Burned

by Sam McBride

  McCormick said that in late October 2016, just over a month before the scandal erupted, he and Crawford were present at corporate dinner organised by the food industry. He recalled how a ‘very relaxed … smiling Andrew Crawford’ had set out what his thinking had been. McCormick told the inquiry: ‘He said “I thought this was AME [Treasury funding, rather than from Stormont’s budget] and we could fill our boots.”’

  In earlier oral evidence to the inquiry, Crawford had been asked about the conversation and said that he could not recall what had been said. But after McCormick’s evidence he told it in writing that he believed it could not have been at the October 2016 dinner because he did not believe he attended the event.

  Crawford, who by then had completed his oral evidence, told the inquiry in writing that McCormick’s evidence was false. Pointing out that the civil servant had been asked about the conversation on several occasions and had initially not used the phrase ‘fill our boots’, Crawford said: ‘This statement is not true. At no time did I make this or any similar comment’. He said he thought McCormick gave the ‘unfounded and untruthful’ evidence in an attempt ‘to deflect any criticism of his role’ in RHI and ‘this has resulted in a great deal of negative publicity towards myself’.

  The inquiry then put to him a YouTube video, which showed him at the dinner. At that point, Crawford conceded that ‘it appears I did in fact attend the 2016 NIFDA dinner’. However, he said he did not believe that he had ‘any detailed conversation’ with McCormick that night about RHI and he was ‘absolutely clear’ he never said ‘we could fill our boots’.

  Crawford’s vehemence in rebutting McCormick’s evidence was striking because the allegation was that he had simply been cruder and more direct in expressing a view which was in the mid-2015 email which he did not dispute. As Foster’s right-hand man, Crawford believed that it was good for Northern Ireland to overspend – even though, on his own evidence, he had by that stage been told by a boiler installer of allegations of serious RHI abuse. The obvious question was: if Foster’s handpicked adviser had that view, did Foster? She insisted that she did not, and that all taxpayers’ money had to be spent diligently. But the DUP had a deep streak of Ulster nationalism which wanted to extract as much from London as possible. It was one of the few areas on which the DUP and Sinn Féin, as nationalistic parties of different hues, enthusiastically agreed.

  If the policy was to get as much money as possible into Northern Ireland, then the Stormont system would effectively be on the side of claimants, rather than taxpayers. Why not make the scheme super generous? Why clamp down on that generosity when it became obvious across Northern Ireland? If the policy was to get as much money into Northern Ireland as possible, why would officials and spads not be openly giving warning to the industry that it would soon be less lucrative, enabling them to pile in before that happened?

  As late as January 2017 – after Spotlight, after the open knowledge of widespread abuse and the extreme generosity of RHI – the business case drawn up by civil servants for their political masters contained a curious objective. Alongside obvious goals such as ending the perverse incentive to waste heat, the document referred to maximising Northern Ireland’s spending power. Thus, even at that late stage, the policy was being shaped by how to spend as much of London’s money as possible – not by simply asking: what is necessary to incentivise claimants and provide value for money for taxpayers?

  There was and is an inherent difficulty in public spending in Northern Ireland, which made RHI more likely. Being so heavily dependent on the Exchequer, Stormont politicians are invariably spending other people’s money. Their voters know that much of it is not really their cash, and therefore tax and spend arguments are not a feature of political life. Ensuring value for money in the use of taxpayers’ money is seen by the Treasury as the responsibility of the devolved institutions. There is a logic in allowing Stormont to take its own decisions and make its own mistakes – there is after all no point in devolution if the key decisions are still being taken in London. But there is a problem if Stormont is spending other people’s money without consequences. And it is naive to rely on devolved institutions to be the watchdog for value for money when there may be a consensus in those institutions that milking the maximum sum from the Treasury teat is not an error but a policy.

