Wednesday, 5 March 2025 (10.00 am)
SIR ROSS CRANSTON: Well, good morning, everyone, and good morning, Mr Gibson. I directed that Neal Gibson be screened during his evidence from attendees at the hearing, both in person and online. He’s not screened from me, members of the Inquiry team, nor from representatives of the Full Participants who are in the hearing room with me. Mr Gibson, before we start, first of all, I’m wondering if you can read the affirmation.
NEAL GIBSON (affirmed)
Now, Mr Gibson, before we start, if at any time you want a break, you must indicate to me and we’ll then have a break, but what we normally do is we try to go until about 11.15, but if, before that, you want a break, then, you know, please indicate that. So you’re going to be questioned by Ms Sarah Le Fevre.
Questions by MS LE FEVRE
MS LE FEVRE: Thank you, Chair. Mr Gibson, would you start by giving the Inquiry your full name, please?
A. Yes, my full name is Neal Simon Gibson.
Q. Thank you. And you’re employed by His Majesty’s Coastguard; is that right?
A. Yes, I’m employed by His Majesty’s Coastguard.
Q. Which is part, as we know, of the Maritime and Coastguard Agency. You’ve been so employed for over ten years now?
A. That is correct, yes.
Q. Thank you. And you have made a witness statement for the Inquiry, signed on 9 January of this year, which runs to 101 pages; is that right?
A. I believe it’s 110 pages.
Q. Thank you. It’s probably my maths.
A. No, that’s all right. I forget, but it was over pages, yes.
Q. Thank you. And you also produced a timeline, running to three pages, of the key events as you remember them?
A. Yes, and that was at the time as well, a couple of days after the event.
Q. Thank you. Your role then. You are currently, is this right, the or a Rescue Coordination Centre Manager? Is that right?
A. That’s my correct —
Q. Are you based at Dover?
A. Based at Dover, yes.
Q. And is that a role that existed in November 2021 when it was described as “Commander of Dover MRCC”?
A. Yes, the previous title was Maritime Commander and Dover MRCC.
Q. Thank you. As at, though, 23 November 2021, you were, within Coastguard, a Search and Rescue Mission Coordinator; is that right?
A. At the time in 2021, my role was a Maritime Operations and Team Leader.
Q. Thank you.
A. The role of Search and Rescue Mission Coordinator is a qualification for the SAR.
Q. I see. So you were qualified, I think, as an SMC in February 2020?
A. That’s correct, yes.
Q. And you were promoted to Team Leader in June 2020, so an additional function; is that right?
A. So the Team Leader was the oversight of the team. So the Search Mission Coordinator role — sorry, qualification is about the prosecution of SAR incidents and the Team Leader role is about the supervision of a team and then obviously your SMC qualification is valid and refreshed every five years.
Q. Thank you very much, that’s really —
A. As of this date, I am still a qualified search mission coordinator as well.
Q. And are you still operational in that role?
A. No, I’m — my role is not operational currently, it’s the management and oversight of — of the staff.
Q. Thank you.
A. However, if called upon, I can give tactical advice from the perspective of a Search and Rescue Mission Coordinator.
Q. That’s very helpful. I’d like to show on our scene now an extract from your witness statement. It’s {INQ010392/3} and page 3 of that witness statement, please. I think at paragraph 9 of that witness statement, which we’re looking at now, you have described for us the duties of an SMC. You tell us that they’re set out in the IAMSAR manual, and then you tell us, in the second sentence, that: “The SMC is the person in charge of a Search and Rescue … Operation until a rescue has been [e]ffected or until it has become apparent that further efforts would be of no avail …” And that was as true in 2021 as it is now?
A. Yes, the IAMSAR guidance is the international guidance which underpins all Coastguard activity worldwide.
Q. Thank you. If we move on to the following page, please, to page 4 {INQ010392/4} and paragraph 10, you tell us there what the SMCs primary responsibilities are and were: “… to: gather information about distress situations, develop accurate and workable SAR action plans and dispatch and coordinate the resources to carry out SAR missions.” Thank you. If we scroll down on that page just to pick up the roles of a Team Leader, you have set them out for us at paragraph 12, (a) to (e), and if we turn the page to page 5 {INQ010392/5}, we can see that you had responsibility for managing the maritime operational officers, senior and standard, within your operational teams for ensuring their competence and that their training was up to date and so on. That’s part of the role of a Team Leader?
A. Yes.
Q. Thank you. So far as you’re aware — that can come off the screen, thank you — had you received, by November 2021, all training considered necessary and appropriate from Coastguard to carry out those roles and functions?
A. As far as I’m aware and can recall, yes.
Q. Thank you. And is it right — you’ve told us this in your witness statement — that at the time, at the time you qualified as an SMC, there was no specific small boat training incorporated within that training?
A. There was not. Small boats were, in maritime terms, in their infancy of — of a new type of incident, so we didn’t have specific training. However, a lot of Coastguard principles and other things applied.
Q. Yes, thank you. Well, we’ll come back, I’m sure, to that. Can I ask you about this next, about the small boats generally. You’ve been employed as a SAR officer since 2014. You’ve told us through your witness statement that in those years since employment, you had seen a “rapid and significant”, in your words, increase in small boat activity; is that right?
A. Yes, I mean, an increase — again, how do you define “rapid”? But certainly an appreciable increase from when they first started to where we are currently.
Q. Thank you. Before 23 November 2021, had you worked night shifts that had involved significant small boat activity?
A. As far as I can remember, I can’t say definitively, but I had prosecuted multiple days and night shifts which involved small boats.
Q. Thank you. Any idea how often before November 2021?
A. Can you rephrase that question? Sorry.
Q. Any idea — can you give us any indication how commonly you prosecuted those sorts of shifts before November 2021?
A. Yes, so if you like, for context, the first small boat crossing I think we recorded at HMCG was in November 2018, possibly earlier. Certainly throughout 2020, it became more and more common. And, again, from 2018, the method of crossing, the construction of the craft and then the frequency and the numbers of people involved increased. So I would say, in a standard 12-month cycle of shifts, I would say probably 50% would have involved some form of small boat crossing, predominantly in the period from the end of May to late November.
Q. Thank you. You have told the Inquiry as well that that increase had had an impact on nearly every aspect of your role and at MRCC Dover in general. Can you summarise what you mean by that impact?
A. So the role of officers at Dover, we were dual skilled officers. So obviously search and rescue is the Coastguard’s primary function — primary function, apologies, Vessel Traffic Services, which is the provision of save navigation of traffic through the Dover Strait, and also the approaches to Harwich, Felixstowe, Port of London, so 95% of the UK’s trade goes through that stretch of waterway. So you’re dual skilled in providing that service, which is a 24/7 continuous service, and also search and rescue. So the impact of having an increased SAR load affected, you know, our staffing levels. You know, we were busy, you know. HM Coastguard delivers a service 24/7, 365 days a year, and it is demand-based, it is not forecastable for what we would call general SAR. The small boat SAR is a bit more forecastable because it was based on the weather. So you could anticipate we’re in for a busy period. So it affected everything from training, so, again, there was a big demand on staffing levels to be good and consistent; SMCs to be present at Dover, because the oversight is a lot easier from the room, we can do it remotely. However, being in the room just is a bit easier for the —
Q. Yes.
A. — you know, technology is good, but it is not the answer to everything.
Q. Thank you. Can I ask you to help us with what the main points of difference were in dealing with a small boat requiring SAR and a more standard form of SAR?
A. Yeah, so obviously there are four sea areas across the world, sea area A1 covers everywhere within 50 nautical miles of a VHF base station. Each commercial craft/pleasure craft should carry the appropriate equipment to operate within them sea areas. A commercial craft is bound by all the GMDSS regulations and SOLAS, so carrying a lot of equipment, including navigation, communications, things like that. Dealing with small boat search and rescue, sometimes, in the early days, they didn’t even have phones or there would be one phone on board. Their position fixing isn’t accurate, their information passed is not always reliable, whether it be by wanting to be covert or just generally not understanding where they’ve come from, what they’ve done. Passage of time. If they’ve not got an anticipation of how long they’ve been at sea it makes that location difficult. So the location of a small boat in the Dover Strait, for those who are looking at the map and obviously it’s not that big a bit of water, essentially when you’re a pinprick on that map, it’s a very big bit of water. So it’s generally the location —
Q. Yes.
A. — and the quality of the information being passed, or being understood and being able to be transmitted due to language barriers.
Q. Thank you.
A. That would be the biggest change, shall we say. But the lack of communication and position fixing would be the hardest.
Q. So accurate location and accuracy of the information gathered?
A. Yes.
Q. Thank you.
A. And, to add, quantifiable and being able to assess and corroborate that information.
Q. Thank you. I want to ask you just a little now about policy and process and you’ve touched on this already. The starting point adopted by Coastguard generally in developing responses to small boat SAR in particular was, I think this is right, to apply the internationally agreed principles of SAR as set out in IAMSAR?
A. That’s correct, yes.
Q. And adapt those principles as necessary?
A. Principles and Standard Operating Procedures.
Q. Thank you. Did or does IAMSAR provide any assistance specific to dealing with or responding to small boats?
A. At the time when this became a problem, no. Recently, the IAMSAR guidance has been updated. Don’t quote me on the date, but certainly within the last 12 months, if I want to give an accurate representation to cover what is the phenomenon of small boat rescue, which isn’t just unique to the UK —
Q. Yes.
A. — obviously the American Coastguard have a big problem with it as well and also the Mediterranean states have dealt with it for a lot longer than we have.
Q. Thank you. But, at the time, it was silent on — on —
A. At the time, it was silent on it. However, IMO guidance requires the signing of 196 nations to agree on things, so …
Q. Yes, thank you. And you referred to Coastguard Standard Operating Procedures. Were those reflective of the IAMSAR guidance?
A. Yes, they are based round what the delivery of IAMSAR requires.
Q. Thank you. And a suite of procedures ranging all over the Coastguard’s functions, but which you also applied as appropriate to small boat SAR?
A. Yes.
Q. Thank you. I think it’s right though, too, that some SAR small boat specific process had been developed by November 2021?
A. Yes, we were working towards it. Basically, we have incident tapes, which have a Standard Operating Procedure to match with it, and, again, we were developing a specific incident type to cover what was small boats at the time.
Q. Thank you. And you have told us that you contributed or made contributions to that development of that policy; is that right?
A. Yes, that’s correct.
Q. Thank you. I’d like to show on the screen now {INQ000428/1}, please. That, I hope, is a Standard Operating Procedure for “Incidents Involving Migrants”, and is that an example of a procedure that had been developed specific to small boat SAR?
A. Yes, and as you can see, the document is dated 6/10/2021.
Q. So a matter of weeks before 23 November —
A. A matter of weeks before, yes.
Q. Can I ask you, it’s marked as well “Version 12.0”. Were there previous versions or was this the first effective iteration of the document?
A. I would imagine there was a version 1. I can’t say — however, versions would be where we’ve changed things, and it might be spelling mistakes, something as simple as that, but we do keep versions of everything, so if we have spelt something wrong or added bits in, then obviously it is updated, hence the different version types.
Q. Thank you. If we move on to page 2 of this document {INQ000428/2}, we can see, in the second half of the page, that there are specific instructions here dealing with relevant to “Information Gathering”, so the second of the two challenges that you’ve identified specific to responding to small boats, information gathering in respect of the vessel, looking for the location, description, whether it’s underway or making way, whether it’s — what its course and speed are, and if it’s not underway, whether it’s broken down or taking on water. Was that an important distinction for you, the condition?
A. Yes. The phasing of an incident is quite important. It determines the actions under IAMSAR. So, again, the more information you have, the more assessment, the different your response will be. You know, if it’s sinking and taking water, that is a very much grave and imminent danger of people entering the water. So, therefore, if there was multiple incidents, you would grade them which were the most severe first so (inaudible) stuff like that. So, again, it’s knowing what needs to be dealt with and when.
Q. Thank you. We can see at the foot of the page, moving on to “Persons on Board”, looking to establish the numbers of persons on the vessel. And then perhaps over the page, please, to page 3 {INQ000428/3}, whether they’re wearing life jackets, whether they have access to other life saving equipment, whether medical assistance is required, whether anyone is already in the water or missing, what nationalities are on board. And all of this is information that you’re looking to gather from a small boat; is that right?
A. Yes. What I would like to say at this point is, we don’t ask leading questions. So this is information we’re looking to gather, but we would not be asking the leading question, “Has anyone fallen in the water”, because it’s very easy with that language barrier for that answer to be, “Yes”. You know, “Yes” can be an answer. So it is open questioning, not leading questions, but we are asking the questions in an attempt to gather this information rather than physically asking these questions.
Q. Thank you. And just on that point, had you been given, you or any of your team been given any training as to how to answer questions?
A. Yes —
Q. Ask questions.
A. — that’s — that’s very much part of the initial training that you undertake when you join the Coastguard, the operational and communication [Inaudible] training covers 999 telephony, routine telephony, radio telephony and the type of questioning to ask.
Q. Thank you. And we can see, we go on in the “Information Gathering”, “Report[s] from Migrant Vessel”. Is that information you’re looking to gather directly from the occupants of a small boat?
A. Yeah, pretty much, to be honest, yes. Again, the second point there around, I’m going to say EISEC information is how it’s pronounced for us, but that’s stands for Enhanced Information for Emergency Service Calls. So that is basically whereby the mobile and telephony will tell us which mast it’s connected to, an error radius so we do get some geolocation potentially from a mobile phone signal. But that is not something the persons on board the vessel would provide, that’s provided by the mobile networks.
Q. I see.
A. It doesn’t occur when we receive phone calls through international emergency roaming, so if you’re not connected to your home network on your phone, we won’t receive that information.
Q. I see. So it’s partly reliable, but it’s partly dependent on the location that the call is made?
A. Yes, there is a — there is an error radius on it and we get the error radius, so that can be anything up to two to three miles so depending on the accuracy of it.
Q. Thank you. And then you’re looking to obtain the original caller’s phone number as well?
A. The caller’s phone number, yes.
Q. And why do you need that?
A. If we need to get back in touch. So obviously it — whether you’re in a small boat or fallen over on a cliff and broken your hand, you know, if we can get back in touch with you, that’s very important. We may want to come back, ask some further questions. So a Maritime Operations Officer, or MOO, would generally take the initial calls, and the SMC would then review it and maybes highlight some further information.
Q. Thank you. And so you might need to make contact?
A. Might need to call them back, yeah.
Q. Thank you. All right, can we take that document off the screen then, please. Did you find that policy, that SOP, that process and the supporting training helpful to you in learning how to obtain information from small boats?
A. General Coastguard training covers information gathering. It’s a good aide memoire to assist it. However, information gathering is our core skill in our operations room, so it — it assists. However, you should have that pretty much ingrained in you about, you know, the six Ws of a 999 call is how we work our information gathering, and then just adaptation of questioning for language barriers, things like that.
Q. Thank you. And the six Ws, for those who don’t know?
A. So what, where, when, weather, watch, and I always forget the last one, unfortunately, but they’re —
Q. (Overspeaking – inaudible).
A. — they’re written down in my statement somewhere —
Q. All right, thank you. Can I ask you this. A SOP of this type, incidents involving migrants or otherwise, how would those be brought to the attention of MOO operation staff?
A. So any changes to guidance relating specifically to operational work was always either published on OMS at the time, which was the operational management system, or it has since been replaced by the Coastguard information portal, and they appear as hot topics with an acknowledgement usually, so they have to read it and then click a button to say it’s been acknowledged.
Q. And were all staff required to read new SOPs as they were published?
A. Yes. There is an element of self-learning, and again, it is duty bound to them. And again, as a Team Leader, you would check that your staff had — with a verbal sort of start of watch, any new updates, can you make sure you — you know, it was a general start of watch chat, make sure any new information on CIP is read and understood.
Q. Thank you. I’d like to ask you now a little bit about the Coastguard mobile phone, the iPhone. Is this right, that in October 2020, the Coastguard had decided to adopt a dedicated, standalone iPhone in addition to the standard communications procedures?
A. The — the adoption of the standalone Coastguard mobile phone was in response to a change in information gathering from small boats. Believe it or not, I’m not great with technology, I did not know you could share your location from WhatsApp until someone showed me when we got this phone. So we had previously gathered a lot of information from questioning, you know, getting their positions from Google Maps, you know, because again Google Maps gives you a latitude and longitude. So the standalone mobile phone was to aid, at the request, shall we say, of these callers to, you know, provide — I can provide you this information via WhatsApp. And up until we got that mobile phone, we couldn’t receive that information, so it was acknowledged that, if they’re prepared to transmit it that way, we need to be able to receive it in some matter of way, and that was the quickest solution I believe. I wasn’t responsible for the enacting of that solution however. If you want something, you want something quick; that was probably the easiest way to achieve it.
Q. Thank you. I think it was standalone in the sense that it wasn’t integrated into Coastguard’s other communication systems?
A. No, it is just a standard personal mobile phone which had WhatsApp for business on it. It wasn’t tied into any of our recording software and it was purely just for that passing of positions via WhatsApp, which seemed to be quite a prevalent method of communication among the persons crossing the Channel.
Q. Thank you. So, effectively, sole purpose, to enable communication with persons in small boats with the specific purpose of obtaining WhatsApp messages which would allow the geolocation of the small boat?
A. Yes.
Q. Thank you. And the Inquiry’s seen some training or guidance that was issued as to how to use WhatsApp on that iPhone?
A. Yes. I’m middle-aged in terms of Coastguard personnel. So the youngsters are much better at the tech relating to WhatsApp. So, yeah, we had guidance to make sure everyone could operate it.
Q. Thank you. Was that then — once Coastguard had the standalone iPhone, was that the most reliable way for Coastguard to obtain geolocation information from a small boat?
A. It was a way of obtaining and maybes tying up information that we’d gathered through call collections. So it shouldn’t have been the only way of doing it, however, it did give you a very definitive geographical latitude and longitude in decimalised format. However, good call collection and questioning would corroborate that latitude and longitude.
Q. So the iPhone, coupled with the questioning of the occupants of the small boat, and that was the best way of locating a boat?
A. Potentially. There are pitfalls in WhatsApp. You know, is it a live location or was it a previous location, what time was that location? Same with any call collection regarding position information, it’s only as accurate as the position given and the time given. Again, an example of that would be a yachtsman maybes records his position once every hour in his log. If he passes his position an hour ago, it’s only accurate an hour go. So you’ve got to be —
Q. I see.
A. — understood with is this live or is this a position the last time they connected to a network which gave them position information.
Q. Thank you. So a recognised need within the Coastguard to constantly reflect on how up to date that geolocation that had been provided —
A. Again, yes, it’s assessing that. You know, if they give a position and say they were near a certain ship with a name, you can then cross-reference that ship’s position at that time and the time of that position.
Q. And the other options you’ve referred to, EISEC, the emergency service route, potentially a route to triangulate?
A. Yes, so EISEC gives us, like I say, a geographic area. So it’s — it is not as accurate as we would like. There are enhancements in that service which is advanced mobile location, that requires good connectivity for phone calling, that’s a technological thing, but it can be more accurate. But, again, it depends how many masts you’re connecting to, WiFi networks, things like that so …
Q. Thank you. So it had its own limitations, as you’ve said?
A. EISEC has its own limitations, but it gives us a rough area, however it depends which masts it’s connected to.
Q. Thank you. So we’ve heard about the guidance on how to use WhatsApp, but in November of 2021, were there any other written procedures explaining how that mobile phone was to be used?
A. Not that I recall. I believe it was accepted that it was there for the purposes of receiving positions via WhatsApp and that was the accepted practice of the phone. But whether there was a written guidance that said, again, it was not to be answered, it was for the purposes of using WhatsApp communications, which was written positions — well, shared positions and a text message, but not to be used for phone calls due to the fact it wasn’t recorded.
Q. Where was the information about geolocation then to be recorded? If you received via WhatsApp, where was it supposed to be written down?
A. Any information received via WhatsApp would pertain to a specific incident and therefore that geolocation information would be recorded in that incident.
Q. And by “in that incident”, do you mean the ViSION log set up specific to that particular incident and given its own global information number, GIN number?
A. That’s correct, it would be recorded in the ViSION incident management system.
Q. Thank you. And was it anybody’s job in particular to record that information in the ViSION log, or was it the person who picked up the co-ordinates, their job to record it?
A. It would be whoever picked it up would record it —
Q. (Overspeaking – inaudible).
A. — and obviously then make myself aware, as SMC or another team member if I was engaged in other work, of and update that incident.
