do you think could be done better in the future, in the event of a pandemic that required emergency procurement when it comes to data?
Mr Jonathan Marron: Yes, so I think in sort of the basic question of recording, I think we’re in a much better position in the Department of Health, the Atamis system, the tailor-made system to run procurement and records. I think that is now in place. I think I’m right in recalling that we’d initially produced that at the autumn, perhaps, of 2019, to be rolled out for June/July 2020 so it was sort of coming.
Counsel Inquiry: So Atamis is one develop?
Mr Jonathan Marron: Yes, so I think, if we were doing that now, then all of the material would be stored on Atamis from the beginning. There would be no need to use Excel spreadsheets in the first couple of days and no need to use the Cabinet Office Mendix document.
Counsel Inquiry: Does Atamis allow you to automate and triage the offers that are coming in or not?
Mr Jonathan Marron: I understand that it’s a tailor-made procurement system.
One of the procurement experts you are talking to will have a much better view of its capabilities. I am not a procurement expert. But I think in certain – the issue of data recording access, have we got that, I think that will be better and (unclear). So I think that is definitely an improvement.
Then I think, in a pandemic, I think the other thing you have to be prepared for, if we get into the position that we are doing emergency procurement, you really have to be ready to build and pull together all the data you had, so the things that were really important to us.
Counsel Inquiry: Pull together all of the data?
Mr Jonathan Marron: All of the data. I’m trying to give a sense of the data challenge. So we have talked about pricing and contracts, which is clearly a critical part of this, we were running a price comparison process, looking at the average prices paid over the time, and variation, you know, trying to avoid any contracts over 25% higher than the two-week run rate. That’s the sort of thing you have to do in the pandemic. I mean, I don’t think you can do that in advance, so you have got to set up those systems that you’re monitoring in-line.
The other bit on data that was, I think, much, much more challenging was really understanding the usage in our system. We had no frontline data on actual usage of PPE or indeed inventory.
Counsel Inquiry: I think that’s what’s sometimes described as the burn rate?
Mr Jonathan Marron: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: So the inventory, the quantity which is stored onsite –
Mr Jonathan Marron: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: – in NHS trusts and hospitals and in the care sector, and the burn rate is the speed at which –
Mr Jonathan Marron: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: – that PPE is being used?
Mr Jonathan Marron: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: What you’re saying is that if you had data on the burn rate, you would be able to better predict the –
Mr Jonathan Marron: Yes.
Counsel Inquiry: – types and quantities of PPE which you would need to buy?
Mr Jonathan Marron: Better prediction, and at any point where you are running short of supply, better targeting of where it needs to go. I mean, essentially if somebody has got significant inventory locally, you don’t need to send them any more. We simply didn’t know that. So, I mean, I know that everybody struggled but having that sort of information, I think, would be really helpful.
Then the other thing that we, I think, need to be really clear, the military team that helped us with the Command Cell really helped us build a model to track our incoming supply first of all. I think one of the things that perhaps we don’t talk about very much is the disruption was not just to the production of PPE and the contract but actually the global systems for moving these things around also were severely challenged in the pandemic, and so there was significant work doing that.
Counsel Inquiry: Mr –
Mr Jonathan Marron: One last point, I do remember –
Mr Sharma: I’m very sorry, but there are a number of questions to be asked by the Core Participants. Thank you very much for the evidence which you’ve given.
My Lady, I don’t know if you have any questions or if we can turn to –
Lady Hallett: No, thank you.
I think it’s Professor Thomas first of all.
Questions From Professor Thomas
Professor Thomas: Good afternoon, Mr Marron. Can you hear me?
Mr Jonathan Marron: I can hear you.
Professor Thomas: I represent FEMHO, the Federation of Ethic Minority Healthcare Workers. I have two short topics, four questions.
Mr Marron, I’m sure you’re aware that concerns have been raised and were particularly pronounced regarding the fit and suitability of PPE for ethnic minority healthcare workers, correct?
Mr Jonathan Marron: Yes, I am aware.
Professor Thomas: Now, in terms of inclusivity of the PPE design and procurement, how did the DHSC assess the needs of ethnic minority healthcare workers during the procurement process, and what steps are being taken to address the specific needs in ongoing and future PPE procurement strategies?
Mr Jonathan Marron: Yes, thank you. So I think two points are really important here. One, there’s a very general point around for the whole range of PPE, having the right sizes for everybody is really important. Now I think that is more – is broadly applicable.
I think if we looked at some of the challenges we had in providing the right equipment to ethnic minority staff, I think the real challenge came in what we call the FFP3 respirator masks. So for people not familiar, this is the very close-fitting mask that needs to make a seal. Now, obviously those masks, they don’t fit all face shapes and sizes, and I think if we particularly look at the sort of distribution of face shape and sizes, I think for some of our ethnic minority colleagues they found it very hard to get a fit in a mask.
