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E I could call Mr Mark Drakeford please to read thank you even thatan and Fant can weird I can cut in high a be and air declare and affirm that the evidence I shall give shall be the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth if you could start with giving us
Your full name please it’s Mark dford Mr dford you have provided a witness statement for the purposes of this module and we’ve got that displayed at iq30 37129 you signed that statement on the 13th of December last year are the contents of that statement true to the
Best of your knowledge and belief they are you also provided a witness statement from module one and we can see that at inq 30 17784 that’s been signed in the usual way with a declaration of Truth as well you also gave evidence in module one and the transcript of that evidence is
Available on the inquiry website and you have also provided two further witness statements for module 2 if we can just identify those the first we see there it’s inq 30273 747 and then the second it’s inq 30 28190 and those two have been signed with statements of Truth uh Mr dford uh
We’re very grateful for the provision of those statements and also your assistance to date if I can deal first with your background and career it is uh very well known that you are the first minister of Wales you have been so since December 2018 before entering politics you have
Worked as a probation officer a youth Justice worker and a bernardo’s project leader between 1991 and 1995 you lectured in applied social studies at the University College of Swansea now Swansea University you then moved to what is now Cardiff University first as a lecturer and later as a professor of
Social policy and applied social sciences alongside your University lecturing in 2000 you became a special adviser on health and social policy and later served as the head of the first Minister’s political office you then succeeded rodri Morgan as the assembly me member for Cardiff West when Mr Morgan retired in
2011 in 2013 you were appointed Minister for Health and Social Services a post you held until May 2016 when you became cabinet secretary for finance and local government you became first Minister and leader of Welsh labor in 2018 is is that all correct that’s all correct uh although you announced on 13th of
December last year that you would stand down as first Minister you remain first Minister until your successor is selected is that right correct um Mr dford your experience is important for a number of areas in this module uh because in practice you worked inside the Welsh government including a decade
In the first Minister’s office since the outset of devolution in 2000 you’ve therefore got a vast knowledge of um government how the Welsh government Machine Works in practice you’ve also been Health Minister and Minister for local government and so very familiar with the work of the NHS and local
Government in Wales you’ve also as I’ve um spoken about Finance Minister you therefore negotiated the current funding regime in Wales you therefore understand the complex issues of government and inter-government finance and obviously last and by no means least as first Minister you were head of the Welsh government and so had overall
Responsibility for wales’s pandemic response and also its engagement with the UK government and the other devolved administrations unsurprisingly therefore there is much to cover um this morning and this afternoon if I can start please with some questions about your role as first Minister and the decision-making structures within the Welsh government
You say at paragraph 14 of your witness statement that you are primarily responsible for the formulation development and presentation of Welsh government policy and you say that this did not changed during the pandemic is that right that would be right as first Minister you chair the uh Welsh
Government cabinet you describe in your witness statement the cabinet as the core decision makers and you say that all though the practicalities of ministerial engagement changed with remote working the essence of collective decision- making remained intact throughout the pandemic is that right my Approach as first Minister was always to
Make sure that the decisions we arrived at prior to and during the pandemic were the collective decisions of the whole of the cabinet we will look obviously at those particular decisions in in Greater detail later this morning and this afternoon but broadly speaking so that
We know the LIE of the land and we know how you approached these issues were all the momentous decisions so the decisions for example to impose lockdowns social distancing measures and so on were those decisions that were made in practice by the wel cabinet or were they decisions
Made by you and infirmed or endorsed later by cabinet the decisions were always the decisions of the cabinet either made directly in the cabinet and almost all always in that way occasionally and particularly in the very early days they were made drawing on the clear knowledge of what the cabinet would have decided
Because of Prior discussion but made sometimes in a Cobra meeting where I am the only representative of the Welsh government present I understand and although as you’ve explained the full cabinet LED on Collective decisions um during the pandemic individual ministers were required to make decisions within their own portfolio responsibilities and
You make the point it’s paragraph 39 of your witness statement um that you expect ministers to exercise portfolio responsibilities themselves save where first a decision requires a cross-government set of resolutions and secondly the issues are so significant that it needs to be elevated perhaps just to illustrate the point the closing