Q. Thank you. Was it likely, do you think, that a person in a small boat who had been given a mobile number for Coastguard might try and communicate further via that mobile phone once they had that telephone number?
A. I guess it depends person to person. Some people prefer picking up the phone and ringing, some people prefer just texting these days. So, again, the number being out there we know was shared amongst other persons. We had received texts before people even left the beaches sometimes on that phone, so it was obviously shared amongst the community that was involved in small boat crossings. However, also calls were received to Dover Port Control, so that number had obviously been Googled, because it’s not an emergency services number, it’s purely the number for commercial traffic entering the Port of Dover. So I don’t think it influences it one way or the other. You know, there is a website which helps assists the small boat — the migrants crossing, which tells them what to do, you know, that sort of thing, and again, it does refer to the emergency numbers, 999 and obviously the French 112, I believe it is.
Q. 112 and Port Control as well. But to my — to my question, once a person on a small boat was in receipt of a number that they knew they could use to communicate with the Coastguard, was it foreseeable, at least possible, that they might try and make further contact via that telephone number, whether by WhatsApp, text, telephone?
A. It’s possible.
Q. You’ve told the Inquiry that no training had been provided to you or I think anyone else for whom you were responsible regarding monitoring or checking the mobile phone. Was that right?
A. In effect, no. There was no, “You must check it every half an hour or 20 minutes”. It was there to be used during active SAR incidents; however, it is not a primary means of engaging with our customers, for want of a better phrase.
Q. So was anything supposed to happen if the mobile phone did receive a call or a text message?
A. The guidance was not to answer it. We believe it was originally supposed to be forwarded to the Dover number. So if a call was made to it, it should have been forwarded. Now, I don’t know whether that was following, but certainly we had done that in the future to record any calls that came through it.
Q. And who had given that guidance?
A. I’m not sure. I can’t remember.
Q. But there was an instruction, to the best of your recollection, that the phone wasn’t to be answered if it rang?
A. Yes. Whether I’d made that on the night of, “Listen it’s not recorded, so we shouldn’t communicate by that method”, because it’s not a recorded line, which is very important in our terms of communication that everything is recorded that comes into the operations room.
Q. Do you think there was any scope for confusion amongst members of SAR teams, your team or otherwise, as to how exactly the mobile phone was to be used?
A. The primary purpose of the mobile phone I don’t think was under any confusion. However, there could have been more consideration for what ifs.
Q. So what if somebody called the phone, what if somebody messaged the phone, what to do in those circumstances?
A. The call would be the main one. The message is fine, because actually we sent a message or — and expecting the reply, but obviously that — that is recordable, because it is a written message. The phone call is more of a challenge.
Q. Thank you, that’s very —
A. I don’t know whether that was considered or not, but certainly I wasn’t privy to that.
Q. And just pushing a little further, a message that’s sent when you’re expecting it would be picked up, but a message that was sent when you weren’t necessarily expecting it might go unnoticed?
A. An unsolicited message from a boat we weren’t aware of, you know, the phone pings, and it is just a ping, may be missed if we’re not expecting … Again, a solicited message, where we’ve sent that message for — request for information, we’re waiting for a reply, we’re not expecting unsolicited messages in, because we were in control of the number.
Q. Thank you. Do you remember ever giving instruction to a person on a small boat, “Don’t send us follow up messages”? Was that the sort of instruction that was given?
A. No, I think it was fine to receive messages because, again, it would be timestamped via the WhatsApp when it was delivered. Checking it was delivered was part of it as well, the ability of WhatsApp to check it’s delivered is —
Q. The two blue ticks?
A. Yes, sorry, however many it is, yeah. Yes, that was part of, you know, it’s been delivered, that’s good; they haven’t read it yet, so that gives us they’re not in signal possibly or they haven’t got round to reading it. So that sort of to and from messaging was expected.
Q. Thank you.
A. Because it covers the language barrier a bit.
Q. All right. I want to take you then to the start of your watch or shift on 23 November of 2021. You were scheduled to work a 12-hour shift, is that right, 7.30 in the evening through to 7.30 the following morning?
A. That’s correct, yeah.
Q. You were to be based in the operations room at Dover?
A. That’s correct.
Q. You were leading your team, team 3?
A. Yes.
Q. That’s a search and rescue team?
A. Yeah.
Q. That team, on the night, consisted of yourself, Stuart Downs, from whom the Inquiry expects to hear evidence, I think, next week, and a trainee MOO; is that right?
A. That’s correct, yes.
Q. There were two further team members, but they were dedicated to the VTS, vessel traffic scheme, that you’ve explained already?
A. Yes, that’s correct. So in the July of 2021, we’d begun to separate search and rescue and VTS in response to the increased workload. So there was a Team Leader who managed VTS, which was the same grade as myself, and another vessel traffic service officer who was covering the VTS desks.
Q. Thank you. You have told the Inquiry through your statement you were two members of staff down that night; is that right?
A. Yes, one of my staff was on leave and the other one had unfortunately called in sick.
Q. And were those staff due to be in the SAR team or the VTS team?
A. The member of staff on annual leave was a SAR team member, and the member of staff who called in sick was a VTS team member.
Q. Thank you. I think both those functions were based at the time in the same operations room?
A. That’s correct, in the operations room at the time there was 11 desks and three were dedicated to VTS.
Q. And it’s because of that sick leave that you effectively had to double hat yourself that evening; is that right?
A. That’s correct. Whereas I would have arrived at work and known that the VTS was complemented by the three VTSOs, as designated by IALA for the VTS requirement, I would have been free to maintain search and rescue all night.
Q. Thank you. But as it turned out and because of that sick leave, you had to be dedicated, I think, to VTS for a period of three hours?
A. Yes, I had to cover the VTSOs’ breaks, so they had a break from their duties.
Q. And that was 10.30 in the evening on the 23rd to 1.30 or thereabouts the following morning?
A. It was there or thereabouts.
Q. Thank you. You have told the Inquiry that in the weeks leading up to this shift, you were working an altered shift pattern, that’s six on and two off, the standard being four on and four off. How did that affect you?
A. So the — the extra two shifts were to cover vessel traffic service officers mainly. So obviously I was just doing more hours than a standard four days off would be. Resting in between was fine. The two extra shifts usually consisted either of a full night shift or maybes just three to four hours of break cover on that shift so … But, again, sleeping during the day and resting as I would normally. In some cases probably sleeping more than if I was going about my four days off.
Q. On this particular shift, you have told us you were unable to take your own break in the course of the shift; that’s right, isn’t it?
A. That’s correct, yes. I went without a break that night shift.
Q. So that was 12 hours and no break?
A. 12 hours and no break.
Q. I want to ask you a little more about the team, the SAR team, and their qualifications. Stuart Downs hadn’t yet completed his incident response qualification; that’s right, isn’t it?
A. I believe so. If it’s written in his statement. But I believe he was still under training as a Maritime Operations Officer.
Q. So was he, strictly speaking, a trainee as well?
A. He would have shown on our watch bill as being a trainee. Whether he’d completed the training, but not sat the assessment module of the IR, I can’t recall.
Q. Thank you.
A. But he would have been trainee —
Q. Pending.
A. In the training — the training takes about nine months, and obviously you’re operational from when you’ve received your communications training. So he was progressing through training.
Q. I see.
A. And a lot of the training is —
Q. So it’s the communications training that renders you operational?
A. That makes you count as operational, yes.
Q. Thank you. Were there any tasks or functions of a MOO that Mr Downs was unable to carry out on that night shift?
A. Not — nothing that he wouldn’t be able to carry out, because he was under supervision from an SMC.
Q. Was he under supervision during the period of time that you were carrying out the VTS function?
A. He — he was under a direction of another SMC, which was remotely from the JRCC. So I was still within the room, however my role was not to manage the SAR at that time, it was to deliver the VTS function.
Q. Thank you. The trainee, she was non-operational; that’s right?
A. She’d been with us 30 days at that point, so she was new to the Coastguard, she’d done her initial training and she was learning a lot of the — you know, a lot of the learning we can do in the Ops room and actually being exposed to seeing what’s going on and learning it is a good part of learning the job before going on the formal training.
Q. Yes. But she was 30 days into a nine-month training regime; is that right?
A. That’s correct, yeah.
Q. Thank you. And what did non-operational mean for you as Team Leader in practical terms? What could she actually do?
A. So administrative tasks. We could direct her to update bits of information which were non-critical. Again, we have SAR partners ring in, and the way our system works is it identifies who our SAR partners are. So they would take a function of various calls from SAR partners who would be delivering routine information, so not search and rescue information, but routine information. The maritime safety information broadcast is part of the work we do, which is about maritime safety. She was able to record that information and update it appropriately, and it’s — it’s a pre-recorded broadcast, so therefore it can be — it can be reviewed and checked before it goes out. Updating trackers as directed. Again, updating documents. By trackers, I will — I need to emphasise, I mean the spreadsheet, not a geolocation method —
Q. Yes.
A. — it is a spreadsheet in overview —
Q. The Coastguard shared tracker. Is that what you’re referring to?
A. I — it referred to anything really, it’s just referred to as a “tracker” in this Inquiry, because it is genuinely a spreadsheet with an overview of the information.
Q. Thank you.
A. The synonym “tracker” maybes construes that people believe that these boats are tracked in some form of method.
Q. Oh, I see, so that’s the distinction in your mind?
A. In my mind the word “tracker” is possibly the wrong use of the word. “Document”. It is a spreadsheet, but it was called a tracker because actually it was for sharing information so people could keep a track of what was going on.
Q. Thank you.
A. It’s a conflict of the English language where one word means six different things.
Q. Yes, of course. Well, thank you for that. Just going back to your trainee on the evening. She was to carry out administrative tasks?
A. Yes.
Q. And learn by observation?
A. And learn by observation, and again, getting her to do entries in ViSION is a good skill set.
Q. (Overspeaking – inaudible).
A. You’ve seen the type of entries we use for brevity, so the message is in there, but quickly and efficiently.
Q. And that and you was the whole of the SAR team in the operations room on that shift?
A. That was the complement of people based in MRCC Dover.
Q. Thank you. Are you aware that the trainee was involved in a call directly with the French Coastguard in the course of that shift?
A. I became aware of it. I was on the VTS at the time. Again, it rang as a routine line, and, again, we would generally — the trainees could answer the routine phone calls, because a lot of them would be maybes enquiries from the public. The French Coastguard do have a dedicated line to ring which informs us that it is the French Coastguard calling us, however they obviously rang on the routine line for, whatever reason, I do not know.
Q. In normal expectation then, a trainee wouldn’t be speaking directly to the French Coastguard; is that right?
A. No, not without some form of communications ticket.
Q. And why not? What are the risks associated with that sort of communication?
A. If, for whatever reason, it turned out to be an emergency situation, they wanted to pass information on, it’s again managing risks and expectations, and again, if it did happen, they were coached to pass it over to an experienced operator.
Q. And do you know whether in fact that was passed over to an experienced operator?
A. I do not know, unfortunately, because I was engaged with the VTS operations.
Q. The Inquiry’s been separately told that the trainee was in charge of the standalone mobile phone in the course of that shift. Do you agree with that, or — is that right?
A. I think she may have been asked to operate it under the direction of either myself or Stuart Downs, so, “Can you send a message to this incident on this telephone number”, which is a division of labour, to make it easier.
Q. And to receive the messages in response?
A. If she received a message, it would be to make us aware that a message had been received.
Q. So in your mind, she was functioning effectively as a post box?
A. Without sounding too disingenuous to her, because she’s a quite capable person, but, yes, fundamentally, there was no responsibility on her. However, she was utilised to assist, and again, feel useful in delivering what was a busy night of search and rescue.
Q. Did she understand that, do you think?
A. I believe so, yes.
Q. Was it appropriate, do you think, for a trainee to be handling communications directly with small boats by mobile phone?
A. What was requested I feel was capable of her abilities, which was to compose a message and send that message.
Q. But that far and no further?
A. Correct.
Q. All right. Then team 3 in the operations room. You would — when you were the SAR team and part of the SAR team, you were physically, is this right, sitting closely enough together to speak, catch each other up between calls and communications; is that right?
A. Yes, as — our room was organised in what I would describe as a horse shoe shape, so three desks, two desks, three desks. So we were sat in a line of three, and our VTS colleagues were not too dissimilar from my colleague there on a bank of three desks. So we were all in verbal sharing distance.
Q. Thank you. And were you in the habit of verbally sharing in the course of a shift?
A. Yes, it’s part of my role. You know, the brief of a mission is shared verbally, as well as the mission plan being recorded in ViSION.
Q. And those verbal updates would improve your situational awareness —
A. Yes.
Q. — is that right? An important part of your situational awareness?
A. A massive part of situational awareness and also confirmation that people understood what was expected of that mission and their roles.
Q. Thank you. And in your recollection and to the best of your recollection, were you able to update each other in the course of that shift, 23 to 24 November?
A. As far as practicable.
Q. By that you mean what?
A. Basically operational demand. This was a busy shift and sharing information in between being on phone calls myself, be it with SAR partners, emergency calls, again, it was as quick as possible and as briefly as possible.
Q. Thank you. You had remote support, you’ve alluded to it already, throughout the shift, is this right?
A. Yes, there — there was — HM Coastguard’s network is a virtual network of ten stations joined together. So Zone 14 is a maritime zone which encompasses from Ramsgate Harbour out to the median line, and then obviously down to Jury’s Gap Sewer, which is west of the Lydd Firing Range, and south, again, to the median line.
Q. Thank you. So a virtual network. And the support you had primarily came from the JRCC at Fareham; is that right?
A. That’s correct, the Joint Rescue Co-Ordination Centre at Fareham.
Q. And is that where the remote SMC was based who covered effectively for you whilst you were involved in VTS?
A. On this night, yes, it was allocated from the Joint Rescue Co-Ordination Centre.
Q. Thank you. You’ve referred to some of them already, but explain them now, if you would. Are there downsides and what are they, of remote rather than in-person support?
A. So on the night in question, the channel 16 watch, that’s the listening watch for the international calling and distress channel, so all calls from commercial shipping whether it be a routine call or a distress situation are broadcast on that channel. That was being carried out by Solent on our behalf. I refer to Solent as the Joint Rescue Co-Ordination Centre because that’s its physical location and its call sign on the radio. They were maintaining that watch, so, again, we didn’t have that in the Ops room at Dover, so calls through channel 16 were intercepted — not intercepted, were recorded by that team which I would usually hear, so obviously that sort of makes you a bit blind as the SMC to traffic information on channel 16. Again, the small boat nature isn’t using VHF radio because they’re not fitted with VHF radio, so in terms of the overall SAR picture for the areas I’m responsible for, if there was any Mayday broadcast from commercial shipping or other SAR related matters, that would have been — had to be relayed to me either via a flash message or a phone call or a VHF talk box, which we’ve got so … —
Q. What about the verbal updates between calls and the improved situational awareness amongst the team —
A. So —
Q. — was that affected?
A. It is affected, because obviously in our standard situation, we’d say, “Can I just get everyone’s attention” and brief everyone. You end up with a double brief basically. You brief your team in the room and then you’re having a brief with someone either on the phone. So updates via the phone on — it’s a phone call, it ties an operator up, as simple as that. You know, it’s an interruption. If someone takes a phone call in this room now, they’re not paying attention to what’s going on, because that is just how it works. So there is limitations. It’s good because we don’t have to have that physical presence. There are a lot of benefits. Again, during this period, let’s not forget, we were still in the height of COVID, with social distancing and things like that, the isolation policy was five days from a positive test, so if you took out an entire Ops room in HM Coastguard, we could still function and deliver our services from somewhere else where we had the capability of staff who weren’t off sick. So there was a lot benefits, and COVID was quite a significant challenge for a lot of the emergency services and HM Coastguard involved.
Q. What about supervising staff? You’ve told us about Stuart Downs almost through his training and your trainee, both of whom required supervision. How easy is it to supervise as SMC remotely or from a remote location?
A. So in terms of supervision, it’s not they have to have their hand held through the whole incident, they just have to have their work approved. So, “I’m going to task an asset”, “Yeah, that’s fine”; you know, it’s just seeking that confirmation. So it can be done. They can use the VHF talk box to say, “SMC, I need to make you aware of incident — Global Incident Number X, Y, Z, and my intentions are a lifeboat, Coastguard rescue team, aircraft”, and then the SMC can come back and say, “Concur with your decisions”, or, “Actually, additionally, can you do this”. So the supervision is — is achieved, and again it’s not a, “I need to check everything you’ve done”, everything goes in ViSION, their thoughts, their requests, and then it can be approved, signed off, enhanced.
Q. All right. I’m going to ask you now some questions about the information that was available to you at the start of that shift. You’ve explained to the Inquiry through your statement that you received an oral handover from the outgoing SMC; is that right?
A. Yeah, that would be correct.
Q. That you think there might have been a written record, but you’ve been unable to find it?
A. So the handover, the general practice for the handover is we have a PowerPoint document which lists any — I’m going to use the term “generic” ongoing matters, be that: search and rescue assets which may have a limited capability or are off service, mention it now; a list of the known hoax callers we have and their general telephone numbers and what they’ll ring up saying; vessels of interest, so, again, part of the coastal monitoring is done by His Majesty’s Coastguard, so any vessels of interest would be in that handover; and then there would be a list of all the ongoing SAR incidents. So the general document gives you an overview of what’s going on with the building, silly things, even including like does the hot water work, you know, the coffee, you know, it’s broken, some domestic things, and then also very specific SAR —
Q. Specific SAR, and that would include of course any ongoing small boat SAR as well?
A. Yes. And again, that would be briefed from ViSION. You’d note them in the document just for noting them, because, again, you use that document to jog your memory on: this is done, this is done. So a SAR incident that may be complete, or it’s the casualties have been rescued safely and maybes the SAR assets are en route back to base. So the SAR action is complete, however our duty of care still extends to the search and rescue units still at sea or transiting back to base.
Q. Thank you. Or, for example, this is an ongoing incident and you need to be particularly aware of?
A. Very much so, and you would brief the SMC of where you were up to through the ViSION log. You’d run through the ViSION log with the start and the middle, and over to you for the end, as it were.
Q. Thank you. All right. But you’ve been unable to find, or nobody has shown you a copy of the written PowerPoint that you think you would have received?
A. No. And, again, it was a live document, so we would have probably been up to version 1,006,200-and-something. So, again, it’s there as a document, but it is just a — it’s a document template almost, rather than —
Q. Thank you. So that’s the handover. The Inquiry has heard about a network briefing, or a system for giving a network briefing at the start of shifts, and that’s something that was recorded, is this right, in the — by the maritime — or the marine tactical commander — my apologies — in the national network maritime log; is that right?
A. So there is a 0900 and 2100 network brief.
Q. Thank you. Let’s look at the one that was relevant to you at the start of your shift. Can I have {INQ000233/1}, please. Now, this is the log that’s valid for the 24 hours of 24 November 2021, but it incorporates, if we scroll down please towards, firstly, the bottom of the page, we can see the beginning there of the network briefing or the headline for the network briefing that was given at 2100 on the 23 November. So that’s the network briefing that you’re referring to; is that right?
A. Sorry, we’re on 24th at midnight at the minute. We might need to scroll.
Q. Yes, but if we look —
A. Oh, sorry.
Q. — on the right-hand side, do you see, the references to November, somebody has helpfully incorporated into this log the briefing from 2100 the previous evening?
A. Yes, so the reason for this being is the — it’s a daily incident and therefore it’s just that nature of —
Q. Thank you.
A. — 9 o’clock last night we had a brief and we carried it forwards to that next 24-hour period until the —
Q. We can see it’s entered by —
A. — next briefing happens.
Q. — “DJONES”, who was that night and for that shift the Marine Tactical Commander?
A. Yes, that’s correct.
Q. Can we go to the next page {INQ000233/2}, please, and see what this briefing says. We can see there’s detail at the top of the page, and it comes in various points, tells you about the various staffing levels and so on. And scrolling through, please, to {INQ000233/3} where we can pick up, I hope — thank you — at point 9: “Incidents of National Interest: Migrants.” Yes?
A. Yes.
Q. And then: “Guidance from the Tactical Commander — where there are teams of 2 or 3 please consider getting through breaks to ensure maximum numbers in Ops rooms when we face maximum demand. If you are getting at all overwhelmed alert me by whatever means available that you need support, it is better to go big early and retract, than try to bring support in late.” Did you see this briefing?
A. Yes.
Q. What did it mean to you?
A. This — this is quite a — you know, it’s just sensible workforce planning, to be honest. In my mind, Dover had already anticipated breaks getting done as soon as possible, anticipating a midnight start based on the Op Deveran forecast. So we were very aware of Dover, you know, early hours of the morning is when we are going to start to hit our maximum demand.
