10 March 2025

(10.30 am)

(Proceedings delayed)

(10.35 am)

Lady Hallett: Mr Sharma, I gather we’ve got a slight technical hitch but we seem to be ready to go.

Mr Sharma: We are.

My Lady, the first witness is Professor John Manners-Bell.

Professor John Manners-Bell

PROFESSOR JOHN MANNERS-BELL (sworn).

Questions From Counsel to the Inquiry

Mr Sharma: Professor Manners-Bell, you have provided the Inquiry with an expert report. The reference is INQ000474864. It extends to approximately 200 pages. I wonder if you’d be kind enough to confirm that that report is true to the best of your knowledge and belief.

Professor John Manners-Bell: Absolutely.

Counsel Inquiry: Professor Manners-Bell, you are the chief executive of a global market research organisation, Transport Intelligence Limited, the founder of the Foundation for Future Supply Chain, a fellow of the UK Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport, and you are formerly the honorary visiting professor at London Metropolitan University Guildhall Faculty of Business and Law; is that correct?

Professor John Manners-Bell: That is correct.

Counsel Inquiry: You are also the former chair of the Supply Chain and Logistics Global Advisory Council of the World Economic Forum?

Professor John Manners-Bell: Yeah.

Counsel Inquiry: You are the author of several published works, including texts on global logistics and supply chain risk management?

Professor John Manners-Bell: That is correct.

Counsel Inquiry: I wonder, Professor Manners-Bell, if we could start, please, with an introduction to supply chains, what they are, why they matter, and what they comprise of.

Professor John Manners-Bell: Certainly, and I think the first thing to recognise with supply chains is that, in usual times, they work away in the background, nobody really understand or recognises that they’re there, and the first time that people will understand that supply chains actually exist is when they break and when you can’t get food on the shelves or you can’t get the right medicines at your hospital, or indeed, as we’re all here today, is because you can’t get hold of the right PPE.

And so I would say up until 2011 or so, there is really very little understanding of what could go wrong in supply chains, but as a whole, supply chains relate to the movement of goods from suppliers, who in many cases are offshored, outsourced to China, to Asia. Those products move through the supply chain, through a variety of different companies, assembling those goods. They’re shipped usually, you know, internationally by sea freight or by air cargo. They then arrive in the western market, where they go through, again, a whole process of different organisations, such as wholesalers, distributors, retailers, before they arrive at the consumer.

And at every stage, value is being added by all the different companies which are involved in that supply chain.

And as you have one flow of goods from Asia, usually – I mean, not always but in many cases it is – from Asia to the west, you also have flows of information, of data, which go up and down the supply chain, which provide levels of visibility, tracking, where are your goods, at what part of the process, the order process, are they –

Counsel Inquiry: Thank you, professor. Can I ask you just to pause there. Perhaps during the course of your evidence I’m going to take you through a number of charts which you’ve very helpfully provided in your report. The first one is at page 15 of your report, and it touches on just what you’ve been explaining to the Inquiry.

There it is on screen.

What you’ve just described to the Inquiry is that moving in one direction is the flow of goods from the supplier to the manufacturer, to the distributor, the retailer, and ultimately to the customer.

The flow of funds in the opposite direction.

And then could you help us, please, with the arrow pointing in two directions, which refers to the flow of information. You’ve referred to “visibility”. Could you help us, please, with what they mean in the context of supply chains.

Professor John Manners-Bell: Certainly. And this is absolutely a critical issue related to supply chain and the efficiency and the effectiveness of how the supply chain works.

If you’re a customer, just to work through an example, and you place an order via – maybe it could be on an online retailer, e-platform or whatever, then that triggers the release of an order process throughout the whole supply chain and the – whoever the retailer may be or whoever is fulfilling that will order to its suppliers to replenish the stock, which has moved on to the customer. Those suppliers will then place orders further up the supply chain, internationally usually, as I was saying, in terms of manufacturing, especially with consumer goods, until it triggers a whole range of different events throughout that supply chain.

And so that’s what I mean by the data flowing back up the supply chain. But once that order has been placed by the supplier, then they will upload some data to their platform that they are using which will inform every other member of the supply chain all the way back to the consumer when that goods will be delivered, when that order will be fulfilled. So that is the flow up and down.

Counsel Inquiry: Now, this figure, of course, is a simplification of something which is far more complicated happening underneath.

Could we have, please, figure 2, which is at page 16 of your report.

Professor John Manners-Bell: Yes, and as the Inquiry can see, things are much more complicated than the first diagram, which we displayed.

There are multiple tiers of suppliers, and many of those tiers will work for other companies within the supply chain as well. And this is getting closer to the reality of a PPE supply chain, which we’ll come on to a lot later.

Counsel Inquiry: So, just looking at figure 2, on the left-hand side there are “2. Tier Suppliers”. What are they, please?

Professor John Manners-Bell: They are suppliers who are working for other companies within the supply chain. So a tier 1 supplier would have a contact and link with the main customer, who was organising the manufacture of a particular product. Tier 2 suppliers will work for those tier 1 suppliers. And in many cases you can go down to tier 5, tier 6 suppliers. So many, many tiers of suppliers all working for each other, all undertaking different processes within the supply chain, as they are being subcontracted to manufacture components, intermediate goods, which then are assembled at a later stage within that supply chain. So it is highly complicated.

Counsel Inquiry: So there are a high number of different relationships at different layers involved, ultimately, in making sure that goods pass from one side of this diagram, ultimately to the other, the right, to the consumers?

Professor John Manners-Bell: Exactly. That’s right.

Counsel Inquiry: And in the course of this, the movement of goods from one side to the other, you refer in your report to there being a combination of collaboration and competition between different entities in a supply chain. Could you help us with that, please.

Professor John Manners-Bell: Yes, certainly. In many cases, many of these suppliers who are manufacturers in their own right will also be competing for the same business as – for the main customer. So many times they will also supply goods to other suppliers, other manufacturers within the industry, but at the same time as that, they may also be supplying direct to the end manufacturer, the original equipment manufacturer.

Counsel Inquiry: What are the problems, just in general terms, which are created by that combination of complexity and the lack of visibility within the supply chains? What happens?

Professor John Manners-Bell: Well, absolutely, the – it is the lack of visibility which is the problem because data will be existing at various different silos, they’re called, within the supply chain. So each supplier has its own resource of data which, because it may be competing with other companies, with other suppliers, with other manufacturers within the supply chain, it may not want to share, for competitive reasons, commercial reasons.

So consequently, getting visibility throughout the whole supply chain is very, very difficult, especially when we’re talking about multiple tiers of suppliers.

Counsel Inquiry: Is that because each of these entities within a supply chain is trying to protect the data which it holds about the products which it’s buying and selling and about what it knows about the market?

Professor John Manners-Bell: That is correct, yes.

Counsel Inquiry: I’d like to turn, please, to some of the features of the healthcare supply chains that this module is concerned with and some of the unique characteristics there are with PPE, with ventilators and with testing equipment. I wonder if we could start, please, with PPE supply chains.

What is it about PPE which marks it as, perhaps unique and different to other consumer goods which may be purchased in supermarkets and elsewhere?

Professor John Manners-Bell: Well, exactly, at some level they do look very similar to many consumer goods because they are low cost, they’re manufactured remotely, offshored, and in that respect, it does resemble a consumer goods manufacturing supply chain.

But of course, as we saw throughout the Covid-19 pandemic crisis, one of the key areas of differentiation is the criticality of those goods to public health, to health care workers. And so if in a consumer goods supply chain, you’re not able to get hold of whatever it may be that you want to buy, it’s not the end of the world. If you’re not able to get a face mask or if you’re not able to get any other item of PPE, then it becomes absolutely critical, which means that the supply chains need to be highly robust, highly resilient in order to ensure the supply.

Counsel Inquiry: Each of those categories of healthcare equipment, they have slightly different characteristics. So for PPE, you’ve touched upon the fact that they are low volume and low cost; is that fair?

Professor John Manners-Bell: Yes, low value and high – low value and high volume.

Counsel Inquiry: Thank you. And what about with respect to ventilators, by contrast to items of PPE? We’ve heard evidence from witnesses last week that describe the manufacture of PPE as being something which is actually quite technical and specific, but for ventilators it’s another level of complexity, isn’t it?

Professor John Manners-Bell: Absolutely. They resemble high-tech goods and the supply chains resemble high-tech supply chains. Very, very different from consumer goods and PPE.

Counsel Inquiry: And what about with respect to testing equipment?

Professor John Manners-Bell: For the testing equipment, again, we see there are differences. For example, in one item of PPE you may have five different components coming together. In some types of testing equipment, it may be 60 different parts which are being brought together within a kit. It’s different types of materials. Some of those materials used are also hazardous and so it’s far more complicated in terms of the manufacturer. And in terms of the use of testing equipment, when the tests are being sent back to be analysed, there’s a whole new loop, as well, in terms of life of that testing equipment, which you don’t get with PPE.

PPE, you’ll use, it’s usually single use and then it’s disposed of, and maybe we’ll come back to that later on.

Counsel Inquiry: So there are a number of different ways in which the categories of healthcare equipment that this module is considering, they vary, and their supply chains are different owing to the characteristics of the items which are being bought and sold?

Professor John Manners-Bell: Absolutely right.

Counsel Inquiry: Just to touch on what you described as a closed – is it a closed loop that you referred to with respect to testing equipment?

Professor John Manners-Bell: That’s right.

Counsel Inquiry: And is that because the tests or some kinds of tests have to go to the consumer and then they have to be returned?

Professor John Manners-Bell: Yes, that is correct, and then, because some of the testing equipment is manufactured specifically to the testing companies, they have to be sent back to a specific location which adds an air of complexity within the supply chain.

Counsel Inquiry: I’d like to move on, please, to how one measures the success of supply chains. You refer in your report to what is called the six Rs, and they are the right products in the right place, at the right time, in the right condition, of the right quality, and at the right price.

And are those the means by which one can measure the success or failure of a supply chain?

Professor John Manners-Bell: Yes, I believe so. It’s a well-used rubric within the industry, within the commercial industry, of how to measure the effectiveness of a supply chain and it applies equally well to the PPE sector as well, and other healthcares.

Counsel Inquiry: And in terms of the supply chains which this Inquiry and this module is considering, namely PPE, ventilators and testing equipment, is there any doubt in your mind about the success or failure of the supply chains for that equipment?

Professor John Manners-Bell: Yes, and I’ve written down a quote from the Welsh Government, and it applies equally to all the devolved administrations and the UK Government, but they said that “delivering PPE stock to local health boards did not necessarily mean it reached the right hospital or the right ward”, and that is an example, it really provides an illustration to the six Ps – the six “rights” we were talking about. Because in supply chain terms, not getting the PPE to the right place means a critical supply chain failure. You may not have bothered to have had those goods in the first place if you’re not able to get them to where they’re needed at the right time, to the right people.

Could we have, please, another chart that you’ve produced in your report on page 33? Figure 7.

This is “Volatility in demand and supply variables during Covid”, and you’ve described it as creating a “dysfunctional market”. And on the left-hand side are what are described as “demand variables”, so those variables coming from the demand side of the equation, and under there it says:

“[The] unknown infection and patient hospitalisation rates affects the underlying demand for PPE.”

Another factor was the changing government guidance on the frequency of use of PPE in medical settings; changing government guidance on extension of use of PPE by the general public and businesses; multiple health procurement organisations in competition and making multiple orders; and then finally, the bullwhip effect.

What is the effect of the combination of the demand variables on this side of the equation?

Professor John Manners-Bell: Well, in simple terms it leads to huge volatility in demand. Supply chains work best in a more stable environment, and once you have multiple demand variables, all of which are highly volatile, then it goes back to what I was referring to in the first slide when that data is transmitted up the supply chain. But the uncertainty, the instability which is being transmitted up the supply chain then causes a whole range of signals in terms of production, the requirement, the demand that’s required for PPE goods, which then leads to, as we say, a market dysfunction.

Counsel Inquiry: There are, of course, at least on the left-hand side, some areas in which the government does have control in terms of its policy. One or two of them are the guidance on the frequency of use of PPE and the rate at which that changes. Could you help us, please. What particular effect does changing guidance or changing guidance regularly have on supply chains?

Professor John Manners-Bell: Yes, I think the – probably the biggest impact would be on the usage of PPE, whether it should be single use or sessional use, how many items of PPE are required throughout a single day, for example, relating – referring to the patient involved, whether – the level of hospitalisation, for example.

So that is very clearly one of the biggest impacts on demand, but I think many of the other issues which are also highlighted, also had similar effects.

Counsel Inquiry: And in terms of the multiple health procurement organisations, are you referring to the fact that each devolved administration in the UK had its own procurement system and its own body that was buying items such as PPE?

Professor John Manners-Bell: Yes, I mean, it’s a very fragmented demand side from the – from NHS Supply Chain to the various health trusts that we have in England. Obviously in the devolved administrations there is centralisation of procurement, across the four nations. But then, when you look further in terms of the primary healthcare and social care, these organisations were also buying their own PPE. But beyond that, you could also add other government departments such as the MoD, for example. They all had – they were all buying PPE, they were all holding stocks of PPE as well.

But just to put this in the global context as well, it’s not just the UK, obviously. Every country around the world had similar problems and this was all feeding back to the suppliers largely based in China to create this dysfunction.

Counsel Inquiry: Turning to the other side of this equation, the supply variables you describe on this side of the equation, material bottlenecks and production capacity, and inability to meet regulatory standards, government intervention in trade processes, disruption to air transport and shipping industry, and that point which you’ve referred to before: the lack of supply chain visibility.

Taking all of these together, what effect did this have on supply chains which were providing PPE to the UK and worldwide?

Professor John Manners-Bell: Well, it had a devastating effect on them, and in the first – putting it in context, in the first two months of 2020, actually more PPE was being shipped to China than was being shipped out of China, and that’s because of the progress of the pandemic around the world.

The pandemic, of course, hit China and it also impacted very much on the suppliers, the manufacturers, in China as well. And so consequently, when the pandemic had spread to other regions, first to Italy in Europe and then the rest of Europe, there were these systemic problems in terms of supply.

And then, in terms of the international transportation element, if you look at the air cargo industry, for example, the air passenger sector was impacted by a lack of services flying to China, and so consequently there were bottlenecks in terms of being able to get available capacity when it came back on stream to Europe.

So there was a whole host, a concatenation, you might say, of supplied variables which came together to cause this huge stress.

Counsel Inquiry: Could we touch, please, briefly on one of the points which is referred to on the demand variable side with another chart, which is at page 22 of your report: “Figure 5: The ‘Bull Whip Effect’”.

Professor John Manners-Bell: Yes.

Counsel Inquiry: Thank you. Could we zoom in.

This is figure 5, the bullwhip effect. On the bottom it’s referred to “Customer Demand”, referring up to the supplier, and on the left-hand side it says:

“Small change in Customer demand.”

Seems to create an exponential effect up the supply chain.

Could you please talk us through what’s happening here and how this affects supply chains in an emergency.

Professor John Manners-Bell: Yes, and this is partly industry practice, partly psychological behaviour of people involved in the procurement process, but when there is even a small change in customer demand, the supplier will then obviously fulfil that demand, but when they replenish, they will pass on their orders further up the supply chain and at each stage within that, their supplier’s supplier will add more and more to each order, because the worst thing that could possibly happen, in terms of supply chain, is being out of stock.

So, consequently, the whole behaviour of every company within that supply chain is to over-order to make sure that they don’t run out of stock.

They think there’s nothing wrong with that at their stage of supply chain, but of course if that’s passed on right the way down, through many of those tiers that we saw in some of those earlier graphics, then we see that there is a huge demand which is actually not illustrative of the real demand, actually, in the market at the time. But it is passed on down the supply chain.

Counsel Inquiry: Thank you.

Can I take you, please, moving perhaps away from some of the theory about the way in which supply chains operate, and dealing with what the practical consequences are of the matters that you’ve referred to in your evidence. So market dysfunction, the bullwhip effect, and so on. What effect does that have on those who are on the front line trying to procure items such as PPE?

Professor John Manners-Bell: Well, it creates a hugely difficult market for them. A lot of the – as I think much of the evidence you heard last week will suggest, the supply chains in the UK were very much set up for business as usual – I think you heard that term a lot over the last week – rather than actually to deal with these major peaks of demand.

As I mentioned earlier on, supply chains work very well at times of stability but they need the flexibility and agility to work in times of emergency, crisis, as we see.

So what we found was that the supply chain and the logistics in the UK just wasn’t able to cope with the demands which were being placed upon it. The systems were not set up, whether they were the warehousing systems or whether they were the procurement systems. The framework system which had been set up by the NHS Supply Chain wasn’t able to cope with the demand either, and maybe we can talk about that a little bit later on as well.

Lady Hallett: Can I just interrupt for a second.

During Module 1, I think it was 1, it may even be 2, I thought I was told by a number of certainly politicians that, as a result of preparations for Brexit, a lot of work had been done on the supply chains that was of use. Would you agree with that assertion?

Professor John Manners-Bell: Yes, I do. I certainly agree with that. And there was – a lot of work was also being put into – in terms of the preparedness for pandemics and influenza in terms of the PIPP stocks, which I’m sure we’ll come on to as well. And some of that work went back to 2003, when we saw the first pandemic, and there have been iterations over the last 20 years.

So there were certainly preparations put in place but they weren’t anywhere near to being sufficiently robust enough to deal with the demand of the pandemic.

Lady Hallett: So some work but not enough?

Professor John Manners-Bell: Yes.

Lady Hallett: Sorry to interrupt.

Mr Sharma: Professor Manners-Bell, one of the reviews which you conducted during the course of your report was into the exercises which my Lady considered in Module 1 in relation to preparedness for pandemics. What did you discover about procurement and supply chains in the exercises which you reviewed?

Professor John Manners-Bell: Well, I think there are two – I mean, if we go back to my Lady’s point, yes, work had been done in terms of the preparation, but I think there were two key areas where there was – it was lacking. And the fundamental problem of the exercises, as far as I can see, from what I have read, was that a global shortage or pandemic was not taken into account.

So, in supply chain terms, the downstream element was dealt with: get moving PPE from warehouses through the supply chain to the healthcare workers who needed it. So work was done on that part. But nobody, as far as I am aware, actually looked at the possibility that there would be a global constraint of PPE.

Counsel Inquiry: And one of the recommendations which you make, and we don’t need to turn to it, is that such exercises in the future do take into account such factors as strains in the supply chain and difficulties with procurement; is that right?

Professor John Manners-Bell: That is absolutely right, yes.

Counsel Inquiry: Turning, please, to the global trend in supply chains leading up to the pandemic and how it was that supply chains had the structures and features that they had in 2020, is it right that since the 1980s there’s just been generally a move towards offshore manufacturing to lower cost markets for items such as PPE?

Professor John Manners-Bell: Yes, indeed, there’s – and I think almost every sector will have been impacted by this offshoring and outsourcing trend, largely driven through the low-cost manufacturing resources which exist throughout Asia. That has been underpinned by improvements in data flows, which gives more visibility of what’s happening throughout Asia as well. And also the – very importantly, that since the 1950s and the containerisation of shipping, it’s been very cheap to move goods around the world.

Counsel Inquiry: So in those countries the labour is obviously of lower cost, there’s greater production scalability, I think you describe it as. It means that there is less inventory holding in the countries in which the stock is required, and as a consequence, the supply chains that supply the UK and other countries for critical items such as PPE, they are more vulnerable, aren’t they?

Professor John Manners-Bell: They are. They are, from a whole range of different risks. I think I mentioned 2011 was probably when risk really came onto the agenda, and the reason for that was that there were some very important natural disasters around that time, there was a tsunami in Japan, there was floods in Thailand, and people, certainly from the commercial sector, started to understand that an event happening on the other side of the world could still lead to automotive production being halted, for example, in Sunderland, and/or in the high-tech sector, that it would have huge ramifications in parts of the western world, in terms of high-tech manufacturing, for example.

Counsel Inquiry: And have those trends continued since the pandemic or has there been some change in the trends?

Professor John Manners-Bell: Yes, now it’s what I call a hybrid approach is being adopted. So if we take a step back further before the offshoring and outsourcing trend it was very much a case that there would be – high levels of inventory would be held, just in case there was a major problem. Much of that inventory was held within Europe or in the UK close to the end markets.

When you have offshoring and outsourcing, the risk elements of holding inventory goes down, and along with that, the financial costs of holding inventory goes down, but all these other risks increase, whether those are political, economic, societal, technological, or environmental, as I was saying.

Counsel Inquiry: Touching, please, on what you’ve just mentioned that stockpiles and inventory and the practicality of stockpiles and inventory within the UK, could you help us with this, please: prior to the pandemic was there a single UK-wide complete inventory of items such as PPE?

Professor John Manners-Bell: Nowhere near, no. I mean, a huge fragmentation of data relating to inventory.

Counsel Inquiry: And is it right that that was aggravated not only by the fact that inventory was held by the UK Government, it was also held by devolved administrations; it was held by trusts and boards and other health organisations. And so there’s an enormous amount of data about what inventory holdings there are, but nobody knows or rather nobody knew, prior to the pandemic, what there was?

Professor John Manners-Bell: That’s right, and many of the organisations you’ve just mentioned had different stages in their technological development as well. So some may be using I think what one witness called a sort of analogue. So paper and pen. Others would be using spreadsheets as well. And there was no, sort of, interrelation or integration or the ability to integrate those different data silos as well.

But just to add to that in terms of complexity, of course, that’s all in the downstream inventory. If you take into account the many distributors and manufacturers involved as well, there was no single view of the truth, as it’s called, of the single view of inventory throughout the whole of the supply chain which is just as critical, in my mind.