And reopening of Education settings during the pandemic is that a decision for the minister for education or would that been a decision for cabinet well I think the decision itself rests with the minister but given the significance of that decision it would only ever be made in the full knowledge
Of what cabinet colleagues would have uh contributed to that decision so it’s made by the minister but it’s made in the context of discussion across the whole of the ministerial team although um the inquiry understands that there were certain structural changes within the Welsh government during the pandemic so for example the
Creation of a director general for covid-19 and certain people obviously moved positions in terms of who made the key decisions am I right that that remained always the the Welsh cabinet as you’ve explained with you acting as first among equals and then individual ministers when the decision fell within
Their portfolio yes to what extent Mr dford do you accept personal responsibility for the core decisions taken during the pandemic as opposed to accepting it on behalf of your Administration well no I I accept responsibility myself for all the decisions that we made in the end I am
The first minister of the government and while I am a very um firm believer in what is called distributed leadership rather than hierarchical leadership in the end the decisions that were made in the cabinet are signed off by me and in that sense I am responsible i’ like to next explore with
You some of the legal technical structural problems or issues that that presented themselves um when liaising and dealing with the UK government and the other devolved administrations during the pandemic the inquiry understands that there was an intergovernmental relations review established in March 2018 which ended in
Uh January 2022 and reported then the U idea behind that review was to improve intergovernmental structures and ways of working and we understand that that review has led to a new architecture for intergovernmental working which I I will come to in due course I’d like to just start though with the arrangements for
Intergovernmental relations as they stood at the start of the pandemic uh starting point is the memorandum of understanding and we’ve got that uh at inq 30 25684 uh as we can see there I think the memorandum was first agreed in 2001 but it was reviewed periodically and this is
Dated October 2013 if we can please have a look at page nine paragraph 23 um thank you very much so over the page as well so this recognizes that although most contact between the four nations should be carried out at a bilateral or multilateral basis between departments
There neveress needs to be some Central coordination of the overall relationship and therefore the four nations agreed to participate in what was known as The Joint ministerial committee the JMC uh if we can please have a look at page 12 paragraph um capital A 1.3 uh we can see there it was agreed
That plenary meetings of the JMC would be held at least once a year they would consist of the Prime Minister or his representative uh who would chair the meeting and then you have Scottish Welsh first ministers together with ministerial colleagues Northern Irish first Minister and Deputy first Minister
And then secretaries of State the territorial secretaries of state now the inquiry has heard evidence that prior to 2019 JMC meetings would generally take place as was envisaged in this memorandum of understanding about once a year is that is that your understanding well my because I’ve been
Involved as you heard for so long uh I have taken part in different capacities in meetings of this sort with every prime minister since Devolution other than David Cameron so I started attending these meetings when Tony Blair was prime minister continued under Gordon Brown and then with uh Mrs May
And her successor so yes and actually they would sometimes happen more frequently than that and beneath the first Minister and prime minister jmc’s they were very active jmc’s which brought ministers together around a particular topic William ha when he was foreign secretary for example put a
Great deal of energy into the JMC Europe which brought ministers together in advance of key meetings of the European uh Council so underneath the headline there are the jmc’s and as I became a minister I participated in those particularly around brexit and I think there was a there was a JMC meeting on
The 19th of December 2018 that was the first meeting you attended as first Minister it was a meeting attended by the then prime minister um Theresa May first minister of Scotland and the then head of the nor Northern Ireland civil service in the absence of Northern Irish
Executive uh that was the last JMC plenary session before Theresa May resigned in May 2019 and am I right that there were no JMC plenary meetings um throughout the pandemic none now Mr Johnson um former prime minister has said in his witness statement to the inquiry in module two that he chose not
To meet with the first Ministers of the devolved administrations because in his view that would have been optically wrong for fear that this would give a excuse me a false impression that the UK was a federal state what is your reaction to that statement well I think I shared the reaction of
Professor Henderson who said in her written statement and in her oral evidence that that was one of the most extraordinary statements she had come across in her very long career of academic study in these matters uh as you know I wrote very regularly to the Prime Minister asking