Q. What planning had you done for your own break during this shift?
A. My own break was going to be covered by the remote SMC. The general rule is breaks shouldn’t start within an hour and a half of shift commencing, so we started at 7.30, so I shouldn’t really be starting breaks any earlier than 9 o’clock. Again, a 9 o’clock break would have been an exceptionally early break, and again, of what benefit it would have been … I certainly wouldn’t be sending my VTSOs off on a break at 9 o’clock, because that — their job obviously is the safe and efficient navigation of traffic through the Dover Strait and if they’re tired or fatigued, them having an incident due to that would have been a significant major maritime event. So, again, it’s managing people’s breaks at the appropriate time.
Q. Thank you. But for your own break, Mr Gibson, when did you expect that to happen?
A. My own break was going to be tagged on. So we kind of worked on starting breaks about 10.30 and then running four and a half hours forwards. So I ensured the welfare of, you know, my subordinates first from the VTS, and then obviously my break would have ran on from then. However, by the time I was about to take my break, small boats had started to increase in their intensity, so —
Q. So events overtook you and you’d hoped for a break, what, at about 1.30 or something like that?
A. Potentially, yes, with the intention of returning approximately by about 2.30/3. Again, I think the plan was to get all the breaks done by about 2 o’clock at the latest.
Q. Did you in fact get to a stage during this shift where you did come to feel overwhelmed?
A. Yes. Naturally, 12 hours of work at quite an intense pace does cause fatigue at some point.
Q. Thank you. Can we take that off the screen, please.
SIR ROSS CRANSTON: I’m just wondering. It’s 11 o’clock and it may be appropriate to have a break now. It’s a bit earlier than I thought, but would you like a break now?
A. Yeah, we can go for a break now.
SIR ROSS CRANSTON: Yes, okay, let’s have a break. So just wait a minute, because we’re to be told that the camera is off.
VIDEO HEARINGS MANAGER: Confirming that cameras are now off.
SIR ROSS CRANSTON: Thanks very much. (The witness withdrew) So shall we say at 10 minutes past, we’ll resume. Thanks very much. (11.02 am) (A short break) (11.12 am) (The witness returned)
SIR ROSS CRANSTON: Welcome back, Mr Gibson.
MS LE FEVRE: Thank you, Mr Gibson. So we were looking at the network briefing of o’clock in the evening on 23 November, and that was a briefing that was given by the Marine Tactical Commander, who on that night was David Jones. You’ve explained to us in your witness statement what the role of an MTC is. You’ve explained that they provide tactical oversight and support to SMCs, and that they are responsible for ensuring that every incident receives an appropriate response with necessary assets accorded to it; is that right?
A. Yes.
Q. Thank you. In the course of a shift then, what support did you generally expect to receive from the MTC?
A. Support I would generally expect to receive is oversight of the incident, so that would be by various means, it would either be an entry from them in the incident, or if I required more specific guidance, they would be on hand to receive a phone call and chat through an incident. Common practice is if there was any incidents which were significant, you would brief them verbally rather than just picking it up from the incident log.
Q. Thank you.
A. They — they have set targets for distress phase incidents and the actions they need to take.
Q. I see. So they’re working on their own timeline, but you would expect them to be monitoring the ViSION logs; is that right?
A. Yes, their primary area is the distress phase incidents, so they are monitoring distress phase incidents and providing a RAG status, which is review, action and guidance, that’s what that RAG status means.
Q. Thank you. And what matters then would you expect to report, bring verbally to an MTC’s attention?
A. Anything which would overwhelm resource. So any major incident, anything involving a large maritime search with multiple assets and multiple coordination, or multiple assets to coordinate, or any incident involving a fatality.
Q. Thank you. Things that were out of the ordinary, unexpected, unforeseen?
A. Yes. Anything which, I would say day-to-day Coastguard business, it’s very easy as a coastguard to — you know, we deal with a lot of emergency situations on a day-to-day basis, so for a normal member of the public, you know, for us, it’s just — that’s just — that’s just business as usual. An example of a big thing would be piracy.
Q. I see.
A. The Grande Tema was taken over by some hijackers who got on board, they were obviously trying to gain entry to the UK, and that’s the sort of thing that you would definitely bring to the attention, because, again, it’s going to involve a multi-agency response.
Q. I see.
A. So anything which would overwhelm the local assets in place or the number of people within the Ops room. So, again, if you end up with a major incident in one of your maritime zones, you would speak to the commander and say, “Could we offload some of our other zones because we need to focus all our attention on this”.
Q. Thank you. And you’d had that invitation, standard, you say, in the network briefing, “There’s a risk of overwhelm, tell me sooner rather than later”?
A. Absolutely. You know, we can be as flexible as we need to be, however SAR is always reactionary, unfortunately, so if you can do anything to make it less reactionary, from his perspective, much better.
Q. Thank you. All right, so that’s the network briefing. I want to ask you now about a call that Christopher or Tom Barnett made to you at 19:39, so shortly after you’d started your shift. And I think Mr Barnett is the remotely based SMC who provides that additional layer of cover whilst you’re taken away to VTS duties; is that right?
A. That’s correct, he is a Team Leader on SMC based at the JRCC.
Q. With equivalent rank at the time and qualification to you?
A. Yes.
Q. Thank you. Can I have then on the screens please {INQ01028/1}. This is — we can see that’s the first page of it. This is the transcript of the call made between the two of you, Tom Barnett, Christopher Barnett formally, and yourself at that date and on that time. Can we move over to {INQ010128/2} of the transcript. We can see you introducing yourselves and you are asked how you’re doing, and you say I’m: “Running around like a headless chicken. But apart from that, okay.” “… I’m trying to work out a plan for this evening”, says Mr Barnett, and you talk about the fact you would like all this staff in a freight car to you. It’s a jovial remark, but is that a reference to a preference for staff in person rather than remote staff?
A. Yeah, I mean, we — I’ve arrived at work this evening, so I’d actually been on leave two days previously, so again, as we discussed, I was doing extra shifts. I did actually have the opportunity to take some leave on the two day shifts, so I’d actually come into this night shift quite fresh from when I was on leave. However, what we had, which the Inquiry may or may not be aware of, is a period of unsettled weather, so wave heights in excess of 1 metres in the English channel, for about the preceding two weeks, and this is now rated as amber for the first night, followed by a couple of red days.
Q. Thank you.
A. So … —
Q. And those are the ratings given by Operation Deveran?
A. That’s correct, yeah.
Q. The likelihood, partly and significantly based on the weather forecast, of crossings or attempt crossings in that upcoming —
A. That’s correct. The Met Office provided that product to the best of its ability, because again, all weather is a mathematical model, so don’t always blame them when the weather’s wrong. But they were there to provide us with an overview of what would be a potentially, you know, achievable crossing for the small boats involved or totally unachievable because of the conditions’ expected.
Q. Thank you. When you tell us about the previous two-week period of wave heights, were you expecting that that night was going to be a particularly dense one in terms of attempt crossings simply because it had been impossible for a period of time?
A. From experience, over the year previously and leading up to that point, if there was ever a significant period whereby crossings couldn’t take place because of the weather, the demand is there. You know, it is very much, keeping to the theory of supply and demand, if there is demand, they will supply it. So I was under no illusion that, although this night is only rated as Amber, there is a big urgency and drive to go.
Q. Thank you. And so Mr Barnett asks you, in the middle of that page: “Are we expecting lots this evening?” And you say: “It’s amber, and who knows?” Is that what you’re referring to?
A. Yes. I mean, I don’t have a crystal ball, but, you know, if I had to put a bet on it, I was expecting to be busy for the potentially 36 hours from midnight-ish, possibly earlier. Again, it’s hard to predict when they will leave and when they’ll not leave. However, experience has told us previously when to start expecting.
Q. It’s your expectation based on experience?
A. Yes.
Q. Thank you. You go on to say: “Border Force have stood up all their assets to call us if you need us, rather than we’ll go out and have a look.” What are you referring to there?
A. So they, all their assets have readiness capabilities, and I believe the main HMCC cutter Valiant was ready to go in Dover as required. So sometimes on a — on an amber forecast, they would be at maybes 30 minutes’ notice to move 90 minutes’ notice to move. Again, it’s a 42-metre Damen class cutter, you don’t just turn the key and go, you know, the engines have to be pre-warmed and checks carried out —
Q. I see.
A. — as per any maritime code so … But they were aware and ready to deploy to sea, so they could have been out patrolling on a routine patrol. Again, the Customs cutters, and I infer that it is a Customs cutter, not a migrant rescue craft, they were there for customs work as well as small boat work.
Q. Yes. Your reference, though, to “rather than we’ll go out and have a look”, did Border Force, their assets, their vessels, sometimes do just that, go out and have a look?
A. They would be on a patrol. So they may have been undertaking other work. So they would be undertaking their other core work, which is around maritime security.
Q. I see.
A. So they may have been out doing patrols. On that, sometimes they were pre-deployed to sea, transiting through, so sometimes a Border Force vessel will be a vessel of opportunity, so obviously they display their AIS, unless they’re working covertly, similar to military vessels that operate in the Dover Strait.
Q. I see. So they might have been having a look ancillary to another one of their functions?
A. Yeah, basically, I’ve said not having a look, by that I mean they may have been on patrol carrying out another function as per their —
Q. Thank you.
A. — missions.
Q. But on this night they weren’t?
A. No, they were alongside in Dover.
Q. Thank you. All right. Can we go to the next page of this transcript {INQ010128/3}. You say to Mr Barnett: “I’ll be keeping a large ear on channel 16 in the French channels … to get heads up early, because they’ve not been playing ball.” Now, channel 16 is the channel that you’ve told us was in fact being picked up and monitored remotely, not by you in your SAR room; is that right?
A. Yes, but when we did that, I can’t comment. We may have handed it over as we went on break, because at that point, if — if there was no search and rescue going on, either myself or Stuart listening to 16, and one being there to answer phone calls would have been sufficient. It’s as incident demand increases, we would look at division of labour. And again, so we, at the start of the night, probably had channel 16, I can’t remember for definite, but more than likely, one of us would have had it monitored, but maybes not been actively — if we’d passed it over, they would have been dealing with the comms on it, however we could still monitor the channel to hear any comms.
Q. Thank you. And is it right, as you suggest here, that monitoring, “keeping a large ear on channel 16”, was one way to keep up to date with activity by the French Coastguard?
A. Potential, to be honest. You know, any — any activity going on, if they’re doing broadcast action, speaking to their vessels, they would go on channel 16 and then go to a working channel.
Q. Thank you. So just to read your comment then in full: “… large ear on channel 16 in the French channels, just to get a heads-up early, because they’ve not been playing ball.” Mr Barnett says: “Are they not letting us know again?” You say: “Sometimes they just seem to keep it quiet. Like we’ll not get anything, and then we’ll get a tracker at 3.00 in the morning with 15 instances and then they will go these are mostly in your search and rescue reach’. Wonderful.” “Yeah. It’s a grenade bomb”, says Mr Barnett. And you say: “Yeah, pretty much.”
A. I’m going to correct that because that’s — I think there’s probably a little bit of my dialect and Tom’s dialect confusing things there. So it would be search and rescue “region”, rather than “reach”.
Q. Reach?
A. So region. So, the UK Search and Rescue Region partners right up nicely with the French Search and Rescue Region. So from the perspective of HMCG, we don’t need to take any action until it crosses into our Search and Rescue Region. So if the French tell us in advance, it’s actually a bonus, because if a fishing vessel sinks in the UK SAR, we don’t know about it until someone tells us. So actually, we are — if the French tell us early, it’s getting a little bit of a heads-up, so we can actually start doing some proactive planning for search and rescue, rather than the usual, typical reactive to all the other search and rescue that we do in UK waters.
Q. Yes, thank you. Now, the —
A. And, “It’s a grenade bomb”, so obviously the French Coastguard’s based at CROSS Gris-Nez. Well, sorry, CROSS is their service, and Gris-Nez is the location, so it’s, yeah, we don’t throw bombs at each other. It’s Gris-Nez, so it would be — but, again, I can understand why on a transcript it would sound like “grenade bomb” but it would be “a Gris-Nez bomb”.
Q. Thank you very much. You make reference here to the tracker. You’ve explained your hesitance in using the word “tracker”, but it is a word that was used and is used for spreadsheets or tables exchanging information about migrant crossings?
A. Yes, that’s correct, basically.
Q. Thank you. And the Inquiry’s aware of course, as you tell us about in this transcript, that the French Coastguard operates its own tracker for migrant boats and that delay in the Coastguard providing their tracker was a long-standing, a regular problem for His Majesty’s Coastguard?
A. Yes. And on that, the context of it is, we use the term “tracker”, it’s a spreadsheet. So, call collection, if you take it from a single vessel casualty, is one call, one incident, so the reason it’s done as a tracker or a spreadsheet is because they want to tell us about multiple incidents at the same time, rather than ringing us and saying, “I’d like to make you informed of this, this and this”. So they basically have, for want of a better explanation, provided us with multiple call collections of information they hold via a spreadsheet.
Q. Yes, thank you. And on this particular night, the first version of the French tracker received by His Majesty’s Coastguard was sent at 0057 hours on 24 November of 2021, so early hours of the second day of the shift?
A. First night shift.
Q. First night shift?
A. Yeah. Sorry, yeah.
Q. Yes. And that included, is this right, information about small boats in motion, active, from about 9 o’clock on November?
A. From what I remember from the evidence, I believe, yes, it had a number of boats and the times they departed.
Q. Thank you. You’ve just told us, you told us in your witness statement, that really the earlier information is provided about small boat activity, the more chance His Majesty’s Coastguard has to prepare for when the incidents actually reach English waters, English SAR area; that’s right, isn’t it?
A. That’s correct, yes.
Q. And that includes — that preparation might include alerting UK Border Force as to approximate timings, it might include allocation or reallocation of staff, if necessary?
A. Yes, correct. It’s all about preparing a plan. You know, the SMC’s job is to prepare a plan, and the more time — time is also our greatest enemy, because we’re usually working against a timescale which is ticking away from us. So the small boat search and rescue is quite different to some of the SAR we do, because actually, a lot of the time, we can prepare, providing we’re given accurate, timeously, information to assist.
Q. And on this shift, by 1 o’clock in the morning, in fact the boat with which this Inquiry is primarily concerned, Charlie, was very close to the median line, very close to crossing into UK waters; is that right?
A. The Incident Charlie, which relates to a boat. I’m very specific that it’s not boat Charlie, it is Incident Charlie, which relates to the boat this Inquiry is interested in, was at or around close the median line —
Q. Thank you.
A. — when that information was received.
Q. Did you consider yourself, in the early part of your shift, before you went to VTS, directly chasing, making contact with Gris-Nez, with the French Coastguard, for information about small boat activity on that evening?
A. I don’t recall, is the answer.
Q. In your witness statement you tell us that that’s something that you regularly did; is that right?
A. It’s something that we would do regularly. For whatever reason, I may have directed it or not directed it. I think possibly, if I have to speculate, possibly some — you know, I was dealing with a member of staff being sick, so there was that welfare perspective of, you know, doing that paperwork. So that planning for coming in and then finding I’m a member of staff less than I’d hoped to be, maybe distracted my mind from what I would call a practice that we did sometimes.
Q. Thank you. So you can’t remember whether you yourself directly did it and you can’t remember whether you instructed anybody else to do it?
A. No, I can’t.
Q. All right. If you had received information about Incident Charlie, in particular, earlier, could you, Coastguard, have tasked Border Force to send an asset earlier?
A. Yes. I mean, we — if we were given timescales, we would have looked at what assets were available, and again, given information, came up with a plan, be that a Border Force asset, an RNLI asset, to be aware and start making way.
Q. Thank you. So effectively to proactively or preemptively task and direct?
A. Yes, basically. Unfortunately, what a lot of the people attempting the small boat crossings are told is, “You only have to make it halfway”, which, I think, unfortunately, is — is true, you know, we are predominantly now much better at having enough asset to manage the demand.
Q. Had you made such a request of Border Force previously to preemptively or proactively proceed towards the median line?
A. Yes, so we’ve worked closely with Border Force, and again, if there was an opportunity where we knew there was a vessel and we could give a timescale, then obviously that request would be made via the Maritime Cutter Command to task one of their vessels. The request would be, “Have you any vessels available”? Again, they would declare what was their on-call vessel, shall we say. I think, certain times, they had multiple vessels in the area that could be called upon, and other times they just had a single vessel, again, depending on their other missions and demands. But we would obviously make that request and proceed from there.
Q. Thank you. And had Border Force ever declined a request to proceed proactively or preemptively?
A. Not that I can recall, to be honest.
Q. Thank you. We can take that from the screen now. So you are away from SAR duties for a period of about three hours, give or take, 10.30 to about 1.30. A separate role entirely and no part in SAR during that period; is that right?
A. No part at all. No legal responsibility part of SAR. However, as a human being and a Team Leader, “Are you all right guys”, “Yeah, yeah, we’re good, we’re getting support from Tom”. You know, it’s — we’re in the same room, you know, it’s — we’re not sat in silence.
Q. Thank you. And you come back to the SAR function at about 1.30, about the time when you might have been hoping to have a break?
A. Yes.
Q. Thank you. How would you update yourself if you had to take a period of time out of SAR functions mid-shift like this, what would you do to update yourself as to what’s happened since?
A. So, generally, you would receive an SMC — SMC handover from whoever was remotely SMCing, making you aware, very similar to start of watch handover, but it would be purely focused on active search and rescue. So you are SMC for an incident, not a geographical area, so you would assume the SMC role for each incident, and again that could be one incident, it could be ten incidents, and again, you would receive a brief from the SMC you were going to assume coordination for.
Q. So were you briefed by Mr Barnett that evening, that shift?
A. I don’t recall, unfortunately.
Q. I want to look briefly with you at the events that had taken place during that VTS shift and I’m going to start by asking you to look at a document that calls itself the “Migrant activity tracker”. Before we look at that on screen, is it right that that is a form of log also kept on the ViSION system?
A. The migrant activity tracker would be a spreadsheet document which would be separate to the ViSION incident management system.
Q. I’ll call it up —
A. Yeah.
Q. — and we’ll look at it and you can tell me. {INQ000235/1}, please. This is the calls itself, as we can see at its head, the “Migrant Administration Incident 24th November” or “Migrant Activity Tracker”. Is this the ViSION log?
A. This is a — this is a ViSION — a ViSION log. You’ll see the GIN at the top is listed as 41382 of November 2021.
Q. So this is the log for the whole of that 24-hour period; is that right?
A. Yes.
Q. Thank you. And was this the document where information of general relevance to all small boat crossings should be recorded?
A. That’s correct. So the purpose of this document was for anything we couldn’t tag, so the word “tag” relates to when we add an asset or a resource to an incident.
Q. Yes.
A. ViSION is limited, so if you add a resource to an incident, it is with that incident until you release it. So if it’s doing multiple things — the nature of small boat crossings all occur in a very similar area, and again, a search and rescue asset may see three incidents at the same time, however you can only log the information they provide in the incident you’re assigned to.
Q. I see. So if a particular asset, and we’ll probably see an example of this, a particular asset is assigned to a particular incident with its name, Charlie or Hotel or whatever it is, that asset can only be recorded against that particular incident until it’s released from that tasking; is that right?
A. That’s correct. We update what we call their incident narrative for that asset and that populates it into the incident. And you will see, in the source document there will be a name, so if there’s an asset which we’re updating their asset information, it automatically — whichever incident they’re linked to, it updates it. So this document was used for any proposed flight flying times. So the aerial surveillance patrols under Op EOS would have been recorded in this document because that was a patrol, rather than a search and rescue. So it was a patrol flight, rather than a search and rescue flight, so they would be patrolling, so we would say there will be aerial coverage between these hours in this document.
Q. Thank you. And so I’m clear, this tracker was created and maintained on the maritime or marine side of Coastguard’s work. Is it right that the aerial team, aerial tactical commander, wouldn’t have access to the maritime ViSION logs at this time?
A. From memory —
Q. Yes.
A. — we operated ViSION 4, which was the ViSION service we were using back in 2021, and ViSION 5, the reason being is ViSION 5 was an upgrade with enhanced capabilities which was being tested by the aeronautical team.