Counsel Inquiry: The Inquiry will be hearing evidence from Mr Webster and Ms Lawson, we don’t need to turn the statements up, but what they say in their witness statements was that there was no way of tracking what the individual trusts had and there was no way of tracking what the individual products were that were being bought by institutions such as SCCL?

Professor John Manners-Bell: That is absolutely right, yes.

Counsel Inquiry: Could we have up, please, one of your recommendations. It is at pages 79 and 80 of your report. You’ve made a number of recommendations, I think 29 in total. We’ll just touch on some of them during the course of your evidence. It begins at the bottom of page 79. What you have suggested is that there be maintained a digital twin of the complete UK inventory of PPE and healthcare equipment through an inventory management system. You’ve described it as an aspirational post-pandemic goal, and you go on to provide details of that.

What effect do you think having such an inventory system, a central inventory system would have on procurement and the supply chains going into a pandemic if it were to happen in the future?

Professor John Manners-Bell: Well, it would definitely forearm the people in charge of the supply chain, whether that sits the NHS Supply Chain or within the Department of Health and Social Care or even the politicians, to give an accurate view of what inventory is being held, what types of PPE are being held, the volumes that are being held and where they are being held as well, which is absolutely crucial in any supply chain, not just PPE, to know how much you already have of a particular item.

Counsel Inquiry: Could I turn, please, to market concentration. We’ll be hearing, the Inquiry will be hearing from witnesses later this morning and this afternoon about China being the dominant market in PPE, and just some figures, if I may. You’ve described in your report that in the year before the Covid-19 pandemic, it was estimated by the International Finance Corporation, IFC, that China accounted for 50-60% of the world’s supply of masks, 40% of cover-alls, 40% of aprons, 40-45% of eye protection and 30-40% of shoe covers, and then you refer to the United States taking up about 20-25% of the remaining market share. And then within those figures there’s a little nuance, because gloves, for example, are manufactured predominantly in Malaysia and Thailand. They make up collectively about 85% of the market.

What are the risks that come from markets and suppliers and manufacturers being concentrated in a particular part of the world?

Professor John Manners-Bell: There’s a whole range of risks. I mean, if we look at the political risks, for example, those can manifest themselves in terms of trade measures. Certainly at the outset of the pandemic, China restricted the supply of PPE because it was really focused on its own domestic issues. If – and that is the case for all countries, I’m not just highlighting China, because actually, Germany and France also restricted the exports of PPE.

Counsel Inquiry: So that is a phenomenon which means that no matter where you are going to source your PPE and other medical equipment from, that you have to take account of when you’re building supply chain resilience?

Professor John Manners-Bell: If you don’t manufacture in the UK, there is always a very significant political risk to supply, in a pandemic.

Counsel Inquiry: What is the solution, to put it bluntly, to concentration of market supply in one particular region, country or area in the world? You’ve referred, on the one hand, to diversification in your report; are there other areas which would limit or mitigate the risk to supply chains in a pandemic?

Professor John Manners-Bell: Yes, well, I think – starting with diversification. I think that is absolutely critical and again, this is something which is a trend which is being undertaken throughout, not just PPE but throughout the whole of industry now, especially with the advent of more tariffs and the potential US-China trade war. So looking at multiple countries outside of China is a first step. But, of course, if we have a pandemic which actually develops and evolves from Asia, then the likelihood is all those countries may implement trade measures.

And so consequently, what I suggest and recommend is that we need to look at other markets, including near-shoring, near-sourcing from other parts of the world, which may not be impacted at the same time. And as the pandemic evolves throughout the world, then it would – if you had a very proactive supply chain manager in charge of the PPE, they would be able to switch on manufacturers located in various parts of the world which would mitigate this particular risk.

Counsel Inquiry: Turning to that recommendation, could we have up, please, on the screen recommendation 22 of your report, which is at page 138. This is a recommendation that combines a number of features, some of which you’ve touched on, and others that we will come on to.

You’ve referred to the UK and devolved administration governments adopting an approach to stockpiles which combines elements of three potential options: firstly, strategic supplies, which we’ll come back to; secondly, longer-term relationships with Chinese and critically – your emphasis – non-Chinese suppliers must be maintained or developed, taking into account the possibility that these channels may be rendered ineffectual in a pandemic.

Then the third point which you raise, which we’ll again come on to, is some contingency for national production to be put into place.

So rather than happening upon one solution, if I may, to the supply chain problem, your recommendation is a combination of three or three and a half elements. Could you take us through why exactly that is?

Professor John Manners-Bell: Yes. Well, this is absolutely my recommendation: that we require a multi-faceted approach to building resilience in the PPE supply chain. Absolutely. It’s because if we look at a timeline of the development of the pandemic, I see – and some of this actually relates to the preparedness plans which have been put in place already which we need to have inventory stocks in hand to deal with the pressing need urgency at the beginning of a pandemic.

Now, in the original plans it was hoped that JIT contracts would then kick in to replenish those stocks.

Counsel Inquiry: Forgive me, they’re just-in-time contracts?

Professor John Manners-Bell: Just-in-time contracts, yes – would kick in to be able to replenish those stocks. That didn’t happen, and the reasons behind that need to be addressed, and my approach, I suppose, really tries to provide a solution for why the JIT manufacturing didn’t work in this sort of situation. And there are reasons for that, much because we relied on distributors rather than manufacturers, but if we were able to source goods from other parts of the world and have deeper engagement with those suppliers as well, that will be critical to this approach.

Counsel Inquiry: So does that mean building up longer-term relationships with potential suppliers and manufacturers, not only in China but globally?

Professor John Manners-Bell: Absolutely, yes. You need core – in my mind, in my opinion, what needs to happen is that the core relationships with these manufacturers are developed, long-term relationships, which means that in – when there’s stress in the system, you’re not suddenly scrabbling around for many hundreds or many thousands of smaller suppliers that you have no relationship with, you have no understanding of the quality or the quantity that they might be able to provide but you have these very long-term, very deep strategic relationships with core suppliers which are already in place.

Counsel Inquiry: Forgive me, what would be the difference between what you are suggesting and what the UK Government, for example, had in place when it came to just-in-time contracts? Surely, if those suppliers are based overseas, there’s a possibility that those contracts, strategic though they might be, would fail equally. What is it that you suggest would stop that from happening?

Professor John Manners-Bell: Well, I think in some cases the JIT was relying on distributors rather than manufacturers. That’s the first point. My second point is that if you have those long-term relationships in place, there is a less likely – there is a smaller likelihood that when there is stress, that those manufacturers will be driven by short-term benefits from the price of PPE. But I completely agree that the only way you could absolutely ensure that you had supplies of PPE would be to develop on onshored manufacturing sector within the UK.

Counsel Inquiry: We will turn to that in a moment. In your report, Professor Manners-Bell, you are quite blunt and you refer to a number of minimum requirements that the UK Government has to achieve in order to build supply chain resilience in the long term. The first we’ve touched upon, which is establishing a control tower to look at the inventory. The second is that you’ve referred to initiating what you describe as virtual, rotating stockpiles to address problems of PPE stock control. Could you help us, please, with that second point, virtual rotating stockpiles? What does that mean?

Professor John Manners-Bell: That is a technique that is used quite widely within industry in order to ensure that stocks do not run out of date. I think one of the witnesses, I think Mr Marron from last week, also referred to the rotating stockpile which was being implemented for gloves. And – but in my mind, there is no reason why it should be limited to one particular type of PPE. By rotating, what we mean is that, instead of holding a separate inventory, a separate stock of goods for a particular event such as the pandemic, those goods flow into the normal supply chain as business as usual, and are always being used. So the likelihood of them going out of date is very much smaller.

Now, a virtual rotating stockpile is when that is undertaken by manufacturers throughout the rest of the supply chain. So not held in a specific government-controlled warehouse, for example, but actually the responsibility is with the manufacturers, and they will hold more stock in a relationship with the procurement, with government procurement, on the government’s behalf.

Counsel Inquiry: I’d like to turn, please, to another element of what you suggest would assist in building the resilience of the UK supply chains and that is the potential for domestic manufacturing, but before I turn on to it, could I please ask you, what is it, what are the structural reasons, at least in the UK, that limit or prohibit the building of domestic supply of items such as PPE?

Professor John Manners-Bell: In the first instance, as already mentioned, it is the cost of labour. Some of the process can be very labour intensive, in some cases, and which is why China in particular has gained a competitive advantage, because of its low-cost labour force, and also the scale of its labour force as well.

It goes deeper than that, because the offshoring trend, as we’ve been talking about, goes back, you know, two, three, four decades now. And so actually, it’s not just the labour and those – the manufacturing processes which are being offshored but a lot of the knowhow, the experience, the expertise in manufacturing has been lost. And it’s usually said that if you lose that ability, the capability to manufacture, and you lose the know-how, then it will take a generation to build that back up starting from scratch.

Counsel Inquiry: You refer in your report to some areas in which the UK in the manufacturing sector has what might be described as a competitive advantage. There are areas in which the United Kingdom has high levels of manufacturing capability and capacity. Are there any ways that you suggest that that could be turned to domestic manufacture of items such as PPE and then of more complicated equipment such as ventilators and testing equipment?

Professor John Manners-Bell: I certainly think, in terms of ventilators – because the UK has decided, whether through policy or whether through economics, to really focus on the high-value manufacturing, the advanced manufacturing elements, so aerospace, you know, biomedical technologies, for example. And they’ve left many of the sort of lower-value-adding processes to other manufacturers in the rest of the world, predominantly in Asia.

But if you’re able to automate your manufacturing system, then you can remove the labour element which puts the UK at a disadvantage. And I think that is an area where certainly more focus should be placed and more focus from government policy should be placed in terms of developing that high-tech automation which can then allow UK manufacturers to compete effectively with other manufacturers in the rest of the world.

And that’s already going on in Germany. So it’s not just an aspiration, it’s something which our partners in Europe are already well aware of, and that is why I recommend that we also should be going down that path.

Counsel Inquiry: Could we please bring up that recommendation on screen. It’s your recommendation at page 31 of your report. You make the observation there that:

“Whilst it is not possible to reproduce the vast PPE and healthcare equipment manufacturing capacity presently based in Asia within the UK, policy focus should be on developing a small, automated and scalable manufacturing capability. This would be deployed to provide enough product to meet UK demand between depletion of emergency stockpiles [that you’ve referred to] at the beginning of a pandemic and the time when the global market was able to scale up to meet global demand.”

If I may, one suggestion which may be made is that investing in this kind of automation and equipment is expensive and that the appetite isn’t there. What could the government do in terms of policy to encourage domestic manufacturing to build up resilience in the way that you suggest?

Professor John Manners-Bell: I think it very much needs to provide a long-term horizon for investment in automation, and specifically within the PPE sector. It can do that by committing to minimum volumes of spend with these companies which are investing in the technology.

That’s happened in Canada, it’s in the glove manufacturing sector there, where the central procurement organisation has committed to certain volumes over time. It’s also happened in Australia as well. So it’s something which other governments and countries are looking at to provide that long-term financial backing for a company which gives them the confidence to actually go ahead and invest in this high-capital automation equipment.

Counsel Inquiry: In addition to automation, you also refer in your report to potentially using circularity or reusable PPE. Could you help us with where that would fit into the picture of building supply chain resilience and how that might assist a country such as the UK with building resilience for a pandemic in the future?

Professor John Manners-Bell: Yes, certainly. The PPE industry is, almost by definition, a linear supply chain, so once it’s been used, you throw it away, and many times you’re mandated to throw away a mask or a gown or gloves after you’ve used them. So it is part of the sort of – what’s called the sort of take-make-waste sector. But if you are able to bring an element of circularity into that, so actually once you’ve used a particular item it can be safely reused, then it could have a really big impact on the volumes of new goods that you would need to reorder.

Now, that will take advances in technology, and I think there has been some investment there, certainly there have been some reach projects which will enable PPE to be more robust, but it will be able to – allow them to be cleaned afterwards, using new techniques, and then returned back into the hospital to be reused again.

Counsel Inquiry: Could I have up, please, your recommendation 5, which is on page 54 of your report. And here you make the suggestion that:

“The government should increase investment in research and development related to new, re-usable forms of PPE.”

Do you mean that investment should only be from the public sector or is there scope for private sector investment in these areas? And if so, how could the government incentivise that?

Professor John Manners-Bell: Yes, I think this is really critical as we move forward over the next decade to the use and re-use of PPE. I think that the government should play a role of the research projects for helping to develop that new technology but, of course, it would be the private sector who would be the driving force behind it. That would require there to be a commercial rationale for that investment, and again, that really would need a commitment from the central procurement organisations to invest or to have minimum levels of spend on recyclable, circular PPE.

Counsel Inquiry: Finally, Professor Manners-Bell, a topic which you touched on at the beginning of your evidence, which is data visibility and how important it is for parties within supply chains to be able to see what is happening elsewhere within the chain. Could you help us, please, with what advancements have been made in terms of data visibility and the ability of manufacturers, customers at the end of the supply chain, and intermediaries to understand what’s happening within a supply chain?

Professor John Manners-Bell: There certainly have been huge advances in technologies in terms of providing realtime visibility, realtime visibility platforms, which are very widespread throughout industry of all sorts. It provides the visibility of usage, right from – in the PPE sector, from the ward level all the way up through the supply chain from local holdings of inventory through distribution centres, and there should be – it provides a control tower function. So someone sitting right – in an overarching role to be able to make judgements based on realtime demand, which was very much lacking throughout most of the early parts of the crisis.

Counsel Inquiry: Could you explain in practical terms what that looks like? So we’ve heard in this module last week in evidence about modelling demand and about burn rates and an inability to predict the amount of PPE that was being used, and to track the quantity of PPE which was being supplied. In what ways do what you suggest assist in that regard?

Professor John Manners-Bell: It provides – at any one point it should provide a supply chain manager with the tools to be able to, in terms of the level of procurement which is going to be needed to replenish stocks which are being used, and to do it from not just a central perspective but all the way from the end user, which in this case is the healthcare worker, and right through the supply chain.

So having that level of information allows the manager to make more informed decisions which then goes – relate that all the way back to the bullwhip effect slide that we saw earlier, by actually placing orders based on the reality rather than actually on models which, which may or may not be right, but in many cases are wrong, then it allows fulfilment in a much more ordered way and should not lead to the market dysfunction that we saw.

Counsel Inquiry: You’ve referred to realtime tracking. How is it possible, or could you please describe how it’s possible to have realtime tracking in such granular detail of singular items of, for example, PPE? How does that work in practice? What role do – you refer to such things as IoT, Internet of Things. What role does that have to play in procurement and supply chains in the future?

Professor John Manners-Bell: Well, at every stage within the supply chain data is being provided to a supply chain management function, whether that is provided by the logistics company, who may be picking and packing from a warehouse. As soon as it’s being taken out of that warehouse, that data will be released to say that “We need to reorder to replenish that particular item for that warehouse.” For the person who has ordered it, it will tell you “That shipment of PPE will be delivered tomorrow morning at 9 o’clock.”

Once it has been delivered, then again, an event will be triggered, data will be triggered to say it has been delivered, it is now here, and that will then replenish the inventory.

So it’s a complete – it allows complete transparency of the supply chain, and enabling managers to make better decisions.

Counsel Inquiry: And is this system or this kind of software, is that something which is available now or is it something which is in development?

Professor John Manners-Bell: It’s available now, and it’s in – most industries will be using this, even in sectors which are even more complicated, and there is more of the – the potential for more obfuscation of the supply chain, such as the spare parts industry for the automotive industry, for example, which is very, very fragmented.

Counsel Inquiry: And if I may close, please, with one of your recommendations, number 7, which is on 69 of your report. At the bottom of the page, please. You make a suggestion that the government also has a role in this respect, by the development of new technologies, innovation and business investment. And not only with investment in technologies, but also skills training and research in supply chains.

Professor John Manners-Bell: Yes, indeed. And I think this is one of the facilitatory roles of government: to be able to foster this high-tech advanced technology environment by – through things that it can impact upon, such as education and training as well, which will be very important for, if we’re developing a UK supply chain, to be able to have smaller players within the UK feed into that supply chain, they will need people and resources to be able to integrate the technologies which are available presently. But that will allow much smaller organisations to become part of a more efficient and effective supply chain in the UK.

Mr Sharma: Professor Manners-Bell, I don’t have any more questions.

Lady Hallett: No, I don’t have any questions.

Thank you very much indeed for your help, especially the written report that obviously we’ll consider in more detail but you’ve given an excellent summary this morning, I’m really grateful to you.

The Witness: Thank you, my Lady.

Lady Hallett: Very well, I shall return at 11.55.

(11.40 am)

(A short break)

(11.55 am)

Lady Hallett: Mr Sharma.

Mr Sharma: My Lady, the next witness is Andrew Mitchell.

Mr Andrew Mitchell

MR ANDREW MITCHELL (affirmed).

Questions From Counsel to the Inquiry

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

The Witness: Thank you very much.

Mr Sharma: Mr Mitchell, you have provided the Inquiry with two witness statements: a Corporate Witness Statement on behalf of the Department for International Trade, and then your personal witness statement responding to a number of questions posed by the Inquiry. Would you be kind enough to confirm that those witness statements are true to the best of your knowledge and belief?

Mr Andrew Mitchell: I can confirm.

Counsel Inquiry: We’re grateful for the assistance you have provided to the Inquiry to date. May I start, please, with something about your biography and background. You were a director general in the Department for International Trade, were you not, between April 2020 and November 2023?

Mr Andrew Mitchell: That’s correct, yeah.

Counsel Inquiry: And prior to that you served as Her Late Majesty’s Trade Commissioner for Europe between July 2018 and May 2020?

Mr Andrew Mitchell: That’s correct.

Counsel Inquiry: And you are currently His Majesty’s ambassador to Germany, which you’ve served in since September of 2024?

Mr Andrew Mitchell: That’s correct.

Counsel Inquiry: In your role as the director general in the Department for International Trade, you were responsible for leading three teams: the first, the JACT, the Joint Assistance Coordination Team. Is that right?

Mr Andrew Mitchell: That’s correct, yes.

Counsel Inquiry: And the second, the GSSEP, the Global Strategic Sourcing Engagement Project?

Mr Andrew Mitchell: That’s also correct.

Counsel Inquiry: And also, in relation to Project Defend?

Mr Andrew Mitchell: That’s right, yeah.

Counsel Inquiry: Could I start, please, with the Department for International Trade’s role insofar as it affects preparedness for supply chain resilience. Was it intended, in the department, that it would play any role in an emergency response to a pandemic?

Mr Andrew Mitchell: Certainly to my knowledge it was not foreseen that we would play such a role in a pandemic, no.

Counsel Inquiry: Was the department designated in any sense a Lead Government Department for critical national infrastructure in terms of medical equipment or procurement of PPE or anything like that?

Mr Andrew Mitchell: It was not, no.

Counsel Inquiry: And yet the Department for International Trade became, as it were, at the front line of procurement for PPE on behalf of the Department of Health and Social Care in markets around the world?

Mr Andrew Mitchell: That’s correct.

Counsel Inquiry: What sort of work was the Department engaged in as the pandemic struck the United Kingdom?

Mr Andrew Mitchell: So, as the pandemic struck the United Kingdom, principally those teams in the Department for International Trade were responsible for sourcing investment from international markets and attracting that to the United Kingdom, and then supporting exporters as they looked for opportunities in international markets to sell their goods and services, but then also to negotiate trade agreements, and, broadly speaking, to remove operated barriers and to work on trade in the international system.

Counsel Inquiry: In relation to supply chains, prior to the pandemic, was there any centrally coordinated supply chain resilience function, either within the department or within the government?

Mr Andrew Mitchell: There was not.

Counsel Inquiry: What was the reason for that not having been taken up by departments such as DIT?

Mr Andrew Mitchell: It’s difficult for me to say. I think that, at the time, the department, which, as a consequence of having a very strong analytical function and global teams, did provide supply chain analysis and reports on issues in association with supply chains, didn’t believe that it would be necessary to have a standing function to that end, in other words the analytical function would be sufficient for most purposes.

Counsel Inquiry: Is it nonetheless true that the kind of expertise which was needed in the pandemic to analyse and consider and assist with supply chain resilience was to be found within your department?

Mr Andrew Mitchell: I mean, I think as we went through the various stages of the crisis, and there were principally three stages from the perspective of the work of that department, it became abundantly clear that, yes, this was a function was indeed necessary and useful to government.

Counsel Inquiry: Turning, please, to the role on the front line, as it were, in respect of embassies, high commissions and consulates of the United Kingdom around the world, what role did they play in relation to the sourcing and procurement of items such as ventilators, PPE and testing equipment?

Mr Andrew Mitchell: So in the very early stages of the crisis it became apparent that supply chains were compromised in the medical supplies, ventilators, PPE, et cetera. And the China team, based out of our embassy in Beijing, had identified that getting close to many of the manufacturers and the suppliers had given them an advantage in being able to procure some of these medical supplies. Indeed, at the time, I believe they were of the view that they had bought up all of the supplies that were available on the market, in those very challenged circumstances.

We had teams around the rest of the world. It seemed logical at that point, then recognising the China experience, to deploy that expertise also in respect of markets elsewhere in the world, bearing in mind that we had DIT officials on the ground in many, many places around the world with essentially the same expertise.

Counsel Inquiry: As you’ve mentioned, there wasn’t, prior to the pandemic, any standing capacity to do the kind of work which you’ve just described. The Joint Assistance Coordination Team was a group that was set up in response to the pandemic. Could you help us, please, with what that was, when it was set up, and what kind of work it did.