For a predictable series of meetings between the heads of the four nations uh it had never occurred to me until I read that that the Prime Minister had turned those requests down not on practical grounds which I could understand you know these are very busy
Times and he was a very busy man but as a matter of policy he had decided not to meet that did seem to me to be an extraordinary decision do you consider that Mr Johnson’s um seemingly deliberate choice not to meet with the devolved administrations had an impact
On the Welsh government’s response to to the pandemic I believe it did I believe there are a series of reasons why it would have been preferable to have held not I was never my lady asking for meetings happening you know every week uh to my mind at the height of the
Pandemic had we met once in a 3-we cycle that would have been sufficient but I think there are number of purposes that would have been properly discharged in such a meeting I think it would to use the prime Minister’s term have been optically important for people in Wales
And in other parts of the United Kingdom to see the heads of their Nations coming together at a moment of such National Peril I think if we had not reached uniform Decisions by coming together we would have reached joint decisions so the fact that you would be
In the same room as others you might not come to the identical conclusion but you would all know what everybody else was deciding I think that would have strengthened arrangements and even if you hadn’t managed to do that I always thought that the primary reason for coming together was that you would
Simply understand better what other leaders of the nations were facing in their own areas of responsibility how they were proposing to address those challenges the repertoire of different policy levers they may have wished to to use and as a result for example had I known more about what the first minister
Of Northern Ireland was facing and what she was thinking of doing that would have informed my decisions and those would have been better decisions as a result of having an insight into what other people in a similar position were facing and finally I think regularity of meetings
Improves Trust and in a pandemic when things are moving so quickly and sometimes with such difficult moments trust is a very special commodity I think if you look at the meetings with Michael go by the time we’ve met weekly for about 6 weeks you can just see how the
Conversation is different how it flows more freely how people are franker with one another because they have become used to being in each other’s company and having those sort of discussions and I felt that had we been able to do that at the prime ministerial and first ministerial level we would have had
Greater trust in that relationship and that would have been a good thing in the absence of JMC plenary meetings Cobra was the highest form for interaction between the four UK governments and we’ll obviously come on to specific Cobra meetings in due course but I want to ask you just some general
Questions about the Welsh government’s involvement in Cobra now Cobra uh meeting is obviously controlled by the UK government this means that the UK government decides when they are called and whether or not the devolved administrations are are to be involved you make a point in paragraph 19 of your
Module 2 witness statement you say that the production of papers to be used at Cobra meetings rests exclusively with the UK government in practice this meant uh you did not see Cobra meetings until shortly before the meetings in fact took place did you feel that you and other Welsh Representatives at Co meetings
Were placed at a disadvantage as a result well I want to acknowledge first of all that at this point everybody is working under the most enormous pressure and there is very little luxury of time for the production of papers or any other preparation for a meeting but it
Would undoubtedly be the case in practice that when you arrived at a meeting and I would be the only Welsh uh voice often at that table other UK minister would already have had a discussion and would already have had access to the information that I might have seen often
Less than 20 minutes before the meeting began and in that sense you are at a disadvantage because you are having to try to Grapple very quickly with information that others have had longer to absorb and to think about the inquiry heard evidence in in modules 2 and also in module um 2A that
Concerns were expressed by some within the UK government perhaps most vocally by Mr Cummings about including the devolved administrations in in Cobra um we see Mr cummings’s witness statement inq 30273 872 paragraph 82 um we’re looking at the Cobra meetings with the devolved authorities were particularly bad as sturgeon immediately briefed everything
Discussed to the media they therefore became even more scripted formulaic and pointless than the normal cabinet they were handling meetings rather than the place where issues were really hashed out so the suggest obviously being there made there by Mr Cummings is that there couldn’t be an open discussion at Cobra
When the devolved administrations were present as things would be leaked to the Press are you aware at the time that there were these concerns being expressed within the UK government well I would have been aware of uh anxieties in the UK government but I would also have known that they could
Not have pointed to a single example I sat in JMC after JMC with representatives of the Scottish government sometimes talking about very sensitive matters indeed in relation to brexit and there was not a single example that the United Kingdom government could have pointed to were either the Welsh government or the