We did two things, one a really significant programme of fit testing. Essentially, you have a liquid put in front of the mask, if you can taste it, it doesn’t fit. So it’s really making sure that, for everybody who had a mask, we knew whether it fit or not, and without a fit-tested mask, you couldn’t work on aerosol generating procedures. So the highest level risk wasn’t allowed.
We became aware of these difficulties and we moved to try to have a much broader range of masks, simply to give a different range of sizes and fits, so that more people could find a mask that would work for them.
At the start of the pandemic, our pandemic stockpile, I think, had four different shapes of mask. By the time we got to the end, we’d procured 12 different shapes, so we really made an effort to make sure that we had a much broader range of PPE that would meet everybody’s needs, and I think that was one of our significant learnings.
Professor Thomas: Let me move on. I’ve got three questions and I want to get through them quickly. What modelling methods were used to predict PPE demands in primary care, and did these models account for the demographic diversity amongst end users, particularly for higher-risk groups, including ethnic minority healthcare workers or was a one-size-fits-all approach adopted?
Mr Jonathan Marron: No, we didn’t have a one-size-fits-all approach. We worked very hard across the whole range of PPE to make the wide range of sizes so that people could find appropriate PPE available. And indeed, as I’ve talked about the respirator masks, really significant steps to change the range of masks that were available, so that everybody could find something to fit and, indeed, as we made PPE available, we tried to make the widest possible range available both to our hospitals and later to primary care and social care.
And I think our work on the e-portal allowed primary care – so that’s GPs, dentists, pharmacists, small social care providers, to order their PPE direct from the department in, you know, a wide range of –
Professor Thomas: Mr Marron, I don’t mean to cut across you but you’re making it sound as if there were no problems, but we’ve heard in various modules that have preceded this, there was a number of problems with the fit.
Mr Jonathan Marron: I’m sorry if I’ve given that impression. I do not intend in any way to minimise the challenges. I think I was clear that at the start of the pandemic we had very few masks and were very (unclear). People found that very difficult to secure fit. We did take steps to broaden that and I think this is one of the things that, as we go forward, ensuring that we’ve got a wider range of masks available in our stockpiles so that we’ll have them, I think, is very important.
Professor Thomas: Let me move on to my last topic, and I’ll get through this very quickly. So following on from what you’ve just said, let’s turn to transparency and representation in the procurement decision making. Your witness statement reflects significant role in the decision-making process, highlighting the opportunity to engage with various stakeholders, including organisations like whom I represent.
So question. Can you help her Ladyship with this: what key questions were learned regarding the procurement and distribution of PPE during the pandemic and how are these lessons being incorporated into future emergency preparedness policies to better serve diverse healthcare populations?
Mr Jonathan Marron: So I think the key lessons we’ve taken, one making sure that we’ve got a stockpile of PPE available that allows us to respond. We’re holding a much wider range of products than we did before. I think we have learnt that lesson. Again, I think the specific challenge for ethnic minority staff was in the respirator masks. We have built a wider range of masks which should fit a far greater range of face sizes.
We also, indeed only in small amounts, provided a small amount of powered hoods that could be used instead of masks. There are particularly important for people who have beards and are not able to remove their beard for religious or other reasons. So there was experimentation in how we could make sure that people could take this forward and I think, as we think about our pandemic preparedness for a future event, ensuring that we have those things in place is important.
I think the other thing, it’s not quite the same issue but I think it is really important, I think we could do a much better job of communication. I felt that many times there was real concern and fear amongst staff, and particularly ethnic minority staff, about what they were being asked to do, and I think the changes in the guidance, I think, were very difficult and I remember the BMA being involved in a judicial review against our IPC guidance, where, you know, the litigants came to see myself and Susan Hopkins of the IPC cell, and we managed to work through that. Actually, they felt that our guidance was sensible but they simply hadn’t understood. So I think how communication could be much, much better.
Professor Thomas: So finally this: how are you going to ensure going forward that groups like the one that I represent, FEMHO, and similar organisations are represented and involved in the procurement decision-making processes?
Mr Jonathan Marron: I think we are very open to having a broader conversation about procurement and I’m very happy to talk to you about how we might do that and I think the Department has really sort of taken on the need to really think through how we run our procurement and our pandemic preparedness so we’re ready to meet the needs of all of our community and I think we generally believe that we could have done more earlier in the Covid-19 pandemic and we will try to do it next time.
Professor Thomas: That’s very fair of you. Thank you.
Thank you, my Lady.
Lady Hallett: Thank you.
Ms Campbell is just there.
