at the public inquiry, Foster was grilled on why she had told Nolan she had ‘no idea’ why cost controls were delayed. By then it was clear that her closest aides – who spent hours preparing her for the major interview – had been aware of the allegation that it was her spad who was responsible. She told the inquiry that McCormick had not spoken directly to her about that prior to the interview, but she ‘became aware of his belief after the recording of The Nolan Show … once the recording was over, I went into the junior minister’s office … and Andrew sheepishly said it was his belief that Andrew Crawford had delayed the scheme’. She went on to say that it was ‘certainly … after The Nolan Show that I spoke directly to Andrew about the issue’. Hamilton, who was also there that night, gave similar evidence to the inquiry about a conversation with McCormick ‘definitely after the interview’.
However, McCormick said that if that conversation did occur it could not have been after the recording – and therefore would have to have been before Foster told the public she had ‘no idea’ why cost controls were delayed. The civil servant – who, like Foster, was giving evidence under oath – said that Foster and Hamilton’s version of events ‘could not possibly have happened’. Speaking gravely, he told the inquiry: ‘I’m very concerned by what I’ve had to say this morning.’
The credibility of McCormick’s explanation was strengthened by what had been his immediate reaction to Foster’s interview when it went out that night. After watching her ‘no idea’ answer, he texted DUP spads in shock to say: ‘Difficult to understand why she said she had no idea … when I have said I would have to tell [a Stormont committee] that.’
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On the day after the Spotlight programme went out, Bell discussed the issue by phone with North Antrim DUP MP Ian Paisley – a figure removed from the party leadership, and perhaps an indication that by this stage Bell was looking beyond the party hierarchy for advice. According to Paisley, they discussed the situation on 7, 8 and 9 December with the contact taking the form of a phone call, a conversation in Parliament Buildings and then a personal visit to Bell’s home.
Paisley found a ‘troubled’ party colleague who ‘was concerned about his future’ but insisted they never discussed an appearance on The Nolan Show. During a ‘rambling’ discussion over tea in Bell’s home the MLA advised with characteristic self-importance that he had ‘a team of the greatest legal minds in Britain working on the case for him’, Paisley later told the inquiry. In Paisley’s evidence to the inquiry – by which point he knew that his former colleague’s DUP career was over – he said he had listened in ‘amusement’ to Bell’s claim that he had ‘recordings and documents’ that proved corruption. Naming senior DUP colleagues, Bell claimed that some of them were making vast sums of money out of RHI, Paisley said. The MP said that ‘frankly it was quite sad’ but they ‘parted on good terms’. Paisley went on to discredit his former colleague’s version of events, saying: ‘I was aware I had just met Walter Mitty in the flesh.’ However, the fact that Paisley had such extensive contact with Bell at the point where he was about to go public with his allegations was in itself striking. For years, there had been enmity between Paisley and the DUP leadership.
By contrast, Bell was closer to Robinson than any other DUP MLA and was reverential towards him. Bell employed Robinson’s son, Jonathan, as his constituency office manager and Robinson’s daughter-in-law as his part-time secretary. At a time when, as DUP leader Robinson felt under internal threat, he rewarded his friend’s loyalty, promoting him to junior minister in 2011 and then a full Stormont minister in 2015 – a decision which inadvertently led to Bell taking responsibility for RHI at the point where it was about to fall apart. There were also sensitive personal circumstances which meant that Bell had a unique bond with the Robinsons, which went beyond simple transactional politics.
One Stormont source who observed the DUP at the closest of quarters over more than a decade said: ‘Peter could ask Johnny to murder someone and he’d do it.’ That metaphor could not have been used for many of the others around Robinson. He had always been feared and respected within the DUP rather than loved.
Robinson did not have many close friends and was wary of several senior colleagues whose loyalty he suspected. But Bell’s devotion to the DUP leader was such that while still a minister – and around the time that RHI was falling apart – he began work on a PhD about his party leader and told colleagues that Robinson had agreed to turn over some of his personal papers to him for the academic study.
Although Robinson had stood down as DUP leader by 2016, given Bell’s closeness to Robinson, his contact with Paisley – who was from a rival internal faction – stands out.
The picture is further complicated by comments Cleland and Bell made to the BBC journalists as they discussed the story in that period. Both men gave the impression that they were concerned about Foster’s leadership, seeing it as an attempt to liberalise the party and move it away from its religious roots.
If that was a significant motive for what Bell did, it does not sit easily with the idea that Robinson was in any way orchestrating what was going on. Robinson was the man who had spent years gradually modernising and moderating the DUP. He had a vision of the party replacing the Ulster Unionist Party as the dominant party of unionism, and knew that to do so meant reaching beyond the narrow world of Protestant evangelicalism.
When contacted for this book, Robinson was reluctant to explain why he had discussed with Bell whether to go to The Times or Nolan and whether he was encouraging him to speak out as he did.
Instead, he responded – along with other DUP figures to whom separate questions were asked – with a solicitor’s letter which claimed that what had been put to him was ‘replete with inaccuracies and defamatory content’. The letter did not specify anything which was actually inaccurate but threatened that ‘in the event that publication of inaccurate and defamatory material occurs our clients are fully prepared to issue appropriate legal proceedings’. Further attempts to secure answers to the questions drew no response.
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After the BBC Spotlight exposé on 6 December, the foundations of the Stormont Executive – which with the DUP and Sinn Féin jointly at the helm had ruled Northern Ireland for almost a decade – were rocking. By the time the Bell interview went out, they were crumbling. A massive audience had watched the extraordinary programme. When it was broadcast on BBC One NI, 56% of everyone watching TV in Northern Ireland at the time was tuned in. The average for that 10.40pm slot was for BBC One to have 18% of all viewers. The following day, the Sinn Féin deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness phoned Foster to ask her to step aside as First Minister while an investigation took place into the allegations. She instinctively refused, and from that point devolved government in Northern Ireland was on a path to implosion. But to understand why the revelations of December 2016 shook Northern Ireland, we have to go back in time.
CHAPTER 2
IN THE BEGINNING
Fiona Hepper, who had nothing to contribute as an energy specialist, arrived in June 2010 to head up the team of Stormont civil servants responsible for energy policy. In a textbook move for the Northern Ireland Civil Service, Hepper was a ‘generalist’ who shifted from department to department, learning on the job, before climbing the career ladder in an entirely different area.
The psychology graduate began life in the civil service as a statistician, and over a 30-year career had worked on everything from cross-border economic cooperation to labour market policy, communications, telecoms and emergency planning.
This was how Northern Ireland had been ruled from its creation in 1921. While the ministers in charge of departments had shifted from the Official Unionist Party