Scottish government put into the public domain information that have been shared with us on a confidential basis so while I was aware of and to an extent could understand anxieties I don’t think there was an evidential basis for them on the 13th of March Mark sedwell then cabinet secretary wrote to the then
Prime minister and we can see that letter at iq30 is 182 338 if we could have a look at page two fourth paragraph what is being proposed to the Prime Minister here is setting up a new rhythm of meetings including a daily 900 a.m. prime minister meeting with a small
Group of ministers and key advisers then if we can go over to um paragraph 7 straddling Pages two and three thank you you uh you will also need to decide how you want to involve the devolved administrations instead of inviting them to your 9:00 9:00 a.m. meetings I
Propose continuing to including them in Cobra as Public Service delivery is where their main challenges will be I would also recommend a regular meeting with first ministers either chaired by you or CDL um Chancellor duche of Lancaster uh to update them on the response were you aware of this proposal
At the at the times this is the 13th of March no now we obviously know during the pandemic and you’ve already spoken about the the calls that you had with Michael Gove um and the fact that you were an advocate for a reliable regular pattern of contact between the four four nations
Those calls started in June 2020 and you describe in your evidence and you um alluded to it in your uh oral evidence this morning that those meetings worked well you say in your written evidence because all four participants came to the meeting looking to share information solve problems and
Work work together on agendas of common concern and you go on to say we were not turning up to be told what had already been decided whether we liked it or not um is that is that alluding to how you considered effectively Cobra to have operated well that that wouldn’t be a
Fair characteristic of the whole of Cobra because I took part in Cobra debates which were genuine debates and where a variety of views were canvased but I also definitely took part in Cobra meetings where the decision had already been made in advance of the meeting and we were essentially involved in order to
Be told what the outcome would be but but that wouldn’t be the whole story you say at paragraph 164 of your module 2 witness statement you described Mr Gove as a skillful lead Minister but uh you say he was a center forward without a team lined up behind him and where the
Manager was largely absent perhaps for those less familiar with football can you explain what you mean by that well the absent manager was the Prime Minister because he was never at uh these meetings or at the table and while Mr Gove was a senior minister with responsibility for these matters whose
Voice would count in discussions with his colleagues uh he has influence rather than the determinative impact which a message from the Prime Minister would have message from the prime minister to a cabinet minister says I would like this to happen is in effect an instruction Mr Gove picking up
The phone would have to say what do you think would this be a good idea he’s he’s a Persuader and he’s a he’s a skillful Persuader but that’s what he is and that’s what I meant there was a limit to the extent to which he was able
To discharge the remit of leading a for nation approach across the UK government so it be right to say that the the calls with Mr G whilst whilst useful in your view were not an adequate replacement for meetings with the uh first ministers and the Prime Minister during the
Pandemic they needed to be supplemented by some additional regularity of contact between first ministers I wouldn’t expect to meet the Prime Minister every week uh and meeting Mr Gove every week was certainly useful but at certain points in that Weekly cycle a meeting with a prime minister would have allowed that head of
Government impact to have been brought to bear turning then briefly to the Secretary of State for Wales who throughout the pandemic was um Simon Hart Who the inquiry heard from last week I think it would be fair to say that you’ve made some quite pointed criticisms of the role played by um Mr
Hart during the pandemic you describe him in your module 2 witness statement as being peripheral to your interaction with the UK government and go on to say that the secret of State for Wales perceived his role as scrutinizing the Welsh government constantly seeking explanations for policy differences and making inappropriate requests to be
Inserted into devolve decision-making structures and other groups now when those criticisms were put to the Secretary of State for Wales last week or the the then Secretary of State for Wales last week he said that scrutinizing and interrogating decisions of the Welsh government was very much part of his role and that effectively
The Welsh government should have been prepared for such scrutin now do you agree and do you have comments on that evidence well of course the W government must be open to scrutiny but the Welsh government is scrutinized by the parliament of Wales by the Senate that is directly elected by people in Wales
To discharge that responsibility where the Secretary of State for Wales is concerned again to try to be as evenhanded as I can where he discharged responsibilities that were his to discharge LGE he did so effectively so my lady during the uh progress of the pandemic as you know there were points