Mr Andrew Mitchell: So, to your first question, what was it, it was a joint team created between the Department for International Trade and the Foreign Office to bring together officials essentially to source leads in overseas markets that might lead to new supplies of medical equipment.

This was essentially a reaction to the circumstances that I described, challenging supply chains, and a call to action put out to overseas markets to anyone who might have the opportunity to source supplies, essentially then to bring those to the attention of the British government. And therefore we brought this team together, reflecting the fact that both the Foreign Office, as it was at the time, and the Department for International Trade had teams on the ground in many markets around the world who had experience of working with business, and indeed worked, in the case of the DIT teams, day to day alongside businesses in international markets.

Counsel Inquiry: You’ve referred, of course, to teams which were based in China, but there were also important teams in other areas of the world, including America, Singapore, Germany, Switzerland and Sweden, to name but a few. From your vantage point, what was your role with respect of those teams?

Mr Andrew Mitchell: So the Joint Assistance Coordination Team was an effort to bring together a cell in London that was capable, then, of communicating with these teams in markets overseas on behalf of the Department of Health and Social Care. So the principle was that DHSC would provide what was called the demand signal, in other words what was required by way of medical supplies. The joint team in London would then communicate that demand signal to our overseas posts, as we call them, and that those posts would then go and chase down opportunities, leads wherever they might find them. Then to send them back to that team created in London to make sense of what they were seeing, and then to send on those leads the team felt were worthwhile back to DHSC.

Counsel Inquiry: My Lady’s Inquiry has heard evidence last week of teams which were set up at pace and at speed. Was the JACT one of those teams set up in the very earliest stages of the pandemic?

Mr Andrew Mitchell: It was indeed. It was set up on 28 March 2020 in, I suppose, conditions of some uncertainty, partly because, of course, it wasn’t clear how the pandemic would develop at that stage, but we recognised that supply chains for most medical suppliers were indeed in significant stress, and therefore we brought teams together to create that demand management system. And principally, in fact, relied on the military cell that I had within my broader team for that purpose, and the reason for that was that, as far as we were concerned at the time, looking for leads in international markets was principally a logistical exercise and we had access to teams who had extensive experience of operating in crisis conditions and essentially working around the clock and frankly moving leads backwards and forwards, which was how we understood the role in those first days.

Counsel Inquiry: Just to provide the Inquiry with an idea of the scale of the task. You talked about working around the clock. Does that mean that you had people on shift so that they could pick up the phone and send emails to people based in embassies and consulates around the world?

Mr Andrew Mitchell: We did indeed, yes. We established three rotas, so we were working 24/7, and principally, as you say, the reason for this was that we wanted to be immediately available in a market that could be in South East Asia, to be able to respond to any inquiry that might come our way. And of course, the reason for this was that the market conditions were such that we did not want to lose any individual leads towards a medical supply.

Counsel Inquiry: How many people were there, broadly, roughly speaking, in the JACT?

Mr Andrew Mitchell: In the JACT initially we brought together 20 from Foreign Office and 20 from DIT. But they were then looking after a team around the world, difficult to say, but I’d say there were a couple of thousand people who were working on this at the height of the crisis.

Counsel Inquiry: Just to get an idea of the organisational challenges, I wonder if perhaps we could bring up INQ000493813.

This is a process map created in April 2020 to set out how various teams were envisaged to be brought together. And on the left-hand side it can be seen that there are sources of supplies coming from all DIT staff, and then at stage 2, it appears that there are three triage teams to deal with the leads that are coming in, the FCO JACT team, the DIT JACT team, and then there’s another team beneath that, HLSB. Could you help us with what HLSB is, please.

Mr Andrew Mitchell: HLSB is a team that was within the Department for International Trade whose specialism was in healthcare, life sciences and the bio-economy.

Counsel Inquiry: In the establishment of the system at the beginning of the pandemic, was there some confusion, some overlap, between the work that each of those three teams were doing?

Mr Andrew Mitchell: I would say it was a very difficult initial couple of weeks for the team in the sense that what you had, the HLSB team epitomises this, a group of experts, frankly, in healthcare, life sciences work, particularly their responsibility, investment, and export support, as I had described, recognising that this wasn’t going to be fit for purpose for the scale of the task that confronted us, so building a set of teams with people across Whitehall, and worth bearing in mind, of course, that we were remote from each other operating on Microsoft Teams’ platform, many of us had never met. So in those initial stages we’re both bringing teams together from different parts of the government system but also in conditions in which we simply couldn’t bring everybody together into one place and work through a plan.

So yes, it was difficult in those initial stages, the complexity was high.

I would say that the willingness of everybody to lean into this task, recognising the scale of the national emergency that we were facing, was nonetheless really, really significant.

Counsel Inquiry: One of the features that my Lady’s Inquiry has heard in respect of the Department of Health and Social Care is the preponderance of the use of emails and forms and Excel spreadsheets, no less, it seems, at least to be referred to on this chart with references to forms and spreadsheets and emails on the right-hand side. Did the systems which the JACT and the Department for International Trade were using, did they cause problems for you in terms of coordination and efficiency?

Mr Andrew Mitchell: I wouldn’t say that the forms themselves caused issues. I think the issue that we struggled with was developing a sensible, single process. It was, in a sense, the logic behind the creation of the forms that was the issue for us.

And I talk elsewhere in my own witness statement about the importance of commercial expertise, so commercial policy expertise in the design of the systems. I think one of the issues that we had in the early stages was without direct access to that commercial policy support, some of the system design questions, they were not optimal, frankly, and, you know, we learnt the lessons from that through this process, and as you’ll have seen from the end of stage 2 of the crisis from the DIT perspective, we felt that we had got to a reasonable place. But it is the commercial design question there that’s the issue, I think.

Counsel Inquiry: Could we have up, please, on the screen INQ000489577. And if we could scroll down to the email at the bottom of slide 1, talking about overlap and inefficiency within the systems established by the Department for International Trade, the question here is asked as to why there are two JACTs involved in the triage process and considering that it would only need to be one team. Is this a reference to the speed at which the system was established and the risk of overlap and duplication of effort?

Mr Andrew Mitchell: In fact it’s a reference to the fact that at the beginning of the crisis we thought that the rational response was to keep the teams, as it were, in separate boxes under a single leadership, that that would provide for speed, that was certainly the consideration at the time. We quickly realised that this wasn’t in fact the right way to do this, so within couple of weeks, we’d redesigned the team such that we fused the FCDO and the DIT and the HLSB teams into one. So at the beginning of this stage of the crisis essentially we were operating with three teams under a single joint leadership for those reasons.

Counsel Inquiry: Could we zoom out from this email chain and go up to the top. There’s a reference there to – about the JACT teams being right. Of course, you’re not on this email chain, Mr Mitchell. I’d just like to understand it from your vantage point, from looking at the JACT overall. One of the issues, it seems, is that there’s a negotiation with the FCO and there’s reference there to politics being an issue. Is that something that you recognised from your work in the Department for International Trade, that there was some tension or some politics at play between the department and the FCO?

Mr Andrew Mitchell: This wasn’t my experience. My experience was rather that, as teams working together on the crisis, what we were doing in those initial stages was really trying to work out what the most rational way to operate together was. I had close working relationships with my FCO counterparts, I had known both of them for a very long time, and certainly didn’t feel that this was an impediment. I can entirely understand however, that somebody within the system might infer that that was indeed the reason. But it certainly wasn’t my experience.

Mr Sharma: Can we take that down, please.

Lady Hallett: Can I just check, do we think “politics” in that context meant departmental politics as opposed to party politics?

Mr Andrew Mitchell: Yes, my Lady. I think it’s – my interpretation of this is that this is the politics of the office rather than the politics of Parliament.

Lady Hallett: Yes, thank you.

Mr Sharma: Thank you, my Lady.

One of the references you make in your witness statement about the complexity of working between the Department for International Trade and the FCO is that structures were difficult for staff based in overseas offices to navigate. Could you talk us through that, please. What issues did that create, having staff working in embassies, coordinating with the FCO and the Department for International Trade in the UK, and then them coordinating again with the Department of Health and Social Care as the lead government department? What complexity did that create?

Mr Andrew Mitchell: Yes, so the design – the initial design map that you showed the Inquiry demonstrates the problem with that initial design, namely that if you were in a post overseas and you’d had access to a lead, you’d be looking at that design map and saying, “Which of those entities do I send my lead in to?” And this is the reason, essentially, why, quite quickly into the process, we recognised that we needed entirely to fuse these organisations, and to create a design of the system that essentially had operations on one side and strategy and briefing on the other side, such that later in the crisis, if you had a lead, you’d have essentially one contact point.

Lady Hallett: Did you have any problems – I’ve encountered it in my work that’s been government-related – with having different meeting platforms allowed in different government departments? So I’ve found there are different policies, like one department will only meet on Teams and another department will only meet on Google Meet or Zoom or whatever. Did you have that as a problem at all?

Mr Andrew Mitchell: Not in this particular work, because we were all on the Microsoft Teams platform globally, so that meant the Foreign Office and DIT and all of our teams globally. So in that regard, no. But certainly across Whitehall in the initial stages of the crisis, there wasn’t a single platform for communications, and yes, we had to get accounts on different providers in order to be able to participate in meetings.

Mr Sharma: Thank you, my Lady.

In terms of the guidance that was being provided by the Department of Health and Social Care, could we please have a look at INQ000489583.

This is guidance being provided by the Department of Health and Social Care to those on the ground or through JACT about the procurement of ventilators.

If we could zoom in, please, to “Reject anything” – that’s it, thank you.

In respect of the IPPV ventilators, this guidance suggests that anything should be rejected other than IPPV ventilators.

And then the second and third lines of guidance refer to looking at documentation, and the words – the watchwords are IPPV. But then if the documentation isn’t clear, that one should look at the photograph of the item being procured. And then a rudimentary description, if I can put it that way, of a “large technical machine”, being of – the ventilator that’s being looked for.

Could you help us, please, with your experience and the experience of those in-country with the guidance that was being sent by the Department of Health and Social Care in respect of the procurement of complicated equipment such as ventilators and also testing equipment, but also PPE.

Mr Andrew Mitchell: Yes. I mean, clearly, in order for those teams in markets overseas who had no particular experience of medical supplies and medical supply chains to be able to do the job that we were asking, we clearly needed quite detailed specifications for the medical equipment required. And it’s well documented, including in my own evidence, that in the initial stages that level of technical specification was, from the perspective of those posts overseas, not to the degree that we required. And this was a known issue, one that we worked on together. We rectified that, the Department of Health and Social Care acted on that requirement relatively quickly, but it’s certainly true to say that at the early stages, this was – this was a factor, yes.

Counsel Inquiry: Coordination with the Department of Health and Social Care was an ongoing issue with the JACT. Could we please bring up INQ000493811.

This is an email on 2 April which you are cc’d into, from the head of the JACT from the FCO, to Emily Lawson at the Department of Health and Social Care.

If we could zoom in, please, to “Once concern flagged to me by the team” in the middle of the page. One of the concerns flagged by the team:

“… has been the difficulty of ensuring a fast turnaround from DHSC of the proposals coming from posts and being coordinated by the JACT, and therefore risking losing opportunities. I understand that today we lost an order for 20 ventilators from Israel because we weren’t nimble enough, and there are concerns in the China network that similar delays might cost us larger numbers there, where international demand is enormous.”

Again, drawing on your vantage point, Mr Mitchell, was that a problem that was persistent at least in the early stages of the pandemic, of offers, and potential offers, of supply being routed to the DHSC, but then there being delays in them being processed?

Mr Andrew Mitchell: This was a feature particularly of the very early stages, I would say, of the crisis. And of course from the perspectives – and you can entirely understand this – of the teams out in the market, timing was critical, because leads were available very often only for a short period of time, that was the way the market was operating at that point, and the turnaround times were challenging. And, you know, this is partly down to the fact that – we entirely recognise this – that the Department of Health and Social Care was dealing with a huge profusion of expressions of interest.

I would say the fault was also partly ours. At this stage of the process, frankly, we weren’t giving DHSC quite the level of specification around the leads that we were providing that would have allowed them to take quicker decisions.

So this is an accurate picture, I think, of a moment in time, but I would say that there were issues on both sides that we ultimately recognised and then dealt with as we create the GSSEP, brought in commercial expertise, and then redesigned those commercial processes.

Counsel Inquiry: Just in terms of the work that JACT were doing, and those on the ground with the embassies were doing, were they conducting any sort of triage process about the offers that were being sent in to the Department of Health and Social Care or were they simply forwarding on offers and leads that they thought ought to be followed up?

Mr Andrew Mitchell: I mean, the principal focus here was on maximising the numbers of leads that we were able to secure. So certainly the message from the centre was, within the constraints set out in the document that you showed earlier, in other words there was a specification, nonetheless, to identify as many leads as possible. There was some verification but this was principally around the good standing of the companies. What did we know about the businesses that were offering these leads?

So the level of triage, to use that word, that was being applied was relatively low at this stage in the crisis.

Counsel Inquiry: And were you informed by officials or others at the Department of Health and Social Care that at least at their end they were buckling under the pressure of the numbers of offers? Was there any suggestion that further triage could be done, either by the JACT in London or by the teams which were based in-country?

Mr Andrew Mitchell: The point at which we brought in commercial expertise and the Commercial Policy Team within the Department for International Trade then connected with the DHSC commercial team and with the Cabinet Office commercial team, that was very much the discussion. So what level of specification could we then provide that would support a faster procurement process overall?

Counsel Inquiry: And you’ve touched upon the next subject I’d like to come to you with, which is the commercial expertise which was available in-country on the ground of those receiving the offers. The JACT, of course, reformed and became part of something called the GSSEP, but whilst it was the JACT, at the very earliest stages of the pandemic, was there available to it the sort of commercial and subject-matter expertise on the ground in-country where they were operating?

Mr Andrew Mitchell: On the ground in the country in which the teams were operating, there was commercial expertise available, either within the posts, the missions concerned, or through regional functions. So the Foreign Office had, and has regional commercial functions to support the work of posts overseas.

We didn’t have – in the early stages, we didn’t have that within the JACT, and as I said earlier on, that – a little bit because the intent, really, was to mobilise as quickly as possible, to proliferate the numbers of leads that we had access to, and it felt in the early stages a little bit as though this was a logistical operation rather than a commercial operation. We quickly recognised that that wasn’t right.

Counsel Inquiry: But forgive me, it’s right, isn’t it, that the Department for International Trade, it did have some commercial expertise, and I think you have set out in your witness statement that it’s your view that that commercial expertise should have been deployed much earlier?

Mr Andrew Mitchell: That is my view, yes.

Counsel Inquiry: And if that commercial expertise had been deployed at an earlier stage in the pandemic, what effect would that have had on the triaging process which was happening in-country and then, on the back-up of offers that was occurring in the Department of Health and Social Care?

Mr Andrew Mitchell: I mean, as I referred to a little bit earlier on, there would have been a much better commercial process, end-to-end, which would have been, frankly, to the benefit of DHSC in allowing them then to manage the backlog more effectively. And we should have spotted that at an earlier stage.

We saw the effects of this essentially then in the GSSEP process, because then having rectified that, brought in the commercial expertise that we required, redesigned, then, the procurement process, we had a better process, so we could see the evidence of that later on in the crisis.

Counsel Inquiry: The Inquiry has heard from a number of witnesses that in that first hundred days, that speed was of the essence. So I wonder if we could, please, have a look at an email on 20 April 2020. So about 30 days or so into that hundred days.

It’s INQ000493856. If we could zoom in, please, to the top bullet point.

The issue with supply chains was not only being noticed by those officials sending emails within the JACT; in this bullet point, which is, as I say, on 20 April, it refers to the Cabinet Secretary and Number 10:

“… getting concerned about the lack of overall grip on supply chains work, both domestic and international across all areas, including medical and food ([it] did not sound as though it was aimed at us, but more big picture).”

Then there’s reference there to there being too many competing and duplicating structures in place.

Does that email, again, does that reflect your understanding of the position as it developed in as late as 20 April 2020?

Mr Andrew Mitchell: Yes, I think this is fair. There was, certainly from the narrower perspective of the work that I was involved in, you know, particularly at this point, we were encountering difficulties in being able to properly track leads through the system. There was a lot of duplication in terms of working with distributors and suppliers. So I think that, you know, that suggestion of complexity, it certainly rings true for me, yeah.

Counsel Inquiry: Turning, please, away from the JACT and towards what became – forgive me, I think you referred to it as GSSEP?

Mr Andrew Mitchell: GSSEP, yes.

Counsel Inquiry: GSSEP. What was it that converted the JACT into GSSEP? When did that happen, and what problems did GSSEP fix?

Mr Andrew Mitchell: So we also, through this process, of course, were running lessons learned exercises, and those lessons learned exercises were demonstrating a number of the problems that we’ve talked about today. So what we attempted to do in GSSEP was to clarify the role of the Department, which was essentially in three areas, for the purposes of the work of GSSEP. First of all, sourcing leads overseas, as we’d done with the JACT. But secondly, then, working with individual countries and with groups of countries in international markets, and thirdly, then, looking to how we could diversify sources of supply, so working with new suppliers.

And GSSEP, which came into existence at the end of April, was a response to the difficulties and the recognition of the difficulties we’d faced in the first stage of the crisis, and then a better understanding of where DIT particularly could add value, which was in those three areas plus, of course, the work that separately and at the same time started on Project Defend, which was about supply chain diversification.

Counsel Inquiry: You referred to Project Defend. What was Project Defend, and what issues was it investigating? What did it find about the supply chains, in particular in healthcare equipment?

Mr Andrew Mitchell: So Project Defend was a supply chain resilience exercise that was begun with a view to taking a slightly longer-term look at where supply chain vulnerabilities might manifest. So if we understand the work that we were doing through the JACT and GSSEP, essentially, as the short-term response, this was the longer-term response that recognised that we had encountered supply chain problems that had not been anticipated in the way that they’d manifest, and then thought about what kinds of mitigation we would require, but starting very much with the data. So the work that was initially done by the consultants BCG, in support of the Department, identified where potentially vulnerable supply chains, which supply chains might they be.

Counsel Inquiry: So can I just pause for a moment. So it was noticed that there was a fundamental problem with supply chains that the Department for International Trade was considering. It brought in Boston Consulting Group, an external consultancy, to assist it with the analysis of supply chains, and the direction for that to happen came, did it not, from the very top? That on 25 April of 2020, it was the Prime Minister that commissioned a piece of work: to interrogate where the vulnerabilities lie in our critical goods and supply chains, to consider where they are, to consider how they could be mitigated, and with a particular view to potentially building domestic manufacturing capacity; is that right?

Mr Andrew Mitchell: Yes, so the commission did, indeed, come from the top, and Project Defend was the response, and Project Defend then looked at the kinds of interventions that you might want to make in a market in order to increase resilience of which one was, potentially, domestic manufacturing.

Counsel Inquiry: And the department in which that was located, was the Department for International Trade, was it not?

Mr Andrew Mitchell: It was.

Counsel Inquiry: How long did Project Defend last for, and what were fundamentally its outcomes in terms of the changes that were made to the structures within government looking at supply chains and supply chain resilience?

Mr Andrew Mitchell: So Project Defend ran from April of 2020 until August, I believe, of 2021. It went through four stages of evolution, initially looking at a number of critical supply chains on a very fast trajectory to work out where the potential vulnerabilities existed in those critical national supply chains might be, and then the kinds of actions that might be taken to mitigate some of the risks that applied.

Counsel Inquiry: May I pause you there. Just to be clear, Project Defend wasn’t only about healthcare supply chains; it was a piece of work that looked at supply chains across the piece, but healthcare supply chains, the ones that we’re considering, were certainly part of its work?

Mr Andrew Mitchell: In those initial phases, yes, that’s correct.

Counsel Inquiry: What Project Defend arrived at was a central coordination point, a new institution within government that was initially called the Global Supply Chains Directorate. Could you help us, please, with what that was and what it became?

Mr Andrew Mitchell: I think it’s important to say that DIT had responsibility overall for the intelligence and for the analysis, for triaging the systems across government, but individual departments were responsible throughout – from the beginning and throughout the process and that remains the case today, for the management of the supply chains that fall within their departmental competence. And so the directorate that was created came from, essentially, an assessment that Defend had done good work, it had identified a gap in the way that government operated, in other words an ability to assess continuously and to use data to do this, supply chain vulnerability to build expertise, and then to support those government departments in their work, their individual supply chains, and this is essentially what the Global Supply Chains Directorate was designed to do.

Counsel Inquiry: And of the other recommendations or what came out of Project Defend, in addition to the Global Supply Chains Directorate, were an in-house team of analysts to consider supply chain vulnerabilities, but also attempts to reduce vulnerabilities in supply chains by diversifying or attempting to diversify suppliers and supplier location, and that there would be increased global cooperation with other strategic partners around the world; is that right?

Mr Andrew Mitchell: That is correct, and I mean, essentially, the interventions that could be applied to supply chains included diversification of supply, potential domestic manufacturer, potential stockpiling or international coordination, and those lenses, as we described them, were applied differentially to each supply chain depending on the nature of the supply chain involved, and this did, indeed, overall, I think, increase, first of all, very considerably our understanding of the nature and the functioning of those supply chains, but it gave us the capacity, then, to remove risk from supply chains, working with those government departments in order to be able, then, to identify where the pressures were and to use the interventions that I’ve described.