Q. I see. But there was a disconnect. The two teams couldn’t see each other’s ViSION entries at the time; is that right?
A. That’s correct, yeah, aeronautical incidents relied on a formal handover from a maritime perspective in a formal request. They wouldn’t see what was in an incident, it had to be requested. To supplement that though, aeronautical rescue is based within the JRCC, hence the title Joint Rescue Co-Ordination Centre, because it’s a maritime and aviation coordination centre, so they were in the room, so there would have been the capacity for them to go and speak to one of their maritime counterparts, which — the room is not much bigger than this, so they could go and double-check if there was any conflict. The same with the Aviation Tactical Commander and Maritime Commander, they could — they were based in the same room and could discuss.
Q. But their chains of communication as between the teams were verbal at that stage because they couldn’t — their ViSION systems couldn’t speak to each other?
A. Yes, they couldn’t update each other’s ViSION systems.
Q. Thank you. All right, then if we move on within the document to the bottom of page {INQ000235/2}, please, and we can see 11:39:30 10 an entry made by Dave Jones again, the MTC, at 00:41:35. That’s the start of his entry, but I’d like to look with you at part of page {INQ000235/3} and the balance of the entry. Can we look at that second full paragraph on that page: “JRCC commanders maritime’ & air have discussed … their concern is that with poor visibility’ and our surveillance aircraft being limited to conduct mission we are effectively blind. Both commanders’ agree that caution of allowing ourselves be drawn into a relaxing and expecting a normal migrant crossing night whereas this has the potential to be very dangerous.” Yes?
A. That’s what it says, yes.
Q. Was this controller entry, or controller message entry in this log the way in which this information was communicated to you, the SMC?
A. I don’t remember reading this message. Obviously I was still carrying out VTS duties at this point. The admin log was administrative, so, again, it was recording things. There was concern around fog. I think that was discussed in the 9 o’clock brief as well around aerial assets and limited visibility.
Q. You don’t remember seeing this on shift though?
A. I don’t remember reading this on the shift, no.
Q. Would you not normally have refreshed or looked at the trackers, the ViSION logs, to see what had happened whilst you had been away?
A. When I came back, my main focus would have been the distress phase or any alert phase incidents that were active on ViSION. This incident, as you’ll see, the next paragraph down, is in small letters. So to make it aware for the Inquiry, the way our ViSION system works is anything written in capital letters is not HM Coastguard shouting, it denotes that as a human input. Anything the system automatically creates for us is entered in lower case, which is an important distinction. And you’ll see it moves from “Incident Grade changed from I to N”. So “I” stands for information, and “N” is non-search and rescue.
Q. Thank you.
A. So that is just to make sure that when we look at our ViSION list, anything that shows as a green incident type, you know, it’s not a distress phase incident. So my eyes, when I came back, were drawn to multiple distress phase incidents, and I probably asked the team at the time, “Is there anything else I need to be aware of from the admin log”, and I think the answer was, “No, not really, the flights are probably not going to get off the ground because of the fog”.
Q. Is it unusual for an updating message such as this to refer to the potential for danger?
A. The — from my perspective, I was not expecting a normal, relaxed night at all. I can tell you, I was very aware of what I was expecting and the response that would be required. And with the talk of fog, again, that was already going, this is going to be more of a challenge than usual without aerial support to give us that positional information. So they’ve discussed it and obviously they’ve voiced their concerns with each other. These were concerns which were already massively within my head, looking at: it’s going to be busy because of the timescale of the weather beforehand and it’s going to be further — harder to coordinate an effective overall SAR picture without that aerial asset involved.
Q. Was a briefing recorded in this way or a message recorded in this way, was that the normal way of bringing such a situation to your, the SMC’s, attention?
A. In terms of pre-planned stuff, possibly. Again, the ViSION system is there to record our thoughts and feelings. Is this — this, I would say, is them recording their thoughts in their contemporaneous notes, and this is them going, you know, we need to keep ourselves on guard. And this is them recording then their feelings in a — in a logical incident, and again, it’s quite difficult to find the right incident sometimes. So if it’s a generic statement like this is, it’s not particular — to one particular SAR incident, it’s where do you put that? Should it have gone in the Network Management Log? Possibly. But, again, this is specific to the Zone 14 area that Dover coordinated, so, again, I guess it’s: where do you put that information? We want to record it and note it.
Q. Would you have been more likely to see it if it had been recorded in the Network Management Log?
A. Yes, probably, because, generally, what we used to do as a practice was you would record when SMCs were on and off break in the Network Management Log, which gives the maritime commanders overview of where people were, or their capabilities.
Q. Can I ask you very specifically, to the best of your knowledge and recollection, how common was it, back at the tail end of 2021, for scheduled surveillance flights to be cancelled/put off?
A. Again, aviation is very weather dependent. It’s — and in some respects, it’s a lot more critical than maritime. So, you know, when a ship runs out of fuel, it’s fine, it just bobs around there. If an aircraft runs out of fuel, it’s a little bit more intense for them on board. So, again, the whole margin for error with aeronautical stuff is critical compared to that. So if there was any risk, then that is deferred to my aviation colleagues.
Q. Thank you. All right, that can come off the screen, please. I’d like to ask you very briefly and in just very general terms about RVL, or Reveal. Were you aware that there was an asset operated by a company called RVL flying that night between about 10 o’clock in the evening and about 4.30 in the morning?
A. I wasn’t aware. So RVL was another one of the aeronautical contractors. So Bristow Helicopters supply all the search and rescue rotary aircraft, and 2Excel were the other part of our flight programme. RVL were tasked mainly, from my understanding, with counter-pollution work, so I wasn’t aware of that aircraft. And if it was up I would have assumed it was doing counter-pollution work because that was what they were contracted for. That’s my understanding.
Q. And so if I were to ask you why that asset wasn’t tasked to assist with Incident Charlie, that would be your answer, that would have been your understanding of what it was doing and what it could do?
A. That — that’s correct. And also I wouldn’t have tasked an asset like that, because that would have been a request to the aeronautical rescue for air support.
Q. I see. Thank you. All right, we’ve talked about the French tracker, which arrived in its first iteration of the shift at hours. The Inquiry knows that a call from the French Coastguard was taken by Mr Downs at 1.06, and we’ll ask him about that when he comes to give his evidence. And then he had opened a specific log on ViSION for Incident Charlie and I’d like to look with you at that now. That’s {INQ000237/1}, please. And we can see, at the header of that page, the unique GIN number; is that right?
A. That’s correct, yes.
Q. Top left-hand corner. We can see that the incident has been named “Charlie”, and that what’s known about it is that there are “30 POB”, persons on board, and 13 of those are women, eight of those are children, 14 of the persons on board have life jackets, and the “dinghy appears to be in good condition”. That information, the dinghy appearing in good condition, is the only fact in those capitals that doesn’t appear in the French tracker. Do you know where that information came from?
A. I don’t, unfortunately.
Q. Was the condition of a small boat important to Coastguard?
A. It’s — it’s — it’s amplifying information. So any extra information which helps us ascertain the risk involved is — is amplifying information.
Q. And is the condition of a small boat relevant to the risk presented to its occupants?
A. Very much so. A commercially constructed craft, rather than a homemade craft, is, you know, going to present different risks.
Q. Thank you. And so is it right to say that a correct recording of the information that is accurately known as to the condition of a small boat is really important?
A. Yes. Again, condition’s a really hard one to quantify, but things like: is it properly inflated, is it fully inflated, does it seem to be sagging in any places. Again, anything we can get which helps us understand the status of the boat, basically.
Q. Thank you. But Incident Charlie, or the dinghy involved in Incident Charlie, is described as appearing to be “in good condition”?
A. Yes.
Q. All right. Can we move on to page {INQ000237/4}, please, I think, of this log, and we’ll see, at 0124 hours, the entry made by Stuart Downs that: “UK [Border Force] MCC advised of this migrant — HMC Valiant will probably be deployed [and] will advise when the decision [is] made by UK [Border Force].” And then we see that Valiant is turned out at hours, yes?
A. Yes, that’s correct.
Q. Thank you. And assigned to this particular incident also at hours, yes?
A. Yes. Like I say, you can see all the bits in small case. These are system generated prompts. And, again, you assign an asset to an incident and it will generate or 12 lines of information like this.
Q. Thank you. The Inquiry understands that the next thing that happened of significance is that Mr Downs took a call directly from the occupants of the boat in Incident Charlie at 01:37. Then if we move on to {INQ000237/5} of this log, please, we can see your first entries on it. 01:42:38: “Incident Grade changed from M to D.” Now, that’s in small or lowercase text. Would you explain that entry to us, please?
A. Again, so, yes, the incident grading is a box. As I said before, we have I, N, U, A, D and M. So “M” stands for “monitoring”. So anything not within the UK Search and Rescue Region at this point would be graded as a monitoring incident, because we are only monitoring it and waiting to see if it makes it. The “to D”, that means “distress”, and again, that is where I have gone into the system and changed it from monitoring, which appears as an orangey-peach colour in this incident number, to a bright red “D” for distress. So, yes, it’s — it is me. You’ll see that “NGIBSON” is the user op that has activated that change. However, I’ve just made it distress, because we believe it to be approaching the UK, or within UK Search and Rescue. And then you’ll see, at 01:43:50, I put my rationale in for that, because I do it, and then I start typing that message, and that’s me putting my SMC, coming in to say the reason this has changed from monitoring to distress is the location of it places it.
Q. Thank you.
A. You’ll also see “SDOWNS” puts a coordinate change from 1.77 … 51 … That is a decimalised latitude and longitude, which will have either been provided via the WhatsApp or whatever method, but that is just where we change the physical position of that incident, so it — representative on a map of this location.
Q. So that’s where the co-ordinates are updated?
A. Yes.
Q. Thank you. Let me ask you about the comment that you record at 01:43:50: “Upgraded to distress as location update places vessel in UK [search and rescue area]. “Unknown condition of craft and persons on board no French assets on scene with vessel.” So you record an “unknown condition”. Where do you get that information from?
A. So my — my thought process here is, a bit like an MOT on a car, it’s valid for the day it’s issued. At 0900, or whenever the French were given the information, it appeared in good condition. I don’t know what’s happened to the status of that craft as it has proceeded across the English Channel. So I don’t know its current condition of the craft because I have no current French asset with it to give me an update on its status or aerial observation of it, so I’ve basically gone with I don’t know, it started off all right, but how is it now, that’s an unknown. So this is me saying my unknowns are: I don’t know what condition it’s in now.
Q. Thank you.
A. Again, persons on board 30, about 30. So back in 2018, up to about 2020, most of the craft were sourced by — from commercial means, and again, they would carry approximately between 10 and 15 people and this could be easily counted by heads from either an aerial surveillance or a boat surveillance. As we got into 2021, the average number of persons per craft increased to about 38 to 40, and when you’re counting heads of people who are all cramped, if you imagine 40 people in a dinghy between myself and Sir Ross, that’s a lot of heads to count and the opportunity to miscount that people is — is high.
Q. Yes.
A. So, again, if it’s a round number, it’s plus or minus.
Q. All right.
A. And fast-forwarding where we are now, the maximum amount we’ve ever had in a boat is approximately 97 people, and, again, when it’s been reported leaving by the French they say approximately 60 people. So, you know, there is a variance now of potentially up to people in some cases.
Q. 30 or 40 people, yes.
A. So, again, it’s very hard to go, yeah, 30 people, that’s definite, because, again, just the numbers involved and actually how was that counted. You know, they haven’t all purchased — yes, they’ve purchased a ticket, but it’s not a formal manifest, shall we say.
Q. Thank you. That’s helpful. All right, I’ll take that from the screen now. I’m going to ask you about the first call that you took from the boat shortly. Let me ask you though first about this. You — and you’re not alone in this amongst witnesses — have told the Inquiry that callers from small boats sometimes exaggerated their level of distress. Was that your experience?
A. Yes. Again, this goes back to people asking closed questions or potentially leading questions. You know, there was obviously things said, like I’ve referenced earlier, there is a website where they were told to say this once you get halfway, the boat’s taking water, you know, someone’s died in the boat. Again, all facts that can’t be corroborated over the phone, so it makes it quite difficult to understand the level of what’s actually going on. I think the best example of that is one of the questions from a previous incident, he said there’s water in the boat, and I ask how much water and he informs me there’s 3 metres of water in his boat. Now, a small inflatable, that means they’re going to be a metre and a half under water if they’re sat down. So it’s — we know there’s questions, but it’s — it’s very hard to gather that information accurately and be confident of what you’re being told.
Q. So a particular challenge and you’ve told us about the particular challenges in gathering and assessing information —
A. Yeah.
Q. — accurate information. Do you have any sense at all of how often callers exaggerated the level of distress they were experiencing?
A. It’s a very difficult question to answer. Experience tells me, from previous ones, there is that expectation, again, you ring, we’ll be there to pick you up; if we’re not there in five minutes, another phone call comes in, I’ll speed this up potentially. So, again, I guess the delay from their first phone call to when they’re actually rescued can generate — I don’t — they’re not coming quick enough, you know, perhaps that is part of it, to be honest. So it’s a really hard question to answer, because again, I’m second-guessing other people’s thoughts. But certainly if we receive multiple phone calls from craft, it tended to be, “Oh, it’s getting worse, it’s getting worse”, because again, I think some of our things were, when we got that initial information, and it’s the worst possible thing, you’ve received an emergency phone call from any member — any member or person who’s in difficulty and you know you’ve got this timescale between when your vessel leaves to go and rescue them and them being rescued, and it’s like you can’t speed that time up, it’s just what it is. So I think obviously the longer it goes from the initial phone call to a rescue asset arriving on scene, you know, it’s — we haven’t got the capacity to ring them back and say, “Don’t worry it’s going to be ten minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes”, because invariably what will happen is, maybes a higher priority dinghy would take over and then you might have to redirect that search and rescue asset. So it’s a very difficult question to answer.
Q. Yes.
A. But I would imagine, you know, we all know we’ve been sat in traffic or stuck somewhere and, you know, you want to get something done, you add a bit more credence to why you should be priority.
Q. Do you think that belief, that callers from small boats did sometimes exaggerate their level of distress, do you think that belief was widely shared within the Coastguard?
A. I think it was in people’s minds, of can we — can we take what we’re told at face value. You know, is — is everyone on fire and sinking? No, probably not. But I think it was, basically, just be mindful when you gather the information, analyse it, assess it, verify it, to get what you can. And that could be from the plane flying overhead and going, “Information Coastguard …” — you know, they’re not getting rescued by the plane, but the plane can give us a visual observation — “… oh, they’re all sat there quite happy, there’s no bailing going on”. If a plane flies over or a passing ship goes, “They are bailing for their lives”, you know, then you’ve got a bit of verification of that information. So it’s gathering the information, assessing what you’ve been told and then getting some sort of visual confirmation, or eyes on, whether that be from French Coastguard, our planes, passing commercial shipping, stuff like that. It’s — it’s about verifying what they’ve told us.
Q. Had you received any guidance or training in how to assess information being provided from small boat callers?
A. Not in specifically small boat callers; however, general search and rescue, you know, you’re analysing and verifying the information. Some of the worst customers we have are fishermen, who, “Yeah, it’s not too much of a problem, I’ve got a bit of water in the boat”, and what they mean is they’re about to get in a life raft because it’s about to sink. So, you know, you’ve got the fishermen, who will, literally, last minute.com, it’s time to get off. So, again, you use your general SAR procedures to analyse, again, people’s inflections in voices, you can understand when something’s a bit more serious and not, so, general SAR training gives you the skill set you need to make it.
Q. And did there come a time, any time during the course of this particular watch, this particular night watch, that you believed those on board incident boat Charlie had exaggerated their level of distress?
A. So the initial — the initial phone call, which I believe we’ll probably get into discussing my phone call, something in my gut — and, again, I’m asked to describe what that gut feeling is, it’s just a gut feeling that this doesn’t feel quite as usual. As we progress through the night and we’re starting to effect rescue after rescue after rescue, there is a possibility in my mind that actually maybes it wasn’t as exaggerated as they said because the boats we’re recovering all seemed to be in good condition and so forth. So the initial phone call gives me concern, and then obviously as we progress through the night, we’re rescuing people and, you know, the levels of, you know, it’s — you know, we’ve come to a point where we go, yeah, okay, that’s — yeah, because, again, other vessels said we’re taking water, we’re sinking, and then we recover them and they’re not, so its …
MS LE FEVRE: All right, thank you. Chair, it’s midday, I don’t know if that’s …
SIR ROSS CRANSTON: Yes, what do you — I think we’ll have another break.
A. Yeah, okay, no problem.
SIR ROSS CRANSTON: Just for ten minutes. So that will be minutes past midday to come back. So if you leave first.
A. Yeah, okay.
SIR ROSS CRANSTON: You leave first.
A. No problem.
MS LE FEVRE: We need the announcement.
SIR ROSS CRANSTON: Oh, sorry, we need the announcement.
VIDEO HEARINGS MANAGER: Cameras are now off. (The witness withdrew)
SIR ROSS CRANSTON: Thanks very much. (12.03 pm) (A short break) (12.13 pm) (The witness returned)
SIR ROSS CRANSTON: Yes, well, welcome back, Mr Gibson.
MS LE FEVRE: Thank you. So, I’m taking you to a point in time 0148 hours on November. At this time, two things happen. The French tracker is provided in updated form, and you take a call directly from the small boat Incident Charlie. The French tracker contains a little more information now. It tells us, again, that there are 33 persons on board, 30 women and children, likely into the UK SAR at 01:30 — we knew that already — but not very much information beyond that which was already held by Coastguard. And so it’s your call from Mubin, who was a 16-year-old boy who was on board the small boat Incident Charlie and it’s a called that’s passed to you, I think, from the French Coastguard; is that right?
A. I’m not sure how the phone call is received, but obviously, yes, I assume the phone call. I can’t remember whether it was a 999 phone call or whether it was passed from the French, but, yes, it is me on that call with Mubin.
Q. Thank you. It’s a long call, 21 minutes. Mubin had good English; is that right?
A. Yes, a level of English that was understandable and conversable.
Q. Thank you. In the course of the call, you could hear multiple other voices in the background; is that right?
A. Yes.
Q. Was there shouting?
A. There was a level of noise which made it difficult for me to fully hear everything Mubin was saying at times. So whether it was shouting or just general background noise, things going through a headset can be transmitted. I can hear that typing quite clearly, despite I’m talking. So, again, it’s your perception. But it was quite a lot of background noise.
Q. Thank you. And were there voices speaking in languages other than English that you could hear?
A. Yes. I couldn’t identify which language, but there was conversation which was not in English.
Q. Thank you. In the course of the call, I think it’s right that you did manage to give Mubin the number of the Coastguard standalone iPhone?
A. Yes.
Q. And you managed to take two mobile telephone numbers from those on the boat?
A. If it’s recorded in the incident, probably. I can’t remember. Like you say, it was 21 minutes —
Q. Thank you.
A. — and quite an intense phone call.
Q. And I think it’s right that via that iPhone and the WhatsApp messaging system, you managed to take a geolocation from and for the boat, time stamped at hours?
A. Yes, there was some form of WhatsApp message with the location.
Q. Thank you. And I think that was a location that was close, or quite close to the Sandettie Lightvessel?
A. It was in — for broad terms, within the vicinity of, yes.
Q. Yes, thank you. You tell Mubin a boat is coming and you told him it was going to take a bit of time, and he told you that there were 40 people in the boat. I’d like to look just at some brief extracts of the transcript of that call now, please. It’s {INQ007630/1}, and we can see that’s the introductory page, introducing you and the speaker and the timing. And I’d like to look with you at page {INQ007630/16} of this transcript, please. So we know, Mr Gibson, the text that shows in red has been translated from another language into English for the purposes of this transcription exercise. This is towards the end of the transcript, and we can see that you say: “… like I say we’ll be coming to be shortly. We’re getting a boat. It’s going to take a bit of time to get the boat to you because obviously you’re a long way off the shore.” Mubin says: “We are in water UK, right?” And you say: “Yeah, I believe so. I’m just checking your position now. Bear with me. There is a boat coming. It is going to take a bit of time, you know.” And then Mubin says: “Okay, okay. I’m waiting.” Then he says: “I see a light.” And turn to {INQ007630/17}, please: “I see a light. I see a light … “… “Look my left. Look my left. Please. Please. Please. Please …” And then: “It’s finished … it’s finished … Look [to] my left … Look my left, please.” And you say: “Is there a boat to your left, did you say?” The speaker says: “Look my left … Can you see the light?” And you say: “There’s a light, okay.” The speaker says: “To my left …” Over the page, please {INQ007630/18}. And then the speaker goes on to say: “Please … Everything[‘s] finished … Look [to] my left …” You say: “… I … hear a lot of shouting …” The speaker says: “Yeah, it[‘s] finished. Come here, please … It’s finished. Finished.” And you say: “Right, Mumin.” And he says again, “we finish”: “Come here, please, we finish.” All right. Can we take that off the screen, please. Is it right that during this call and as we’ve seen in that part of the transcript, it became apparent that Mubin and those on the boat could see the lights of another vessel?