When the Welsh government sought the assistance of military authorities and there’s a process the MAA process military assistance to Civil Authorities uh the Secretary of State for Wales has a formal part to play in that process and he always did it perfectly satisfactorily he was always
You know there when he was needed he always moved the the process Along by discharging his responsibility so where he had a role to play I’ve got no complaints about what he did my difficulty was particularly in the early days with frankly I think very little
Else to do the Secretary of State filled his days by writing letters to me asking me about the watch government’s responsibilities and um the risk was that he was beginning to get in the way of our ability to do the things we needed to do at one point I had to write
To him and explain that I couldn’t go on giving a priority to my scarce officials time with so many other things to do to replying to correspondents from him about things for which he had no responsibility and for which I am accountable not to the Secretary of
State for Wales at all but to the parliament of the Welsh people um one of the roles of the the Secretary of State for for Wales is to act uh as a voice for Wales within the UK cabinet did you consider that Mr Hart
Acted as a as a voice for uh the Welsh government at UK cabinet during the pandemic UK cabinets have some hierarchical um implications within them and the Secretary of State for Wales is not to be found near the top half of of that hierarchy um I’m afraid I would say that the
Secretary of State for Wales was far more the voice of the UK government in Wales rather than the voice of Wales in the UK cabinet now you you’ve um mentioned several times in your written evidence and also um this morning the effectiveness of the approach that Michael Gove took in the meetings that
You had with him effectively acting as a as a key link person between the UK government and devolved administrations in in your view in the event of a future pandemic where where does that leave the territorial offices of the Scottish office the Wales office the northern Irish office are
Those offices being made redundant do you see them having a different role uh or should they have a different role in the event of a future pandemic uh well um my lady this is a much broader question and well above my own responsib way beyond my terms of
Reference sounds shall shall I just say in general terms that you know cases have been made for a territorial office in the UK government a single secretary of state with second tier ministers for Scotland Wales and Northern Ireland but that’s a matter for the prime minister
Of the day quite definitely not for me I think um Mr Draper the reason I asked the question is because we’re coming to the intergovernmental reforms that we started off speaking about that were then reported on in January 20 22 um perhaps if we can just have a look at
That report briefly it’s inq 4 83 215 um and this a couple of other Witnesses earlier uh in the inquiries have been taken to this and this establishes a new framework a new set of structures for managing intergovernmental relations and perhaps briefly we can just have a look
At paragraph uh 11 on page three uh so the new framework that supersedes the JMC system provides this three tier committee structure um and all four nations as I understand it have agreed to work under these new Arrangements uh you you say at paragraph 2011 of your module 2 witness statement
Uh you make the point that the new intergovernmental Arrangements have never been fully implemented and in any event you say they need to be animated by the necessary Cooperative spirit for them to take the strain of responding to a prolonged and and profound emergency my question is simply
In in the event of a future pandemic do you believe that these new arrangements for intergovernmental working will be effective well I think they would be more effective than the ones we had to rely on during the pandemic they are still very new they’re still not fully tested the uh
Ministerial committee the top tier of this didn’t meet at all in 2023 hasn’t met now for 18 months so uh partly that my is because there has not been an executive in Northern Ireland so there are sensible reasons why it’s been difficult to do so uh but
Then that’s partly what I meant by saying that structures are important and it’s important to get them right but structures by themselves will not be sufficient there has to be an approach to the structures there has to be a commitment to them there has to be a willingness to make the structures work
Can have all the structures you like on a piece of paper but if the people involved in them don’t don’t approach them in that Spirit they want to deliver what is needed I think did you sorry to interrupt do you want to finish the sentence no no do you understand the
Structure because I confess I find it really rather difficult there’s inter interministerial groups interministerial standing committees and Tim limited interministerial committees um not exactly straightforward to understand no it’s it’s over complex uh I think and I think that’s one of the things we’ve leared since uh the structure came into
Being it needs to be streamlined and paid uh back essentially though it has three levels it has ministers meeting on their own portfolio areas there are two committees then which stand over that the inter ministerial standing committees one dealing with Finance one dealing with other things and then at
The top of this pyramid a council of ministers which involves the Prime Minister and the first ministers uh but I I would agree with you my experi of this so far is it’s over elaborate want to next um ask you Mr dford some questions about information sharing between the four nations
