Foster’s former special adviser says sorry for sharing internal RHI documents with his cousin
A FORMER special adviser to DUP leader Arlene Foster has apologised for sending internal documents about the Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) to his cousin.
Dr Andrew Crawford — who was Mrs Foster’s special adviser during her time as minister for the Department for Enterprise, Trade and Investment (DETI) — appeared for the fourth time at an inquiry into the botched green energy scheme yesterday.
A series of fatal flaws in the design of the scheme exposed Stormont to a huge overspend as it ended up paying out more to applicants than it cost them to buy fuel.
Dr Crawford told the inquiry that his cousin Richard Crawford, a poultry farmer, had asked him for information about the scheme in July 2013 and that he had emailed him internal documents which had not yet been released to the public.
Dr Crawford said: “I shouldn’t have sent them to him.
“I apologise for it, it was wrong on my behalf. I put that into my second statement (to the inquiry) but I want to put that into the record here today.”
Mr Crawford said that his cousin installed biomass boilers in his poultry shed 12 months after the internal RHI scheme paper had been shared with him.
He added: “In no way did Richard get an advantage from this.”
Dr Crawford admitted that he never told Mrs Foster that he had shared the documents with his cousin.
The inquiry also heard that an opportunity to inform Mrs Foster about cost control changes to the RHI scheme in Great Britain was missed after a letter from the UK government’s energy minister was not given to her. At the end of May 2013, then Energy minister Greg Barker wrote to Mrs Foster informing her his department was making major cost control changes to the RHI scheme running in Great Britain.
The letter was given to DETI officials who were running the scheme in Northern Ireland. However, officials decided there was no need to forward the letter to Mrs Foster as it was similar to an earlier letter from Mr Barker and no
action was therefore required. The inquiry heard that this was not the case and that the earlier letter was about different matters — meaning a chance to tell Mrs Foster about cost controls was missed.
Dr Crawford said Mrs Foster should have seen “all the correspondence” coming from a Westminster department.
Junior counsel Joseph Aiken said: “There is correspondence coming in from a Whitehall minister to the minister of the department and at no stage is the minister of the department seeing that communication, that is dysfunctional.”
Dr Crawford replied: “That is wrong and should not have happened.” Dr Crawford added that he did not think Mrs Foster saw the correspondence as it was her practice to respond to all correspondence from Westminster departments.
The inquiry heard that the first time the issue of cost controls was brought up to Mrs Foster was in a submission sent to her on June 26, 2013. The submission was drawn up by ex- ternal energy consultants Cambridge Economic Policy Associate (CEPA). The report did not expand on the rationale behind introducing cost controls.
Asked whether, at the time, he put any importance on cost controls, Dr Crawford said: “I probably didn’t give it a great deal of importance because this was the first time it was highlighted.
“However, I believe it would have registered with me at that time that it was a new proposal that had been introduced, hence I would have requested a follow up meeting in relation to it.”
Dr Crawford said that he did not realise the scheme could be manipulated to make a profit.
He said: “I didn’t envisage that the scheme would be structured in such a way that it would pay people to... earn as you burn.
“I just assumed, wrongly now, that there’d be checks in the system that would stop that from happening.”
However, he admitted to the inquiry that he did not understand “exactly what that meant” or how regulations would prevent costs spiralling.
Mrs Foster will resume giving evidence to the enquiry this morning.
❝ I didn’t envisage that the scheme would be structured topaypeople to ... earn as you burn