A. They don’t ascertain what the light is. Within the Dover Strait, there’s multiple navigation marks which all have characteristic lights flashing, all commercial vessels, by its size, have to display certain lights, a port light is red, which is the left-hand side, green light for starboard, a stern light which is white, and then their length lights, they’ll carry two white lights. So, again, trying to get what the lights are would help you identify whether the ship was coming towards them, going away. But unfortunately, I think that level of explanation would have exceeded the level of English on board. It’s quite — for a maritime professional, it makes a lot of sense. For the general member of the public, who’s not trained to identify a ship, it’s a bit more to say could you describe the light sort of thing. Fixed navigation marks, some of them flash white. You know, again, is it a flashing light, is it not a flash light. However, you’ve also then got the risk of if the vessel is rocking and rolling, the light can appear to be flashing as it’s obscured from view and then comes back. So, in that point, I almost feel that they thought I was on — they’d called for help, and they assume, you know, you call for help, someone’s coming. “We are coming to help you”, and it’s that language barrier of, oh, cool, he’s on his way. I fully think Mubin probably thought I was going to turn up on a boat and pick him up. I don’t know whether he understood how coordination and rescue works so …
Q. No.
A. And they could see a light and it was probably a commercial vessel, but …
Q. Did you take that possibility seriously, though, that it might be a vessel and they might be able to see a vessel?
A. Yes. At the point in time, so one of the Coastguard systems we have is called C-Scope, which is our AIS client, and also within that system for the Dover Strait, primarily for the VTS function, is a radar overlay. So AIS is the Automatic Identification System, which a vessel transmits gross — vessels over gross tonnes, by law, have to display their AIS and that gives us their — there’s three types of data: vessel data, static data and dynamic data. So there’s, like, the vessel’s names, call signs, MMSIs, their speed, their course, their destination, and all that’s transmitted, which gives better overall maritime awareness.
Q. Yes.
A. So other vessels can look on their AIS system and go, “Right, we probably want to go north of him because he’s going to want to go off to starboard because of where he’s heading to his next port.” So it gives —
Q. It’s a powerful tool and it’s a powerful tool to understand what and where vessels and other objects are —
A. Yes, very much so.
Q. I see.
A. So we could see that there was —
Q. Did you interrogate that then —
A. — vessels in the area —
Q. — having received that information from Mubin, did you interrogate C-Scope?
A. We looked at C-Scope, and I think there was about five or six vessels. And again, it would have been too hard to go, “I wonder if it’s that vessel, I wonder if it’s that vessel”. The VTS team, they broadcast an information service broadcast, and in that broadcast there is a, you know, for any sightings of small vessels, you know, at this point, I think we were probably doing a proactive broadcast, “There are small vessels in the Dover Strait, all vessels are advised to maintain a sharp look out and report any sightings”.
Q. Thank you. Is it right that you identified one potential candidate as that vessel as being the Gaschem Shinano?
A. Yes, I mean, I believe certainly that vessel was in the area at the time and I believe questions were then asked of it.
Q. Did you ask those questions?
A. No, I think I requested it either through the VTS team — again, division of labour, trying to keep myself free to make the important SMC decisions —
Q. Thank you.
A. — that I’m required to make.
Q. Do you know that the Gaschem Shinano said that it couldn’t see anything?
A. I think that was reported back to me.
Q. Yes. And it was let to continue on its passage?
A. Yes.
Q. Thank you.
A. So another point around this is the — the south-west lane of the Dover Strait is obviously monitored by Dover Coastguard and the north-east lane is monitored and managed by Gris-Nez, under the call sign “Gris-Nez Traffic”. In terms of the Search and Rescue Region, from where they enter the north-east lane at the Greenwich Lightvessel, up to and including, just, by the Mike Papa Charlie buoy, which is the mid-part of Calais, so essentially halfway between Dover and Calais, the Search and Rescue Region then extends, the British one extends into the north-east lane, so the vessels transiting the north-east lane are under the supervision of Gris-Nez Traffic, but obviously we can still call them on 16 and then get them to 11 and chat to them —
Q. Thank you.
A. — rather than having dog-leg of going to Gris-Nez Traffic to ask them the same question, we — it’s an understanding, they’re reporting to Gris-Nez, however, if it they’re called by Dover, it’s for a reason.
Q. You can see them and you can speak to them if you want to?
A. Yes, exactly, yeah.
Q. Thank you. Now, in the transcript that we’ve just looked at — we won’t look at it again — Mubin repeats several times, “It’s finished, we’re finished, finished”. You’ve told the Inquiry and you’ve told us about it — told us about this already today, that you had a gut feeling that this wasn’t an exaggerated case, wasn’t a case of exaggeration. Did you in fact consider at this stage that this call was a genuine case of serious or severe distress?
A. The actions I take following the call I think highlight that I had genuine concern for this vessel.
Q. Did you understand that this was or might be a boat that was taking on water?
A. That wasn’t verbalised in the call. “We’re finished, we’re finished”, again, I didn’t go — because that would have been jumping to a conclusion, again, the analysis of it didn’t lead me to say it’s sinking. It was, you know, there is — I have a concern for this boat, I don’t know what that concern is, but there is concern from a feeling I’ve got from this phone call.
Q. Thank you. Well, we’ll look at your — the actions you took next almost immediately. I just want to ask you about some WhatsApp co-ordinates that were sent to Coastguard on that standalone mobile phone. I think it’s right that there were two further WhatsApp positions sent at and 0221 respectively. They were sent to the Coastguard iPhone, but nobody in Coastguard saw those until about an hour later. You’ve told us about that in your witness statement. And it’s you, in fact, that records them into the Incident Charlie ViSION log at about 3.28 or so. Why were those coordinates missed?
A. I — I can’t recall why they would have been missed. However, what the Inquiry needs to understand, and the greater audience, is we weren’t just dealing with one small boat, there was I think seven or eight on the French tracker at this point, so coordinating multiple incidents in the Channel, and again, whether that phone had been put down, the ping had been missed, and again I’m going to give an example here, Sir Ross just mentioned it was 12 o’clock and I felt like five minutes had passed, so the passage of time when you’re very busy is quite easy to — to miss in some cases.
Q. Right. Do you know whether those updated positions were ever passed to the Valiant?
A. I can’t recall, unfortunately.
Q. Should they have been?
A. In terms of the Valiant’s response, once the Valiant was requested and tasked through Border Force Maritime Command, it was then under our coordination and we would have tasked it to the most likely position for — for the vessel. So, as and when the Valiant was closing in on the position, we would have probably updated them with the updated positions as required.
Q. But you don’t know whether that happened?
A. I don’t know whether that happened, but I think the Valiant was tasked to the vicinity of the Sandettie Lightvessel. The rationale for that was the tide in the Dover Strait goes north-east and south-west bound and the tide was setting to the north-east, so therefore any drift would have been towards the Sandettie Lightvessel, so …
Q. Thank you. But is it right that, ideally, Valiant should have been provided with the most up-to-date co-ordinates/geolocation available to Coastguard?
A. Potentially, yes.
Q. Right. And I’m going to move forward to your next acts, which is I think the Mayday relay; is that right?
A. More than likely I would —
Q. In relation to —
A. — (overspeaking – inaudible) — yeah.
Q. — this particular incident? So this is a relay that was created by you at 02:26 or 02:27, depending on which log we’re looking at. I think it’s right, you’ll correct me if I have this wrong, but Mayday relays are the highest level of alert, they’re only to be used in severe distress situations and only to be used where there’s a grave or imminent risk — risk to life?
A. So the Mayday relay is — it’s just any distress phase situation is — the proword is “Mayday”, which amplifies that to all mariners. The use of broadcast action for a Mayday is discretionary from the SMC and there are times when we will not use a Mayday broadcast because it’s not required or it’s not going to elicit a response from what we need, basically. An example of that would be mid-Atlantic. We’re not going to issue a Mayday broadcast for the middle of the mid-Atlantic because there is just not that response out there, we will do other means. Again, it’s about the audience you’re transmitting to. The Dover Strait is a densely populated traffic, so therefore you’re going to get lots of responses. And the nature of the Mayday relay was to get any vessels that could respond to respond and then any vessels with sightings to give updated position. So this is where we’re going out for information about the small boat. We know there’s one there, we want to get eyes on, further information from it. A commercial tanker is not going to effect the rescue of a small 8-metre rubber dinghy.
Q. No. You say that the issuing or the decision to issue the relay, the Mayday relay, is in Coastguard’s discretion?
A. Within the SMC’s discretion.
Q. SMC’s discretion, thank you. Your discretion was influenced, is this right, by the level of distress you discerned in the course of the call that you yourself had taken; is that right?
A. So from the level of the call I took, as I said, I had this feeling. What I wanted was some sort of visual confirmation of what the level of distress was. You know, what is the issue which is causing me to have this concern for their — this grave and imminent concern for their safety.
Q. Thank you. And you tell us that through your witness statement. You say it’s the level of distress, the level of panic and fear, and the lack of information, and those are the factors that influenced, is this right, your discretion?
A. Yes, that’s correct, yeah.
Q. How unusual was it for you to do, if that’s the right terminology, a Mayday relay in respect of a small boat?
A. It wasn’t a very common occurrence. Again, because we’ve had that prior awareness from being notified, we’ve had aerial patrols, so, again, we’re not needing to ask for anyone and everyone to tell us what’s going on, we are communicating directly with an aircraft and therefore we’ve got that information, the aircraft’s tasked, they’re in this position, “Go, give us updated positions”. It was to do with a lack of aerial surveillance. You know, it was — you know, it’s not as prevalent if we’ve got an asset which can fulfil that evidence-capturing role.
Q. Had you yourself ever broadcast, or caused to have broadcast, a Mayday relay before this in relation to a small boat SAR incident?
A. Not that I recall, but I may have done.
Q. Is it fair to say it was an unusual step for you to take?
A. Again, going to general SAR principles, it’s not an unusual step if it’s the right course of action.
Q. Yes.
A. And I felt that more information from passing ships was the right course of action whilst I was awaiting the Valiant transit in and arriving on scene.
Q. Thank you. But in relation to action planning in respect of a small boat incident, fair to say that it was unusual as part of that plan?
A. It was unusual because of the usual asset complement that we normally would utilise for small boats.
Q. Thank you. And in particular the lack of aerial picture?
A. Yes, correct.
Q. Thank you. As it was unusual, did you think about alerting the Maritime Tactical Commander, Mr Jones, about the relay?
A. I didn’t. Again, his is tactical oversight, again, the distress phase action checklist is there, and again, it wouldn’t be unusual for him to — you know, there — for a Mayday broadcast to be going out. If a vessel calls Mayday, then we would do a relay as per normal. So it’s not an unusual action to go along with a distress phase action.
Q. Was it not directly related to his information provided to you about the dangerous situation created by the lack of aerial picture?
A. It could have been. However, again, it wasn’t — again, I was carrying out my actions as I saw fit, and he would review that incident at some point.
Q. I see. Let’s look at the Mayday relay itself then {INQ007660/1}. That’s the first page of it. We can see it’s timed at 2.27. On to the next page, please {INQ007660/2}: “Mayday relay, Mayday relay, Mayday relay, all stations, all stations, all stations … Dover Coastguard. Dover Coastguard, Dover Coastguard. “Mayday information number one. Small craft with 40 persons onboard in position … With the decimalised coordinates and a description of location in relation to the Sandettie Lightvessel: “Taking water and requiring immediate assistance. “Any vessel that can assist to contact Dover Coastguard.” That’s the message that is the Mayday relay?
A. Yeah.
Q. Does it follow that it was your belief, at least a real possibility, that this boat was taking water at this stage?
A. So without viewing the ViSION log, whether I requested the Mayday broadcast to be compiled or whether I compiled it myself, I can’t confirm.
Q. I see.
A. So because 16 — the Channel 16 function has been performed by Solent, I may have made that request to Solent to compile it, and whether I would have reviewed it before it was broadcast I can’t comment without checking the incident. So they may have put in “taking water”, I don’t know. But, again, looking at this, the “taking water”, I don’t know. I don’t think I had that information at that point. However, it could have been one of the facts and deductions I made from what could be causing them to panic so much.
Q. Thank you. Would you take that off the screen please. I think it’s right that you were aware at the time you caused the relay to be broadcast that the closest vessel to this small boat was a French vessel, the Flamant?
A. Yes, so obviously when we were analysing and assessed the information, we can see a light, the Gaschem Shinano was in there, but also the — the French vessel Flamant was also displaying its AIS, so I was aware of its position in relation to the position of this incident.
Q. Thank you. Did you have any sense then of how far away, in time, the Flamant was at the time that the relay was broadcast from this — from this small boat?
A. So, from memory — and I think this is also noted in my witness statement — I think I estimated the distance was about 2.5 nautical miles. Again, time — distance/speed/time calculation, if you want me to do one off the top of my head, probably quite close, in terms of giving me an instant picture. So I’d say probably 15 minutes, if that, if they were making best speed. Again, their best speed probably somewhere in the region of 15 to 20 knots.
Q. That’s really helpful. Thank you very much. Did you hope that the Flamant would respond to this relay?
A. Yes, so the Mayday relay is — you know, is, by law, all vessels who can respond should respond to a Mayday relay. That is a law of the sea.
Q. So you expected it to respond?
A. Yes.
Q. Did it respond?
A. No.
Q. Other vessels did respond?
A. Yes.
Q. Were any of those able to assist?
A. There was a couple of vessels transiting the south-west lane that responded. They — they, because of their nature of their course, couldn’t assist, so they were thanked for responding. The reason they couldn’t respond was, for them to go where this position was, it would have put them going in the — well, they would have contravened Rule 10(b)2 of the collision regulations, which would be proceeding in the wrong traffic lane against the flow of traffic, so —
Q. And would have been dangerous in its own right?
A. Pretty dangerous, yes.
Q. Thank you. All right. The relay then was repeated every 20 minutes; is that right? Is that normal?
A. Again, that’s in my witness statement.
Q. All right.
A. Generally, with distress, we’d be somewhere between minutes and 30 minutes depending on where it was and what it was.
Q. Thank you. And it comes to an end, I think, at about hours. I’m going to ask to have up on the screen, please, {INQ000238/11}. That will be the vision log for Charlie. (Pause)
THE EPE OPERATOR: It’s only five pages.
MS LE FEVRE: Oh, gosh, I must have given you the wrong reference then. I’m sorry. All right, well, I might come back and show you the document. What it says and what’s recorded is that at that time there is no requirement for the Mayday relay because Valiant is in the area investigating targets. And then the Mayday relay stops from that point forward. At 0339 hours, it’s right, isn’t it, that no small boat had been confirmed, rightly or wrongly, as being Charlie?
A. I believe so, yes.
Q. What was the usual practice or procedure for ending a Mayday relay broadcast?
A. The usual practice or procedure would be where the — the emergency situation ceases to be. Now, the rationale for this emergency relay broadcast were for vessels to assist, and then we obviously had a situation where we had a search and rescue asset on scene, able to assist, so therefore vessels of opportunity, which is the other vessels using the Dover Strait, were less of a — you know, we hadn’t had any definitive small — by “small craft”, I mean craft that could be used to operate in (a) shallow waters, in and around traffic separation schemes. So, again, it was deemed that, once the Valiant was there, we weren’t going to get any other vessels from a Mayday broadcast.
Q. Ah, so it was the likelihood of response that factored into the decision to stop the broadcast?
A. Yes. So basically it was: is this — is this generating any benefit to the ongoing incident? We’re not getting any responses, we’ve got search and rescue units on scene, and actually, the part of the broadcast which was “any sightings” was still being transmitted via the VTS service on the working channels of both Gris-Nez VTS’s broadcast at 10 past the hour and Dover Coastguard’s broadcast at 20 to the hour. So that request for, “Any sightings, please give us information”, was still being repeated by other means on the VTS working channels, supplementing the SAR effort. So to then broadcast on repeatedly seemed to be more than was required. We had the “any sightings” was being done, and also we had SAR assets on scene.
Q. So do you think then it was appropriate to end that Mayday relay broadcast before the vessel in distress to which it related had in fact been located conclusively?
A. I was content with the assets I had on scene to effect any rescues, so therefore the Mayday broadcast wasn’t required.
Q. All right. I’m going to move on then and ask you about the second call that you had with Mubin. This is a call at 0231 hours, so fairly shortly after the broadcast of the Mayday relay is started. How would you describe Mubin’s general state during this call?
A. I don’t remember the second call, unfortunately, so without seeing some transcript —
Q. All right.
A. — I’m going to, unfortunately, struggle to comment.
Q. Well, we’ll look at the transcript then. {INQ007655/1}, please. Thank you. That’s the covering page. If we move on to the first — to page 2 of the document, please {INQ007655/2}, that’s you, Coastguard: “… good morning. “Hussain”, which, as you saw on the first page, is in fact Mubin —
A. Yeah.
Q. –: “Coastguard, can you help me please? Can you help me, please? I’m finished …” You say: “Hello … can I take your name first of all?” Gives the name: “… have you called before?” You say. He says: “… yeah, like … location. Can you look … look … Look up, please.” You say: “So you’ve called before. Have I spoke to you … as well … “Have I spoken to you before? How many people are in your boat? “40 … 40 people … we’re dying and two are — children.” You ask for the telephone number. And over the page, please, {INQ007655/3} into page … yes. So confirming the telephone numbers. Again, you’re asking for how many people there are on the boat. You get a number and a little bit of a breakdown, some of it’s inaudible. You ask where they’d set off from, you were told Calais. Next page, please, {INQ007655/4}. You ask what colour the boat is. He says: “Don’t … understand. It’s broken, broken … Can you help me, please? And the water has blown my …” You ask again about the colour, and you’re told: “The boat’s finished … can you help me, please?” “I can …” You say: “… but I can only help you if I know where you are and what colour boat you’re in. “… “I … need to know where you are, to send someone to help you.” And they mention the WhatsApp. Over the page, please {INQ007655/5}. And then there’s a conversation about telephone numbers. Next page {INQ007655/6}, continuing about the numbers. Part way down the page, you say: “Well I’ve got a very important question for you~… “… “How many times have you rang to speak to the UK authorities … this number is very familiar and I’ve spoken to Mumin, effectively already.” So that’s you triangulating this call, is it, with the previous call?
A. This is me trying to manage what is multiple calls all from the same vessel. Whenever we receive a call, we’ll create an incident, and as we go through this you’ll see what it’s like with ten incidents for the same boat and actually trying to ascertain all information into one incident, or is there one boat, or is there ten boats? So, yes.
Q. And then at the bottom of the page, you say: “I told you … there’s a boat on its way and … We’ve got your position from WhatsApp already.” Did you ask him to send a fresh, updated location via the WhatsApp in the course of this call? We can look at the whole transcript, if you like, of course.
A. I don’t think I requested it. Again, possibly I was thinking he’s sending it, so he may send me an update, and possibly I should have formally asked for that, if I hadn’t asked for it, or maybes made that assumption that he would send an update, because he’s contacted me and we’ve done this process before.
Q. Thank you. Because I think it’s right that your Standard Operating Procedure of general application for dealing with multiple calls tells you — tells all Coastguard personnel to extract all information you can from repeat calls, because there may be some new, or better or update information in — available from that later call; is that right?
A. That’s correct, yes.
Q. Do you think you should have asked him expressly to send a fresh location in the course of this call?
A. On reflection, it wouldn’t have hurt. So it would have been good to do it.
Q. Can we move on, please, to page {INQ007655/7}. So you’ll see in the middle of the page, approximately, you say: “… there is a boat coming. You’re just going to have to –” Mubin says: “Where is it? We are dying, where is the boat?” You say: “The boat is on its way but it has to get –” He says: “We all die. We all die.” You say: “… you’re going to have to be patient … stay together … I can’t make the boat come any quicker.” On the next page, please, to page {INQ007655/8}: “I can’t make the boat go any faster than it’s going currently.” And in the middle of the page: “I can’t give you a time at the minute but less than half an hour.” Why did you tell Mubin that the boat was going to be with him in less than half an hour?
A. So if I can just maybe clarify —
Q. Of course.
A. — for the Inquiry. I believe the — in the incident, the HMCC Valiant’s tasked at approximately 01:42, from memory of reading that incident, and I think you said this phone call’s about 02:30.
