Northern Ireland’s religiously infused political landscape was rare, the two protagonists in the studio knew that a brutal political defenestration was about to begin. Bell, a self-confident character who had always been disliked by many of his colleagues, had been around politics for long enough to understand that his words would critically destabilise his party leader, already embroiled in a financial scandal that had been leading news bulletins for more than a week.
Seated opposite the Strangford MLA was a big beast of broadcasting: Stephen Nolan, BBC Northern Ireland’s aggressive and populist presenter, whose daily radio programme reached more people than any other outlet.
For an audience who had been given teasers about the dramatic nature of what was to be said in the interview recorded a day earlier, the first image they saw of the politician – kneeling in a television studio – was compelling. A few moments later, seated languidly across a studio desk from Nolan, Bell’s opening words were dramatic:
I have undertaken before God that I will tell you the truth and yes hundreds of millions of pounds has been committed and significant amounts of money has [sic] been spent. I am authorising every detail, every document, every civil service document that I signed, every submission that I signed to be made publicly available and to be examined exactly as the truth I now give you.
By Wednesday, 14 December 2016, the day the interview was recorded ahead of broadcast the following night, Bell had been talking to Nolan for a full week. When he arrived at the BBC’s Ormeau Avenue headquarters that afternoon, it was amid unusual secrecy. Rather than coming through the front entrance, he drove into the internal car park and was brought into the building through a side entrance. From there, it was a short distance to Studio 1 – a rarely used windowless studio, which had been commandeered for what would be one of the most dramatic political interviews in the history of Northern Ireland.
Inside the studio, one of BBC NI’s most senior editors, Kathleen Carragher, was crouched behind a screen, unseen by the cameras, following what was being said. A few yards away, BBC NI’s veteran political editor, Mark Devenport, and a handful of senior production staff were crammed into a tiny nearby room under a staircase, which had been hastily rigged to receive a live feed of the interview as it was recorded.
Bell was a willing interviewee and quickly got to the point. He was there to unburden his soul about his role in keeping open a disastrous green energy subsidy – the Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) – when it could have been reined in or shut. By now, much of Northern Ireland was aware that the decision to keep the flawed scheme open was projected to cost taxpayers about £500 million.
Pressed by Nolan on why he, as the minister in Stormont’s Department for Enterprise, Trade and Investment (DETI), did not close RHI at the first opportunity, Bell replied: ‘Other DUP spads involved themselves in the process … I was then informed by my special adviser in the department that other DUP spads were not allowing this scheme to be closed.’
The word spad, an abbreviation for ministerial special adviser, would have meant little to most viewers. But to anyone familiar with Stormont it was instantly clear what Bell was doing: he was accusing some of the DUP’s most powerful figures of deliberately wasting vast sums of taxpayers’ money. Within the DUP’s ultra-centralised structure, spads were people of immense power.
Bell went on to name the two spads as Timothy Johnston, the DUP’s most senior backroom figure, and Andrew Crawford, the long-standing adviser to Arlene Foster. Foster had been Bell’s predecessor as DETI minister and had set up the scheme. By now she was both DUP leader and First Minister.
It was a clever move by Bell to seize the initiative. He was putting himself up against one of the most aggressive interviewers in Northern Ireland. However, as much of the information was new, Nolan did not yet have the full picture as to what had gone on. Bell’s story was particularly compelling because he was committing to full publication of every document and demanding a judge-led public inquiry – the most rigourous investigation possible under British law. Why would he be doing that if he had any doubts as to the accuracy of what he was saying?
The constant references to God gave Bell’s interview a confessional quality, which attempted to elevate it above the dirty world of politics. By underpinning the drama with theology, Bell was making it harder for the DUP to make him the scapegoat for what had happened. Some people – even some Christians – viewed the prayer scene at the start of the broadcast as a gimmick that undermined Bell. Standing in the studio, Bell had asked Nolan if he could pray before they began and the broadcaster agreed. It is unclear whether Bell knew at that point the cameras were rolling; he soon did because producers were concerned that a decision to air that scene could appear to be intrusive. At the conclusion of the interview Bell was asked if he wanted that segment to be broadcast. The politician gave his consent and that was the first image a quarter of a million viewers saw the following evening.
The interview was littered with the insistence that he was telling the truth; the late Ian Paisley had exhorted him to tell the truth, his wife that morning had told him to tell the truth, even God had told him to tell the truth.
The broadcast contained a slew of remarkable allegations, including the claim that the second-most senior civil servant in his department had come to him to whistleblow about Bell’s spad. According to Bell, the civil servant had been asked ‘behind my back’ to ‘cleanse the [departmental] record’ by removing Foster’s name and a reference to the Department of Finance from a departmental submission about RHI.
He then spoke of the period just after cost controls were introduced, where Stormont received confirmation from the Treasury that it would have to bear the full bill for the overspend – a colossal sum for a devolved administration. At that point, in January 2016, Bell said that he had been advised by the civil service to shut RHI immediately, which he wanted to do, but he was ‘ordered’ by a ‘highly agitated and angry’ Foster to keep the scheme open. He said: ‘She walked in and shouted at me that I would keep this scheme open. She shouted so much that then Timothy Johnston came into the room.’ Breaking down, he said he had tears in his eyes because ‘children are dying’ as a result of the NHS losing money: ‘The regret that I ultimately have now, when we’re seeing terminally ill children being sent home from hospital, is that I didn’t resign … I think we all should hang our heads in shame for what has occurred.’
It was an explosive, gripping performance. But although some of what Bell was revealing was accurate, sceptical viewers might have wondered why he had not thought to tell the public about this for almost a year – until the point where he thought he was going to be blamed. Nolan asked the 46-year-old politician: ‘Are you involved in a coup to take Arlene Foster down?’ Bell replied: ‘Nothing, as God is my judge, could be further from the truth.’
But all was not quite as it seemed. What Bell presented as a straightforward case of political corruption was more complicated. The public inquiry Bell demanded would ultimately dissect his ministerial career and expose an unflattering portrait of a minister who took limited interest in the work of his department, while acting in ways which did not sit easily with the devoutly religious image he had cultivated.
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Almost a year later, at the opening of the public inquiry into the cash for ash scandal, a section of the Bell interview was played on video screens in Stormont’s old Senate Chamber – where for 111 days witnesses would give evidence about the scandal. Counsel for the inquiry David Scoffield QC described it as ‘gripping television’ that had an ‘explosive’ impact. The lawyer said: ‘It’s probably unprecedented in contemporary Northern Ireland politics as an example of a former minister turning on senior party colleagues, including his party leader, the then First Minister.’ But until now the story behind that theatrical – and bitter – split with his party has never been told.
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