Particularly the sharing of scientific um information and start with some questions about Sage um in January and February the Welsh government’s primary source of scientific and medical information about the virus came from sage and you say at paragraph 30 of your um witness statement for module 2 this was a
Comfort to you at the early stage of the pandemic to know that Sage would meet regularly however as we’ve seen the first five Sage meetings went ahead without any representatives of the Welsh government did that concern you that those early Sage meetings going into early February didn’t have a Welsh voice around the
Table well I think the number of answers to that first of all uh we were fortunate and I don’t think there’s anything more than that fortunate that our chief scientific officer for health Rob offord was well known and well connected to people who were on Sage so
I always felt we had a direct line into the sage discussions as that month moved on I did come to be more anxious that we had somebody in the room while those discussions were taking place rather than having a good redout of the discussions and particularly this slightly later on anxious about our
Ability to put questions directly to Sage that were pertinent to Wales but in those very early days it did not occur to me that there was a particularly Welsh angle on what was a global phenomenon so sage in those early days is less concerned with domestic impacts than in collecting the
Information of what was happening elsewhere in the globe and at that point did not myself see that there was a particularly Welsh Ango or contribution to that so in the beginning I didn’t have uh concerns they did grow a little as the weeks went by the inquiry heard
Evidence in module two from Professor Henderson that say data and advice had an English frame of reference from what you’ve just said do do you agree with that well uh I I do agree with it to an extent um the United Kingdom is a voluntary Association of four nations
But they’re very different in size and scale so if you have a population of 55 million to draw evidence from that’s always going to provide you with a richer source of evidence than a population of 3 million so you so in some ways I don’t think we should be
Surprised that a lot of the information that sage has is from the largest Nation however there were times when there would have been specific Dimensions that were pertinent to Wales where you struggle a bit to see where Sage was finding the evidence it might have needed to make sure that Welsh
Circumstances were being taken into account in its deliberations you identify another issue with with sage at paragraph 30 of your module 2 witness statement you say there was no reliable protocol which made it clear that sage in fact worked for all four nations and not just for England
And you give two reasons for that first you say um you had to ask Cobra to make Sage advice available to the Welsh government and secondly you could not ask Sage to carry out any bespoke research without prior agreement from Cobra is is is that right that is right
Now the technical advisory cell that was set up on the um 27th of February and the inquiries heard um evidence that that was set up because Sage outputs needed to be interpreted into a Welsh context but given the the lack of Welsh representation at Sage the fact that
Sage papers were not being shared with Welsh government until uh I think it’s early April the limitations on commissioning that you refer to in your witness statement and the the Welsh the lack of Welsh specific interpretation until you get Tac and tag set up was it the case in January and
February that the Welsh government was not really in a position to question any of the advice that was coming out of sage I don’t think we were not in any position because as I said our chief scientific uh adviser in health was well connected to Sage able to let us know
What was happening and able to ask questions on behalf uh of Wales but what I think happens is that the limitations that you uh enumerated get resolved over the weeks that those issues come to the for so today you would hope that those things would have been in place from the
Beginning they weren’t but they were identified and they were resolved but if you had growing concerns that the um Welsh specific features weren’t being reflected in Sage couldn’t you have set up Tack and tag earlier to get the world Pacific Focus I think if if all this were to
Happen again you would hope that tag and tag would be there from the beginning um but I think as I say these realizations are Dawning as the weeks go by and where you begin to realize some of the limitations of your starting point and then we do set up tag
And T and I was always extremely grateful for the people who provided their time and their expertise to us in that way and even if we in the future event had better representation at agage better access to their information better ability to ask them to do work
For us I’d still have tag and Tac I wouldn’t not have them because I think the job they did in turning that more general information to specific advice for whales would still be very very valuable so as as well as tag and Tac being established um earlier in the
Event of a future pandemic you would be calling for Welsh representatives to be on Sage from the outset to my mind that will be an important lesson of the experience that we uh live through as well as um Sage information about the virus in January and February was obviously being relayed
To you and the Welsh government through participation in Cobra meetings the first three Cobra meetings were 24th of January 29th of January and the 5th of February uh Welsh government was represented by at Vaughn geffin in his capacity as minister of Health and Social Care at those