Q. Yes.
A. So from Dover to the Sandettie Lightvessel is approximately 12 and a half miles. I can’t remember exactly. But I’ve done a quick calculation, thinking, if the boat’s underway from Dover at that time, you know, they make about 15 to 18 knots best speed, so I’ve obviously had in my mind that the boat’s underway. It may not have been. And this is what I’ve said, so I’m kind of thinking, well, we tasked it at this time, give it time to get moving, and then I sort of said minutes thinking, again, that passage of time, and where am I, I’ve probably assumed it is within about half an hour from where it is, without actually formally checking because I’m in this phone call with Mubin. Rather than distracting myself with looking at the screens, I want to listen to the information and gather and assess it, so~…
Q. Thank you. So that was a sort of off-the-cuff guess?
A. Yeah, basically, you know, it’s, time’s passed, I’ve tasked an asset, you know, experience tells me transit times, and if I’ve tasked them at this time and they’ve got underway, they should arrive somewhere in the vicinity of that sort of timescale.
Q. As you know/we know, it was about an hour before Valiant in fact reached the Mayday coordinate position from 0201, so about twice that time estimate.
A. Yes, it was double that time, and that may have been because I wasn’t aware of what time it actually got underway.
Q. All right. Looking down towards the bottom of the page now, you say to Mubin: “I appreciate everyone’s very scared on the boat … we need … “… you need to stop making calls you need to stop making calls … “… “… You need to stop making calls because every time you make a call we think there’s another boat out …” Next page, please {INQ007655/9}: “… there and we don’t want to accidentally go chasing for another boat when it’s actually your both we’re looking for.” Take that off the screen, please. Is that an instruction from you to Mubin to stop calling Coastguard?
A. From that, what I wanted was, “Listen, you need to understand, we are working to rescue you and we’re getting a lot of calls in with lots of different information”, maybes I need — again, from my mind, I don’t know that amplified with: unless somebody drastically alters. You know, generally, we say don’t call again unless something changes, you know. So that was me asking him to be patient. As I said earlier, that will — you know, when do they start exaggerating, well, how long has it been from the first call to when they get rescued, so it was ringing us every ten minutes and then giving a different name, or, again, as you look at that transcript, were saying the name is Hussain, and not Mubin. So there’s another incident for that and now I’m going to roll it into Charlie because I’ve managed to ascertain it, but it’s taking my time up of keeping what is a complicated maritime picture in one piece.
Q. Thank you. And is that the standard instruction then, not to call again unless something changes? Is that a standard instruction?
A. It’s not a standard instruction that I’m aware of. However, it’s about asset and incident management. You know, it’s — keeping the pertinent amplifying information flowing is great, however, just telling me, because again, at this point, “We’re all going to die” … if I look back on this and reflect on it, “We’re all going to die, we’re all going to die”, is it exaggeration now, because we keep getting these phone calls without any more information? And I think this is where it starts to generate to me is the level of distress being exaggerated because it is, you know, the boat’s not come quick enough. And, yeah, it’s — if you don’t understand what’s fully going on and you’re getting, “We’re all going to die”, it’s quite a distressing situation to find yourself in of sitting at the end of a phone, effectively helpless. You know where they are, you want to get a boat to them and you can’t.
SIR ROSS CRANSTON: Mr Gibson, would you like a break?
A. That’s all right.
SIR ROSS CRANSTON: We’ll just pause for a moment. (Pause). I think we might have a break.
MS LE FEVRE: Mr Chair, if it helps, I only had one more question to ask about this call and I was going to suggest we broke immediately then and then the topic will be over and Mr Gibson will know he doesn’t have to come back.
SIR ROSS CRANSTON: Yes, okay, well, ask the final question, yes.
A. If we could clear it off in one go, I’d prefer that.
SIR ROSS CRANSTON: Yes.
MS LE FEVRE: Thank you. To the best of your knowledge, did Mubin call again in the course of that shift?
A. I’m not sure. Again, there was so many names. So, as — as the night progressed, it — as I’ve said, there was more than one boat. You know, we had so many calls and so many different names and — we will touch on staffing later and I will explain more about the pitfalls of having plenty of staff and not having enough staff, but, yeah, it’s I don’t recall if he rang again.
MS LE FEVRE: Thank you very much. Chair, if that’s …
SIR ROSS CRANSTON: Well, thank you very much. So we’ll come back about five minutes to 2, if that’s all right.
A. Yeah.
SIR ROSS CRANSTON: So thank you, Mr Gibson.
VIDEO HEARINGS MANAGER: I confirm the cameras are now off. (The witness withdrew) (12.55 pm) (The short adjournment) (1.56 pm) (The witness returned)
SIR ROSS CRANSTON: Well, good afternoon, everyone, and welcome back, Mr Gibson. Ms Le Fevre.
MS LE FEVRE: Thank you. Mr Gibson, I want to ask you now about a call you had with the French Coastguard at 0242 hours. We have a transcript of that call as well. I’m going to ask for that to come on to our screens. It’s {INQ007656/1}, please. You can see the date and time and the participants there. If we can move on to {INQ007656/2} of that transcript, we can see the introductions, and you confirm and up the French migrant 7, as they called the boat, with your case, Charlie, at the foot of the page. The French Coastguard, in their third entry on this page, they say: “… they called already, spoke, ‘Please call us’, because he claim, ‘Help me, help me, help me. We are in the water’ …” So they ask you: “… so you have a rescue boat for this case or not?” And you say: “We have the Valiant proceeding, however the Flamant is closer to their position. The Flamant is currently outlined three nautical miles from where they are.” Firstly, the French Coastguard passing this information to you, “We are in the water”. Now, the Inquiry hasn’t found any Coastguard — His Majesty’s Coastguard log where that information is recorded: persons in water. Is that important, an important piece of information?
A. Again, this is another statement of: how accurate is that information, how — how do I validate that information? So, again, “We are in the water”, is this we are in the UK water, because again, this is a lot of that, I guess, language barrier. So, again, it’s how that message is received. You know, “We’ve entered the water” or, “We are in the water”, and I guess that is possibly something we’ve got that, this mindset of mine, where, I mean, this call comes not long after chatting to Mubin, where he’s saying, “We are in UK waters”, or, “We in UK water, okay”, because this is what they’re trying to achieve. So possibly this is me looking at, yes, they’re in the — the French are ringing me to tell me something, so, you know, if — if this was the opposite way round, so I’m ringing the French Coastguard to say, “Listen, I’ve just had a phone call from people in the water and they’re in your area”, I would be expecting a response of some description or actually we should proceed if they’re — whichever. So it’s not recorded because, again, it’s that passing of information from Gris-Nez, it’s a bit of an update. As you can see, again, we’ve used the limit of my French at the start of this with “Bonjour”, so, yeah, it’s — we’re still in the early stages of passing information to me in this call of, like, “Right, you’re ringing me”, “It’s our case 7, it’s your migrant alpha”, “Actually, no, it’s not, it’s Charlie”, so we’re trying to ascertain where we are with that. So I’ve not recorded it because maybes it’s not being reinforced to me as saying, “Help me, help me, help me, we are in the water”. And, again, I’m not taking that as being they’re in the water, because, again, it’s referenced the boat.
Q. I see. So that’s why it’s not recorded. Did you tell anyone else about this part of the Coastguard — the French Coastguard’s call to you?
A. Possibly not, no. Obviously these are my SMC thoughts about what’s going on. We’re getting underway to — at this point, we have the information of: they are here and they need help. But we don’t actually ascertain what is going on with the nature of the boat, so we’re still in this information gather/responding phase of not having a full picture.
Q. All right. I’ll ask you a little about your response then. The Flamant, you say, is closer to their position?
A. Yeah.
Q. And it would be the quickest response vessel. If we move through to {INQ007656/4} of the transcript — thank you — we see you, in terms, saying that, locating the Valiant boat and then saying “the Flamant is obviously closer” to where the Flamant is at the moment and then there’s a conversation about the relative speeds of the respective vessels. Over the page again, please, to {INQ007656/5}: “How many minutes?” And you say: “How many minutes? They’re doing 15 knots so they’ve got nine miles … about 35 to 40 minutes.” And the French Coastguard: “40 minutes?” And then an audible gasp. Could you have asked, expressly asked the French Coastguard outright to task the Flamant to attend this boat?
A. I could. It would have still remained with the French Coastguard’s decision to accept that request or not. The Mayday relay, as I’ve said, is about, you know, all vessels that are capable and which — and can respond to respond. I think, from my perspective, me instructing a foreign military asset to comply with an instruction and proceed from French waters into UK waters, it’s probably not something I thought I should tell them to do that, which is why it was a polite request of, “Is it possible if they can”. I think, within my remit as an SMC, I could do it, however, engaging an international SAR in this instance, and again, we are — when we work with our SAR partners it’s quite amicable and it’s generally for, like, not a political — you know, this is a political topic for a lot of people. For us, it’s just search and rescue, but there is political sensitivities around it.
Q. Yes.
A. So, I guess, when you start making demands, it’s — it’s how we process that, and maybes that’s one part, and it’s certainly something we’ve picked up on from this incident as a Coastguard of we need to be better at actually being very clear with what we want.
Q. Thank you. So just so I’m clear, you could ask?
A. I’ve since learned that I could have made it, “Can you formally task the Flamant”. And it would be “Could you — I’m formally requesting you task the Flamant to this incident as the nearest search and rescue vessel or nearest vessel”.
Q. That’s the most you could have done, an express and formal request for the tasking?
A. Yes.
Q. It wouldn’t be for His Majesty’s Coastguard to directly task the Flamant?
A. No, because it is not a — so HM Coastguard will formally task declared assets and additional assets. However, the Flamant is neither a declared or additional asset, it’s a vessel of opportunity.
Q. Does it follow from your answers that you had never previously asked the French Coastguard to task one of their assets?
A. I’d never had to forcibly request is how I would describe that. You know, we’ve spoken with the French and liaised with the French and have a good working relationship and it’s never been to a point where, actually, I really need it to go.
Q. Thank you. Did you consider raising this negative response, effectively, with the — with your Maritime Tactical Commander?
A. I didn’t. Again, it’s — for me, at this point, I’ve got to work with what I’ve got, and I didn’t have the time to go, “Wouldn’t it be great if we got this”. So, again, it was another thing of, it could have been raised if I’d had the capacity to do it, but again, I was more concentrating on the rescuing and working with what I’ve got.
Q. Yes, because would he perhaps have had different communication channels with the French Coastguard?
A. He would have had no different communication channels with the French Coastguard. It’s — you know, the direct line, as it were, from ringing a foreign RCC, you know, he could have maybes carried bit more clout, or he may have formally requested it. However, like I say, I didn’t feel I had the time to ring him when I could — my time could have been better spent managing all the SAR incidents ongoing.
Q. Thank you. Can I just go back two pages in the transcript to {INQ007656/3}, please, and just looking at the express information that you relayed to the French Coastguard in the centre of the page: “… the Flamant … obviously she’s in UK waters but the Flamant is probably the closer vessel to respond if they are sinking.” What was your state of mind in respect of the state of the small boat at that time?
A. So, one of our process is what we call the facts, factors, deductions and outputs. So what we know, what we can deduce from that and what we need to do to fix the deduction so — and that’s covered by actions, risks and constraints. So worst case scenario is: they’re sinking. You know, they’re saying they’re finished; they haven’t said they’re sinking, but one of the deductions I’ve obviously made in my mind was, worst case scenario is: they could be sinking. So that’s — again, this is why I’ve said “if they are”, not “they are”, it’s “if they are”. So, again, a deduction is if it is as bad as it could be, you know, worst case scenario is that dinghy is going to sink.
Q. Thank you. Take that transcript off the screen, please. Can I ask you this then. Would you agree that RNLI lifeboats are better equipped to proceed at speed and perhaps in tough sea conditions to provide assistance, better equipped than Border Force cutters, for example?
A. Are they better equipped? RNLI lifeboats are capable craft, however, they are limited by survivor capacity, and again, they are quicker by definition. HMCC Valiant is a — Border Force may correct me on this, but maybe quite an aging vessel and probably due for replacement, and, when new, was probably capable of higher top speeds, but for safety reasons and sustainability, it was slower. So a lifeboat could be used, could be utilised, and again, however, these are volunteers and we’re managing finite resources, so …
Q. Thank you. RNLI was a declared and available asset to Coastguard that evening?
A. Yes, the lifeboats obviously declared their status of availability, and again, that request would go to their launching authority and they would decide whether they’d accept or decline a tasking. The lifeboats would not be pre-deployed. That is not within our memorandum of understanding. They are not to just be sent out there to wait for it to happen; they were generally at that time tasked to a specific incident within UK waters and then returned to base.
Q. Thank you. So did you consider, to the best of your recollection, tasking RNLI to attend this small boat, Incident Charlie, once you knew the Flamant was not going to attend it?
A. I considered it. However, obviously, as I’ve said, the Valiant’s underway. To page the lifeboat, there would be that timescale where the Deputy Launch and All Launch and Operations Manager contacts the Coastguard to agree or disagree the tasking. That then follows with a separate page to the crew, they then have to assemble, again, get the boat ready for sea, do their checks. So actually, by the time I’d paged a lifeboat, which, Dover lifeboat would have been the closest, the arrival time on scene would have probably been quite similar. So, again, it wouldn’t have expedited the vessel arriving on scene.
Q. Thank you.
A. Valiant and Dover lifeboat would have arrived on scene at approximately the same sort of time.
Q. And is that a thought process you went through on November?
A. Yes. So as I’ve said, our resources are finite. So in terms of actual capability across the Kent coast and into Sussex, you have Ramsgate Lifeboat, you have Dover All-Weather Lifeboat and you have Dungeness Lifeboat, three different classes of lifeboat, and obviously the Border Force assets available. As I said earlier in this, it’s saying we’d had two weeks of foul weather and we were expecting a busy night, and a 36-hour period of extended possible migrant activity, there was a consideration for not exhausting what is a finite amount of resources, so therefore —
Q. In the RNLI?
A. In the RNLI. And you know, it’s: we’re at the start of what is a busy period. You know, we are being told this is just amber; tomorrow’s red, the next night’s red. So I was very mindful about not exhausting or fatiguing all my resources, because once I’ve exhausted the RNLI, there is no back up to the RNLI, as it were. So I was mindful of how much resource I used because of what was predicted.
Q. So they wouldn’t have got there any more quickly and you were mindful of the limited resource?
A. Yeah.
Q. I want to ask you next about a call you had at 0311 in the morning, with Border Force, with Border Force Maritime Command and with a man called Tom Willows, from whom, again, the Inquiry expects to hear in the next days and weeks. In this call, you discussed with Mr Willows the French intelligence that you had received, the fact that the Valiant was proceeding to the Incident Charlie boat and the fact that there were a number of other small boats in the area, two to three small boats in addition to Charlie in the vicinity of the Sandettie Lightvessel. Can I have, please, {INQ007602/1} on the screen. It’s the cover page there. If we can turn to {INQ007602/3}, please. So, here you are, explaining to Mr Willows the Valiant is proceeding to Charlie and where it is in relation to the Lightvessel. You’re asked whether it is still a Mayday situation at the moment, and you say: “Well, they’ve told me it’s full of water.” Who’s “they” in those circumstances?
A. This, I’m not sure about. This is where I, again, I can’t remember everything, however, I may have started coming to these conclusions on my own without the evidence. Again, I have this gut feeling that something isn’t quite right and I’ve obviously considered sinking, taking water. So I don’t know whether I’ve ever had it confirmed, however my thought processes are, if there is something seriously — you know, no one wants to think worst case scenario, but you’ve got to consider, you know, the likelihood of it catching fire is very slim because it’s a small rubber boat. Yes, there is petrol in it. But actually, the most likely catastrophic would be taking water, sinking, deflating, stuff like that. So I’m maybes verbalising it, but without having definitive proof to back it up. And this is part of my tasking of — or getting further information, can someone just tell me what’s going on. I’ve got all these thoughts about what could be going on, and that is the worst scenario you can be in. So it’s, I’m sharing ideas with people, possibly to influence a decision or to reinforce my decisions that this is a Mayday situation, it’s not quite right, because I can’t rationalise that feeling I had from that first phone call.
Q. Thank you.
A. But I haven’t got definitive proof of what the distress of the dinghy was.
Q. So you share the information and you fix that information with Mr Willows as well —
A. Yeah.
Q. — your thoughts at the time. You talk about the reason for the Mayday broadcast to get a certain vessel with a French flag on the back of it to attend: “… they’ve basically completely ignored the Mayday distress call … it didn’t kind of work how I wanted it to, but there was a reason for it.” What do you mean by that?
A. It was further information. Further information gathering. You know, anyone who can give us a visual of this vessel or information on it, that’s the purpose of the Mayday call. You know, if — if the Flamant had attended, fantastic, you know. But likewise, that wasn’t the only vessel out there.
Q. So what you’re talking about there is a reason for the Mayday broadcast?
A. Yeah.
Q. Not a reason for Flamant not attending —
A. Yeah.
Q. — in response?
A. Yeah.
Q. Understood, thank you. And you say: “Now it looks like they are … hot-footing it away at 30 knots [so] there is potentially two to three craft … in the vicinity of the border …” All right. Then, moving down then, please. So Mr Willows says to you: “… we don’t want to call any other assets out just yet … we’ll wait and see what develops.” And you say: “That’s the dream, isn’t it, don’t get more than one out.” And Mr Willows says: “Yeah.” Did you believe that it was better to have as few assets out as possible?
A. This — this is about managing what limited assets I’ve got. So that is about, if we can do it with just one asset and keep everything else for what is coming. So, as you said, the Flamant is seen exiting the area to go and do something else, so in my mind’s eye, whether the French have told us yet or not, and with the expectation from the intelligence and the forecasting, we are in for a busy day.
Q. Yes.
A. So it’s, if we can do the ones we know about with one vessel and then don’t use the next vessel until we know about some more, that’s just me trying to be as efficient with my search and rescue assets as possible.
Q. Thank you. And you’ve told us today and you’ve told us in your witness statement that you knew you had to preserve assets for what was likely to be a busier — still busier shift the following day. So is it right that you were intentionally minimising the use of assets on November?
A. I was being as efficient as I possibly could be with my assets.
Q. Thank you. Move on to {INQ007602/4} of this transcript, please. You talk at the top of the page about the helicopter 163, and we’ll come back to that a little later. Towards the bottom of the page, you do a little rough calculation with the reports that you have and the numbers you’ve got, 30 and 40, and so your rough calculation is that Valiant would be expected to pick up persons from small boats. That would be — would have been too much for the Valiant; is that right?
A. I can’t remember the exact capacity count on Valiant, but it was somewhere in the vicinity of 100 to 120 persons.
Q. So you say it’s: “… probably pushing our luck for Valiant.”
A. Possibly. That is I haven’t got definitive numbers. As we’ve said earlier, I was told 30 people in one phone call, 40 in another. What is the example number? It’s do we go 30, 30, 30, that’s 90, but it turns out to be 50, 50, 50, that is pushing it. So I think it was that mind’s eye of until we’ve got a better understanding of what we’ve got, we don’t know.
Q. Would those numbers in that sort of ballpark have been a reason in their own right to task another asset to this area on that night?
A. Not necessarily. It would have been something that was in my forward look, my future planning for it, and again, if another vessel had turned up in roughly the same location with another 40 people, then that would have influenced, yes, it’s time for more capacity, more assets.
Q. I see. Thank you. We can take that off the screen, please, and I will ask you some questions now about helicopter R163. That’s a helicopter, an asset made available by Bristow Helicopters to Coastguard; is that right?
A. That’s correct, yes.
Q. And on this night and on this shift, it was captained by a Christopher Trubshaw. Again, the Inquiry expects to receive evidence from Mr Trubshaw fairly shortly now. In the migrant activity tracker at 0231, David Jones records his plan for the aerial tactical commander to speak to Christopher Trubshaw and to arrange — this is the plan — for R163 to be airborne for a period of time between 03:00 and 05:30, and that would give a maritime picture from the air. Were you aware of that plan?
A. I am unsure aware of that plan, however I was already considering could we use rotary aircraft to —
Q. I see.
A. — cover this, what the unfolding picture was, of multiple small craft in quite a close vicinity of each other and the complications of identifying which one’s which.
Q. The Inquiry understands that R163 was initially tasked by the aerial Tactical Commander, not directly by you; that’s right, isn’t it?
A. I believe so.
Q. Thank you. Is it correct, to the best of your recollection, that no one at MRCC informed the aerial Tactical Command about Incident Charlie or the fact that a vessel was thought or might be sinking?