Counsel Inquiry: One of the endpoint pieces of work of Project Defend and the directorate that was set up, which incidentally was renamed the Economic Security and Supply Chain Resilience Directorate, was something called the Critical Imports and Supply Chains Strategy.

Could we please bring it up. It’s INQ000494249.

This is a document published by the UK Government in January of 2024.

Could we turn, please, to page 27.

And in the “Spotlight” box in the middle of the page, about halfway down, it says:

“Measures such as stockpiles and targeted buffer stocks are specifically designed to mitigate a specific product shortage.”

And this a spotlight on what the government is doing with supplier coordination on health supply chains. This is one measure, and then it continues down in the paragraphs below to refer to:

“In particular, the NHS [implementing] multiple supplier framework agreements to improve security of supply and to manage demand spikes or individual supplier challenges.”

Now Mr Mitchell, Professor Manners-Bell, who has just given evidence, has considered this document and this is what he says about it, and I wonder if, after I’ve read it out to you, whether you could provide me with your answer. This is his report at paragraph 250. He says this, that:

“… the UK Government’s prioritisation of making PPE and healthcare equipment supply chains more resilient remains unclear.”

Looking at this document.

“In its report, ‘Critical Imports and Supply Chains Strategy’ published in 2024, the sector revealed only a cursory mention, and specific reference to China was absent saying only: …”

And the passages I’ve just read out to you:

“… ‘the NHS will implement multiple supplier framework agreements to improve security of supply …’” and so on.

He refers to:

“… the Scottish and Welsh Governments [who] both aspire to self-sufficiency in some types of PPE … [but] there is no evidence of a strategy formulation process setting out how specific supply chain resilience will be achieved.”

And so, from the beginning of Project Defend, at which the emphasis was on diversification of supply, partnering with allies, strategic reserves of critical goods, and expanding UK production, Professor Manners-Bell has considered this and says it just doesn’t go far enough. Could I have, please, your reflections on that.

Mr Andrew Mitchell: In fact it’s difficult for me to comment in any detail on this, since the report was published a year and 11 months after I had ceased any involvement in this work. In a way, I mean, I would say that this is broadly what I would anticipate and expect to see in a strategy that looked at supply chain resilience across the spectrum. In other words, this is a strategy for supply chain resilience for the national economy rather than a sector-specific supply chain strategy. That would be for the DHSC.

But I do – I mean, two things – first of all, recognise within this spotlight here the actions, the interventions, that Defend recommend. So you can see in the text here what’s happening around domestic production, for example, and diversification of supply. Elsewhere in the report, I think it is also worth saying that China is recognised as a very significant market, and the market with the highest risk associated with it in the way that this report assesses risk.

So it’s difficult for me to say more than that, to be honest, but, as I say, I think this is broadly to be expected from a national supply chain strategy.

Counsel Inquiry: Would you expect such matters as diversification of supply, support for domestic manufacturing and investment in supply chain technology, insofar as it affects healthcare supply chains, to be matters which are taken up by the Department of Health and Social Care rather than this UK Government document?

Mr Andrew Mitchell: I mean, it was always the case through the Defend and the work then of the Global Supply Chains Directorate that the relationship was as between, for DIT, a central intelligence function supporting department and the responsibility for the supply chains themselves, which sat within the Department, so yes.

Mr Sharma: Mr Mitchell, thank you very much. I don’t have any further questions.

My Lady, there are some Rule 10s.

Lady Hallett: There are indeed.

Mr Weatherby. Mr Weatherby is sitting there.

Questions From Mr Weatherby KC

Mr Weatherby: Thank you very much.

Mr Mitchell, I am going to ask you just a few questions on behalf of the Covid Bereaved Families for Justice UK, two short topics about intermediaries.

So you describe in your statement – and for the record – we don’t need to look at it, but for the record it’s 13.17 – that the intermediary market in the context of ventilators was “much riskier” than procuring directly from manufacturers.

And you state – again, for the record, paragraph 4.10 – that in respect of guidance on ventilator opportunities issued by the DHSC on 5 April 2020, and I quote:

“The guidance instructed officials conducting triage to ‘be cautious’ of new suppliers entering the market and claiming to have stock. This was due to an increase in middlemen offering stock on behalf of companies.”

So my question: can you help us, very briefly, just what was the risk that you were referring to there in your statement, the risk from the intermediary market?

Mr Andrew Mitchell: And this was principally the experience of the team in China on the ground.

Mr Weatherby KC: I’m going to come to that, yes?

Mr Andrew Mitchell: That, you know, they spend a bit of time essentially looking at what was available on the market, and had discovered that sources of supply were much, much more reliable when they went direct to the manufacturers.

Mr Weatherby KC: Yes.

Mr Andrew Mitchell: That the intermediaries were essentially sourcing, because of the way that the market was working, because there was very high demand and very low supply, lots of new suppliers were stepping into the market, and the experience was that the product supplied via intermediaries was likely to be harder, frankly, to verify from the perspective of – (overspeaking) –

Mr Weatherby KC: Right. So issues of quality –

Mr Andrew Mitchell: Yes.

Mr Weatherby KC: – fraud, non-delivery, those sorts of things?

Mr Andrew Mitchell: And the issue was, essentially, that because new suppliers were coming on to the market, they were essentially untested.

Mr Weatherby KC: Yes. Was – similar guidance which I’ve just read out, to be cautious due to middlemen, was that also issued in respect of PPE? Or don’t you know?

Mr Andrew Mitchell: I’m sorry, I don’t know the answer to that question.

Mr Weatherby KC: Okay. I mean you state it again, paragraph 13.21 of your statement that:

“… the China team’s preferred primary sourcing strategy for PPE in China was to work with large state-owned healthcare distributors (known as state-owned enterprises, or SOEs).”

And that allowed for larger orders sourced from multiple factories, and you described, 13.22, that the China team’s experience that:

“… most offers of PPE supply from small intermediaries were high risk …”

And so I’m sure you’d agree that the China team would be well placed to express that view, and that’s the view that you would share?

Mr Andrew Mitchell: Yes. I mean, they were looking – I mean, that word “high risk”, or the term “high risk” I think probably has to be seen in the right context there, which is I interpret that risk to be both quality but also questions of reliability of supply.

Mr Weatherby KC: Yes.

Mr Andrew Mitchell: So they’re talking about going to the SOEs because the SOEs are in a position to source supply when individual factories also stopped supplying, so they had access to a broader set of sources. So from the perspective of managing risk, they’re managing risk of supply, but also risk on quality.

Mr Weatherby KC: So we have heard that the PPE Buy Cell, the DHSC, and the UK Government generally had a very large number of offers, and both Buy Cell and the VIP Lane that we’ve heard about, had a lot of those offers from small intermediaries which were necessarily more high risk as we’ve discussed. Was anything done to communicate from your department about these high-risk problems?

Mr Andrew Mitchell: So we – the point at which we, as GSSEP, so the Global Strategic Sourcing and Engagement Project, started work setting out very clear demand signals on behalf of DHSC –

Mr Weatherby KC: Yes.

Mr Andrew Mitchell: – then we issued a set of documents as part of that new commercial process which included a statement of good standing, and opportunity risk assessment that allowed us then to work with the teams on the ground, to conduct the due diligence, it wasn’t formal due diligence in the commercial sense but, nonetheless, gathering the data that allowed us then to make those assessments together with DHSC.

Mr Weatherby KC: But was the clear message going back to DHSC that the problem of high risk, small intermediaries, was something that needed to be considered carefully?

Mr Andrew Mitchell: I mean, I can only answer that in relation to the process which we put together, which was essentially that if a supplier failed to fill out a statement of good standing, for example, automatically, that lead would not be taken forward.

Mr Weatherby KC: Yes, okay. Second point, and quickly, could we have up INQ000493919. Just while that’s going up, this is an email that you produced at paragraph 4.48 of your statement, and it’s the end email of a thread from JACT leaders. It’s specifically from Frank Clifford, Head of Operations, to Fred Perry. And it’s headed “PPE - System broken”, and it refers to:

“… approaching a Rubicon moment, perhaps we have even crossed it already. The PPE team is adding no value but at the same time are under increasing pressure.

“They have been asked to stop forwarding items to DHSC escalation …”

Then the second bullet point is the one I want to ask you about:

“Additionally, the frustration is growing at post …”

Then the second sentence:

“We even have the ludicrous situation of a manufacturer being identified some time ago sending information into the .gov system and now being asked to undertake due diligence on a middleman who is offering items from that company.”

So is what’s being said there, is that instead of DHSC purchasing directly from the manufacturers to be identified by your team, that the DHSC was now indicating back to your team that it was considering purchasing the same products but from an intermediary who would sell at a marked-up price and at greater risk?

Mr Andrew Mitchell: I mean, it’s difficult for me to say specifically with relation to this example, but certainly, we were aware at the time that intermediaries were operating in the market, and offering their supply to multiple sources, but there were multiple intermediaries also leading back to the same sources of supply. So this was absolutely a feature of the market at the time.

Mr Weatherby KC: Yes, the question really was: was this a problem between your department and the DHSC in terms of that you’d identified this lead, yet they’d come back through asking you to do due diligence on a middleman? Was that part of the problem that’s – (overspeaking) –

Mr Andrew Mitchell: It’s difficult – as I say, it’s difficult to say with this particular example but, I mean, the more general problem, which the GSSEP process tried to resolve, was that the commercial process that we were following was not in those initial stages sufficiently clear. So that was the aim.

Mr Weatherby: I won’t take it any further. Thank you.

Lady Hallett: Thank you, Mr Weatherby.

Professor Thomas. He’s over there.

Questions From Professor Thomas KC

Professor Thomas: Good afternoon, Mr Mitchell, I represent FEMHO, the Federation of Ethnic Minority Healthcare Organisations.

Mr Mitchell, during a critical phase of the pandemic response, there were significant concerns, were there not, about inclusivity of procurement practices, particularly ensuring that PPE and other healthcare products procured met the diverse needs of all healthcare workers, including those from minority ethnic groups and individuals with specific disabilities.

Now, let me come to my question. I’ve got two questions for you. The DHSC programme delivery board met on 12 June 2020, and that highlighted a strategic risk concerning the lack of inclusive product specifications.

If we can just call up one document, INQ000339236_0029, thank you.

Can you see that on your screen?

Mr Andrew Mitchell: I can, thank you.

Professor Thomas KC: Can you go down to point 4, do you see that? It’s highlighted:

“Risks that we do not provide the inclusive product specification for all end user requirements, eg ethnic minorities, [and] those [having] disability.”

If we go on to page 31, so that’s two slides down, so it’s … yes.

We can see that you are there – can you highlight, it’s the fifth one down, “Andrew Mitchell”. Yes, there you go.

Now, so you were at this meeting. You were aware that this risk having been identified at that time? That’s correct, isn’t it?

Mr Andrew Mitchell: Yes, I was at that meeting and I recognised that risk, yeah.

Professor Thomas KC: Yeah. So that brings me on to my second question, which is this: so, Mr Mitchell, what specific discussions or actions were taken to address this identified risk to ensure that procurement processes were aligned with the diverse needs of end users? Help us.

Mr Andrew Mitchell: So, I mean, I would simply say about this, first of all, that – I mean, I entirely recognise that this is a very significant issue, and to your point, I was at that meeting and heard that risk discussed. I’m afraid that my responsibilities were principally in the international supply space rather than anything to do with the product specification. So once those specifications were made, they were passed to my department, and we were then sourcing those leads on behalf of the DHSC.

Professor Thomas KC: Forgive me, Mr Mitchell, that wasn’t my question. I understand your answer, but my question was – you had been at the meeting, even though you say you didn’t have the responsibility, I get that. My question was, this risk having been identified, particularly with ethnic minorities, my question was: what discussions or actions were taken to address this at the meeting? Not necessarily by you.

Mr Andrew Mitchell: I’m afraid I don’t recall what actions were taken alleged that meeting on that topical. I’m sorry.

Professor Thomas KC: Could it be that none, it wasn’t discussed, it was just let through?

Mr Andrew Mitchell: I’m sorry, I don’t recall what actions were taken on that topic at this – (overspeaking) –

Professor Thomas KC: It’s an important point, isn’t it?

Mr Andrew Mitchell: It’s an important point yes.

Professor Thomas: Thank you, my Lady.

Lady Hallett: Thank you, Professor Thomas.

Thank you very much indeed, Mr Mitchell. Thank you for your help in preparing statements and the like, and thank you for coming here today. I hope we didn’t bring you over from Germany –

The Witness: Always a pleasure, my Lady.

Lady Hallett: I hope you can combine it with some other meeting in Whitehall or whatever, but thanks very much for your help.

The Witness: Thanks very much indeed.

Lady Hallett: Very well. Shall we break now, and I shall return at 1.55.

(12.54 pm)

(The Short Adjournment)

(1.55 pm)

Lady Hallett: Mr Sharma.

Mr Sharma: My Lady, the next witness is Simon Manley.

Mr Simon Manley

MR SIMON MANLEY (sworn).

Questions From Counsel to the Inquiry

Mr Sharma: Mr Manley, good afternoon.

You’ve provided one witness statement to the Inquiry in your own name and you’ve also adopted the witness statement of Sir Philip Barton, which you’re able to speak to during the course of your evidence. Would you confirm that those statements are true to the best of your knowledge and belief?

Mr Simon Manley: They are indeed.

Counsel Inquiry: Thank you. Mr Manley, to start, please, with your biography, a little bit about yourself. You are formerly the Director General of Covid-19 at the FCO, a position which you held between March and September of 2020?

Mr Simon Manley: Correct.

Counsel Inquiry: And prior to that, you were the British ambassador to Spain?

Mr Simon Manley: That’s right.

Counsel Inquiry: And you were also a non-resident ambassador to Andorra between October 2013 and August of 2019?

Mr Simon Manley: That’s exactly right, yes.

Counsel Inquiry: And you’ve been in diplomatic service since 1990. You are currently the United Kingdom’s permanent representative to the World Trade Organisation and the United Nations in addition to other international organisations based in Geneva; is that correct?

Mr Simon Manley: That is indeed correct, yes.

Counsel Inquiry: Mr Manley, can I start, please, with the FCO’s role prior to the pandemic in respect of procurement. Before the pandemic hit in China and in the UK, did the FCO have any prior role in pandemic procurement or any anticipated role in pandemic procurement?

Mr Simon Manley: In pandemic procurement, not really, no. I mean, obviously we’d had some preparations for a series of eventualities around pandemics but not really for taking on a role in procurement.

Counsel Inquiry: When the pandemic struck in China and in the UK, was there any guidance or playbook which the FCO officials could rely upon to respond to the emergency?

Mr Simon Manley: So, if I may say, I mean, our initial involvement was very much a consular involvement and it was in the initial outbreak in Wuhan and then in subsequent outbreaks in hotels in Tenerife and elsewhere. So the involvement in procurement only really came in in and around – and the first time I think we actually get actively involved in this is around 14 March 2020.

Counsel Inquiry: So the focus of the FCO prior to that date was about repatriating citizens to the United Kingdom?

Mr Simon Manley: So we’d established the taskforce the joint taskforce with DFID, in February. I think to look at the broader international implications of the emerging – it was still not yet a declared pandemic, so it was anticipation of something that might be coming our way. And then there was this consular response, as I say, in Wuhan, a couple of cruise ships in Tenerife and elsewhere, where you’d had outbreaks where we’d had to repatriate British nationals and, in some cases, our own staff.

Counsel Inquiry: From in your perspective, as director general, when did I come to your attention that this pandemic might affect global supply chains and in particular supply chains emanating in China?

Mr Simon Manley: So I became director general on 16 March 2020, so just after the initial requests out of Number 10 to secure ventilators. So pretty much my first day in the job was dominated by this challenge. But throughout this early period it is one of a series of challenges, and the challenges of returning the British nationals to the UK continues to be a big focus for our organisation in those first few weeks and months.

Counsel Inquiry: So to focus, please, on that initial request, did that initial request emanate from Number 10? In 14 March 2020, Number 10 sought the assistance of the FCO to try to procure ventilators directly from China?

Mr Simon Manley: That’s correct, yes. So I think we had been led to believe, by a professor at Oxford that there was a willingness on the part of a colleague of his in China to help us secure those ventilators.

Counsel Inquiry: And in relation to that request, what assistance did the Department of Health and Social Care provide to the FCO?

Mr Simon Manley: So, I mean, on the specific request in respect of China, that specific request didn’t go that far. I mean, what becomes quite clear pretty immediately is that we have a bigger problem on our hands, and that there is a requirement to secure several thousand ventilators within the space of a month or so.

And so where we – you know, we go to DHSC essentially to understand precisely what it is we’re looking for. You know, none of us are experts in ventilators. And so it is to acquire the sort of spec that our post should be looking out for, and you’ll see from the material –

Counsel Inquiry: Forgive me, is that a request that was made by the FCO or the Department of Health and Social Care, or did they offer their assistance to you?

Mr Simon Manley: I can’t really remember what was the sequence, but we wrote out to – I mean, originally to our post in China but then subsequently to a number of other posts in the network for help in trying to identify potential suppliers of ventilators. And obviously what our posts required was a sense of what was the specification of the ventilators that we were looking to acquire.

Counsel Inquiry: In terms of the expertise available in-country, focusing, please, on China, what sort of expertise was available to the FCO and therefore to the UK Government, by virtue of the FCO’s officials in-country?

Mr Simon Manley: So what we had in China at the time – and it’s – I suppose it’s just worth, if I may, just giving a bit of context. I mean, the pandemic had obviously – China had been the first place that the pandemic hit, and therefore, in response to the pandemic we’d already had to –

Counsel Inquiry: Please – slow down, please.

Mr Simon Manley: Sorry.

Counsel Inquiry: It’s all right.

Mr Simon Manley: Forgive me. We had already had to close two of our consulates in China. We were left with two other consulates outside of Beijing plus the embassy, so we had – still had Chongqing and Shanghai, plus the embassy in Beijing.

What we had across that network was a cross-government operation. So we had staff working for various bits of the British government. And in particular what we had were two bits of expertise.

And that was the staff who we had working on trade and investment matters, drawn primarily from DIT, as then was, who had a knowledge, particularly of those whom had been working on the life science sector, they had an awareness of the Chinese market, of the sort of companies who might be out there. And then more broadly, of course, what we had were people who knew China pretty well, who had the language expertise, who had an understanding of the relationship between firms and the state, which enabled us to sort of navigate the terrain.

And I think it’s important to remember that we had what we had because at that stage you couldn’t send additional people into China because of the pandemic restrictions, and indeed, we’d had to remove quite a number of our staff and a lot of dependants over the course of the previous two months. So many of the people who would normally be working in China were still working on Chinese matters but working from secondary locations.

Counsel Inquiry: So just to break that down a little bit, so in China, two types of experts, if I may call them that –

Mr Simon Manley: Correct.

Counsel Inquiry: – some who are experts in the countries?

Mr Simon Manley: Correct.

Counsel Inquiry: And others who have built up some expertise in relation to trade and investment and commercial matters?

Mr Simon Manley: Yes, and obviously, I mean, there’s an overlap. So many of those who had been working on life science issues within our trade and investment team obviously also had a knowledge of China itself, language expertise, or whatever.

Counsel Inquiry: Of course. You refer there to border closures –

Mr Simon Manley: Yes.

Counsel Inquiry: – that had taken place. What effect did that have on the people who were in-country and unable to be supplemented by others flying from the UK. Was that simply an impossibility?

Mr Simon Manley: It was effectively an impossibility. So we had to work with the – in terms of the people on the ground, and as I said, they were supplemented throughout by those who would have normally been posted to China but who we’d drawn down, as we’d say, in the weeks previous, but we couldn’t send in additional people for some time. And also you have to remember as in many parts of the world, including, of course, in the UK, these were people who were obviously often having to work from home because they were under lockdown.

So the pure logistics of working were quite hard.

Counsel Inquiry: You, of course, were based in the United Kingdom, were you not?

Mr Simon Manley: Yeah, I was indeed, yes.

Counsel Inquiry: And in relation to the contact between the team based in China and the United Kingdom, did that come through the FCO in London or was that directly with the Department of Health and Social Care?

Mr Simon Manley: So I think there were different types of contacts. I was in frequent contact with our ambassador there to get her sight of the overall state of affairs. We had, unusually, direct contacts between the network of – the China Network, who were busily trying to help DHSC procure goods and DHSC, and we also had our team which became – initially known as ACT, JACT, and then GSSEP, who were this interface, if you like, between our global network and our team in London – (overspeaking) –

Counsel Inquiry: Thank you, Mr Manley. We’ve heard about as ACT, JACT, and so on, just earlier this afternoon.

Can I move on, please, from ventilators, which was the initial procurement request, to the matter of PPE and China Buy. Could you talk us through, please, the evolution of the team, moving from procurement and seeking out ventilators, to seeking out PPE?

Mr Simon Manley: So, as you say, Mr Sharma, you know, the original – the initial challenge was ventilators. But actually quite quickly – I mean, at the time this seemed like a period of months but, of course, this was days and at most weeks – it became clear that the NHS was going to require vast quantities of protective equipment. And indeed, as we had been out in the Chinese marketplace we had been conscious of the opportunities that already existed for PPE, and indeed, you know, by sort of a week or so after coming into the job we were already asking the network as a whole to get a sense of what the sourcing opportunities are likely to be for PPE.

Counsel Inquiry: When you’re talking about the network as a whole, how many people, just roughly, are you talking, in-country, in China, doing this sort of work for the FCO?

Mr Simon Manley: So in the case of China, which is probably the best documented, if I can put it like that, I mean, at peak we have about anywhere between 170 and 200 people working on these issues in China, on a shift basis.