Meetings uh those initi cob meetings and indeed I think the next two so the 18th and 26th of February they were chaired by the Secretary of State for health um Mr hanok and it’s not until uh the 2nd of March that we see the first meeting
Being chaired by Mr Johnson now it is obviously quite permissible for Cobra not to be chaired by the Prime Minister indeed it can be chaired by any official you however commented in your evidence that there is a clear enough case for concluding that the prime minister should have chaired earlier Cobra
Meetings but you say not for the purposes of reaching different outcome in terms of the work done by Cobra but in terms of giving a greater impression that the crisis was being taken seriously is that right yes so my lady I I’ve uh attended many Cobra meetings not to do with the
Pandemic at all but other crises and it’s very ordinary for them to be chaired by the minister with a greatest direct responsibility for them so the fact that the Prime Minister was not there at the beginning I shouldn’t I don’t think people should read that as something extra ordinary but as the pace
Of concern begins to gather I think in retrospect you could say that the prime minister’s involvement in chairing Cobra earlier than he did would have sent a stronger signal about the seriousness with which the Gathering storm was being taken now the first Cobra meeting that you attended was um the 18th of February
So you did not attend the first three meetings I mean might it be said that your non-attendance at those first three meetings U indicated that the unfolding crisis was not being taken uh seriously by the Welsh government well I think there are two reasons why I wouldn’t um agree to that
Proposition first of all at that point the approach to the pandemic is still very health dominated it’s still being dealt with in the Department of Health in London and the actions inside the Welsh government are very much concentrated uh around our health Minister as well so I think a health
Minister going to a Copa chaired by the health minister of the UK government to talk about health matters is not unreasonable uh and the second point is of course is that vau gettin is a very senior minister in my ministerial team uh and I have full confidence uh that he
Will represent the was government of was interests uh in the fullest extent obviously we we understand that there would have been discussion in those early Cobra meetings about public health matters and at that stage the pandemic um the virus had not been declared a pandemic but by mid January it had
Spread to Thailand and Japan you had UK scientists reporting a 12% hospitalization rate and there was already evidence of limited human to human transmission so in an overarching sense as first Minister do you not think you should have involved yourself in those early discussions concerning what
Would have been on any view a very worrying virus I think as you have said the discussions were focused on health evidence and health responses and at that point I believed that the person best placed to represent the w government in those discussions was the person with those Health responsibilities in the was
Government the Cobra meeting that you you attended on the 18th of February if we can just see those minutes please it’s inq 456 227 uh this was a meeting chaired by the Secretary of State for Health and Social care Mr Hancock uh have a look please at page
Five the um and we see that you you were dialed in um as first Minister for Wales um paragraph 2 on page five there’s an update there on the um current situation uh if we can have a look at paragraph 3 the next paragraph please you’re told there’s nine positive cases
Confirmed in the UK discussion about repatriation of UK Nationals from the um Diamond Princess cruise ship if we can go to page six please um par 11 there’s discussion about What legislation would be used to respond to covid-19 stated there um any bill would be employed on a
Reasonable worst case scenario it’s not for Cobra to decide what whether to legislate or not and then if we can just finally go over the page to paragraph 13 there is a legislative policy paper introduced and the chair U Mr hanock emphasized any bill would cover the four
Nations of the UK if we can just please have a look at that legislative policy paper it’s inq 449 396 if we can uh just zoom in on paragraph 2 please it makes clear here that the final decision on what Provisions the proposed bill would contain uh when to
Introduce it and Al its parliamentary handling will be taken by number 10 and the Parliamentary business and legislation Committee in light of the latest scientific evidence from Sage so just pausing there this is 18th of February you understood from the the outset um didn’t you the choice of legislation pursuant to which emergency
Powers would be exercised would be a decision for the UK government that was my very clear uh impression at that time and because legislation was to be discussed at that meeting is one of the reasons why I attended it myself because you’re now going beyond the
Health uh brief itself and the fact that the committee would not be able to make those decisions without the Prime Minister being there I think is another argument for why the Prime Minister might have chaired Cobra a little earlier than he did now we obviously know that the UK
Government had on its statute books the Civil contingencies act 2004 uh it also had on the statute books the public health control of disease act um under the former so under the Civil contingencies act um you’d have understood that decisions would be made by the UK government and the Welsh