  ***********

  Under devolution, the Northern Ireland Civil Service grew servile to its political masters to the point of sycophancy – although there were honourable exceptions within its ranks. The civil service was a venerable organisation which had once effectively run Northern Ireland for its first half-century when policy in the de facto one-party state glided along at the pace set by mandarins. It had then helped to keep Northern Ireland functioning through 30 years of the Troubles when to be a senior civil servant was to have a target on one’s head. It produced men of the calibre of Sir Ken Bloomfield, the erudite Head of the Civil Service whose family narrowly escaped death when the IRA bombed their house, and Maurice Hayes, a proud Catholic Irishman of formidable intellect who courageously saw it as his duty to serve the community and seek to find a way out of those murderous decades. However, while some were drawn to the world of bureaucracy out of a belief in public service, others viewed it as a cushy career with salaries and pensions on a par with the rest of the UK – but in reality much higher because of the lower cost of living in Northern Ireland. With a huge workforce, powerful unions and a focus on constitutional politics, stories of lazy or incompetent civil servants being allowed to draw salaries for years abounded.

  In the first 89 years of the Northern Ireland Civil Service, none of its most senior figures – the permanent secretaries – had even been seriously disciplined or demoted. With no culture of being held to account, some officials acted in ways which suggested they thought that even a massive crisis would only ever lead to political heads rolling. That changed in 2010 when Paul Priestly, a high-flying permanent secretary, was demoted after it was proven that he had written a letter sent in someone else’s name which attacked MLAs who had grilled him during an appearance before the Public Accounts Committee. But even what the committee described as ‘utterly disgraceful’ conduct did not see Priestly sacked. Rather, he was shuffled sideways to another well-paid senior post in Stormont’s Strategic Investment Board which oversaw some of the most expensive public sector projects.

  The failure to effectively oversee civil servants under decades of direct rule was not corrected by devolution. With ministers often focussed on tribal disputes, there was little evidence of ministers putting real effort into rewarding the good civil servants and rooting out the incompetent. While nominally it was the role of the Assembly to scrutinise how ministers were running their departments, the Assembly was controlled by the Executive’s two dominant parties who would cut deals in party rooms to protect one or the other. In the short term, that suited the DUP and Sinn Féin, who had reason to believe that the public were motivated to vote based on who seemed a competent tribal champion, not who provided good government. By taking expedient shortcuts they were building their administration on sand.

  But while politicians’ attempts to evade embarrassing scrutiny are unsurprising, it was the approach of civil servants which shocked a swathe of the public. The head of the Northern Ireland Civil Service, David Sterling, told the inquiry that he saw his role ‘first and foremost to help ministers do that which they want done … I would always advise staff: “You don’t say no to a minister”.’ Sterling was referring to the principle that ministers had a democratic mandate for their policies which should not be overridden by unelected bureaucrats. But plenty of officials seem to have more literally believed that ‘you don’t say no to a minister’ even if what they wanted involved rule-breaking or law-breaking. Too many civil servants failed to speak truth to power and remind ministers or spads that they had no mandate for bad behaviour.

  It was their devastating mix of weakness and incompetence that, at the
very least, facilitated the scandal. In March 2019, Lord Alderdice, the former leader of the Alliance Party and a former Speaker of the Assembly, spoke for many when in a House of Lords debate on the future of RHI he said: ‘When I was growing up, I had a relatively implicit trust in both the competence and the integrity of the Northern Ireland Civil Service. That has been shattered and blown apart repeatedly over the last number of years, as a combination of incompetence and a lack of integrity has been demonstrated over and over again.’

  It was clear that inadequate resources had been allocated to energy division, despite requests for additional staff. But that did not explain most of the individual failings – from Fiona Hepper’s and John Mills’s misleading ministerial submissions through to Stuart Wightman’s astonishingly misleading evidence to MLAs. Bad practice had become acceptable at every level. From the very top, where Sir Malcolm McKibbin tolerated Sinn Féin circumventing the law, to lowly officials who knew that their superiors did not want them to take minutes of potentially embarrassing decisions, the organisation was broken. Unable to prove they had acted properly because of the culture of verbal government, some officials came to regret that they had set aside good practice. DETI’s plainspoken finance director Trevor Cooper said: ‘You know, one of my greatest regrets in this is not putting a hell of a lot more down in writing.’

