The UK Covid Inquiry is coming to Wales at the end of February for two weeks of sessions examining the Welsh response to the pandemic and documents it has published suggests the Welsh Government is in for a tough time.
Baroness Heather Hallett's sessions from Tuesday, February 27, until Thursday, March 14, are set to be the first inquiry hearings dedicated to understanding what happened - and what went wrong - in Wales' response to Covid. Mark Drakeford has repeatedly refused call to hold a Wales specific Covid inquiry saying that the UK wide inquiry is sufficient to assess the Welsh Government's performance through the pandemic.
Yet even though this will be less in-depth than a full Wales-focused inquiry, which has led some to accuse the Labour administration of hiding from scrutiny, the hearings in the Mercure Cardiff North Hotel in the city's Llanedeyrn area are still set to pose some challenging questions that will be be difficult for Welsh Government politicians and civil servants.
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The last time a senior Welsh Government minister appeared before the inquiry's QCs it proved very embarrassing for former health minister Vaughan Gething who had to admit he never read a key document about pandemic preparedness. Now running to be the next Welsh Labour leader and First Minister, he can't afford another disastrous performance.
The inquiry has published a document laying out the areas it will be looking at - entitled 'Provisional Outline of Scope' - and there are some reasons for the Welsh Government to be getting sweaty palms.
The document says the hearings will "examine the decision-making of key groups and individuals within the government in Wales including the First Minister and other Welsh Ministers, in particular between early January and late March 2020 when the first national lockdown was imposed."
There will be more detailed consideration of some areas and the impact of the pandemic on those areas later on in the inquiry.
Below are the six areas that the inquiry intends to look at during these two weeks of hearings and why this could present a concern to the Welsh Government.
1. The structures of the Welsh Government and the key bodies within it involved in Wales’ response to the pandemic and their relationships and communications with the UK Government, other devolved administrations and local authorities within Wales.
This is basically "how well did the the Welsh Gov communicate with the UK Government and councils". This is likely to be the area where the Welsh Government feels most secure. Throughout the pandemic a consistent Welsh Government line was that the Conservative government in Westminster was bad at communicating. They would often argue that this delayed decision making and cost lives.
Wanting to talk about this was one of the key reasons why Mark Drakeford refused to have a Welsh specific inquiry in the first place. He argued that it was impossible to really understand what the Welsh Government did without understanding the UK context. He will likely use this platform to make the argument again.
However there are also areas within this where Wales' response to Covid felt, at the time, like a distinctly poor relation of England's. For example, while England had a system for distributing PPE to care homes, Wales didn't in the same way. Welsh care homes were left screaming because they were unable to get PPE from their usual suppliers, which had been engaged by in England to distribute England's stocks but hadn't been given any access to Welsh stocks to distribute and care homes had had no communication from councils or the Welsh Government to inform them of a process to access PPE.
2. The Welsh Government’s initial understanding of, and response to, the nature and spread of Covid-19 in Wales in the period between January and March 2020 in light of information and advice received from the UK Government and other relevant international and national bodies, advice from scientific, medical and other advisers and the response of other countries.
This is going to be a real tough area of inquiry for the Welsh Government. It wasn't until months into the pandemic in the spring of 2020 that they really started to assert themselves in terms of making their own decisions and not simply following the UK Government.
Then health minister Vaughan Gething was challenged at length about the threat posed by coronavirus in the Senedd as early as January 29 and those inquiries reflected genuine concern from elected members. Mr Gething stressed that the Welsh Government was not being complacent but he was certain he didn’t “want to add to the impression that a more significant health risk is on its way than is likely.” He added that “it's worth reflecting that the ’flu makes people severely unwell and kills people every year, and yet, we still can’t persuade people who are in a category where they can receive a free NHS vaccine, to take that up in the numbers we'd want them to. So, let’s have some perspective on it.”
The inquiry will also likely look at the doddering of the Welsh Government when it came to events being held in March 2020. The Stereophonics concerts went ahead over the weekend of Friday, March 14 and Saturday 15 not to mention the scheduled Six Nations game between Wales and Scotland in Cardiff. Two other Six Nations games were cancelled already as was forthcoming football match between Wales and the USA and the Premier League was already on hold until at least April. Despite this Mr Gething said, “here is little medical reason at the moment to ban such events.” He even told journalists he'd take his own family to the Six Nations fixture against Scotland.
The WRU eventually cancelled the game but not before thousands of Scots packed into Cardiff, potentially picking up or spreading the virus.
3. Decision-making by the Welsh Government relating to the imposition or non-imposition of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) including lockdowns, local restrictions, working from home, reduction of person to person contact, social distancing, the use of face coverings and border controls in Wales
This one is going to be very interesting for several reasons. Firstly because it says that it will look at "the degree of and rationale behind differences in approach between the Welsh Government and other governments in the UK". The Welsh Government made great fanfare of the fact that "in Wales we do things differently", it looks like we may find out if this was the right thing to do.
The inquiry will also look at "the impact of UK Government funding on the Welsh pandemic response". This will likely touch on the decision of then Chancellor Rishi Sunak not to extend furlough for the Welsh firebreak lockdown. This was a hugely controversial decision at the time and led to a big spike in people joining YesCymru.
4. Access to and use in decision-making of medical and scientific expertise, data collection and modelling relating to the spread of the virus in Wales; the measuring and understanding of transmission, infection, mutation, re-infection and death rates in Wales; and the relationship between and operation of relevant systems for the collection, modelling and dissemination of data.
Don't expect this one to be as controversial. Scientific collaboration between the different parts of the UK was far more cordial and productive than political communication. Welsh advisors had access to SAGE and used much of their findings to underpin their own advice.
A key nugget could be the decision by Vaughan Gething to not test asymptomatic patients going into care homes from weeks after England brought in the policy. The fact that it was not until April 29 that Vaughan Gething changed the policy to allow all residents coming into homes to be tested will surely be raised. Until that point, only those with symptoms were allowed to have a test. Even England was weeks ahead of him with Matt Hancock announcing on April 14 that everyone going into care homes could be tested.
Experts on the Sage committee knew the risks of transmission from non-diagnosed Covid-19 positive patients and staff long before this- and yet nothing was done to stop elderly patients flooding out of virus-ridden hospitals into care homes without a test. Wales lost 3.4% of all its 23,000 care home residents in the first wave of the virus and you can bet that the inquiry will want to look at how this was handled.
5. Public health communications in Wales in relation to the steps being taken to control the spread of the virus; transparency of messaging; the use of behavioural management and the maintenance of public confidence in the Welsh Government, including the impact of any alleged breaches of rules and standards by Ministers, officials and advisers.
The Welsh Government could face some tricky questions here regarding things like the ban on supermarkets selling non-essential items. This was a really divisive issue when announced and has been acknowledged as one of the points that the Welsh Government lost the support and goodwill of much of the public.
The sentence "the impact of any alleged breaches of rules and standards by Ministers" could also throw up some tasty exchanges. Vaughan Gething will also likely face questions about when he was pictured eating chips at a time when we were only supposed to be outside to exercise for 15 minutes and Lee Waters about his regular trips to his second home that were exposed in a WalesOnline investigation.
6. The public health and coronavirus legislation and regulations that were proposed and enacted: their proportionality and enforcement across Wales
This is a very broad area but could provide some stumbling blocks for the Welsh Government. There were multiple times, when the virus was very repressed, that the economy remained closed down for longer than England. This could be explored along with decisions like committing to local lockdowns even after they had demonstrably failed to contain the virus.