Counsel Inquiry: And of those people, what is the divide between those who, as you described earlier, are in-country experts, or country experts, and then those with commercial expertise?

Mr Simon Manley: I wouldn’t know the precise distinction between the two.

Counsel Inquiry: The work that was being conducted by the FCO officials in-country in China, could you help us, please, with how they went about sourcing PPE? Who were they approaching? Who were they seeking out contacts for?

Mr Simon Manley: So, I mean, in the initial phase that we are – they are trying to understand what the landscape looks like. Who are the companies out there? Who might be able to provide at this sort of scale? It is, as you’ve heard elsewhere, including from the professor this morning, it’s a very cutthroat market by this stage. There are obviously a number of other governments and organisations trying to secure PPE. So they are trying to identify what the possibilities are and then reporting back on those possibilities to DHSC.

Counsel Inquiry: I’m sorry – who are they reporting back to?

Mr Simon Manley: To DHSC, essentially.

Counsel Inquiry: And in terms of the reporting back to DHSC, presumably there’s this ongoing dialogue between the officials on the ground in China and DHSC. Are DHSC providing the specifications and the type of kit that they require, and is the China team responding to that?

Mr Simon Manley: Yes, that’s essentially the process. So DHSC had that expertise and, of course, they had the best understanding of the changing requirements for PPE as we’ve understood better the likely path of the pandemic in the UK.

Counsel Inquiry: What sort of work, those officials based again, focusing in on China –

Mr Simon Manley: Yes.

Counsel Inquiry: – what sort of work were they doing with respect to specifications and letters of intent and contracts, focusing in, please, on the very earliest stages of the pandemic?

Mr Simon Manley: So in the very earliest stages, where they can, they’re trying to visit their production centres, the factories, if that’s possible, they’re trying to get clarity on the precise spec of the goods being produced in China and then checking that with DHSC to see whether this is indeed what we require. So it’s an iterative process, and one at which we’re obviously trying to move at pace because of both the clear scale of the requirement from the UK, but also the intense nature of the competition on the ground.

Counsel Inquiry: And you refer to visiting factories or manufacturers or suppliers. Of course, there were some restrictions on movement, and so what effect did that have on the way in which the team, in-country in China, could view and certify and check whether the manufacturers were going to be able to provide the kind of equipment which was needed in the UK?

Mr Simon Manley: So when they couldn’t visit in person they were trying to find other ways of getting that certainty, whether it was through, kind of, video footage or other means. But they were very conscious that they – that we needed to be absolutely sure of the goods that were coming to us, and that the facilities or the firms with which we were dealing were ones that were going to be able to produce these goods of the right quality in the right timeframe at the right price.

Counsel Inquiry: In terms of the split between the leadership of those teams, obviously there’s the Department of Health and Social Care based in the United Kingdom and then the FCO, who is effectively working on the front line. What was the split in terms of leadership? Were the FCO able to take a lead in terms of sourcing and then signing contracts or did it always have to wait for DHSC to make a decision?

Mr Simon Manley: So, I mean, I would like to say that the China operation was very much a joined-up cross-government operation. So the team, this 170 to 200-odd people at peak, were drawn from across the embassy and then the two remaining consulates, so they’re people from across the government, it has a large DIT component. It’s headed – the Head of Mission is obviously Foreign Office, but it’s very much a cross-government team – sorry, I’ve forgotten the original question. Apologies.

Counsel Inquiry: Who was taking the lead in relation to signing contracts and making sure that equipment was being procured? Was it still the Department of Health and Social Care or was that something which the FCO was doing for itself?

Mr Simon Manley: So there are a number of contracts in the very early phase which are signed by that China team on the ground, but quite quickly, we tried to get ourselves into a position where those contracts are being formally signed off by DHSC. But it’s always kind of part of a conversation between the team on the ground and the DHSC as to whether we’re providing the right material.

Counsel Inquiry: So it was possible, as it was at the very early stages of the pandemic, for those who are based in-country at the FCO in China to source and secure and sign contracts for items such as PPE?

Mr Simon Manley: That was the case with a proportion in the early phase, yes.

Counsel Inquiry: We don’t need to turn it up but on 18 April 2020 the First Secretary of State Dominic Raab made a proposal which was that the FCO ought to be able to continue to purchase PPE directly in-country, not requiring it, the contract to come back to the Department of Health and Social Care. Can you help us, please, with the reasons as to why that wasn’t taken forward?

Mr Simon Manley: Because I think – I mean, we looked at it very carefully and I think these – all the way through, all the way through, we’re questioning ourselves as to whether we’ve got the right methodologies in place. I mean, that explains the occasionally slightly bewildering acronym soup as we moved from ACT to JACT to GSSEP, or whatever, because we’re constantly saying to ourselves: is this the best way of doing things? And so when the Secretary of State asked us to have a look at this, we had another look at this. We came to the conclusion that at least at that stage that wasn’t going to materially change our performance because this is now several weeks into this process, and what is important is the, throughout, is the precision of the demand signal, which I think Andrew Mitchell referred to this morning, and the pace of the decisions. Not because pace in and of itself is important, but it’s important in this particular context where one of the risks that we faced was of us finding the right material at the right place, and at the right price, but finding that we had been outbid by somebody before we could sign off that contract.

So pace was important in that particular respect, and we – I think we concluded that having the contracts being signed off by the local Head of Mission wasn’t, at that stage, going to make a material difference to that.

Counsel Inquiry: Could we turn up, please, INQ000493785.

These are emails between the Department for International Trade employees about China procurement in some of the very earliest stages of the pandemic between 23 March and 26 March.

Could we go down, please, to an email on 23 March from Mr Duke. It begins “The single-most important ask”?

Mr Simon Manley: Mm-hm.

Counsel Inquiry: Two-thirds of the way down, please. Three paragraphs from the bottom:

“The single-most important ask from our team in China is this: London should approve procurement immediately of everything the NHS will need in the coming weeks and months. Delay will mean we may not be able to secure stock. We understand the need to prioritise, but we must stop [and my emphasis] our current sequential approach.”

Could you help us, please, with what you’ve described, which is, if I may say so, a sequential approach, some work being done in-country followed by some work being done by the Department of Health and Social Care, to what was required at the very earliest stages of the pandemic?

Mr Simon Manley: So I’m not sure I would necessarily, if I may say, describe that as an entirely sequential process because there’s a constant process of engagement and interaction between the China Network and DHSC. As I said, you can – I can understand the frustration of those, if you like, on the front line in China who were out there trying to find this PPE, often doing so, and wanted a quick answer because they feared, as I said, that as in this case, that we would turn up two days later to discover that somebody else had come in in the interim and had purchased those goods instead of us.

Counsel Inquiry: I’m sorry, Mr Manley, could I ask you, please, to just slow a touch.

Mr Simon Manley: I’m sorry.

So people were frustrated, I think, that they would on some occasions find items, would report that back, and by the time that we’d got an answer as to whether this indeed was a contract with which we wished to proceed, that somebody else had come in and purchased it.

On the other hand, I also understand quite how difficult it was to have a clear projection several months out of what our needs might be over the course of the year. So there was an understandable tension there, but, you know, throughout, we are trying to speed up the process but at the same time we have to have due respect for ensuring that we’ve got the right items at the right price and that we can be confident about the supplier. So it’s a constant tension throughout this process.

Counsel Inquiry: Could we please bring up that email again, INQ000493785, just to see what the consequences can be in the event that speed is not prioritised.

If we go to the second paragraph from the bottom:

“This a practical example of what happens if speed is not prioritised again in the very earliest stages of the pandemic. To give just one example, last Thursday we informed the Department of Health and Social Care we were already to procure tens of billions of [Covid-19] test kits. Today we still haven’t received the green light to place orders, and over the weekend the United States bought all of the stock of [Covid-19] testing kits in China.”

And if we can go down, please, to the following paragraph, this observation:

“We have been consistently behind the curve but we need to get ahead of it. The China Network is ready to respond (we have dozens of people working on healthcare procurement, with more on standby). The DIT is leading this work. The expertise and industry connections of the DIT teams in China is saving lives in the UK – and we can do more. Please feel confident to strongly make the case in any meetings where the opportunity lies.”

So, Mr Manley, what I’m suggesting to you is that if the FCO at the time were enabled to enter into and procure more kit on the ground, these sorts of events might not have happened?

Mr Simon Manley: I still think – I think it was important for us to ensure that we were procuring the goods in a way that was consistent with the NHS’s needs as they were being relayed to us by DHSC, and whoever was doing that procurement on the ground had to have that assurance at the end of the day. But, look, I recognise that, like I said, it was an extraordinarily competitive environment and frustrating, therefore, for the teams when contracts that they thought might be available to us were lost.

Counsel Inquiry: Could we bring up, please, INQ000477701 to touch a little, please, on the China Buy process.

This is a letter from Tom Duke, who is the Senior Responsible Officer of the Covid-19 Procurement Taskforce, about procurement of PPE in China, towards a medium and long-term strategy. This is going forward a little bit in the chronology to 23 April 2020.

Could we display, please, down to bullet point page 1, paragraph 4.

This, again, is an indication of the coordination that was required between the FCO, the Department for International Trade and the Department of Health and Social Care.

And if we can go down, please, to page 6.

I won’t take you through every single element of this because we’ve considered it in a little detail with Mr Marron, but the process through which offers had to be coordinated between the FCO, in-country in China, and the Department of Health and Social Care in the United Kingdom, combined with such things as time differences, communication issues and suchlike, would that not have slowed the process of procurement of PPE at the early stages of the pandemic and even into these later stages in April?

Mr Simon Manley: Look, I mean, we were trying to run this process as quickly as we could, along with colleagues in DHSC. I think what, in some ways, if I may say, what this annex also shows you is us trying to be very clear with our teams who were working on this and the steps they had to go through, which were important steps, after all. Important steps like due diligence, and the rest.

As I say, it was a constant tension. I recognise that.

Counsel Inquiry: Could we go back, please, to page 1 of that document. I’d like to ask you some questions, please, about the China Buy sourcing strategy.

Mr Simon Manley: Yes.

Counsel Inquiry: If we could turn to page 2. Thank you. Paragraph 5 at the top. This sets out – again, this is in April of 2020 – that the primary sourcing strategy for PPE in China was to work with large, state-owned healthcare distributors.

It explains the reason why that is.

Would you be able to explain to the Inquiry please, given that the China Buy team was so close in proximity to large state-owned manufacturers as to why you understand it was considered that a New Buy team had to be set up to deal with offers that may very well have been coming from the same source?

Mr Simon Manley: Yes, I have less sight, I have to admit, of that bit of it. What I think you see here is – perhaps coming back, if I may say, Mr Sharma, to where we started, as to what is the – what is it that the PP – who we did have deployed in China brought to this operation. And I think what you see in this strategy, which prioritises state-owned enterprises, is that combination of sort of, if you like, political insight into the way that state and business operate in China and a knowledge of the sector itself. And that led them to this conclusion about how we should focus our effort on the state-owned enterprises as a means of, if you like, reducing our vulnerabilities to securing contracts with companies who would prove less able to deliver the goods produced in the time and the quality –

Counsel Inquiry: Did you or anyone else within the FCO raise the fact that the China Buy team was very close to a number of large manufacturers in-country, and that perhaps one of the strategies which ought to have been deployed would have been to focus attention on those factories, rather than, as we’ve heard from other witnesses, intermediaries who sit between those factories and the PPE supply in the United Kingdom?

Mr Simon Manley: Yes, well, I think – I mean, as Andrew Mitchell was explaining this morning, I think, you know, there were – I think we were aware that intermediaries were not necessarily a particularly helpful avenue down which to go, because in many cases, it turned out that you were dealing with somebody who was in turn dealing with the very company that we were already dealing with. So that it kind of – that those –

Counsel Inquiry: Sorry, just to break that down, what you’re saying is that it’s quite possible that there would be a contract with one of those large manufacturers in China, with which the UK Government has a contract to supply PPE, and then, in addition to that, the government may be contracting with intermediaries whose ultimate supplier is the same manufacturer?

Mr Simon Manley: That would indeed be a possibility. And it’s also something, to be honest, that happened to us outside of the UK. So I think, if I remember rightly, I think – I may get – I think it was the case in Malta, where again, you know, we had a – we identified a company who showed that they would be kind of willing to sell their PPE to us, and then when we kind of looked further we realised that, actually, their goods were being produced in China. So there was a risk that we were going to go all the way round again to end up with similar goods but we’d have been better off going to the original supplier.

But, you know, at the same time we were very – we wanted to ensure that we weren’t neglecting a potential opportunity, as well. So it was – again, there’s a tension there.

Counsel Inquiry: Could we have a look, please, at INQ000494034.

A document about this potential issue of gazumping, one contractor gazumping another contractor in China.

And if we turn to page 2, perhaps over the page to 3 – forgive me, there it is at the second-from-the-bottom bullet point:

“It is [in]valuable to have a joint coordination function …”

With reference to the JACT.

And then:

“This may also have helped to mitigate self-gazumping in the context of procurement not recommended, or even known about, by the China Network.”

So there was that risk. This document is setting out the potential risks of being gazumped, of the UK DHSC team being gazumped or vice versa by the China Buy team based in China.

Could you help us, please, with what steps were put in place to stop or limit the risk of that having happened.

Mr Simon Manley: So, I mean, I may – I’m not sure about the particular context of the assertion here, but it is certainly true to say that we were concerned at various points in this early period by the fact that we – our sort of China Network purchasing team – were not the only UK entity seeking to purchase PPE in China. So that there were cases of other UK entities, whether they be devolved administrations or NHS trusts or others, who were seeking to procure. And with a risk that you indeed did end up, sort of, if you like, gazumping yourself or at least competing against other UK entities.

And I think you’ll know that at, I think it’s around, 16 April or so when the Permanent Secretary at DHSC writes, for example, to the devolved administrations to stress the point that we’re going to be trying to insist upon a kind of all-UK procurement policy.

Counsel Inquiry: Forgive me, Mr Manley, it’s my fault. This document I should have introduced to you.

Mr Simon Manley: Sorry.

Counsel Inquiry: What it is, it’s a paper produced by the Department for International Trade, it’s produced on 1 June 2020, and it’s headed that there are lessons learnt for the London procurement team.

Mr Simon Manley: Yes.

Counsel Inquiry: And that of one of the risks which is identified is that risk of self-gazumping and of intermediaries. And so the question I had for you was as to whether, to the best of your knowledge, there was a system or a process in place, either in China or in the UK or within DHSC, to make sure that the United Kingdom wasn’t effectively competing with itself?

Mr Simon Manley: So we recognised that there was a bit of a problem, and actually I think DHSC, certainly in respect of the devolved administrations, took action to try to ensure that we were not competing against ourselves. But it had been a problem at the very early stages. I think we’d be the first to admit that.

And that, if I may say, was, you know, one of the – I think Andrew Mitchell this morning kind of focused on the role of the JACT as a sort of transmission point, if you like, between the demand signal and the supply signal, if I can put it in those terms, but there was also a point about the JACT, and indeed GSSEP later on, being a sort of single point of information for all of us within the system, including our ministers, as to where we were in the procurement process. And I think that was one of the things we were trying to sort through.

Counsel Inquiry: Could I turn, please, to some of the lessons that were learned by the FCO as a result of the China Buy procurement process. So, setting aside what the Department for International Trade had considered the lessons that were learned, what reflections did the FCO have about the operation of the China Buy team and the procurement of PPE?

Mr Simon Manley: So I think – well, two things. I think we thought they did a tremendous job, first of all. They did a tremendous job in the most difficult of circumstances, as so many other people did in response to the pandemic. It’s a cutthroat competition, the pace at which they were having to work, the pressure which they felt, as we all did, to secure, first, ventilators and then PPE at pace for our colleagues back on the front line in the NHS.

Counsel Inquiry: Forgive me, in the witness statement of Sir Philip Barton, he describes that a number of the issues arise from staff training and a lack of expertise on the front line in China. Is that a sentiment that you agree with?

Mr Simon Manley: Yes, I do. So we drew a number of lessons from it, which we have put into practice, or tried to put into practice, which include the training that’s available to people, the procurement policies that we have in place. But I just want to register that I think, you know, in terms of the commitment that those officers showed, the skill and dexterity they demonstrated in very difficult conditions, they did a tremendous job. We were constantly learning, constantly learning, constantly trying to adapt our processes and procedures. And I think you see that working through the – you know, the three or four months of – the first few months of the pandemic, as we shift the structures of the JACT and the China Network, we shift the way that we are doing this. Partly for the lessons, partly of course because needs change. And we moved from ventilators to PPE, and then we realised that the sort of volumes of PPE that we were going to need to continue to procure were such that we needed a slightly different model, and it’s one that is more kind of UK or London-based than the one that we’d started with. And also because you’ve been running what’s effectively a crisis operation, drawing on staff who are not, you know, fundamentally versed in procurement matters or even healthcare matters, and taking them away from other jobs, and you’re having to try to get yourself back onto a more sustainable footing.

So there’s a process of near constant evolution through the course of those first few months, and then a sort of – and lessons are being learned all the time, some of which are immediate and they’re being put into practice in changes to the way that we are doing things on the ground and some of which are longer term.

Counsel Inquiry: Pause for a moment, please.

Lady Hallett: If I could just ask a question.

Mr Sharma: Yes.

Lady Hallett: Going back to Mr Sharma’s question and the lesson learned, I understand that you accept the proposition that there may have been a lack of training or expertise. I’m just wondering how you put that long that you’ve learned – or, sorry, how your former colleagues put that lesson that’s been learned into practice to apply both to business as usual – because presumably your people in China are having to deal with business as usual as well as a pandemic. How do you get the right kind of expertise and training for your people in China? As you say you couldn’t send new people in who were properly trained. So how does that work, in practice now? Today?

Mr Simon Manley: My Lady, I think that’s a very good question because I don’t think it would be practical to make every member of the China Network a procurement specialist. So what we are trying to do is to try to ensure that we’ve got higher levels of basic knowledge across the system and then we’ve got the procurement policies in place that would enable them in such an eventuality. But it was, as we all know, an extraordinary time in which each and every day, every assumption that we might have made, was being thrown up in the air and we were having to adapt constantly to those changing demands.

Lady Hallett: Sorry to interrupt, Mr Sharma.

Mr Sharma: Not at all, my Lady.

One of the second lessons that Sir Philip Barton places in his witness statement on behalf of the FCO is that there was an absence of clear lines of responsibility between the FCO, the Department for International Trade, and the Department of Health and Social Care. Would you agree with that?

Mr Simon Manley: I would have, yes. But what we – I think – again, what we are trying to do in the course of the first few weeks and months is to get ourselves to a more sustainable footing and one in which there’s a – through a kind of crisis period where we’ve got a demand signal that’s coming out of DHSC and that’s being implemented by joint teams, FCO and DIT teams, you know, we start, JACT starts as being primarily a FCO team, becomes a joint FCDO – FCO/DIT/DHSC team and then modifies itself again and becomes a kind of DIT-led GSSEP. So we’re evolving constantly.

Counsel Inquiry: And this, Mr Manley, is one of your own, in fact your principal reflection about the approach to the pandemic. You say this:

“… if the wider expertise within government, including trade and investment expertise within [the Department for International Trade], had been available to the FCO at an earlier stage, effective procurement processes might have been established sooner.”

Mr Simon Manley: Yes. We try and bring in this expertise as quickly as we can. If you look at the initial dates, I mean this is – those initial messages that we’re sending out on around 20 March, days after the pandemic has been declared, and when we’re only, I think, realising quite what is happening to global supply chains as well. We then try and – one of the lessons that we quickly learn from the JACT is that need to have more DIT staff and expertise in this, and that’s what happens kind of within about a week.

Counsel Inquiry: One of the ways of solving the problem of expertise is, of course, by training.

Mr Simon Manley: Mm-hm.

Counsel Inquiry: Another means might be better coordination between the expertise which is available within the United Kingdom and within the FCO. In the event of a pandemic at some point in the future, what do you think the right balance is, the right mix between increasing training on the ground for officials and making sure that there’s coordination? Or do you think it’s not an either/or question?

Mr Simon Manley: I think you probably have to have a little bit both, but I do think a lot of it is about coordination, and we were hamstrung by the inability to bring in expertise from the UK into the China Network because of the pandemic restrictions. But as those days and weeks go on, we’re trying to make the best use of that expertise and, I think, if we were doing it all again, it’s easy to do with hindsight, and we’d have been quicker at it, and I hope we’d be quicker at it again, if we were to be faced with similar circumstances.

Mr Sharma: Thank you, Mr Manley, I don’t have any further questions.

Lady Hallett: I think there are some questions from Ms Mitchell. No? Oh no, that’s for Mr Gove, sorry.

I don’t think there are any questions for you, Mr Manley.

Mr Sharma: I don’t believe there are.

Lady Hallett: Very well. I’m terribly sorry about that. I’m getting ahead of myself, Mr Manley.

Thank you very much, indeed, for your help. I hope we haven’t flown in another diplomat to help us today. I was afraid we might have flown in Mr Mitchell especially, but you can combine your visit, I hope, with other special –

Mr Simon Manley: Special – (overspeaking) –

Lady Hallett: Thank you very much indeed.

The Witness: Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr Sharma.

Lady Hallett: I think we might as well continue, Mr Wald, if you’re happy?

Mr Wald: Yes, my Lady, very happy.

My Lady, our next witness this afternoon is Mr Michael Gove.

Lady Hallett: Thank you.

Mr Michael Gove

MR MICHAEL GOVE (sworn).