  The claim of inadequate resources is undermined by where Stormont chose to focus its staff. As departments desperately sought to spin their failures as successes, the Executive employed more than 160 staff in its press offices – more than all the newspaper journalists in Belfast, more press officers than the Scottish government, more than double those in the Welsh government and more than the press officers in the Irish government, all of which were far larger. It also directed enormous resources into secrecy, battling to reject Freedom of Information requests. In 2014, Peter Robinson and Martin McGuinness’s department was surprisingly open about why it was so closed, arguing to the author that it should be allowed to withhold information if releasing it might cost the First Minister and deputy First Minister votes – an argument thrown out on appeal to the Information Commissioner.

  The resources that Stormont could find for such frivolous activities undermines the narrative from some officials that the civil service was under-resourced. Rather, priority was given to actions which were in the interests of politicians but not in the wider public interest. A Whitehall official well placed to compare the situations in London and Belfast pithily said: ‘There are some hugely impressive people in the NI Civil Service who care deeply about Northern Ireland. But the idea that it is under-resourced is just nonsense. It is incredibly well resourced. In truth, there are lots of people doing not very much.’

  An individual with significant professional qualifications who met a senior civil servant to discuss an energy proposal, which they believed was self-evidently beneficial to Northern Ireland – and in which they did not have a commercial interest – said that he had been surprised at the official’s response. Rather than debate the proposal’s merits, the senior civil servant asked how it would impact on farmers, adding: ‘The farmers must have their subsidy.’ The individual, who was from outside government, said that it was made clear that this was not necessarily the view of the official but that he knew it was what his minister was going to ask.

  Northern Ireland’s Comptroller and Auditor General, Kieran Donnelly, – whose June 2016 report into RHI first exposed it to public scrutiny – told the inquiry that many of the practices which led to RHI had become embedded within the civil service. He said:

  It is clear to me that value for money is not front and centre in the mindset of too many civil servants … every public official should treat taxpayers’ money exactly the same as they treat their own money – it doesn’t matter where that money comes from … I think that needs to be ingrained in the mindset of a whole generation of civil servants.

  Even amid the unfolding crisis in December 2016, the civil service seemed to carry on as if nothing was amiss – to an extent which was almost comical. In the weeks after Spotlight, Hepper, one of the key officials involved in setting up RHI who was responsible for key errors but who had been promoted, was advertised to deliver a civil service workshop on good policy, drawing on what was described as her ‘unique perspective’ in the field. Sterling would be promoted to Head of the Civil Service, while Wightman would also be among those involved in RHI who were promoted.

  More than three years after RHI was finally shut, not a single official involved had been disciplined. In late 2016, a ‘fact-finding’ exercise had been commissioned as the first step to possible disciplinary action, but that was put on hold until the public inquiry completed. Already by that stage, some of those involved in RHI had retired or left the civil service, making discipline impossible.

  The early weeks of the inquiry were spent dissecting how the scheme had been approved by multiple layers of civil servants in two departments as well as a minister and her spad, none of whom said that they spotted any of the basic problems. Dame Una O’Brien said at the inquiry that it appeared to her that officials were simply ‘hoovering up assurances from others as a way of saving themselves from having to look at the detail’. Essentially, civil servant E appeared to think that because civil servants A, B, C and D had already looked at or were to look at the proposal then it must be fine. In that sense, having multiple layers of scrutiny potentially made the process more dangerous than if one or two people knew they were fully responsible.

