25 July 2023: Dunn - A

Shona Dunn is a career civil servant since 1995. As the Second Permanent Secretary in the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) she has key delegated responsibilities working to the Permanent Secretary. She is also an “Accounting Officer”, meaning she is responsible for how public funds are spent, to make sure all spending is appropriate. (Sounds like she is a chief bean counter who knows the cost of everything and the value of nothing … like State-harmed lives).

The witness was asked about how the implications of matters such as compensation having “strategic implications” are dealt with. There is a perspective on the impacts of proposed actions on the service, basically meaning if there is a cost in one place, something else will have to go without. Matt Hancock’s commitment to pay compensation if recommended led to the question of how the DHSC started to plan, or didn’t, to be ready to meet the then Minister’s commitment. There was no work done. Following the publication of the Compensation Framework Study, being a further impetus for starting to prepare, she was asked if it did. She did not think so, and while there may have been discussions between officials, there was no work the witness is aware of. Then, just before Sir Robert Francis KC appeared at the Inquiry, the Government made a further commitment towards compensation, but again it did not lead to preparatory action.

Counsel moved on to the first interim payments and related this to the witnesses’ role as an Accounting Officer. She was involved with the Public Accounts Committee and wrote that by accepting the case for making the first interim payments it would, “create an unquantifiable contingency to liability”. Basically, a precedent will be set, and it is not possible to know exactly what the cost commitment will be. There is a protocol requiring certain levels to costs to go to Parliament. Further questioning sought to understand the degree of accepted liability in the case where receiving something as “interim” would logically suggest there will be more to come. From her word-soup answers it became clear (bad choice of word) how forms of words can be used to underline – or to undermine – any future commitments. (They know all the tricks.)

It was observed how long it took before the Permanent Secretaries meeting group actually did meet. The witness could not explain the apparent delay. This led to an exploration of the civil service ways of taking forward cross-departmental actions. Work by officials was initiated to analyse the cost and scale of implementation of a compensation team. These types of processes are “iterative”, she said, rather than being completed as a final report and published by a certain date. Counsel suggested how this way of working might lead to some work never getting to be in a state of completeness to allow decisions and actions to be taken. (It sounds like the civil service have created a world where there is always work to be done, but it is never really done. They don’t carry out a task, per se, but they make a “contribution”. Thus, the more “complex” a matter is, the longer it can be held in leadership limbo with nobody having a role or interest in seeing something through to a conclusion.)

Ms Dunn was asked to acknowledge that the numbers of registered people involved with the schemes is the best guide to the likely numbers involved. The idea of people so far not identified but suddenly “coming out of the woodwork” obviously remains as the scary monster under the bed (that the Government fears or that they want to use to fearmonger Parliament and the public with).

The witness was asked about the practicalities of pre-registration. She wanted to avoid adding to what Jeremy Quin had said. The witness was pinned down to discover if the possibility of extending the registration capacity of the schemes had ever been discussed. She gave a general response about there being discussions covering a variety of matters.

Recent press reports with large sums of money being quoted were reviewed. She said it was, “clearly a leak”. The witness did not know who the source was, but like Mr Quin, it was not seen as being helpful.

A few documents which made reference to interim compensation and/or pre-registration were displayed. The witness gave some prepared explanations which deflected responsibility away from Whitehall. It took a few questions to get the witness to accept how registration arrangements for new potential claimants had been discussed, but they were said to be tied to decisions by Ministers rather than for officials to act alone.

Counsel referred to various witness statements suggesting that there was cultural resistance to changing a policy or position/line, but Ms Dunn denied there being any trace of that for her experience of the civil service. (“She would say that, wouldn’t she.”)

There were also references to witnesses who had described the slowness of the way Government works. The witness was asked to comment on that perspective. She recognised how things might look sometimes, but in relation to the infected blood issues, the complexity is a factor, but everyone is trying to get to a conclusion as quickly as possible. (This is surely another example of words being relevant depending on perspectives. Maybe the “conclusions” to be reached are not those the Inquiry might have meant, but more about not spending money. And “quickly as possible” is just the length of a piece of string.)

The situation of there not being parity of psychological support was raised. England is behind the rest of the UK. Ms Dunn reported that some research was commissioned and is soon to be reported on (in August). The need is to look at the next stages of setting up a service, but no timescale for this has been set. Counsel highlighted the additional psychological impacts of people still having to wait for financial and other support and how this made matters more difficult for people. The witness was encouraged to take this back to her colleagues and Ministers.

All that remains is for core participant questions.