Questions From Ms Campbell
Ms Campbell: Thank you, Mr Marron. I ask questions on behalf of the Northern Ireland Covid Bereaved.
Two topics, please, and can I say at the outset, if you’re not the right person to answer my questions, it’s important that you say so, because I appreciate you’ve given a corporate statement and these may not be within your direct expertise or experience.
Mr Jonathan Marron: Yes.
Ms Campbell: The first question is about supply routes to community providers and we looked briefly when you were being asked questions earlier at a chart – I think it’s page 205 of your statement – in which, on the right-hand side, we can see how distribution to community providers was to be organised. The background to the question is the commitment by the government to provide PPE free of charge, including to, if you like, health and social care providers in the community, GPs, dentistry, pharmacies, even prisons. Okay.
Mr Jonathan Marron: Yes.
Ms Campbell: In your statement, it’s actually at paragraph 636 for the record, you go on to explain that there were two main routes of supply, one was via commercial wholesalers, and the other was via local authorities, local resilience forums. Just to give it some context, the commercial wholesalers received about 337 million items and about 637 million items went through the LRFs, all right?
Am I right that the obvious difference between the two routes is that the local resilience forums would distribute PPE from their hubs for free, whereas the commercial wholesalers would distribute PPE or make it available to be purchased, having bought it or acquired it from the DHSC or another source?
Mr Jonathan Marron: Yes, so I can answer for England. I know what we did in England.
Ms Campbell: Yes.
Mr Jonathan Marron: So I should break this down. So before the pandemic struck, the plan to supply social care and the sort of small primary care providers was that they would continue as they had in normal circumstances to buy from wholesalers.
Ms Campbell: Yes.
Mr Jonathan Marron: The Department would release stock from the PIPP stockpile and others to those wholesalers so that could continue.
Ms Campbell: Yes.
Mr Jonathan Marron: I think whilst we did release – I hope you have the numbers.
Ms Campbell: Yes, we do.
Mr Jonathan Marron: We did try this and it had some, we were concerned very early in the pandemic that this route was not sufficient. The local resilience forums, which I think we started at the very beginning of April but I would need to check the exact date, was our first response to how do we get more PPE to social care, primary care, all of the small providers that you can’t take a huge pallet and drop it on their doorstep like you can a hospital. The LRF, so that’s a local resilience forum, we definitely saw that as an emergency channel, we were trying to do that as a top-up so that the people in most need could get it.
We never saw that as a continuous way of doing this and you see that by the time we get to June and July of 2020 we have small providers of primary care, social providers and indeed all providers by the time we get to the autumn registered on what we called the e-portal, which was essentially an –
Ms Campbell: Yes, I really don’t want to go as far as the e-portal. I think that kicks in about September, as you say –
Mr Jonathan Marron: I think by June we’ve got small providers basically registered –
Ms Campbell: My question is slightly different: when you use the commercial wholesalers, which was a significant source of supply, if not the primary one –
Mr Jonathan Marron: Yes.
Ms Campbell: – to what extent was it considered that commercial suppliers would sell PPE to community providers for profit and, therefore, was inconsistent with the government commitment to providing it for free?
Mr Jonathan Marron: Yes, so I think – so this is my own understanding, I’ve checked this in advance – I think my memory is that the process intended that we would sell – the government would sell to wholesalers at a normal PPE price and they would sell it on at that price, so – or maybe with a small margin. It certainly wasn’t the idea that they would sell it on at the pandemic prices which, as we’ve talked about, were significantly high. So I think it was not a role of free PPE at that time. We moved away from that very quickly to providing free emergency PPE from the LRFs and then, of course, by the time we get to the summer we are providing free PPE to everybody.
Ms Campbell: I think we’ll leave it there and pick it up with another witness next week because I want to ask you also about the four nations distribution of PPE and you address it in your statement over a fairly lengthy section that culminates with reference to a protocol issued by the Secretary of State for Health on 1 March 2021, which essentially indicates that each devolved administration would control its own share of the funding envelope, would share information between them, would seek value for money by minimising competition between the four nations, within the international market and would collaborate in terms of need and resilience.
Mr Jonathan Marron: Yes.
Ms Campbell: We had invited you, and I hope you’ve had the opportunity, to look at an email exchange between representatives of the Northern Irish, Scottish and Welsh administrations. For the record, it’s INQ000377395. In that email exchange, I hope I’ll jog your memory, there are concerns about the proposal from the DHSC that it would manage the PPE fund on behalf of all four nations and the time of this email is mid-May 2020. Those involved in the email were concerned that really it left more questions than it answered and it certainly didn’t answer their concerns about procurement on their behalf.
They suggested in that email in May 2020 a new four nations PPE procurement group, that each administration would be an equal partner, that they would plan future PPE in that group in terms of expenditure and, where the requirements of each nation overlapped they could work together to get best value.