Lady Hallett: Mr Gove, I hope we haven’t kept you waiting for too long and that you were warned.

The Witness: No, not at all. No, thank you very much, my Lady. Not at all.

Questions From Lead Counsel to the Inquiry for Module 5

Mr Wald: Please state your full name for the Inquiry .

Mr Michael Gove: Michael Andrew Gove.

Lead 5: Thank you, Mr Gove, and thank you for supplying to the Inquiry a witness statement. It’s Inquiry document INQ000563560. It’s signed at the end.

Could you confirm, please, for the Inquiry that it’s true to the best of your knowledge and belief?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Lead 5: Thank you very much indeed. Mr Gove, by way of brief background, you are the former MP for Surrey Heath; is that right?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Lead 5: You’ve held numerous senior roles, including ministerial ones within the Conservative Party, but for the period of relevance to this module, you were the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster between January 2020 and September 2021; is that correct?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Lead 5: And you were the Minister for the Cabinet Office from mid-February 2020?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Lead 5: Thank you. And you are now the editor of The Spectator, you’ve been so since October 2024?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Lead 5: Thank you, Mr Gove. Moving on then, please, to your role in pandemic procurement which is obviously the subject of this module. You’ve told us in your witness evidence that that role was relatively limited and led by DHSC; is that right?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Lead 5: Throughout the period that is relevant to this module, your fellow minister there was Mr Matt Hancock from whom we’ll be hearing in due course.

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Lead 5: We know from your evidence also, Mr Gove, that you attended a range of important decision-making fora, sometimes attending, sometimes chairing, including COBR, the General Public Service Ministerial Implementation Group, HMIG, Cabinet, Covid-O and meetings with devolved administrations. Yes?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Lead 5: You tell us very candidly, if I may say so, that you have no extensive knowledge of public procurement law. That’s the position, isn’t it?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Lead 5: But you are nonetheless, Mr Gove, familiar with the importance with the ensuring that fairness and transparency is achieved through that process at all times?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes, consistent with other priorities.

Lead 5: Yes, I don’t know whether you’ve been able to tune in to last week’s evidence at all, have you, Mr Gove?

Mr Michael Gove: I’ve had the chance to read some of it.

Lead 5: I don’t know whether you have read, therefore, the evidence of Professor Sanchez-Graells? You will, then, recall a set of principles that govern procurement and his evidence that not just even in an emergency, but especially in an emergency, fairness and transparency are to be maintained.

Mr Michael Gove: I read his evidence, both here to the Inquiry, and also the report that he prepared. I think there are a number of flaws in his analysis.

Lead 5: Well, I’m not going to ask you to critique his analysis; I’m asking you a very specific question about transparency and fairness. Can we limit ourselves for these purposes to that? Would you mind?

Lady Hallett: I think we’d better give Mr Gove the chance to see if he wants – can you summarise your – (overspeaking) –

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Lady Hallett: – Mr Gove?

Mr Michael Gove: So Professor Sanchez-Graells is both an academic and a lawyer, and in his work he exhibits the weaknesses of both of those otherwise admirable professions. He outlines an adherence to EU legacy law, which seems to me to be almost theological in its – how can I put this – finickiness and it is also the case that he seems profoundly to underestimate the degree of pressure under which this and other governments were placed at the beginning of the pandemic. So while I am a huge admirer both of academics and of lawyers, all professions have their flaws, and Professor Sanchez-Graells exhibits both of those flaws in his report.

Lead 5: All right, Mr Gove, I don’t think there’s any dispute that you and others – we’ve heard from some of them last week – were under terrific pressure during this period. The simple point, and it’s a point relevant to one of the High Court judgments, of which you may be aware, that even during emergency procurement, it is necessary, it is essential, to maintain principles of transparency and fairness. In that particular case, or cases, they related to equal treatment and the publication of contract notices after the event.

Mr Michael Gove: Yes, and I take it you’re referring to the case that dealt with PestFix, Clandeboye and Ayanda?

Lead 5: I am. They are both Good Law Project cases, they are separate cases.

Mr Michael Gove: Mm.

Lead 5: One of them found unequal treatment as a result of the High Priority Lane, to which we’ll come in a few moments, and the other found, as a result of notices not having been published within the requisite time or at all, that requirement of transparency had not been met?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes, I have a very low opinion of the Good Law Project. I believe that its title is an almost perfect oxymoron. The man who runs it is a politically motivated grifter.

Lead 5: All right. Well, thank you for that, Mr Gove. It wasn’t a question I was asking you, but you’ve said your piece.

You do, by contrast, have an enormously high opinion of Lord Agnew, don’t you?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Lead 5: And you say so in your written evidence. You delegated authority for issues pertaining to government commercial activity to your junior minister, you say Lord Theodore Agnew. Did he report to you?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Lead 5: Yes. So you were provided with updates so far as his involvement in public procurement was concerned?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes, but there would be many decisions which Theodore would take which, in the course of any given day, I would not seek nor wish to micromanage.

Lead 5: Do you have any sense of what proportion of his time was devoted to the challenge of emergency procurement?

Mr Michael Gove: A significant amount but I would not be able to put a percentage upon it.

Lead 5: Okay. Thank you for that. You say that he had a vitally important role within the Cabinet Office, you describe him as a lynchpin. You use various other adjectives describing him in heroic terms.

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Lead 5: And indeed, you describe him as a hero –

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Lead 5: – for his role in public procurement?

Mr Michael Gove: Absolutely.

Lead 5: All right, thank you for that.

I want to move on to the subject of the Ventilator Challenge. You tell us within your written evidence that the procurement – that you did not have any direct decision-making authority or leadership, with the exception of the Ventilator Challenge.

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Lead 5: I just want to ask you, in relation to the first clause there, you distinguish, presumably, direct decision-making authority or leadership and indirect decision-making authority or leadership; is that fair?

Mr Michael Gove: I believe so but it depends how you develop this line of questioning.

Lead 5: Well, let’s see how we get on. By “direct”, that is issuing an instruction?

Mr Michael Gove: Mm.

Lead 5: A clear instruction. I don’t know whether you followed or read Mr Rhys Williams’s evidence or Sir Gareth Rhys Williams’s evidence of last week?

Mr Michael Gove: I did.

Lead 5: You did. You may recall, therefore, in relation to ministerial pressure, that he subdivided that category into three subcategories.

There is a request from a minister for an update as to how an offer that has made its way into the VIP Lane is progressing. That’s number 1. Which he said, fair enough.

Number 2, “You said you’d get back to me by X, and have not done so, why not?” He described that as annoying but fair.

And number 3, “I want you to purchase this or these items from this source.”

Which he described as “not okay”.

Now, the third example would be direct decision making, would it not, whereas the first two, indirect?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes, but I think that since the example of any contract being awarded at the behest or request of a minister which resulted in public money going to any contractor didn’t arise.

Lead 5: Sorry, you acknowledge that the third species, the third subcategory that Sir Gareth postulated last week would be direct intervention from a minister, if it existed?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Lead 5: All right. You say that you had no direct decision-making authority or leadership with the exception of the Ventilator Challenge –

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Lead 5: – where you did. Yes?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Lead 5: Because you had direct intervention, you had direct involvement and intervention in that challenge?

Mr Michael Gove: Well, it may help the Inquiry to note that in the Ventilator Challenge, which followed on from the inability of the government to procure ventilators at a time when they were considered to be a vital element in the response to Covid, the Prime Minister asked the Cabinet Office to lead an innovation partnership-type arrangement, during which there were a number of companies, some of them established medical suppliers, one, at least, not, to see if it was possible, at pace, to provide the NHS with the equipment that it was, at the time, so desperately in need of. I believe that the eventual outcome of that was a success and I believe that Gareth Rhys Williams and Theodore Agnew deserve enormous credit for it.

Lead 5: All right. Well, we heard evidence about the Ventilator Challenge, as you will know, last week, particularly from Sir Gareth, but since some of that correspondence included or was sent by you, it’s important, and only fair to you, that the Inquiry should hear directly from you in relation to it. And that’s what I want to move to now, if I may.

Mr Michael Gove: Of course.

Lead 5: Thank you.

Could we have, therefore, INQ000048399 up on display.

As early as 20 March 2020, which was four days after the Ventilator Challenge was announced, the Prime Minister, in a WhatsApp messaging group – which I don’t think included you?

Mr Michael Gove: No, it did not.

Lead 5: – was messaging about ventilators, and he said this:

“Dyson freaking.”

Then we have:

“Action this day.”

Mr Hancock says:

“I have also received the same. I will talk to Dyson and Michael” – which I presume is yourself.

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Lead 5: “… and sort it.”

Were you at this point informed that Sir James Dyson was freaking?

Mr Michael Gove: I was certainly informed, I don’t know if it was precisely at this point, I was certainly informed at different points of the frustrations that Sir James Dyson felt with the process of Dyson the company’s involvement in the Ventilator Challenge.

Lead 5: Was pressure being applied to you to include Dyson in the Ventilator Challenge, and to progress its design?

Mr Michael Gove: Pressure was being applied to me to ensure that we got ventilators to the front line, and the decision to take procurement of ventilators out of DHSC and into the Cabinet Office for the Ventilator Challenge was a reflection of the Prime Minister’s judgment that DHSC was doing an enormous amount under pressure, and that Sir Gareth, because he had some experience in this area, could help us to secure those supplies. A number of different companies were involved in that process, the most high profile of which to those who would not have been involved in the field of medical equipment, would obviously have been Sir James.

Lead 5: I note that save for that last part of your answer, you have answered in general terms. We’re going to turn on to the detail in a moment but can I ask you directly: did you have as much or more direct involvement in any other potential ventilator manufacturer as you did with Dyson?

Mr Michael Gove: I looked at all of the designs. I spent my time trying to ensure that the process was happening as quickly as possible. What I wanted to ensure was that all viable designs were followed up. The difference between Sir James and others is that he has not, or had not primarily been involved in making medical equipment, but what he was and is, is an entrepreneur, an inventor, and designer of distinction who had been contacted by the Prime Minister and who had indicated his willingness to help at a time of national challenge.

Lead 5: Mr Gove, it’s not quite what I asked you. Can I take you back to my question, please, and I think it’s one that permits for a “Yes” or “No” answer. Did you have as much direct involvement with any other potential ventilator manufacturer as you did with Dyson?

Mr Michael Gove: No, not as much as with Dyson.

Lead 5: All right. Thank you, that’s what I wanted to be clear about.

Clearly, as you’ve indicated in your answers this afternoon, Sir James was very active in pushing to be involved. We know that, don’t we?

Mr Michael Gove: He wanted to save lives.

Lead 5: He wanted to save lives. We know of this. Could we have another document for which you are not responsible, but in which you are mentioned, INQ000569777, page 11, which is a rather well-thumbed copy of Mr Hancock’s pandemic diaries.

Mr Michael Gove: Mm.

Lead 5: It’s 25 March 2020:

“Boris called Michael Gove and me in to talk ventilators. He wants Michael to pick it up, given all the procurement people are actually based in the Cabinet Office.

“Our competition is proving a mixed blessing. Some participants are a little over-enthusiastic. James Dyson, the vacuum manufacturer, has been contacting numerous people in high places to ensure he has a prominent role. He’s continually on the phone, including to Boris, pushing to take part. He’s an amazing innovator and engineer and he’s completely right to turn to this – after all, we put out the call – but it’s becoming awkward.”

Then further down:

“Michael texted asking to talk urgently about what to do about Dyson. It’s a fine line between enthusiasm and getting in the way.”

All right, would you agree with that assessment? Was it becoming awkward?

Mr Michael Gove: It was the case that Sir James was frustrated at what he perceived to be bureaucratic slowness on the part of the government machine. Part of my role was to challenge the bureaucracy within the government machine at every point, not just on behalf of Sir James but on behalf of the National Health Service and those at the front line. Sir James has a particularly energetic style of making himself known. So do I.

Lead 5: You speak within your witness statement about the political pressure that Sir James is capable of exerting. What do you mean by that, and did it come to bear on you?

Mr Michael Gove: If it was the case that at any point someone who was willing to help the front line had been fobbed off with bureaucratic excuses, and if their kind efforts had not been followed up energetically, that would have been a political problem. But worse than that, it would have been a failure to discharge my duty as a minister seeking to help the front line.

Lead 5: Is that your assessment of the Dyson proposal: that Sir James was fobbed off?

Mr Michael Gove: It was the case that he communicated to me and to others frustration with the process. So I set out at different points in order to see if aspects of the process that might be conducted sequentially could be conducted in parallel. I asked questions about whether or not space in some of the testing facilities, which I believe were in Birmingham, could be freed in order to ensure that the process of advancing different prototypes could be done.

At that time, my main aim was to ensure that we had the maximum number of potential ventilators from the maximum number of suppliers, and I think it was noted in the evidence that Sir James, because of his production facilities, had his prototype got through testing, which it didn’t, would have been able to produce significant numbers.

Lead 5: Were you capable of forming a view as to whether – which side of the line his proposals fell: enthusiasm and getting in the way?

Mr Michael Gove: I think that it’s in the nature of government that every single day, people who are enthusiastic, sometimes always – sometimes also get in the way. So it may be the case that there are people who maintain an Aristotelian golden mean between enthusiasm and getting in the way, but normally in the rough and tumble of politics and government, sometimes the best people, the most energetic people, can overreach, but you want to have people who are capable of either asking difficult questions or being demanding. That’s the price of progress.

Lead 5: Mr Gove, you relied, as all ministers must, on the advice of senior civil servants?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Lead 5: And you heard, did you not, then and last week in evidence, Sir Gareth Rhys Williams significant concerns about the safety of the ventilator prototype being proposed by Dyson?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Lead 5: Yes. Were you aware of those concerns both at the time – you presumably are aware that that was the evidence given last week?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes, of course I was.

Lead 5: Were you aware at the time?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes, of course I was.

Lead 5: Yes.

Mr Michael Gove: So the reason why I pressed was to see if it was possible to refine the design and, indeed, the design was refined, and some but not all of the obstacles to its implementation were addressed.

Lead 5: Well, let’s –

Mr Michael Gove: But throughout, we were very clear that no device should be deployed on the front line unless it had secured approval from the MHRA.

Lead 5: Because of the fundamental importance of ensuring safety in a piece of apparatus such as a ventilator?

Mr Michael Gove: Correct.

Lead 5: Yes. All right, let’s turn to some of the relevant correspondence and test the degree to which it matches up to the account which you now give.

Could we have INQ000496699.

It’s an email dated 25 March 2020, from Sir Gareth Rhys Williams to Sir John Manzoni: “Cdl” – that’s yourself?

Mr Michael Gove: Mm.

Lead 5: “… insistent [in capital letters] 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 …”

All right.

That’s the first one. Before I put a question to you, I’m going to bring up on screen the second one.

The same day, it’s INQ000533247. The same day Richard Hornby, the Chief Financial Officer at the Cabinet Office – with whom I’m sure you’re familiar.

Mr Michael Gove: Mm.

Lead 5: – emailed cabinet colleagues to say:

“Please accept this as authorisation to raise a purchase order for £100,000 in favour of Dyson for prototype ventilators. Gareth Rhys Williams has been instructed by the CDL to proceed at place. Description and conditions will come from Gareth and Dan. Thanks and happy to discuss.”

Then one more before I pose a question to you, if I may.

It’s INQ000497116. And this is a few days later … yes, there it is. If we just scroll up, we’ll see who this comes from. It’s from – yes, it’s from your office.

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Lead 5: “Dear all” – and there are a number of action points there. Do you see one, two, three, four, five, down:

“MHRA” – that’s the regulatory body responsible for ensuring safety?

Mr Michael Gove: Mm.

Lead 5: “And GRW” – Sir Gareth Rhys Williams – “to ensure by the end of Friday …”

Mr Michael Gove: Mm.

Lead 5: And this is written on a Wednesday:

“… to ensure by the end of Friday the Dyson product has [first] been tested and [second], has been approved by MHRA.”

Now, Mr Gove, given what you say about the importance of safety, given what you say that you regarded your role only as one of unblocking bureaucracy, how was it that you were able, on Wednesday, 25 March, to give a clear instruction that not only would the Dyson product have been tested three days later, but also approved by MHRA, by that time?

Mr Michael Gove: I could not tell the MHRA what to approve and would not. I think that this is Private Office shorthand for “We would hope that it had been tested, and if tested satisfactorily, approved by the MHRA to that timescale.”

I was anxious to ensure at all points that if we could, that we had products that could save lives operating at the front line. But it’s absurd to imagine that I, or any other minister, could instruct the MHRA, an independent regulatory agency, to approve a product. If I had told the MHRA to approve a product, they would have told me where to get off.

Lead 5: Well, Mr Gove, that’s the reason that the question has been put to you. Let’s see how others on this email string interpreted what it was that you were doing at this point. Can we scroll up a little bit. Up to the top.

Mr Michael Gove: Mm.

Lead 5: Yes, there it is. This is from Graeme Tunbridge from the MHRA itself.

Mr Michael Gove: Mm.

Lead 5: “The readout from CDL’s Private Office and a response by John Manzoni are below – in short, you will see that CDL was keen to press forward with Dyson’s proposal to a time scale that is totally unrealistic.”

Well, that’s one point.

Mr Michael Gove: Mm.

Lead 5: That’s going too fast, going faster than we are capable of achieving safely.

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Lead 5: “… based in part on promises made by Dyson that are already not being fulfilled. In addition, however, CDL 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.”

Note the word “circumvent”, strong language for a regulatory body charged with ensuring the crucial safety of devices used to maintain life.

Mr Michael Gove: Completely. But what I was doing, and did throughout, was at every stage ask if there was any way in which this process could be accelerated. Why? Because I wished to see ventilators placed at the disposal of the NHS at a time when it was felt that we needed them and we needed them delivered at scale.

So whether or not Graeme Tunbridge was in any of the meetings – I’m not sure that he was in many – if he had been, or if others had been, they would have been able to tell you that I was asking a series of questions in order to ensure that the process was as efficient, effective and fast as possible.

But whenever confronted with brute facts, about safety or otherwise, I would always accept them. It’s the role of ministers to challenge, and, indeed, one of the conclusions of an earlier module of the Inquiry was that ministers have to challenge the advice they are given.

Lead 5: Mr Gove, you’ve said that in answer to previous questions, but it does seem from this email correspondence that what you were doing is stepping beyond that role and mandating a regulatory body to do neither what it could within a given timeframe, nor what it might not end up doing, depending on the result of its tracing?

Mr Michael Gove: No, not true –

Lady Hallett: I’m not that’s – forgive me, Mr Gove.

I’m not sure that’s a fair way of putting it, Mr Wald. The idea that a third party comes up with the word “circumvent” does not mean that Mr Gove was trying to circumvent. I think we need to be careful.

Mr Wald: Mr Gove, you have given your evidence. You were not seeking to circumvent the role of the MHRA?

Mr Michael Gove: No, and it’s ludicrous to imagine that any minister could have done.

Just imagine the situation, if you will, that a minister, Matt Hancock, I, Boris Johnson, says we want to have a potentially lethal machine in hospitals deliberately so that we can meet an arbitrary deadline. It’s inconceivable.

Lead 5: All right, Mr Gove, let’s just finish up on this string of correspondence.

Could we have INQ000534490. This a further – I just want you to have the opportunity to respond to this, if you would.

This is Sir Gareth, 25 March:

“Suggestions what to?

“I do feel that CDL …”

This is you.

Mr Michael Gove: Mm.

Lead 5: “… is being unreasonable – even if he was correct that we had delayed anything, which I don’t believe he is at all, this tone is … regrettable. But see below. It would appear that the Dyson sample is [just] not … 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.”

Now, there is a new point expressed in this email, which is the opportunity cost.

Mr Michael Gove: Mm.

Lead 5: Which is the time, the effort, that is being devoted to Dyson meant that that time, that effort, could not be devoted to other ventilator proposals of the type that you were describing earlier fell to be considered –

Mr Michael Gove: Mm.

Lead 5: – and that you would have considered. Is that a fair point, Mr Gove?

Mr Michael Gove: I don’t believe that it is. So I think that the first thing to say is that there are always trade-offs in this process. The second thing to say is that, as Gareth Rhys Williams pointed out, in the end the Ventilator Challenge – thanks to his leadership more than anyone’s, and also Theodore Agnew’s – was able to produce products in weeks that would ordinarily have taken months, if not years.

The third thing to say is that at any given point, the MHRA laboratory would have been – the people there would have been working flat out. I also believe the people at Dyson were working flat out, but it might have been the case that Dyson’s ability to bring the improved product to the laboratory in time on this occasion was found wanting. But I think in the greater scheme of things, the loss of time, the opportunity, cost, would have been nugatory.

Lady Hallett: Can I ask this, do you think this is fair, Mr Gove: that you put a great deal of pressure – part of your job, as you’ve said – because you understood the Dyson prototype was viable when it wasn’t?

Mr Michael Gove: Well, I think that’s at the heart of it, my Lady. I, by definition, am not an expert, the MHRA are, in deciding whether or not a prototype is suitable for deployment.

What I do have experience of is pushing bureaucracies, and sometimes I can be unreasonable and rebarbative in tone, and I apologise for that, but I think that in this case what I was seeking to do was to see if an opportunity existed to produce ventilators from a source which, if they were viable, would have been capable of producing them at a scale and in a number greater than any of the other arrivals.

Mr Wald: My Lady, I note the time but I’m quite close to concluding this topic.

Lady Hallett: Carry on, please.

Mr Wald: If you’re content to carry on for a few moments.

Lady Hallett: Of course.

Mr Wald: Could we have INQ000536361, please, brought up on to the screen.

