21 July 2022: Blears - A

Hazel Blears was known to be on the less-tall end of the spectrum which people were reminded of when she entered the Hearing Room in a business-like way. The elven looks of the Salford lass have been retained. She had sat in on some of the John Reid evidence during the morning sessions and at the time, upon entering the room, had followed the convention drummed into her as a lawyer by bowing before taking her seat to observe the proceedings.

Ms Blears trained as a solicitor and worked in local authority roles. She was already in the Department of Health (DH) by the time she was asked to cover for Yvette Cooper when Ms Cooper went on maternity leave. She later took over from the aka Mrs Balls (Ed’s wife). Counsel went over the very varied list that made up her portfolio, with the witness calling it a “packed agenda” full of “highly topical rolls”; some to be maintained and some in development. Not long after her subsequent three years in the Home Office she left Parliament.

When asked about her knowledge of the matters being investigated by the Inquiry, her specific knowledge came from a constituent who raised the issues with her. As others had been asked and answered, she received no training on how to be a Minister or her particular brief, and she believed it would have been useful, even for basic matters like chairing meetings. She saw this as a failing of the UK system. She also thought there should be a handover period. Ministerial changes happen very quickly, sometimes within an hour. She could start the day speaking with senior doctors and end the day speaking with Chief Constables. As before, the question about the short period of most Ministerial positions was seen to be too short. Her view was that twelve months was not long enough, especially when there were quite technical topics to deal with, as in Health. The witness recognised how she might sound like she was giving a seminar talk on how Government works, but this writer thinks she did quite a good job of that. Too bad that was not why she was there.

The first briefing was about the Haemophilia Society report on HCV and how that might be responded to. The Executive Summary of the report made reference to Weber Shandwick, the PR firm responsible for the “carpet of lilies” campaign (not the Society’s finest campaigning moment, it is suggested by this writer). The report opted for the Canadian Hep C settlement be the foundation for a UK support scheme.

Ms Blears saw the report as a serious piece of work which had involved a considerable amount of work. A briefing paper provided the witness with the official perspective on the report. But before Counsel could continue with the line of questioning, Ms Blears asked if she could make a few comments about the report. She said there was a fatal flaw because it very much followed the Canadian system, but that system had been based on accepted negligence, which didn’t apply in the UK (… who refused to accept it, even if it was there to be accepted, perhaps). She said the report made a leap from a negligence perspective of damages being due, which did not apply in the UK to one of support, but the language was still about damages and common law. She felt this took away from the credibility of the report since there was no negligence. Clearly, this trained lawyer felt confident enough to provide a critique. Sir Brian intervened with a hypothetical question which was not a hypothetical question. Her first response missed the point, so he had to restate it. Then she had to reverse her position in that hypothetical case, or rather, what Sir Brian said she saw as a hypothetical question. He expected to return to the veracity of that hypotheticality later. (Hoisted with her own petard as a result of over-estimating her own level of smarts.)

At first she did not appear to have recognised what had been done to her. She continued to respond to Counsel with her legal credentials taking the lead on her answers. However, as the questions continued, she started qualifying her answers with the preface of “what she was being told at the time”. A week may be a long time in politics, but three minutes of questioning seems to have been equivalent to the dawning of a new day which opened up the eyes of the witness to her folly. Her references to the Haemophilia Society report also changed from suggesting it was fatally flawed, to saying it was “confusing”. It did not appear on the screen, but the witness underwent a flush of blood to the face, especially when she had to admit how the law on damages was not her specialism. (Gotcha!)

Reference was made to the Ross Report, which was not a matter for her boss, Alan Milburn, but was for her to address. The briefing on it was full of the usual lines, and also included concerns about how the Scottish Health Minister, Malcolm Chisholm, might be moved to respond with some kind of support scheme akin to what was available through the Macfarlane Trust beneficiaries. The witness did not think she read the Ross Report in the same way she read the Haemophilia Society report. Despite not reading it, the witness still felt qualified to explain how it was not really a like-for-like comparison. The shallowness of this witness became increasingly apparent as she showed a serious lack of appreciating of how untenable her position was by continuing to spout the old lines, even today. Her self-deluded pretences to her own capacity for critical thinking were unravelling in a quite untidy and unseemly way. Her preening prior to appearing, including the enhanced eyebrows, were not helping viewers to have sympathy for the witness. Ms Blears may be a public example of the female version of the Peter Principle (people in an organisation will be promoted up to a point where they are no longer qualified, leaving that organisation full of incompetent people). This could be the Paula Principle.

Ms Blears wanted everyone to know how not uncaring she and her colleagues were (double-negative intended). Sadly, she replaced her lack of critical analysis skills on the legal aspects of the issues to her lack of understanding of the variety of impacts of viral infection. It became more noticeable how she was concluding more of her sentences with a phrase of recognition of the harms experienced by those infected, as if the witness thinks that got her off the hook. She was also ending more and more of her sentences and even clauses with an upward inflection of her voice. Apart from the exception of Californian surfer dudes and Australian mall girls who have adopted this affectation (for whatever reason), most other times upward inflection is indicative of a plea to be believed. The fact that the Secretary of State had to intervene might indicate how far out of her depth this Junior Minister had become. She was not invited to the call between Alan Milburn and Malcolm Chisholm.

Counsel suggested that due to the time (it was 4:27pm), it might have been useful to take a break to allow the list of questions to be cut back. Without hearing the actual discussion, there was seen to be a quick huddle involving Counsel, the Chair, and Counsel for the witness. It seemed to rapidly achieve agreement. But with more questions to come and the necessary further break before core participant questions, the day was in danger of becoming a bit of a “late-sitting”.