  ***********

  But even in a battered organisation whose myriad deficiencies had been exposed in humiliating fashion, there were glimpses of leadership and the sort of personal responsibility which was lacking in many political figures who came before the inquiry. Even before the scandal had properly erupted in December 2016, McCormick had been publicly penitent. On the final day of the inquiry’s hearings, he spoke bluntly about his own role. Pausing at the end of his evidence, he said:

  We bear shame. I said … in January ’17 shame on us for all that we missed … I personally bear shame; I feel ashamed personally for not doing better at the meeting on the 24th of August [when he agreed to delay cost controls] … I should have stood up; I should have asked for a [ministerial] direction that day, and that’s my responsibility.

  Becoming briefly emotional, McCormick said that while ‘it’s certainly done me personal damage’, the scandal had undermined devolution – something in which he said he was a passionate believer. But, in a recognition that many of the practices exposed by RHI were indefensible, he said that the inquiry report ‘can be a new foundation’ for a new Stormont.

  CHAPTER 25

  THE SPECIAL WORLD OF SPADS

  In proportion to its size, Stormont had more special advisers than any other legislature in the UK or Ireland. Paid almost double the salary of an MLA, and in some cases more than ministers, spads were often the real power running Northern Ireland – yet with less accountability than their counterparts in other systems of government. While expedient in the short term, RHI exposed how in that system thrived bad behaviour – nepotism, laziness, greed and an arrogant disregard for rules.

  The inquiry forced the DUP to admit that even the way in which it appointed spads was sometimes unlawful, while Sinn Féin put in place a system to circumvent the law. In the words of former DUP spad Tim Cairns, politics can be a ‘grubby world’ and spads were often the dispensable and deniable firewall between a minister and controversial decisions.

  Many spads operated as quasi-gods in the Stormont system. DETI Deputy Secretary Chris Stewart, a vastly experienced civil servant, said: ‘I can think of few, if any, instances of officials challenging spads in any way in terms of their activities.’ Cairns’s minister, Jonathan Bell, claimed that the spad had said to him at one point ‘ministers come and go, but spads remain’. Looking at Stormont over almost a decade since its restoration in 2007, that was largely true – especially for the DUP.
At the top of the DUP spad tree were two figures who were there for the entire time: Timothy Johnston and Richard Bullick. Curiously, Johnston initially denied to the inquiry that there was any DUP spad hierarchy. But, after that evidence was challenged by witness after witness, he changed his evidence, accepting that he had been one of the most powerful advisers.

  Johnston was always kept close to the DUP leader – and always stayed close. Intellectually sharp, politically shrewd and willing to be ruthless, he has been the beating heart of the DUP for about 15 years. Though he had never been elected nor had any ambition to enter electoral politics, he wielded power far beyond that of most elected politicians. When Johnston arrived in the DUP from PwC in 2002, the other key adviser to Peter Robinson was Richard Bullick. Although Bullick remained a key aide up until he left for a public affairs job after the collapse of Stormont in 2017, it was Johnston who quickly became Robinson’s chosen emissary. Whereas Bullick was the strategic brain of the party – and unusually for a senior political figure had almost no enemies – Johnston was the internal enforcer. The young accountant could be brutal with colleagues and had the authority to tell them what to do. Unlike Bullick, who had a languid and light-hearted style, Johnston was a bundle of energy. He would stride into a room, perhaps filled with party colleagues or civil servants, and briskly announce: ‘Right, clear the room’ so that he, Bullick and the leader could talk candidly. Even his many internal enemies never accused Johnston of laziness. Johnston’s power extended through patronage. His future brother-in-law, John Robinson, went straight from university to succeed him as the DUP’s director of communications in 2007 when Johnston first moved into Stormont as a spad. Robinson (no relative of Peter) had not even finished his exams when at the age of 22 was offered the job of chief spin doctor for Northern Ireland’s largest political party. When asked at the public inquiry how he got the job, Robinson could not recall whether the post had been advertised or even whether he had submitted an application form. While Johnston would highlight that as an adviser he had no power to appoint anyone, the fact that Peter Robinson trusted his judgment and that he was one of a tiny handful of aides who had the leader’s ear meant that if Johnston was against an appointment it made it much less likely to happen.