Now, this concern from Sir Gareth led Sir John Manzoni to intervene personally with the MHRA, and he has provided in his witness statement the following. He says:

“I recall that I was concerned that, by virtue of the meeting being called by CDL, indirect pressure was being placed on the MHRA [indirect pressure] to approve the supplier’s design at the stage of selecting suppliers to progress in the Ventilator Challenge. I felt 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.”

Now, again, strong words. According to Sir John Manzoni there, there was a need to protect the integrity of the process. Do you agree that such a need did arise?

Mr Michael Gove: No. I believe that I respected the integrity of the process throughout. What I wanted to ensure was that it was being implemented, appropriate processes, as effectively as possible.

There’s a distinction, I think, to be drawn between the ability of an agency or regulator to determine whether or not technical specifications have been met, and also the speed and effectiveness with which the bureaucracy overseeing that is operating.

Lead 5: You mentioned that the Dyson proposal had the support of the Prime Minister himself.

Mr Michael Gove: Well, the original drive to secure additional ventilators had come from the Prime Minister. He was the author of the Ventilator Challenge and therefore deserves credit for ensuring that we did actually secure additional ventilators faster than might otherwise have been the case. It was also the case that the Prime Minister, I believe, set out to encourage a number of British industrialists to help, of whom Mr James Dyson was one. I also believe that McLaren, the sports car manufacturer, were also contacted because some of the facilities that they had at their disposal were potentially capable, potentially capable, of aiding in that effort.

Lead 5: But as far as you’re aware – well, we haven’t found documentation within the Inquiry that suggests that you promoted or supported a particular proposal in the way that you have done here; is that correct?

Mr Michael Gove: I was very interested in all of the proposals, but the critical thing about Sir James and Dyson is that they had the capacity, as I mentioned earlier, to produce at scale. Most of the other companies were smaller scale, though in the end, as I think Gareth Rhys Williams recorded in his evidence, Smiths and Penlon, in particular I think, really rose to the occasion. But I remember having detailed conversations at a very early stage in the process with Gareth and others in order to understand what was required of each of the potential consortia.

I think one of the consortia that McLaren were part of fell away relatively early on, I can’t recall all of them, but I was just anxious to see that they all contributed. And I also felt, as I say, that given Sir James and his team had a record of deploying ingenious solutions to intractable problems, the fact that they were involved was an asset.

Lead 5: The final question on this topic, Mr Gove. Looking back, with the benefit of hindsight, it’s always very helpful to have that benefit, any regrets? Do you have any regrets in the way in which the Dyson matter was handled or the proposal was handled?

Mr Michael Gove: No, I don’t because I think it’s right to acknowledge that Sir James, having sought very hard to ensure that he could provide a viable ventilator, in the end bore the costs himself of the work that he had carried out at risk. And he is a mean of means, but I think he, or his company, bore costs of £20 million, the reason he was acting as he was, was because he believed he wanted to help the NHS. I think there’s been a focus on Sir James because it was erroneously suggested that he was a donor to the Conservative Party, the BBC had to apologise when it was pointed out that was not the case. Sir James inevitably attracts attention and controversy because of his support for Brexit, but I think that the overall Ventilator Challenge, as I say, worked well and everyone within it, particularly, as I say, Gareth Rhys Williams and Theodore Agnew, deserve thanks and credit.

Lead 5: Just arising out of that answer if I may, Mr Gove, you say under the heading “Conflicts of interest” in your evidence, paragraph 92, you say:

“No pressure was or could be applied to award any individual or company a contract. I passed on every request I received in the manner of a postman delivering communications from every potential seller to discriminating buyer with neither endorsement nor stigma.”

Does that description that you offer at paragraph 92 apply to the Dyson example?

Mr Michael Gove: I think that at paragraph 92 I’m referring explicitly to PPE, and to the High Priority Lane. The Ventilator Challenge was a different exercise, as I’ve explained. And I think that the proof of its success rests in the evidence that we heard from Gareth Rhys Williams and others.

Of course, as the Inquiry knows, as our understanding of the virus evolved and our understanding of treatment of those who suffered from the virus evolved, the need for ventilation, an invasive procedure in any case, was superseded by other treatments.

But the line of questioning, the heuristic which is being applied, is that there was something somehow wrong about Sir James Dyson’s involvement or the energetic championing of him.

In the end, as I say, Sir James lost money trying to help the NHS. Driving the machine hard in order to ensure that we had additional ventilators resulted in success. One of the problems governing debate outside this Inquiry on procurement is that individuals, like Jolyon Maugham and others, have sought to suggest that there was something somehow fishy, stinky or corrupt about this process. That is, as I say in my statement, politically-motivated bilge.

Lady Hallett: I think that’s a moment to take a break, Mr Wald.

You remember, Mr Gove, we take breaks for the stenographer, and I promise you, we will finish your evidence today and I shall return at 25 to.

(3.20 pm)

(A short break)

(3.35 pm)

Lady Hallett: Mr Wald.

Mr Wald: Mr Gove, I want to turn now to the subject of the VIP Lane, if I may. You make it very clear in your evidence that you were not responsible for setting it up, you had no hand in that, in fact you didn’t even know about it until some point afterwards.

Do you remember how long after it was set up that –

Mr Michael Gove: I can’t remember exactly, no. I think I was made aware of it by media reporting.

Lead 5: Yes, you say so in your statement.

Mr Michael Gove: Yeah, I think so, yes.

Lead 5: Yes. You may have read or heard last week’s witnesses. None of them would favour a reinstatement of a VIP Lane or a High Priority Lane in the event of a future pandemic which called for emergency procurement. I assume that you would align yourself with those witnesses, that you would not support or press for or advocate for the reintroduction of the VIP Lane or the High Priority Lane?

Mr Michael Gove: No, I don’t believe so, and I think that as things – as one reflects on procurement, both the successes and the failures, I think that the issue of the VIP or High Priority Lane is a marginal one, but I wouldn’t, certainly, strive to reinstate such an arrangement in any future pandemic preparedness.

Lead 5: No.

Mr Michael Gove: But I do believe that the focus or attention that has been directed towards the High Priority Lane as one of our principal defects in our approach towards procurement is disproportionate.

Lead 5: Okay, well, that’s a fair observation. There’s the optics of it but then there’s the actual functioning of it. We touched upon the High Court challenges. The VIP Lane was found to be unlawful on the grounds of unequal treatment, so it’s not purely a matter of optics, is it, Mr Gove?

Mr Michael Gove: Well, I’ve read Mrs Justice O’Farrell’s judgment, and indeed you are right that its operation was found to be unlawful, but it’s also the case, I think, that the judgment concludes that the contracts would have been awarded to those respective bidders in any case.

And I also think it’s important to bear in mind the point that’s made by – several points that are made by Nigel Boardman in his report, his review into procurement overall. He makes the point that the government needs to be willing to experiment simultaneously with several potential solutions, acknowledging that some of them might not work, given the scale of emergency procedures.

Lead 5: Mr Gove, I’ll come in due course to invite you to offer your view on what alternative solutions might look like, particularly given your wealth of experience in government.

Mr Michael Gove: Thank you.

Lead 5: But just to respond, if I may, and ask you a further question based on what you’ve just said, you’re right, of course, that in the case of where unequal treatment was found, it was also found that the particular contracts that were there being considered would have been awarded in any event?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Lead 5: But we are in this Inquiry focused on systems, aren’t we?

Mr Michael Gove: Mm.

Lead 5: And so we are looking, as we must, at finding better ways of emergency procuring in the future. So the fact that a particular contract or three may or may not have received an award ultimately is, to use your language, marginal; it’s not really the crux of the matter, is it, Mr Gove?

Mr Michael Gove: Well, again, I think that there have been various attempts, statistical attempts, to suggest that somehow the High Priority Lane massively distorted the process of procurement, and I think, again, there are deeper and more profound problems with procurement, both as we saw during the pandemic and more broadly, than the operation of the High Priority Lane.

Lead 5: All right, as I said, I will come back to it. You’ve offered a page or so of reflections at the end of your witness statements, and I want to ask you briefly about those towards the end.

Mr Michael Gove: Thank you.

Lead 5: You’ve told us within your written statement that as a high priority minister with a co-ordinating role during the pandemic, you were often in receipt of a very large number of offers of assistance.

Mr Michael Gove: Mm.

Lead 5: And you cite the example of one of them, your then shadow minister, Rachel Reeves MP?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Lead 5: And you’ve provided a response to Rachel Reeves, who was requesting an update in relation to a number of offers. Let’s have a look, if we may, at your response.

It’s INQ000512941.

It’s dated 2 May 2020. So it postdates the existence of the High Priority Lane. Were you aware of it by now, do you know?

Mr Michael Gove: I can’t recall if I was aware of it specifically at that time.

Lead 5: Okay, very fair. You’ve said that:

“If businesses …”

Yes, there we are:

“The Government has set up clear routes for businesses to use if they want to help with the response to COVID-19, and we encourage all potential offers to be directed to the following webform … If businesses use this webform, it ensures that offer is entered into our system effectively and allows the appropriate team to take it forward. As you would expect, all offers are triaged by officials and we are focused on prioritising those which can deliver significant quantities of high-quality equipment to the health and care sector.”

So there, Mr Gove, you appear to be describing what on the face of it looks likely a sensible method –

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Lead 5: – of receiving and triaging offers but which is not the VIP Lane.

Mr Michael Gove: Mm.

Lead 5: Yes?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Lead 5: So would this – you said that you weren’t sure whether or not, at the time of writing this letter, you were aware of an alternative VIP Lane?

Mr Michael Gove: Mm.

Lead 5: Whether or not you were so aware, would what you are describing here to Rachel Reeves not serve as a method of receiving offers that would not encounter some of the problems, whether identified by the High Court or by others, of the VIP or High Priority Lane?

Mr Michael Gove: I think the particular webform here and the particular portal that we had operating was not perhaps providing the rapidity of response that a number of Members of Parliament hoped to see at a time when there was an urgent need to secure PPE.

I don’t know if you’ve had a chance to look at the original letter that Rachel Reeves sent me?

Lead 5: I have seen that letter.

Mr Michael Gove: And as you will see, in it Rachel Reeves listed 20 or so potential sources of PPE.

The charge, quite properly, as an Opposition spokesperson, that she was making, is that we were being laggardly in pursuing these particular offers, and in my response I made it clear that some of those offers, generously meant, were not offers that it was worth pursuing. One was from a theatrical costumier, another from a football agent, and so on.

Lead 5: You refer to it at the bottom of this document.

Mr Michael Gove: Exactly.

Lead 5: The annex to your letter.

Mr Michael Gove: Exactly.

Lead 5: Yes.

Mr Michael Gove: And I make no criticism at all of Rachel Reeves because there were any number of Members of Parliament and others who were seeking to ensure that generous-hearted and kindly-meant offers were being processed. I provided Rachel with the official means by which we were gatekeeping those offers, but I think it is fair to say that it was a legitimate question on the part of Rachel Reeves and others, were we doing enough to ensure that offers were followed up.

Lead 5: As to rapidity, Mr Gove, you are aware, are you not, of the rapid response team that was able to provide a 24-hour response time to an initial offer and then to maintain a rapid response through the process where appropriate?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes, but not every offer received a response that rapid.

Lead 5: No, it was a matter of triage, it was a matter of judgement of the offer whether or not it did receive such treatment?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes, but initially at least the scale of offers that were made meant that not everybody was responded to as quickly as they might have been, and there were a number of Members of Parliament who would contact me and other ministers, indeed others within government, saying, “I’ve made this offer, I believe this offer is profoundly helpful”, and it took longer than 24 hours for them to receive an appropriate response.

Lead 5: If we could keep this document on the screen for a moment. Mr Gove, by contrast, the VIP Lane enabled an offer to come into consideration and receive prioritisation, merely by dint of who it was that was referring it in. So unlike the rapid response team, unlike the webform that you explained as an option to Rachel Reeves, it offered an advantage simply that derived from a personal contact. That’s right, isn’t it?

Mr Michael Gove: Not only from personal contact. Some of – for entrants to the High Priority Lane, some were referred on the basis of the personal contact, some were referred on the basis of the turnover and their assessed capacity to deliver as being significant players in the field, yes.

Lead 5: But it was a limited category of person that was able to make a reference into the VIP Lane or High Priority Lane, was it not?

Mr Michael Gove: Well, first of all, it’s not the case that things were referred to the High Priority Lane; the High Priority Lane took referrals that had come from a variety of people. So forgive me making this distinction, and it is a distinction with a difference. Certainly in the initial phases of the pandemic, I or anyone else would pass on offers. Within the team that was responsible for assessing offers, a High Priority Lane was set up, and ministers were subsequently made aware that offers that they had referred and offers that were also referred from MPs, senior officials and peers, went through that lane.

It was also the case, I think, that there were some offers that came from the FCDO and others that were also referred to that lane as well.

Lead 5: You’ve made it very clear, Mr Gove, in your evidence, that when you were in receipt of an offer, you acted as a postman. You didn’t seek to assess it, to triage it; you passed it on?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes, it would be very difficult for me to have made that assessment, and indeed fundamentally, there was an eight-stage process, which I believe Jonathan Marron outlined last week, to determine whether or not a contract would eventually be awarded. It might be the case that I could say, “this individual or this organisation is clearly a respectable business”, or “this individual is an eccentric who has forwarded something that is inappropriate”, but in most cases the people who would contact me would appear to be businesses that were capable, at the very least, of operating effectively. The High Priority Lane would then conduct an initial assessment and then after that there were two more processes that they had to go through.

So the High Priority Lane, like the Make team and the China team, was, as it were, a tributary that went into the broader reservoir and then, from that reservoir a variety of tests were applied.

Lead 5: Mr Gove, thank you. It wasn’t a criticism and I note the time, we’ve got a bit to get through, so if we could try and keep the answers a little bit more succinct, that would help us all enormously.

Mr Michael Gove: Of course.

Lead 5: Thank you very much. The reason I’ve kept this document up on the screen is that you will see you wrote in your third paragraph:

“The response to help with the national effort against this pandemic has been overwhelming, and I am sure you will join me in commending the extraordinary efforts of British businesses and individuals.”

Mr Michael Gove: Mm.

Lead 5: Now, you will be aware from last week, in relation to the call to arms, of the evidence that we heard, that it proved to be counterproductive. I know it wasn’t your idea. Do you share the view that that call to arms was a counterproductive measure?

Mr Michael Gove: Well, I think it would have been very difficult for any government not to welcome offers of PPE at a time when the principal concern was its absence. So the principal concern, not just in the United Kingdom but across Europe, was that frontline professionals were being put in a position of danger because of the lack of that equipment, and there was a worldwide excess of demand over supply, so any government that wasn’t doing everything that it could in order to secure PPE would undoubtedly be criticised, and individuals who thought they might be able to help, good-hearted individuals, shouldn’t have been, what’s the word, dissuaded.

Lead 5: Mr Gove, when you say “very difficult”, you mean politically difficult, don’t you? You mean that the political pressure was to invite further offers of PPE when the existing offers were already overwhelming?

Mr Michael Gove: Well, we couldn’t willingly turn away individuals who might be able to help.

Lead 5: That’s a different point, Mr Gove.

Mr Michael Gove: Yes, but –

Lead 5: I’m asking about the call to arms, the request for further offers when the existing offers were overwhelming those individuals that were busily triaging, sifting out, the good from the bad.

Mr Michael Gove: It’s certainly the case that the individuals concerned faced an enormous wave of offers but I don’t believe that it would have been possible to stem that wave, as it were, and it was quite right that we should seek to ensure that we got the maximum number of credible offers dealt with as quickly as possible.

Lead 5: Before I move on, a contrary view, it’s clearly not your view, would be that we have an abundance of offers, we should focus our resources now on sifting out, within that source, those offers that are credible, those offers that are good, those offers that we should take forward, and that however great the political pressure to make announcements to invite further offers, one should refrain from doing that in order to allow those responsible for emergency procurement to get on and do their jobs?

Mr Michael Gove: Well, by definition one could not know before assessing the offers how many of them would be viable. So I absolutely take the point that the number of offers was significant, and difficult for the team to process, but until that work of processing starts, one cannot know which offers are meritorious. I would add that the existence of the different streams, the China stream, the Make stream and so on, was an effort to make sure that bets were placed on as many horses as possible because we did not know which of them would finish the course.

Lead 5: So to that point, Mr Gove, did you follow Sir Gareth Rhys Williams’s evidence in which he expressly advises against a call to arms –

Mr Michael Gove: Mm.

Lead 5: – shortly before it is made?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes –

Lead 5: He does that on the basis of his experience of the ventilator call to arms, and the disruption that that had caused. So I’m going to suggest to you that it was then possible, if ministers were prepared to follow the advice of senior civil servants who were closer to the practicalities of all this to refrain from exacerbating a problem of offer flow. That was possible at the time, was it not?

Mr Michael Gove: I think it’s generally the case, in almost any process, that ministers will want things to go faster, and civil servants will say, “Actually, we’re moving just as fast as we can”, and sometimes the ministers will be right to press for greater pace, sometimes the civil servants will be right to push back against such impatience. It’s impossible to know ex ante, to use Gareth’s phrase, whether or not the ministers will be vindicated in their impatience or the civil servants will be vindicated in their caution.

Lead 5: We are going to come on, as I said we would, to reflections, ways in which matters could be improved in the event of a future pandemic, and emergency procurement. Just since we’re on the topic now, is one of those ways to provide more space and freedom for those involved in the difficult day job of emergency procurement to escape what has been described as the “noise”, the distraction, the interference of ministers that, perhaps for valid motives, are seeking either updates or explanations for why a particular offer has not been progressed, or even – to identify the third of Sir Gareth’s possibilities – mandating a particular outcome.

Would it not be beneficial to have a system in the future that protected civil servants from that sort of ministerial interference?

Mr Michael Gove: Absolutely not. I think that would be totally counterproductive. And I think it misunderstands democratic accountability.

Ministers are accountable to Parliament for the government’s response to a variety of events including this crisis. The opposition will quite rightly question ministers and say, “Have you improved this process? Are you procuring things at the right level? Have you got the right approach towards lockdown?”, or whatever.

And if it is the case that ministers blandly come back and say, “Well, the civil servants are doing their very best and you should just quieten down there”, then that is no way of maintaining democratic accountability.

Now, inevitably, sometimes ministerial judgement will be wrong, but ultimately the ministers are accountable and that’s the way that Parliament and our democracy should operate.

Lead 5: Mr Gove, bear in mind that the question I posed was within very narrow bounds, because we’re talking about emergency procurement.

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Lead 5: We are talking about a specific situation, about which we now know quite a lot through evidence that has been received by the Inquiry, and the pressure that was brought to bear on those responsible for procuring essential PPE and other essential medical kit.

Now, we know from the evidence of Sir Gareth, from Jonathan Marron, from others, that the call to arms only made their experience more difficult.

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Lead 5: And we know also from Sir Gareth that that was what he anticipated would happen and advised against.

Mr Michael Gove: Mm.

Lead 5: So let me put the question again but in more narrow bounds than it was before. Even in an emergency situation such as that, would you not countenance some adjustment to that normal democratic principle that you espouse?

Mr Michael Gove: No. I think it’s all the more important in emergency circumstances that there is clear democratic accountability.

I think in a previous module, and certainly in some of the evidence that has been examined, there’s an email that I sent quite early on in the pandemic, early on in March, in which I asked a variety of questions, and the reason that I asked those, as other ministers did, was to satisfy ourselves that the situation was being taken sufficiently seriously.

It’s not for me to pre-judge any of the Inquiry’s conclusions, obviously, but I think one of the things that evidence in other modules would seem to indicate and to reinforce is that perhaps ministers at an earlier stage in the pandemic should have been more energetic and more aggressive in questioning some of the advice that we were being given.

And so at different times, as I say, the cautious Charlies will be correct. At other times, the impatient Ians will be correct, but on the whole, I think it is absolutely right for ministers to challenge and then be held accountable.

Lady Hallett: Are we back to your “daft laddie” questions, Mr Gove?

Mr Michael Gove: To an extent, yes, my Lady, yes.

Mr Wald: Mr Gove, I think we are in the home straight. For the stenographer, if you could slow down a little.

Mr Michael Gove: I apologise.

Lead 5: For me, if you could be, if you wouldn’t mind, slightly more succinct.

Mr Michael Gove: Yes, I’ll try.

Lead 5: Thank you, that would be enormously appreciated.

Let’s move on to your own role in the VIP Lane.

Mr Michael Gove: Mm.

Lead 5: You had some involvement in the Meller Designs offer, didn’t you? And David Meller is a personal friend of yours.

Mr Michael Gove: Yes, a great personal friend.

Lead 5: A great personal friend. He supported you financially in one of your bids to become the Conservative Party leader; is that right?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes, he’s a very shrewd businessman, but on that occasion he got it wrong.

Lead 5: Ah. Well, he didn’t support you in the other bid to become leader?

Mr Michael Gove: No.

Lead 5: Well, he got it right on that occasion.

Mr Michael Gove: I think you can say that’s true, as indeed did the country.

Lead 5: No comment, Mr Gove.

Let’s first establish how Mr Meller was introduced to the HPL. I think he first came in without your involvement; is that right?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes, that’s right. I’m not sure, I can’t recall precisely whether or not it was because he was approached by Andrew Feldman, Lord Feldman, or approached by one of my special advisers without my knowledge at the time.

Lead 5: In any event, he contacted your Private Office I think a full week before he contacted you; is that correct?

Mr Michael Gove: I think that’s right, yes.