A. I can’t remember, unfortunately.
Q. Presumably then you can’t remember either any passing of information that there might be a requirement to search for people in the water?
A. I don’t remember asking for that requirement, no.
Q. Right. You yourself did speak to the captain of R163 at about 0249 hours. We’ve got a short transcript of that. I don’t think we need to look at it, but in that call you set a search area for R163. Do you remember doing that?
A. That initial call — and this is, I’m going to sort of challenge that comment about search area. It’s — it’s a difficult one, because that was actually a patrol area.
Q. Yes.
A. So I’m not searching for a specific incident per se, what I’m doing is gathering an aerial picture of what’s going on. So I set a rectangular box.
Q. Yes.
A. Which was from, I believe, the Mike Papa Charlie buoy north-eastwards towards the Sandettie Lightvessel, where, from the information I had, most of the small boats were concentrated or they’d been departing from. I think the weather assessment had told us that actually the north-east beaches, so to put that in context, anywhere from the French-Belgian border round to Cap Gris-Nez was going to be favourable first, and then the western beaches, down towards Le Touquet would, as the day progressed, become favourable conditions for launching. So most of the launches were concentrated in the Dunkirk and Calais area to start with.
Q. Thank you. So you set your rectangular area —
A. Yeah.
Q. — in that conversation, and you say that was a patrol area?
A. Basically, it was, “Can you go and identify any dinghies, small boats in this area and report back positions, statuses of them”.
Q. It’s probably very obvious to you, Mr Gibson —
A. Yes.
Q. — but what, in these circumstances, is the difference between a patrol area and a search area?
A. So a patrol, I have got this from — this is an area that I need searching, there is no calculated maritime drift, so I’d like you to fly as a patrol. You’re not search — it is a search, but it’s not how we — the parameters are slightly different. So we would do a defined search plan if we knew exactly what we were looking for, where it went in the water, what we estimate its drift to be, size, aspect, things like that. Whereas this is, we’re aware of some boats underway and making way. So, as it’s known now, we carry out ISR flights, which is intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, which is quite an established practice, whether it be civilian or military, and that’s effectively what this patrol was going to be. We’re aware there is stuff there, we don’t know exactly where it is. The search is more around this happened here, two hours have passed, this is where it should end up. So that’s what I’m trying to define by patrol and search.
Q. All right.
A. So this generally relates to something that is drifting, whereas a lot of these boats are underway and making way and therefore cannot be mathematically modelled to search.
Q. Thank you.
A. They’re powered.
Q. So it’s slightly more general and it can’t be subject to very particular parameters?
A. Yes.
Q. Yes.
A. Generally, when we talk about search in the Coastguard, it is something that has been affected by environmental, meteorological and hydrological conditions, not under its own power.
Q. All right. Thank you. Now, the Inquiry is aware that R163 was airborne by hours, and I would like us to look again now at the migrant activity tracker, {INQ000235/7}, please. Thank you. We can see there, against your name and against that timestamping, the fact that R163 is now assigned; is that right?
A. Yes, assigned.
Q. Thank you. And that incident reference in lower case, so automatically generated, 41382, that is the incident reference for this migrant activity tracker for the night; is that right?
A. Yes, so we would refer to this as a migrant admin log —
Q. Sorry?
A. No, no, it’s okay, because it is — no, it is both, but, for us, this is what, like I say, about trackers, we had so many names for trackers that it gets confusing for those looking in from the outside. When you’re doing it, day in, day out, it’s very easy to use the same name and still know what you’re talking about. So, yeah, because I’ve assigned 163 for this patrol, so it’s not to a specific incident, it’s doing everything —
Q. Thank you.
A. — that’s why it’s gone in the admin log.
Q. Understood. So you didn’t assign or task R163 to Incident Charlie specifically?
A. No, because at this point we just wanted to know where everything is and if they could get eyes on and give us updated positions. So obviously, as you’ve mentioned, getting WhatsApp position is one way. This is our other way. If we can do it from the air, they can give us visual and also course and speed, which then allows us to plot and predict where boats are going to go.
Q. Thank you. Once R163 appears then on this general log, do all entries in relation to R163 remain on this log and this log only?
A. Yes.
Q. For this tasking?
A. Yeah, unless 163 was then assigned to a different incident. So all the time it’s assigned to this incident, as you go through, if it’s released from this incident, it will show as “released from incident” and a timestamp to that. But any time we update 163’s incident card, it’s attributed to the admin log.
Q. Thank you very much. That’s very helpful. Can we take that off the screen, please. Now, at 0352, you spoke again to Christopher Trubshaw. Can we have {INQ008825/1} on the screen, please. Thank you. That’s the first page of it. The second page {INQ008825/2}, it’s a very short transcript, we can see it there: “… Valiant’s on scene of one craft. “She has reported one other craft sighted in the vicinity … I believe that a search around the Sandettie light vessel as an expanding square, or a parallel track as you see fit to search for potential other craft in the area.” There’s — so now we are in specific search territory; is that right?
A. We haven’t modelled for a drift, but I’ve again got this opinion that most of these boats — so the drift — if anything had broken down from their initial positions, the drift would be to the north-east, 045 degrees on a compass. So if you’ve got north, which is 0, everything’s going north-east because that’s the way the tide’s been setting and the wind is blowing them.
Q. Thank you. So these references to searching: “… as an expanding square, or a parallel track …” Is that more detailed information, a more detailed description of a search exercise?
A. Yes, so they are internationally recognised IAMSAR search tracks.
Q. Search parameters, yes.
A. Yes, so basically there’s the expanding squares, they start in the centre and work their way out with a gradually lengthening track. The parallel track is where we would fly the long length of the rectangle, turn and then come back down that rectangle. The other version of that is called a creeping langer head, where they do the short side of the rectangle as it turns.
Q. Thank you. And does the IAMSAR manual have something to say about — or something more precise to say about track spacing and sweep widths depending on what it is that you’re looking for?
A. Yeah, so every single drifting target has a sweep width, then there is correcting sweep width, which is to do with environmental factors, and, yeah, so there is a — there is a sweep width and a track — a track spacing for each conceivable, and I say “conceivable” because, to date, you know, as different maritime equipment changes, you know, we keep pace with the generic and then a specific, and things like that.
Q. Yes, of course. And so that’s contingent on what it is that’s being looked for?
A. Very much so, because, again, different things drift at different speeds.
Q. Thank you. And so there are different search parameters, for example, relevant when searching for craft, and when searching for people?
A. Correct, yes.
Q. Whose decision is it to set search parameters for airborne assets such as R163?
A. So that would be with the SMC generally. And, again, in this instance, it’s slightly different from what we’d call a traditional maritime search because I’m looking for multiple craft, not just one. Again, I’ve been told there’s two or three craft in the vicinity, so I’m trying to cover all my bases with the one aerial asset I’ve got. So, again, I’m not telling him to go and look for one specific craft, I’m asking them to conduct a search for all the craft in the area. So if I — if we took this incident in pure isolation, I know there’s a dinghy with 40 people in it that I’m looking for and that’s all I have to look for, and that makes it easier, because if I don’t find it, I keep looking. The risk with small boats is, if you go searching on a busy night, you will find one, you will find two, and again, then we’re into the territory of identifying which one’s which. So, at this point, I’m aware of weather — weather restrictions to the fixed wing aircraft, so, again, it’s what can he fly safely for his aircraft to detect. Now, I’ve said, “This is what we’re looking for, we’re looking for boats about 8 metres in length, you know what you can detect”. And again, weather conditions, he is — he’s in an aircraft, I’m sat in an Ops room, he needs to tell me his visibility, his flight height, stuff like that. So I’m leaving, “I want you to do a search for boats, can you choose what you think is safest for your aircraft to fly, based on the weather conditions, what you think you can achieve effectively”.
Q. Thank you. So is this instruction as much detail or as much precision as you felt you could give Mr Trubshaw?
A. Yes.
Q. Ask you this. The Inquiry hasn’t seen any evidence that R163 was told that there were possibly persons in the water by this stage associated with Incident Charlie. To the best of your knowledge, is that right?
A. Yeah, that’s correct. Again, I’m still unaware of the nature of distress of Incident Charlie. They’ve told us they’re in trouble and need help. I’m still trying to establish is it sinking, is it not. And again, we now are getting multiple other craft in the same vicinity. So we haven’t said people in the water, so, yeah, it’s not — that’s not cropped up in that decision-making process, because if it’s, is it still sinking, it’s a rubber dinghy’s, a rubber dinghy, and if it’s inflated, it’s inflated. You know, a commercial vessel made of steel will sink, so, again, we haven’t — I haven’t considered people in the water, it’s has the dinghy — is it just full of water or has it sunk? That’s where we’re still unsure of the nature of what’s going on with this dinghy.
Q. And I think you’ve answered this question already, but if R163 knew that it was looking for people in the water as opposed to a vessel or craft, that would have affected the parameters under which — pursuant to which they were searching; is that right?
A. This is obviously something we discussed with the MAIB. So if we are searching for people in the water, the track spacing is 0.1 of a nautical mile, which is yards detection range, basically. But that is for one person in the water. If they’re wearing a bright orange life jacket, that dramatically increases as well, you know. So if we’re looking for 40 people in the water, that’s a much bigger target than just one person in the water. So it would change, however you’ve got to — the guidance — and, again, it’s very clear, MAIB said this as well — a person in the water is 0.1 of a — 0.1 of a nautical mile, one cable, but we’re not just looking for one person in the water, there’s potentially 40 people. So it’s balancing what you know you’re looking for with the realistic of there is multiple people, and we’ve been told there’s life jackets in play as well, which enhances that detection range as well. So it’s a very hard thing to subjectively say, “Yeah they should fly that”. The downside of flying a very narrow track spacing is you don’t cover the area, or as much area as possible. And, again, I know there’s other craft that I’d like to have positive positions for who haven’t rang us, potentially. Again, we — we know we’ve had a lot of phone calls, but we don’t know all these craft are actually ringing us; some of them are merrily proceeding along underway, quite content that they will make it safely. So it was that balance of there’s multiple incidents and trying to cover all bases.
Q. Thank you. All right, can we take that off the screen, please. I’m going to move on to ask you some questions about Valiant and its arrival and its work in relation to three small boats, not Incident Charlie, but three other small boats. The Inquiry knows that the Valiant arrived in the Mayday position, so at the coordinates confirmed at at 0324 that morning. Not finding anything, it then moved in the direction it best estimated the small boats might have moved in and towards, and we understand that by the time it cleared its mission that evening/that morning, it had embarked three small boats in total by the time it was underway back to the coast. The first then of those small boats was embarked by hours according to the Border Force systems and they gave it their Mike or M number of M957. Can we have, please, on the screen {INQ007578/1}. This is a call record of a conversation between you and the Valiant at 0421 hours. We’ll move on to {INQ007578/2}, please. The Valiant calling you, I think; is that right?
A. Yes.
Q. With a description of the first of the small boats. It’s a black rib, black inflatable, and you say: “… I believe this is probably incident Lima … matches the description [of] a black RIB.” And the report you had from the French where there were about 40 people on board. And the Valiant says: “Yeah, that could be the same … clearly there’s a lot of reports, so we’ll deal with what we’ve got.” And you say: “We’ll work on that potentially being Lima and [we’ll] carry … on [the search] for Charlie …” Yes? A. Yes. Q. Take that off the screen, please. Did you in fact identify — come to identify that first small boat as Incident Lima?
A. I can’t recall whether I did. However, I’ve recovered a boat which matches a pretty close description of what I think Lima was identified as in the first place.
Q. Thank you.
A. So it’s — I can’t say for definite without reviewing all my logs, but —
Q. Well, I think, if it helps, we can look at that {INQ00246/1}, please. This is I think the Lima ViSION log. If we look at page {INQ000246/4} of that log, do we see you at 05:27, an entry made by you: “Believe this vessel was picked up by Valiant at … All migrants recovered and boat marked and abandoned …” Is that your entry?
A. Yes, so I’ve obviously — at the time it’s recovered, we’ve recovered a boat and again we’re now going to attribute it to information we’ve previously held. So I think this is — we’ve done other stuff since then and I’ve kind of come to the conclusion that, based on the position that it was reported in, the distance it had travelled, I’ve carried out a few things to cross-check the information and confirm to myself I’m content that that would be that boat in question.
Q. Thank you. And as we’ve already seen in your conversation with the Valiant, it wasn’t Incident Charlie, as far as you were concerned?
A. No, that’s correct, yeah.
Q. All right. If we take that off the screen, please, and can I have in its place a page from — and I’m going to call it the tracker, it is the spreadsheet in your language, but I’ll call it the tracker — {INQ006808/1} in its native version, please, and I’m looking for the entry for the 24th. That’s right, thank you. So can I see here — this is the Coastguard tracker; is that right?
A. Yes, this is —
Q. Or the Coastguard spreadsheet?
A. — the Excel document that gets referred to as the migrant activity tracker —
Q. Yes.
A. — which is what we use to share the information with other agencies.
Q. Thank you. And I think this is it in its form as at 0530 hours on the morning of 24 November. We can see then — I think this is the first time that we’ve looked at this. We can see, in the first column, the alphabetical naming of the migrant vessels. And then, in the second column, the duplicates of those vessels. The third column marked in red or green for resolved or ongoing. The incident report source. The French reference to marry up with the French tracker. The Coastguard’s GIN unique identifying number. The Border Force numbers, those Mike numbers. Mobile phones. And then positions. The area for search and rescue, whether in French or UK waters. Some descriptions as to the vehicles and their details. The numbers of persons reported on board. What asset’s been tasked. And any further notes. And then a final column for “Outcome”. If we look down back to the left-hand columns, please, and we look down for the entry for “Lima”, we can see “Juliet” in fact, two lines up from the highlighted, “Juliet” identified as a duplicate of “Lima”; is that right? A. I believe so, from what you’ve shown me. I can’t remember from …
Q. And that’s got an “R” marked next to it. Now, is that showing that that incident had been resolved?
A. Resolved because we believe it to be a repeat of — of Lima, basically. That would be why it would be shown as R. As you’ll notice, there is zero positional information in there, not really much description. And again, if we went into the ViSION log for — there’s not a GIN for it, which is weird, there should be a Coastguard GIN in there for it — it would probably give us some information and a rationale for why it was made a repeat of Lima, whether it be the same telephone number or positional information from the — there would be something to corroborate why we were content it was definitely a duplicate from the outset.
Q. I see, because Lima, at this stage, remains marked outstanding in red?
A. Yes. I will stipulate that this is not the sole source — the single source of the truth is ViSION. This was us — to enable us to share information. So ViSION should have always been updated first and then the tracker second. So that didn’t always happen and that is something we’ve addressed, because ViSION is our legal document for recording information. This is about sharing information with third parties to make everyone else aware who needs to be made aware.
Q. Yes, I understand. If we look into the seventh column — I think my maths is right — I’m looking for the UK Border Force reference column, and we can see that “M957” has been entered against Incident Charlie in this version of the tracker; do you see that?
A. Yes, I do.
Q. M957 is the number that should have appeared against Incident Lima; is that right?
A. From the ViSION log we’ve just witnessed, that would be correct, yes.
Q. Did you notice, at any time during this shift, that this Mike or M number had been entered against Incident Charlie on this tracker?
A. No, I did not.
Q. You yourself didn’t make that entry?
A. I don’t believe so. The Mike numbers were generally provided by Border Force MCC or when the staff who were based in the joint control room with Dover came in, they would either pass this information or update it. If you’d like me to give a reason for that, you will see the asset tagged as “VALIANT”, because that’s what Valiant was going to, we’d actually tagged Valiant to Charlie. So I could understand if someone had seen Valiant was the asset tagged and there was an asset M number provided, that they would go, “Oh, Valiant’s with Charlie”, and again that would be the conflict of having the Valiant tagged to an incident which it was proceeding to and then coming across a subsequent incident before it got to Charlie.
Q. Thank you. Is that effectively your best guess as to how that entry came to be made?
A. It is, unfortunately, yeah. The Mike numbers bear — it’s a Border Force reference number. So that is for when they’re landed ashore so they can be administratively processed so they know, again, without going too much into the process, they come ashore, their welfare is checked, anything they’ve got is bagged for evidence, they’re interviewed and then they’re taken to onward care, and that is just how they identify the different groups of 40 people arriving into the reception centre.
Q. Thank you. You’ve told us this morning that effectively all information regarding Valiant’s actions was recorded in the Incident Charlie log because it’s to Incident Charlie that Valiant was originally tasked?
A. That’s correct, yeah.
Q. Do you then make a connection between Valiant appearing exclusively on the Charlie log and this error — entry in error in the tracker?
A. Potentially, yes, because whether that information was recorded in Valiant’s logs, because it would have been there, and the M number would be Valiant just picked up M957. If someone was updating it, either from afar, or whoever put that information in, could easily look at the log and go, well, that’s in Charlie and make that mistake, potentially.
Q. Does it follow then that you would agree that there’s scope for confusion in that — arising from that process of recording assets against particular incidents?
A. I think it’s a limitation of our system and it can cause problems. Again, and this is one of the factors, you know, our system’s set up for going to specific incidents, you know, and coming across another incident makes it quite difficult. No different to the police, when they attend a road traffic accident, if they come across another one beforehand, I’m sure it probably causes problems for them in going, “Oh, hang on, that patrol car is now not doing that”. So, yes, there is limitations of our system and it would cause confusion.
Q. Thank you. If we take that off the screen, please, and I want to ask you about the second small boat that Valiant was dealing with. Can I have {INQ007469/1}, please, on the screen. Now, this is a call or conversation between Stuart Downs — not you — and Valiant. And if we look at {INQ007469/2}, please, we can see that Mr Downs is providing a position, which has been acquired from R163, together with a description of the vessel as being “eight metres long”: “… slight … Perhaps “light”: “… grey in colour.” And: “Underway heading westerly with 30 [people on board] …” And R163, we see at the foot of the page, isn’t still with the vessel: “They described the vessel as not being in distress … not being in the immediate need of any assistance. So they’re continuing their search to look for other vessels …” We can take that off the screen now. Valiant was alongside the second small boat then at hours, and they gave that the next number, the next Mike number, M958. We’ve then got a series of very brief communications to look at {INQ001580/1}, please. (Pause). Mr Gibson, I think I can deal with it another way without calling documents on the screen. They’re communications from the Valiant to Coastguard, a trio of communications relaying information about this second boat that they located. In the first of the calls, 05:58, they say there have been no calls made from the persons on this boat externally to Coastguard. In the second call, at 06:05, they say the people on board this second boat are 31 adult males, so no women and no children. And in the third communication, at 06:07, they say, in fact, perhaps there might have been one call made to Coastguard from this boat. So those are three pieces of information that Valiant has relayed to Coastguard about this second small boat that they’ve located and they’re alongside. At this stage then, thinking about Incident Charlie, this was a boat of whom it was known that the profile of the passengers was a mixed profile; is that right?
A. So, sorry, which — which incident are we …?
Q. Incident Charlie, and we’ve looked at the Charlie log and we can look at it again, but what had always been consistently reported about Incident Charlie was that there were men and women and children on that boat; is that right?
A. That was the initial report. However, that was never verified, where that report came from, and obviously there is subsequent phone calls with — with Mubin where he then changes that from being 30 persons on board to persons on board, so there is some confusion around the validity of that original evidence, in my mind, because I’ve had conflicting information and other phone calls where the numbers change.
Q. As to numbers, yes, but as to whether the profile was entirely a male population on the boat or whether, as initially reported, it was a profile of men and women and children, there had been no change in that information, had there?
A. Not that I’m aware of, from the initial one. However, the — the phone call which I took from Mubin didn’t give a breakdown, it was just a number of persons.
Q. And then the boat associated with Incident Charlie was at least believed to be perhaps sinking; is that right?
A. It was a consideration, and, again, as we’ve discussed, that was one of my thoughts. We’ve also discussed that level of exaggeration, and, again, we haven’t come across a boat that’s sinking or taking water, we were finding(?) boats that are underway and making way.
Q. Had you received — had Coastguard received any information about Incident Charlie, in fact all evening, to the effect that the boat was underway, in progress?
A. Again, there was nothing to say it wasn’t either. There is, I believe, (inaudible) the engine, or they mention the engine in one of the phone calls, but I don’t know, I don’t think it’s audible what they say about the engine and there is a lot of background noise, so to actually hear the engine in the phone call is indistinguishable. So there is nothing that I am presented with which gives me a definitive one way or the other.