Now, is it fair to observe that there’s not a great deal of difference between what was being proposed by the devolved administrations in May 2020 and that which ultimately was in the protocol issued in March 2021?
Mr Jonathan Marron: So I think broad reflections on the work with the devolved administrations –
Ms Campbell: Well, keep them narrow because we’re –
Mr Jonathan Marron: Yes, before –
Lady Hallett: We’re running out of time, I’m afraid, Mr Marron, sorry.
Mr Jonathan Marron: Yes, so we operated separately before the pandemic.
Ms Campbell: Yes.
Mr Jonathan Marron: As the crisis hit, we worked closely together. There was a proposal that the Department of Health would lead for everybody, and for – we worked on that basis for a short period of time. We then agreed that, actually, it was better to devolve the fair share of the resources we were given to each of the nations and we would all run our own procurement efforts, with the co-ordination you talk about so that let’s everybody’s procurement team be part of this use everybody’s networks. So that’s where we ended up.
And then the other bit that I think was really important throughout this period, we were sharing information about our stocks and what we had, and all four nations helped the others through the mutual aid of, you know, moving masks or gowns, whatever the challenge might be, between the four nations.
Ms Campbell: It might be reasonably inferred from that answer of evolution in terms of arrangement –
Mr Jonathan Marron: Yes, definitely.
Ms Campbell: – that it would have been significantly more helpful to have a protocol in place pre-pandemic about what four nations PPE procurement would look like?
Mr Jonathan Marron: I think the four nations worked really closely together. We had a Four Nations PPE Board that met between April and August to really try and coordinate. I think the immediate task of ensuring the PPE across the four nations was used where it was most needed, I think we did an excellent job of. I think the questions of how to do procurement, we’ve talked at length about the challenges we faced setting up a new Parallel Supply Chain. I do think that the position that we landed in that allowed us to take advantage of the expertise of procurement in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales, as well as the NHS English procurement, I think was a sensible place to end.
Ms Campbell: Just, finally, in terms of that position, is that the position you landed in May 2021 onwards, with that protocol coming in to play?
Mr Jonathan Marron: I believe it was around that period, I would need to check.
Ms Campbell: Thank you.
Lady Hallett: Thank you, Ms Campbell.
Dr Mitchell.
Dr Mitchell is that way, directly in front of you.
Questions From Dr Mitchell
Dr Mitchell: I’m instructed by Aamer Anwar & Company on behalf of the Scottish Covid Bereaved, and it’s really the flip side of the questions that you were being asked there by my learned friend, Ms Campbell.
The question I was going to ask you about was, from your perspective, would there have been merit in having one pandemic plan where single procurement and distribution was involved but, in fact, you’ve answered that question by saying that you thought it was better to devolve. So I suppose the question then is: why was that?
Mr Jonathan Marron: So I think, in the position that we faced, it was really helpful to be able to use the experience, skills, networks of all the procurement teams. I mean, if – maybe it would be possible to bring all the procurement teams together into one group. We didn’t attempt to do that. I think doing that at the point we had lockdown, I think, would have been too difficult. So I think, in the end, ensuring that everybody was able to bring in supplies was really helpful.
We continued to coordinate it. We didn’t want a position where, you know, the English procurement was bidding against the Scottish procurement for the same contract in China. That clearly would be unhelpful. So we continued to coordinate to try and avoid that. But I think we really were in a position where we wanted as much capability and capacity as possible on this task, and I think this allowed us to do that.
Dr Mitchell: So it was just employing as many people who had that skill set as possible, and looking at it from all four nations?
Mr Jonathan Marron: I think, in the immediate period we’ve been talking today about how did we make this emergency response, I think that was the right thing to do, as we think about our resilience going forward, it may be worth considering whether there are other ways of doing this.
Dr Mitchell: Thank you.
Thank you, my Lady.
Lady Hallett: Thank you, Dr Mitchell.
That completes the questions we have for you, Mr Marron. I appreciate how hard you and your colleagues must have worked during the pandemic and how distraught, I’m sure, many of you are – I think you’ve shown signs of it this afternoon – that all your hard work has been undermined by the creation of the VIP Lane. I hope you understand why we had to examine it.
The Witness: Absolutely.
Lady Hallett: But I’m extremely grateful to you and your colleagues for the work that you did and, of course, for the work you’re doing helping the Inquiry. I know you probably have to arrange some of the response to us, and it’s a huge burden. I know that. So thank you for that, and thank you for your help this afternoon.
The Witness: Thank you very much.
Lady Hallett: Very well, I shall return at 10.00 tomorrow.
(4.36 pm)
(The hearing adjourned until 10.00 am the following day)