Lead 5: Yes. I was somewhat curious. Why would that have been? Would it have been so well known that he was a friend of yours within your Private Office that his contact would have been taken forward and accepted?

Mr Michael Gove: No, I think it was because – as I say, I can’t remember whether or not it was Andrew Feldman or Henry Newman, my special adviser, who had contacted him. He was known to be – his whole business was particularly to source textiles and other products and to provide them for retailers, so I think it was presumed that he might have some expertise in this area. One thing that was always the case, though, was that my Private Office was told and was aware that he was a friend of mine, and that he had donated money to my political campaigning activity in the past, and therefore that any approach should be treated with particular care, in other words, he should not be, what’s the word –

Lead 5: Favouritism –

Mr Michael Gove: Treated – yes, exactly. Precisely in order to ensure that that was the case.

Lead 5: And what I want to do is in the time remains, is to see whether the correspondence suggests that he was favouritised on the basis that he was a close personal friend of yours, or whether, instead, that friendship meant that he was treated with additional caution. I want to look at each of the emails and invite you to comment on which of those two things is happening.

So let’s situate ourselves first with INQ000563687.

Now this, I think, was before your involvement.

Mr Michael Gove: Mm.

Lead 5: This was the initial contact with your Private Office.

Mr Michael Gove: Mm.

Lead 5: There are two emails, one of the 19th and I think one of the 25th that we don’t necessarily need to bring up.

Mr Michael Gove: Mm.

Lead 5: “Not sure who the best person is as I only began to support [someone who has been redacted out] on it yesterday – but I think this will be of some use for someone.”

You were then called, I think, by Mr Meller?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Lead 5: And you spoke to him on 26 March?

Mr Michael Gove: I believe that’s correct.

Lead 5: Do you remember what the content of that call was?

Mr Michael Gove: I don’t recall it in detail but I do believe that he was expressing concern that his offer to source and provide PPE was not being taken up as energetically as it might.

Lead 5: Yes. Now already, Mr Meller is receiving treatment that those companies or their directors that were drawn to your attention by Rachel Reeves did not receive; is that a fair observation?

Mr Michael Gove: Well, I think –

Lead 5: Or did they receive that treatment?

Mr Michael Gove: I think they did receive that treatment, yes.

Lead 5: By whom? Who was their, as we’ll come to see in the correspondence, who was their champion, or who was supporting their offers?

Mr Michael Gove: Oh, we went to great lengths to investigate all of those offers because they had been placed in the public domain by Rachel and if we hadn’t followed them up she would, quite rightly, have excoriated us.

Lead 5: But that’s a slightly different point, isn’t it, Mr Gove? I appreciate that investigation was undertaken about those companies.

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Lead 5: But what we see here – I mean, we can cut to it because you were involved, and you know, is your involvement in making sure the offer is properly considered, goes through the system at a reasonable pace?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes, well, I think –

Lead 5: So that’s the aspect of the treatment that I wondered whether you were able to say that those companies mentioned by Rachel Reeves also received, not investigation, but chivvying along?

Mr Michael Gove: Well, most of them couldn’t supply PPE, you know, the theatrical costumier could not supply PPE. So it would have been, I think, eccentric – it might have been an eccentric piece of chivalry on my part to have championed the theatrical costumier that Rachel had mentioned –

Lead 5: Mr Gove, if I may, you said to us a few moments ago that you regarded yourself as a postbox.

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Lead 5: All you knew about this offer is that it came from a good friend. You knew nothing more about what it was that was being offered at what price, within what timeframe –

Mr Michael Gove: No, but what I would do, if I may –

Lead 5: By all means, but let’s just deal with this point before you move on to whatever –

Mr Michael Gove: No, no, I think –

Lead 5: So my question to you again, Mr Gove, was this: already we are seeing, through contact with your Private Office, through a phone call with you, through emails we are about to look at, involvement, treatment, chivvying along that Mr Meller receives, that those companies, investigated though they might have been, did not receive, is that not a version of unequal treatment?

Mr Michael Gove: No, because none – I think only one of the 20 companies that Rachel Reeves wrote to me about actually would have been capable, under any circumstances, of providing PPE. I’ll seek to –

Lead 5: Mr Gove, you’ve gone back to it. We’re getting into a loop. Nor did you know whether any of these – this offer was viable, because, as you quite rightly said, you didn’t have the time, the capacity, to assess offers. All you knew about Mr Meller’s offer initially, and actually eventually, was that it had come from Mr Meller?

Mr Michael Gove: Firstly, in the Rachel Reeves list, I did ask that they be looked at closely.

Secondly, there are available to the Inquiry, in fact shared with the Inquiry, and referred to in my witness statement, a variety, a plethora of emails of me acting on behalf of people who were concerned.

So there’s a case that was put forward by the Member of Parliament for Romford, in which people in my private office say to Matt Hancock’s private office: we’re getting hammered by people chasing their offers of PPE, ventilators, et cetera, who are saying they’ve tried to contact the teams but have heard nothing back. I’m sure your SpAds and ministers are also being inundated. Is there a better way for us to handle all of these chasers?

And, again, it was the case that there was an organisation, called UK Civil Air Patrol, which I’d never heard of before, and again, around the same time:

[As read] “Thanks, CDL is keen its progressed, so can the team managing the inbox note this please. He [that is me] is getting increasingly frustrated that people contacting him about their offer not being progressed. Absolutely understand everyone is doing their best but it just helps with ministerial handling and assurance that we are kept up to speed on progress where possible.”

Lead 5: All right.

Mr Michael Gove: So there are – not an infinite but scores of examples of me chivvying when there are halfway credible efforts.

Lead 5: Mr Gove, let’s follow the Meller example through.

Mr Michael Gove: Mm.

Lead 5: Let’s do two things. We were going to consider, as we go along, whether references to your good friendship with him was, as you suggest, in order to make sure that no favouritism was given, or, by contrast and instead, whether it was the opposite. But why don’t we at the same time just consider – let’s wait until we’ve got to the end of it – whether there were other examples that received that sort of treatment. All right?

So let’s go to INQ000533868, please, and page 4.

This is an email dated 3 April:

“I have just spoken to David Meller (a good friend of Michael Gove) who was asked to source PP3 masks for China. He has managed to do so, and has been given a verbal commitment for 40m masks.

“This as you will see below has come through the MOD (not sure why). He now [has] an urgent order to secure the 5m in Holland, and the balance in China.”

Now you would say, would you, Mr Gove, that the reference to Mr Meller being a good friend of yours is to signal that any form of favouritism must be scrupulously avoided. Is that why it’s included in the email?

Mr Michael Gove: Well, I don’t know why Andrew, who is someone for whom I have the highest regard, would have put that in. It may have been to close the loop or to provide additional information. I think there was a difference between my private office, which would act as the chaser, and would have been aware of all of the connections or relationships that I might have had with anyone who was seeking to land a contract, and Andrew, who was enlisted by DHSC to deliberately seek out the type of people who might be able to provide PPE.

Lead 5: On the face of it, Mr Gove, the mere inclusion of the reference without the caveat or the caution that you suggest, would lead one to assume that “This is an offer that we ought to take particularly seriously because of the friendship or the good friendship that this person making this offer has to Michael Gove”; yes?

Mr Michael Gove: That is one inference.

Lead 5: Let’s have a look at the next email in the chain.

It’s INQ000534695.

It’s dated the following day. It’s Mr Cairnduff to the Cabinet Office.

Mr Michael Gove: Mm.

Lead 5: We heard from Mr Cairnduff last week.

Mr Michael Gove: Yeah.

Lead 5: He says this:

“There’s been multiple conversations with Mr Meller which are ongoing but he keeps separately contacting private offices even while conversations with our team are continuing. Unfortunately that [means] he’s generating a lot of noise in the system.

“Please do not mention that validation check to him or anyone else.

“If he contacts either of you again please direct him to this mailbox. Going through multiple routes is actually slowing things as we need to respond to each of the points of contact, it’s not speeding them up (this is the third separate enquiry I’ve received about Mr Meller since yesterday evening).”

Now, slightly different point here, but we heard last week about noise, about distractions.

Mr Michael Gove: Yes, quite.

Lead 5: This was consuming quite a lot of bandwidth amongst those whose responsibility it was to triage offers. It’s possible that there comes a point where the chasing, the requests for feedbacks, the chivvying, interferes with the day job.

Mr Michael Gove: Yes, I think that’s entirely fair.

Lead 5: And that is the anxiety, the concern, that is here being expressed, isn’t it?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes, it is. It’s one that I expressed myself.

Lead 5: All right. It’s one of the reasons, presumably, why you would not advocate for the reinstatement of a VIP Lane in the form it took during the pandemic?

Mr Michael Gove: Well, actually, I would not advocate for a VIP Lane, but the existence of a VIP Lane means that some of those who have access to significant networks and can source goods abroad can be dealt with in a way that would be different from a well-meaning individual who did not have that network.

Lead 5: It’s not the only way to achieve it, though, is it?

Mr Michael Gove: It’s not the only anyway to achieve it, no.

Lady Hallett: Can I put to you a possibility, Mr Gove. Supposing you had a system whereby when the team looked at an offer, you had red, amber, green. So red would be the sweet little lady who wanted to knit a mask, green would be the possible James Dyson type, a manufacturer who could produce at speed and in quantity, and then in the middle you have “possible can produce it, but not too sure”. Would that be the kind of prioritisation system that you would think could work?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes, my Lady, and I think that in some of the evidence that the Inquiry has heard – I can’t remember which witness, it may have been Jonathan Marron, made the point that if, for example, Amazon offers to help – I mean, obviously there are all sorts of other questions about Amazon – you’d be fairly certain that they would have the capacity to provide logistics support, in the same way as a businessman who operates in the Far East and sources items of clothing and other garments is more likely, inevitably so, more likely to be able to provide PPE than a football agent.

Mr Wald: Mr Gove, let’s move on through the email exchanges to INQ000533988.

It’s ten days later, 14 April 2020. Paul Bywater to Max Cairnduff …

Mr Michael Gove: Mm.

Lead 5: There we are. Second paragraph:

“David wants” – we’ll start at the:

“David wants to speak to me today. I don’t have a problem speaking to him whilst on leave but I wanted to check on what line I should take on his existing gown offers.

“We know he has Michael Gove’s ear …”

Now, pausing there for a moment. Do you think that phrase that’s used is a caution against offering any form of favouritism to David Meller or is the opposite: is suggesting that this person should receive preferential treatment on account of his relationship, the influence that he can have with Michael Gove on a normal reading of those words.

Mr Michael Gove: No, I think it’s something else. I think that Max here is acknowledging that these offers have been in triage for almost two weeks, and judging by, I don’t know whose email, they had dropped through the cracks. So it would appear to be the case that – and this is no criticism of Max or any of the team – it would appear to be the case that there had been a system snafu, and Max entirely understandably, or the person emailing Max says:

“I don’t want to jump on a call when I know that gowns/aprons are a priority and simply say that I can’t tell him anything further. I will if that is your advice but we all know that private offices will be following that call up fairly quickly with some urgent chasing for clarity.”

So the key thing there, to my mind, is concern that a provider, in this case Mr Meller but it could have been any provider, had not been treated with the efficiency that one would want at, you know, the apex of efficiency, as it were, and that if it was the case that it got back to me, I might say, “Bloody hell, irrespective of who the person making the offer was, why is it that anyone providing something that we need desperately is not being dealt with in this way?”

Had it been any other provider who had contacted me and who had said there is a flaw in the system, as a number did, then I would have pursued that energetically in order to ensure that the system worked.

Lead 5: All right. Mr Gove, those are two competing interpretations of this email. I’m going to move on because I’m conscious of time.

Could we have INQ000534834.

It’s an email from Lord Feldman to Andy Wood in which Lord Bethell is cc’d.

“I have just spoken to David Meller …”

And once again:

“… (a good friend of Michael Gove), who has asked …”

This is actually the email we looked at earlier.

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Lead 5: The question here – can we scroll up to the top of it now because I don’t think we, it says:

“Are you able to handle this?

“Please confirm. It seems like a terrific opportunity.”

And the response that Andy Wood gives is – at the top:

“Thank you. We are on this one with Bruce and team. The price is very high. Even in today’s market. So will need extra handling.”

Mr Michael Gove: Mm.

Lead 5: You weren’t involved in discussions about price, were you?

Mr Michael Gove: No.

Lead 5: Did you know that the price being asked by Mr Meller was approximately twice the going rate at the time? Did you know that?

Mr Michael Gove: I did not know that.

Lead 5: There are two sources to establish that – well, three. You can either take it from me, Mr Gove, the – Mr Meller ended up entering into a contract through Meller Designs worth £164 million. Were you aware of that?

Mr Michael Gove: Subsequently, yes.

Lead 5: And were you aware that within that contract, the average price for medical gowns was £5.87 – sorry, the average price at the time was £5.87, but Mr Meller, Meller Designs’ medical gowns cost £12.64, so a little over twice the going rate. Were you aware of that?

Mr Michael Gove: No.

Lead 5: Is it possible, I know you’ve given your interpretation of each of these emails, that there was pressure felt by those that didn’t interpret those emails in the way that you have this afternoon to enter into a contract with Mr Meller contrary to commercial advice, or the going rate? Is that a possibility?

Mr Michael Gove: No.

Lead 5: Why would it not be a possibility?

Mr Michael Gove: Because I can’t imagine for any reason Mr Wood, or anyone else, choosing to place a contract on that basis. So those decisions, over the issuance of contracts, were matters for officials not for politicians, and also, I would say that, again, in the work that’s been done by the National Audit Office and also by Nigel Boardman, they make it clear that those decisions were taken autonomously.

Lead 5: Mr Gove, finally, in your reflections section, you say:

“The High Priority Lane was not the initiative of ministers. It was the idea of officials …”

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Lead 5: You don’t know where it originates, do you?

Mr Michael Gove: I don’t, no.

Lead 5: So you’re not really able to state that with such clarity in your statement, are you?

Mr Michael Gove: Well, I don’t know of any minister who – I asked repeatedly – I don’t know of any minister who initiated it, no.

Lead 5: But, I mean, it’s never too late to correct an error.

Mr Michael Gove: Mm.

Lead 5: Are these two sentences baseless? We’re going to look at this with other witnesses, Mr Gove:

“The High Priority Lane was not the initiative of ministers. It was the idea of officials …”

You simply don’t know whether that’s correct or incorrect, do you?

Mr Michael Gove: To the best of my knowledge, I do, yes.

Lead 5: What is the basis for you saying that it is officials that came up with the idea?

Mr Michael Gove: That’s what I was told.

Lead 5: By whom?

Mr Michael Gove: By the officials with whom I was working in order to ensure that my evidence could be consistent with the high standards the Inquiry requires.

Lead 5: I think you have answered this already and the chair has supplemented this point with some additional questions, but at 102 of your reflections you say it would be absurd if faced – “if in the teeth of a terrible crisis, government officials had failed to institute a process to manage and assess the potentially life-saving offers that we were receiving in vast numbers on a daily basis.”

You don’t go so far as to say that the system that was used is the only way of achieving that important objective, do you?

Mr Michael Gove: It’s not the only way. Of course not.

Mr Wald: Yes. All right, Mr Gove, thank you, those are all my questions. I gather there are questions for you that will come from others.

Lady Hallett: There are questions from Dr Mitchell – this time I’ve got it right – who sits there.

Questions From Dr Mitchell KC

Dr Mitchell: Mr Gove, I appear as instructed by Aamer Anwar & Company on behalf of the Scottish Covid Bereaved.

On Saturday, 14 March 2020, to 16 March, the Ventilator Challenge began, over the course of that weekend, and I’m about to take us to an email which you sent to Mark Sedwill at the Cabinet Office on 2 April 2020, just over a fortnight later.

This email has a very long list of questions about important issues in relation to the early days of Covid and I wonder if that might be the email that you were referring to at an earlier stage.

That’s INQ000217031.

Now in that email, at the start of the email you indicate that you’re going to pose a series of questions that state that you’re not expecting immediate answers to that. Do we see that?

Mr Michael Gove: Mm, mm.

Dr Mitchell KC: Now, what I would like to take you to is a particular issue that you posed. If we can go – it’s the fifth question from the bottom, and it comes within the context of the issue of ventilators that you’ve identified.

Mr Michael Gove: Mm.

Dr Mitchell KC: And a question you posed – and it certainly (unclear) daft laddie questions – is:

“Are we certain we have approached every possible domestic supplier/collaborator/in the private sector? What can the Chemical industries Association offer? What has been the structured set of conversations with the wider Life Sciences/BioSciences sector?”

Now, presumably you were asking that question at that time because you didn’t yet know the answers to it?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes.

Dr Mitchell KC: Now, in relation to these, these are questions that are being posed a fortnight after the Ventilator Challenge was taken up?

Mr Michael Gove: Mm.

Dr Mitchell KC: Ought these to be the kind of questions that were answered or had the ability to be answered before calling for the Ventilator Challenge rather than after, given the unfortunate effect that the Ventilator Challenge had of causing the system to flood with offers?

Mr Michael Gove: I don’t think the Ventilator Challenge did have an unfortunate effect in causing the system to flood with offers.

Dr Mitchell KC: Well, the whole system was flooded with offers. Part of that was people contacting – and we’ve heard evidence about it – people contacting the government about offers in relation to ventilators.

What I’m asking is, the questions that you’re posing there, would they have been better asked before the Ventilator Challenge was announced, so that the government could have satisfied itself that they had already approached every domestic supplier/collaborator and the private sector, the chemical industries, and had a structured set of conversations with the wider licences or biosciences sector?

Mr Michael Gove: Can I refer you to the fourth paragraph?

Dr Mitchell KC: Yes, certainly.

Mr Michael Gove: So here I’m talking about testing. So the point I’m making is that there are some things that we have learnt from the Ventilator Challenge that may or may not have a relevance to testing.

Dr Mitchell KC: Indeed. But the question that you’re asking here about collaborations and the private sector with the Chemical Industries Association and the life sciences and biosciences sector, are you saying that those are in relation to PPE and not in relation to ventilators?

Mr Michael Gove: No, I’m saying they’re in relation to testing.

Dr Mitchell KC: And in relation to testing – in relation to testing, why, at that particular stage, did you raise it as part of the issues under questions in relation to ventilators and not later when you deal with the issue of testing in your letter?

Mr Michael Gove: It is about testing. I think you’re misreading the letter. So I make the point that I’m going to raise testing, first of all. I then reassure Mark Sedwill that I have confidence and respect for many others. And then I say, with respect to testing:

“… what are we acquiring, what do we actually need?”

So I ask about kits. And then I use an analogy with the ventilator process to illuminate the debate about the testing.

So it’s a point about testing, not about anything else.

Dr Mitchell KC: So you’re suggesting that those questions aren’t about testing. Does that seem clear to you, when you read it that way?

Mr Michael Gove: Yes, because the Chemical Industries Association and the life sciences and biosciences sector are exactly the sort of people who might help with testing, not with PPE or ventilators.

Dr Mitchell KC: Moving on to my next question, in the same document you asked – and this is on the next page, at 02 – it’s the sixth paragraph down and it’s in relation to public sector testing. The paragraph starts:

“If according to the latest DHSC papers …”

Mr Michael Gove: Mm.

Dr Mitchell KC: And the question I want to ask about is just further down in that paragraph which says:

“We understand that CMO’s office is working with counterparts in DAs – how can we make sure there is a consistent approach in prioritisation of public sector

testing across the UK?”

Did you receive a response to that question?

Mr Michael Gove: I can’t recall. My aim was, as I’m sure you’ll

appreciate, to ensure that wherever possible, we didn’t

have different lists of key workers who should be tested

ahead of others, quite understandably, in different

parts of the United Kingdom. We couldn’t ensure that

that was the case, but coordination there, I think,

would have been wise.

I don’t have to hand Mark Sedwill’s reply.

Dr Mitchell KC: And I think you’ve already touched on it, but why did

you consider that that was a matter of importance? Why

should it have been consistent across all four nations?

Mr Michael Gove: Wherever possible, consistency of approach across the

entire United Kingdom would make things easier in terms

of communication. So for the sake of argument, if there

are a particular group of people who are prioritised for

testing in England but not in Scotland, that might give

rise to concern and to a lack of clarity in

communication. So it would seem to me that,

particularly if you have, more with Wales and England

than with Scotland and England, cross-border activity,

as well, you’d want to ensure that if it were teachers

who were prioritised ahead of nurses or vice versa, that

the same approach was taken. So that would seem to be efficient and logical but, of course, it’s one of a number of things which one could not mandate.

Dr Mitchell: My Lady, those are my questions.

Lady Hallett: Thank you very much indeed, Ms Mitchell.

Mr Gove, that completes the questions. Politicians, or former politicians, are sometimes accused of mincing their words. You couldn’t be accused of that today. Thank you very much for your help. I know that the burden I impose on people like you, asking you to come back, prepare written statements, coming on to give evidence, but as you’ll understand it’s because of the wide range of responsibilities you had and my very wide terms of reference. So thank you for your help.

The Witness: Not at all. Thank you, my Lady.

Lady Hallett: I think there’s a matter in relation to a document, Mr Wald.

Mr Wald: Yes, my Lady. There is an issue that has arisen in relation to one particular document.

Could I just ask in relation to INQ000533868, that there be no reporting carried out until the position has been clarified and confirmed?

Lady Hallett: Thank you. There’s a possibility I may have to restrict some of the content. Certainly. I so order.

Very well, thank you all very much indeed. I shall

return at 10.00 tomorrow.

(4.27 pm)

(The hearing adjourned until 10.00 am the following day)