Q. All right. Well, let’s look at it, perhaps, from the other end of the telescope. What is there about the description of this second boat from Valiant that is consistent with the information you’d received about Incident Charlie?
A. It’s obviously conflicting, and, again, at this point, we have been ongoing with incidents, we are now at 5.20 in the morning, did you say?
Q. Yes.
A. And, again, that information received at 1 o’clock has been superseded by further updates and things like that, so I can’t comment on the conflicting information.
Q. But it is conflicting information? The information about Valiant small boat 2 and Incident Charlie is conflicting, it’s inconsistent; is that right?
A. Yes, it’s inconsistent from the initial report to what’s been recovered.
Q. Right. And then the third and final small boat that Valiant located was identified separately, and correctly, as Incident November; is that right?
A. As per my witness — if that’s what’s in my witness statement, yes.
Q. Thank you. By this time in the morning, you still hadn’t had a break; is that right?
A. That’s correct, yes.
Q. Do you remember that you were interviewed internally by the Maritime and Coastguard Agency as part of its internal investigation about this incident?
A. Yes, I do.
Q. And do you remember saying in the course of that interview that you were, by 4.30 or thereabouts in the morning, getting tired?
A. I would say, if anyone who had worked tirelessly, as I had, from my night shift to where I was, physically, as a human being, you are going to become tired.
Q. Yes. And do you remember saying in that interview that the initial thought of sinking small boat was gone?
A. I think so, because I hadn’t found any evidence of a sinking small boat, and, again, you start to doubt, had you overestimated the level of distress. At this time of small boat crossings, a lot of these boats actually made it all the way to UK beaches and landed on UK beaches. So it’s a term we use, in terms of, it’s an escaping target. If it is going faster than the search is advancing, these boats could actually make it all the way and get outside of where we’re looking for them, as it were, if they were underway and making way.
Q. Thank you. And so is it right that by 4.30 or thereabouts you were less concerned than you had been about the potential existence of a sinking small boat?
A. Yes.
MS LE FEVRE: Thank you. Chair, it’s 2.55, but that is a convenient moment to break, if it’s convenient for you.
SIR ROSS CRANSTON: Yes, of course, yes. So we’ll have a break.
VIDEO HEARINGS MANAGER: I can confirm the cameras are off. (The witness withdrew)
SIR ROSS CRANSTON: So we’ll come back at 5 past. (2.55 pm) (A short break) (3.05 pm) (The witness returned)
SIR ROSS CRANSTON: Yes, well, thank you, Mr Gibson.
MS LE FEVRE: Thank you. I want to ask you some questions now arising directly from your witness statement. Can I have on screen, please, {INQ10392/1}, and page 98 {INQ10392/98}. Paragraph 195 then, please. You say — you’ve told us: “Regarding which of the three small boats I concluded or believed to be Incident Charlie, I think I must have assumed either consciously or unconsciously that it was the second small boat recovered … I’m not sure if I could have said [what] I was sure about … at the time.” What do you mean by assuming consciously or unconsciously?
A. So I’ve clearly come to an opinion that this incident has been resolved, and how I’ve arrived at that opinion, was it a conscious decision of, “Yeah, that’s definitely Charlie”, or an assumed, “That is probably Charlie”, so an unconscious assumption. Consciously, I would say I’ve got enough variable(?) information; unconsciously, I’m pretty sure. I guess that’s what I meant by that.
Q. You didn’t record that assumption, I think, within the Coastguard logs; is that right?
A. I think, unfortunately, by this point, I had — again, as we’ve mentioned, fatigue and tiredness — omitted. I’ve had that thought internally and not recorded it as per our Standard Operating Procedures.
Q. Can we go to page 96 of the statement and paragraph 191, please {INQ010392/96}. You say — you tell us in terms here: “I don’t think this belief was recorded anywhere in a log … I had the oral handover … I probably would have explained the situation [regarding the] … May Day Relay … incident CHARLIE and my rationale for thinking that Charlie had been one of the small boats picked up … but I cannot recall exactly what I said. I do not think I discussed the conclusion with the Maritime Tactical Commander or anyone at JRCC. I do not think I would have thought [that] was necessary.” Do you think you told anyone else about that assumption at handover?
A. I think, because, obviously, if we look at our incident log for Charlie, I’ve sort of recorded it as being finished, and I think there is a — I’ve said — and, again, using the Excel document, which is referred to as the migrant activity tracker, we’ve resolved incidents as we’ve gone through, and that would have formed part of this one’s — these are — I would have displayed the ongoing incidents through to I think it was about Incident Sierra. So the handover would have gone, “I’m content this one’s done, content that one’s done”, and I would have talked at length about what was ongoing and given them a bit of an overview of, “This is what we’ve recovered so far”.
Q. Thank you. Can I go back, with apologies, to {INQ010392/98} and to that same paragraph, 195, to the tail end of it, please. You say, picking it up five or six lines from the bottom: “I now know that none of the three boats we recovered were Charlie. However, at the time, I was confident … we had rescued everyone we had received calls from. If there was even a slight chance that someone hadn’t been rescued, I trusted that the ongoing search and rescue operations, which were … underway when I left at 07:30, would find them.” Why were you so confident that that which was ongoing in respect of search and rescue would find Charlie?
A. So, obviously, as I’ve just — as I’ve said earlier, that small boats SAR and what we call our “routine general SAR” is different. So when we go out to an incident and we recover it, that’s it done. There’s no further cause for us to be out there doing any sort of monitoring. We’re in a period of sustained good weather and highly — well, we’ve now entered that point which would have been red on the Deveran report, which is “highly likely”, so sea states of less than 10 cm, so very slight. We are going to be out there with assets and planes dealing with the day stuff coming through, so this area has now been saturated, or, in my mind, going forwards, this area is going to be saturated by French assets escorting small boats in their Search and Rescue Region, monitoring them, our aviation assets are going to be up during the day. So there is an ongoing SAR element throughout the course of the day, and if there’s anything we have missed, it should be picked up through the course of the day, because there is proactive ongoing search and rescue. And as I said earlier, the prime example of that is, we’ve gone looking for Charlie, but we found Incident Lima, and again, that would be true of anything else. Say a lifeboat goes out from Dover for that requirement and they come across another incident, they can deal with that. So they’re going to come across stuff because there is assets going to be going out all day going forwards.
Q. Thank you. So it’s the generality, is it right, of ongoing activity, general ongoing search and rescue activity?
A. Yeah, it’s really weird. So as we’ve got the migrant admin log, that’s the overview of what assets we’re assigning to things. We have individual incidents, but the whole day’s almost like an incident in itself. We know there’s going to be sustained search and rescue activity required for the whole day, so it’s — there’s individual incidents, because that’s how our system works, and an overall picture of air search and rescue.
Q. All right. Thank you. So going back to your assumption, conscious or unconscious, that Charlie was the second boat recovered — and we can take the statement off the screen now — the Incident Charlie ViSION log wasn’t closed during the night shift, so it wasn’t closed by the time you left; is that right?
A. That’s correct, yes.
Q. The Coastguard shared tracker wasn’t updated during the night shift to show that the Charlie incident had been resolved. It had had the M957 number entered next to it, but it wasn’t showing as resolved. And you’ve told us, as we’ve just seen, that the fact that Charlie wasn’t closed on ViSION doesn’t mean that you were uncertain about what had happened to it but, is this right, you didn’t have sufficient information to close it?
A. So what would happen is, we’ve had multiple phone calls, and the easiest way, once you’ve identified what their multiples are, is to make it a repeat of that incident so all that information is captured centrally under the one incident. So we are leaving it open because, again, what used to happen was, we’d have loads of open incidents and we then just have to close each one individually, and they did relate to things, so this was an admin perspective of: that could relate to that. So it was, again, about admin and times. You know, at this point in time, we’ve got ongoing search and rescue, and actually closing an incident which is complete involves a summary to say who did what to when and who, and then obviously all of our post-incident statistics. So, again, it’s quite an administrative function, and again, that was left to the end of the day in case there was any other informations or incidents that could be linked and then made it to a tidy reply(?).
Q. So what information specific to Incident Charlie were you waiting for to allow you to close the Charlie log before you went off shift?
A. I can’t comment on that, but basically my point is there may have been other incidents which were calls from Charlie which we couldn’t identify as being Charlie because there was no information the same, but they’d originated the same sort of time, things like that. So when we get calls with — so there will be 999 calls we get, which is, “Help, I’m in the water, I need the Coastguard”, and that’s the limit of the information we get, and you’ve got to — you can’t action — there’s not an actionable position, but we can’t just disregard that someone has rang and said, “Can you help me”. So there’s that investigation piece to go on as well, and, again, there’s that, sort of, it happened when we were receiving multiple calls in this area where we know mobile phone coverage is limited. So, again, it’s trying to tie up all the ones where we have very limited information for and tie them to incidents, and, again, if there’s any correlating numbers and things like that. So Charlie would have been left open so people could easily go in and find that information on ViSION rather than having to search for the incident number and corroborate any numbers.
Q. What does closing an incident actually mean, though? What does it signify?
A. Closing means we’ve completed all the actions and done our closing statements, our information, and then it — then it disappears from active incidents on ViSION. So ViSION shows all your open incidents on a day-to-day basis, and once they’re closed they disappear from that active screen, and then you’ve got to run a filter to show what you’re looking for, so either all incidents open in the last seven days, there’s various filters you can run, but it’s not front and centre on the screen, you’d actually have to physically go looking for that.
Q. And unless and until an incident is actually closed, it remains something requiring the attention of human resource, doesn’t it?
A. So an incident — there’s a couple of stages of the incident. So there’s unserviced, which means it’s open with no actions taken. It then goes to an open category, when we’re taking positive SAR action. When we release all the assets from an incident, if it’s completed, it then goes to finished, and there’s — it goes “U”, “O”, “F” and “C”, in a little box at the top, and that shows you that the incident’s finished but just not closed. So it shows that it’s finished and it’s probably either, like I said earlier, awaiting units returning to base, and their confirmation that them SAR units are safe and well, and then the closure action would be taken.
Q. I see. So I think let’s look again at the Charlie log. Can we have on screen, please, {INQ000237/1}, and if we can pick it up, please, at {INQ000237/13}, I think. This is the last page of entries, is this right, before you go off shift? We can see the last entries are all made by Mr Downs, starting at 06:31, running through to 06:46, and that’s showing us that the Valiant is cleared from the incident; is that right?
A. As of, yeah, 06:46: “Status changed from … On Scene to … Called.” So that actually means it’s been re-tasked somewhere else, potentially, with the “Called”.
Q. Thank you. And the log continues to run for another page, so we can look at that page and look at {INQ000237/14}, with the incident being closed at 15:21 on that afternoon. Where does the Charlie incident show as finished?
A. So if you go back to page 1 {INQ00237/1} — again, the printed transcript is very different to —
Q. Of course.
A. — how ViSION displays it. So on page 1 —
Q. The very first page of the log.
A. Yeah. Well, it would normally — so it’s really hard to explain it. On ViSION, our list comes up, you have the GIN top left, the date, the distress phase, the incident type, so in this case “VAID”, vessel appears in difficulty, and then there’s a bit on the right-hand side which has the bit which shows whether it’s closed or finished.
Q. I see.
A. Unfortunately, the way ViSION — when we print out, it doesn’t show it as well as it does in the live version when it’s an active incident.
Q. Thank you. If we take that off the screen and have back your witness statement at page 96 {INQ010932/97} and at paragraph 193, and almost exactly halfway down that paragraph you tell us, consistent with what you’ve just told us: “The closure of incidents is an administrative task … with ongoing SAR operations I deemed it not safety critical to close the incident before I left that morning.” What do you mean by “not safety critical”?
A. So “safety critical” is anything that would have the chance to endanger life. By not closing that incident, if I dedicated resource to close that incident I could be detracting resource from carrying out SAR operations. So, basically, it being open still isn’t going to affect anyone’s life, but me committing resource to closing it could endanger life.
Q. Thank you. I want to ask you — take that off the screen, please. I want to ask you a little about the process for terminating search and rescue. There was a Standard Operating Procedure for that, for terminating migrant SAR. It’s contained in the key SOP {INQ000428/1}, so if we could have that up on screen again, please, and if we can move through that to I think {INQ000428/5} — sorry, page 6, please {INQ000428/6}, “Termination of SAR”. So: “In order to determine if the distress incident should be downgraded, the following information should be received.” Information about the vessel, yes?
A. Yes.
Q. Information about persons on board, and for that I think we’ll need to go to the next page {INQ000428/7}, information about life saving equipment and conditions and so on. And then in the middle of this page, “SAR Termination”: “SAR can be terminated where reliable information is received that [an] emergency no longer exists.” Firstly, when was SAR formally terminated in respect of Incident Charlie?
A. That I cannot give you a definitive time on.
Q. Was it during your shift or after your shift finished?
A. If we’re going on what classes as a termination, the case being closed would be effectively the cessation of search and rescue.
Q. So search and rescue didn’t formally close until o’clock or so the following day?
A. Potentially, yes.
Q. Are you able to explain to us whether there was reliable information, before you finished your shift, that the emergency for Incident Charlie no longer existed?
A. Was there reliable information, I can only base on what I knew and not assumptions made. So from the initial positions given, the drift modelling that I calculated from what I expected the vessel to drift, vessels were located in very similar positions of where I’d expect to find vessels. The Valiant searched using various different means, radar, visual searches, and rescue 163 conducted a thorough expanding square search encompassing the whole area I expected the vessels to be found. On completion of that search, nothing was found, so therefore I made a decision that the — based on that search, which was — I can confirm the aircraft — the quality of the search, that that emergency situation that I believed to be there no longer existed, because we hadn’t located any vessels in distress in the area we expected to find any vessels in distress.
Q. So is this right, the reliable information consisted of the nil return from R163?
A. Yes, that would be my — you know, I’ve gone looking for a vessel in distress and I haven’t found a vessel in distress.
Q. Do you think your conscious or unconscious assumption that Charlie was the second boat located by Valiant factored into that information?
A. Yes, because, again, I believe that second boat was in a position where I’d have expected Charlie to be.
Q. So based on position and position only?
A. Yeah, so the sort of 2 o’clock position, and if they had stopped moving for whatever reason and were just drifting with the tide and the weather.
Q. Do you think it’s right, with hindsight, that search and rescue was formally terminated for Incident Charlie?
A. With the benefit of hindsight, there’s lots of possibilities, and with the benefit of hindsight, no, however, it is very difficult to make a positive identification with the information we’re provided.
Q. Thank you. We can take that document off the screen, please. Then to handover. You’ve told us a little bit about this already. Your shift ended at 07:30. It ended without you having taken a break at any time for the last 12 hours or so. Before your shift ended, Richard Cockerill joined you in the SAR operations room at MRC Dover. What role was he carrying out when he joined you?
A. So, yeah, Richard Cockerill is also an SMC and a Team Leader, and he joined the operations rule — room, and I’m going to put this, as a Coastguard operational officer. He was an asset to my team, he could take direction, or, if required, I could have asked him to take control, as an SMC, of a particular role. Again, you generally have an SMC leading the room, and then obviously other people can be SMC qualified, but you have to have someone doing the shots. And, again, he could have picked up SMC for certain incidents going forwards, however, he came in at o’clock and we discussed that I had a good overall picture of what was going on, I briefed him on what was going on, so he was fulfilling a role of call-taking, information-gathering, analysis.
Q. Do you know, can you remember, what if anything you briefed him about in respect of Incident Charlie?
A. I can’t, unfortunately, no.
Q. At this stage, at 05:00, Valiant had located the first small boat but not the second small boat. Do you think the ongoing situation with Incident Charlie was an important matter to brief to a new team member?
A. So he would have been briefed on ongoing incidents coming in and what Valiant was doing in its location. So there would have been that overall brief of: we’ve got ongoing SAR, make yourself aware of the incidents, Charlie, Delta, Echo, things like that. So he would have been briefed that we had ongoing incidents and to make himself aware.
Q. Was Incident Charlie, as it had been described to you and taking into account all that you’ve said about the need to assess and check information, but was Incident Charlie the most serious incident with which you were dealing that evening?
A. From, as the night progressed, the lack of credible information about what that gut feeling I had was, it did diminish as we started to deal with more and more boats, and again, that consistency of the boats being underway, making way powered, it unfortunately detracted from whether there was a serious situation or not with Charlie, and it became a part of maybes it was an exaggerated case and it’s just come to (inaudible).
Q. It’s James Crane, I think, who comes in to take over from you formally, to take over —
A. That’s correct, yes.
Q. — the whole shift from you at 7.30 in the morning. Do you think that you gave a detailed oral handover to Mr Crane when he arrived?
A. Again, we would have used a PowerPoint document to cover off ongoing planned flights, problems in the Ops room, and then, from what I recollect, I believe I would have given him a handover of all the ongoing SAR, and an overview of the SAR we carried out and completed.
Q. Is it right — you’ve told the Inquiry this in your witness statement — that you raised no particular concerns in relation to Incident Charlie because you believed by then it had been recovered; is that right?
A. That’s correct. I believed it had been recovered, so therefore I had no further concerns.
Q. You told him to keep an eye out, though, for Incident Charlie. What did that mean?
A. So, basically, we had, as I believe it is in the tracker, the spreadsheet, there is up to about Incident Sierra, and again, we haven’t had definite positive confirmation of each boat being the specific boat. We’re saying, you know, we’re pretty sure we’ve got it, but obviously it could — it could have escaped us. So this is the belief that, obviously, some of these boats are underway and making way, and that was the first one to reach UK waters that we were made aware of by the French, and it could have continued on. That north-easterly drift, whether it’s under power or drifting, would alter their course. If they’re heading a westerly course and the tide’s setting north east, they are actually in fact going to be going north west and carry on. So they could have completely gone, again, depending on the speed. So most small boats achieve a speed of approximately 4 to 5 knots, about 6 miles an hour for those in a non-nautical sense, so in an hour they will travel up to five miles across the sea. If they’ve travelled in a north-westerly direction where we’re not expecting them, they could have quite conceivably transited through the area we were sending Valiant, and without that aerial picture, it’s hard to maintain.
Q. What did you expect James Crane to do with your instruction request to him to keep an eye out for Charlie?
A. Again, it would be just to be aware, you know, if you get an outlying, shall we say, report of a small vessel, so from where the Sandettie Lightvessel is, in a sort of westerly — north-westerly direction is the Goodwin Sands, so that’s an area of water that dries out, and again it is getting further and further away from the historically known places where migrants transited. So if he’d had a report of a small vessel north of the east Goodwin Lightvessel, it would have been, “Don’t discount that as being a false report, that could be a vessel, if we’ve had one escape through where we think they should be”. So, again, it was giving him just a forward look and just to consider the unexpected almost.
Q. Do you think your handover to Mr Crane in relation to Incident Charlie was sufficient?
A. Yes, so, because I believed it had been recovered.
Q. And in relation to your assessment throughout the night of information received in calls from small boats, is it right that you received no specific training or guidance about the possibility of exaggeration in those calls?
A. I don’t recall any specific training about exaggeration. However, it is something we were known and there was, as I say, websites which the migrants were using, which we were aware of, which said say this, say that, because it will expedite the rescue.
Q. Did you in fact receive instruction/guidance that calls/information should be taken at face value?
A. Again, part of Coastguard training is gathering the information, assessing the information. So, again, can they — you know, if you ask the same question twice, do you get the same answer? If that information changes, you’ve got to make a decision on what that information is. As per, if you want to take Charlie, for instance, “we’re finished, we’re finished”, we don’t know what that actually meant at the time. You know, we are — they’re using words, but with no real basis. We’re all going to die is, unfortunately, not very specific in what’s actually going on in a situation. So it is very hard, knowing there is a language barrier and trying to ascertain what is factual and what is not factual.
MS LE FEVRE: Thank you. Chair, I’ve come to the end of the questions on my questions for Mr Gibson. Thank you.
SIR ROSS CRANSTON: Thank you very much. Mr Gibson, thank you very much indeed. Thank you for your witness statement, thank you for all your evidence today. It’s been extremely helpful to the Inquiry. I know it’s been difficult for you, but I very much appreciate it. So thank you very much.
MS LE FEVRE: Thank you.
SIR ROSS CRANSTON: So we shall now end the proceedings and resume tomorrow.
VIDEO HEARINGS MANAGER: I can confirm the cameras are now off. (The witness withdrew) (3.34 pm) (The hearing adjourned until 10.00 am on Thursday, March 2025)
INDEX
NEAL GIBSON (affirmed) ………………………….1
Questions by MS LE FEVRE …………………….1