The UK government should have “stepped in” to fill gaps in emergency planning caused by the breakdown in the Northern Ireland executive between January 2017 and 2020, former first minister Arlene Foster has told Britain’s Covid inquiry.

The collapse of Northern Ireland’s power-sharing agreement in 2017 meant it had no government for three years.

But bereaved families said the inquiry had shown how insufficient work to prepare for a pandemic was done even while the government was sitting – and a top civil servant denied that the lack of ministers hampered his department’s activities on emergency planning.

Foster said today: “In terms of preparedness, the Westminster government should have been aware that there was a gap in Northern Ireland.

“[Westminster] should have stepped in – if there was a difficulty with resourcing in Northern Ireland, particularly around the important issue of resilience and planning for emergencies, then there was a duty on the Westminster government to note that and indeed to take the appropriate action.”

Foster said she believed there was “a reduced resilience” in Northern Ireland while there was no ministerial oversight in Northern Ireland owing to the executive collapse.

Foster – leader of the DUP until 2021 and first minister in the periods both before and after the breakdown in the devolved government – said the UK government’s Northern Ireland office “took a policy decision not to intervene, but instead leave Northern Ireland without any ministerial cover”.

Asked about Foster’s comments, the prime minister’s spokesperson told openDemocracy that the UK taking direct control of Northern Ireland presented “additional challenges beyond covid” but declined to comment further, saying the question of Westminster’s involvement in Northern Ireland during the pandemic “related to decisions taken by previous governments”.

Did health reforms progress?

Ronan Lavery KC, representing Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice Northern Ireland, put to Foster that an “absence of ministerial oversight” during the executive breakdown had led to the stalling of both proposed public health legislation relating to pandemic flu, and a devolved version of the Civil Contingencies Act to offer Northern Ireland the same statutory protections for how public authorities should prepare and respond to emergencies as the rest of the UK.

Foster conceded that the executive had already collapsed when recommendations from Exercise Cygnus (a UK government exercise to test flu pandemic readiness) were made in 2017 and that work on pandemic flu preparedness legislation was stopped in order to deal with no-deal Brexit planning. “When I came back into office, I wasn't made aware of the fact that we hadn’t progressed the pandemic flu bill,” she said.

Yesterday, the inquiry heard evidence about a 2018 document that revealed a high risk that Northern Ireland's health and social care sector would not be able to manage an emergency, and that financial resources were lacking.

A separate report in 2016, the Bengoa report, commissioned by Northern Ireland’s then health minister, made a series of recommendations for health and social care in Northern Ireland, including more focus on primary care and elective centres for surgery. Foster told the inquiry that while there was a mandate to introduce these changes, the collapse of the Northern Irish executive shortly after its publication and then covid meant that “no meaningful” change had taken place.

Giving evidence after Foster, Richard Pengelly – the former permanent secretary for the Northern Irish health department – said the Bengoa report was not designed to be a strategy for transforming health and social care in Northern Ireland on its own, but rather one of several “inputs” received by the then health minister.

Pengelly said that despite an absence of ministers between January 2017 and January 2020, lots of work was done by the civil service in preparing for the transformation of health and social care in Northern Ireland. Turning that work into strategy, however, still required ministers, he said.

Inquiry counsel Kate Blackwell KC asked Pengelly whether he was aware of any issues that would have gone to either ministers or an executive, had they been in place, between 2017 and 2020. If not, she suggested, “it couldn’t be asserted that political hiatus had any direct impact on planning and preparedness. Do you still stand by that?”

Pengelly said there were “no issues about the work we were doing in the department” regarding the development of Northern Ireland’s emergency response plan that would have gone to a minister had one been in place.

And he stood by views put forward in his written witness statement to the inquiry that “the systems, processes and structures for pandemic preparedness in Northern Ireland were robust and appropriate” and couldn’t be improved in any identifiable respect.

Brenda Doherty, co-lead of Covid 19 Bereaved Families for Justice Northern Ireland, who lost her mother Ruth Burke at the start of the pandemic, said: “It doesn’t take an inquiry to work out that an absence of ministerial accountability and a functioning executive would have helped Northern Ireland’s preparedness for a pandemic.

“However, the inquiry has brought to light a number of failings that could have been avoided regardless.

“Legislation crucial to pandemic preparedness does not exist in NI as it does across the rest of the UK, leaving public services and systems less able to step up and meet the challenges of a pandemic. Even when the executive was sitting… no scientific advice was sought or given to the NI Executive Office, who hold responsibility for civil contingency planning.

“Key issues like these coming to light is exactly why we campaigned for an inquiry. Our loved ones deserved so much more, and we all deserve for lessons to be learned and acted upon ahead of the next pandemic.”

In a previous hearing, the inquiry heard that preparations for a no-deal Brexit forced Northern Ireland’s government to “cannibalise” departments. Denis McMahon, permanent secretary for the Northern Irish executive, explained how Brexit planning consumed large amounts of civil service focus, diverting it from emergency planning.

The inquiry continues.