Government would act as a category one responder so effectively implementing decisions made by the UK government whereas under the public health act it would be the Welsh government making the actual um decisions for themselves and we can agree can we that the choice of legislation used to respond to the
Pandemic um that would have huge implications for the devolved administrations and and the type of structural response to the pandemic across the UK absolutely you you say in your U module two witness statements paragraph 22 your assumption at the 18th of February Cobra meeting so the minutes
That we’ve just looked at um was that the response to the covid-19 would be a UK government response and the decisions would be taken by the UK government um so your assumption that that time was the UK’s response would be based essentially on Provisions which existed for the introduction of emergency powers
Under the Civil contingencies Act is that right that was my uh assumption at that time uh the legislative response was discussed again at a cobra meeting on the 26th of February um there was a meeting chaired by Mr hanock attended I think by vau Geth and Dr Aton on behalf
Of the Welsh government um you comment on this we don’t need the minutes but perhaps we can just see um what you say in your witness statement it’s inq 30273 747 and it’s paragraph 23 uh thank you very much you say my understanding is an emergency coronav virus bill was
Thus considered to be the legislative vehicle the discussion around the legislative options was from the Viewpoint of the UK government it was the UK government that exercised the relevant powers in The Civil contingencies act however my impression at the time was that the Corona virus bill would mirror the essential scheme
Of the Civil contingencies act and that the primary decision- making power would remain with the UK government to be implemented by the devolved governments um now your your impression in late February was as you say that the UK government would be introducing legislation mirroring the essential scheme of the of the
CCA and primary decision making would remain with the UK government did you voice or did you have any concern about that legislative response to the pandemic at that stage or were you content that that was the appropriate response Well w government officials are engaged in discussions about the bill so
I I’m not anxious about not having a voice in the uh in the process my own impression at the time was that UK government ministers primary objection to using the Civil contingencies Act was it require them to go to Parliament every 7 Days in order to renew the powers that they were
Exercising and that they felt that that would be overburdensome in the circumstances of a pandemic so my belief was that in the emergency bill they would continue to take the suite of powers that the Civil contingencies have provided to them but make them more workable from their point
Of view if we can just look at the um the next six lines of this same paragraph where it says I had not anticipated that the UK government would use the health protection legislation as the basis for responding to the pandemic once that course of action had been
Determined it placed an onus on the devolved governments to pass corresponding legislation and below I comment further on the unintended consequences of this decision for uh Divergence now we’ll talk about Divergence in decision- making and what you described as unintended consequences of that decision a bit later just like
To focus on when the decision was taken to legislate using public health Powers as opposed to the CCA and the impact that that had on on Welsh government decision- making and you you say uh we don’t need it pulled up but it’s in I think your supplementary witness
Statement for module two paragraph 4 you say on or around the 2nd of March the UK government made the decision not to use the CCA however your understanding was that even if the coronav virus act would be the legislative vehicle uh the UK would be the primary decision maker once the
Act had received Royal Ascent implementation would be left to the Welsh government so your your working assumption hasn’t shifted at that stage by the 2nd of March we then um skip forward to a cover meeting on the 20th of March and you deal with this at paragraph 52 of your module 2 witness
Statement and you say this uh the meeting recommended that the public health act 1984 be used rather than the CCA as the legal basis for government action in responding to the pandemic and I’m right in saying aren’t I that that 20th of March Cobra meeting that was the
First time that you were told that public health Powers would be um used to respond to the pandemic my lady I do think this is a profoundly important part of the the debate and you know I I know the dangers of looking retrospectively at these things but the lack of clarity over the
Legislative basis for the powers that will be needed continues all the way through March my belief right up until the 20th of March is that the essential decisions would remain in the hands of the UK government and that devolved governments would be implementers of those decisions um even at the 20th of
March there is further confusion over the next couple of days as to where the ability to exercise Public Health Powers lie and there is an extraordinary exchange of messages between Mr go and Mr Hancock on the 30th of May in which Mr Hancock says I’ve seen this submission uh it’s
Disgraceful that lawyers don’t understand where these Powers lie because public health is not devolved so here is the Secretary of State for health in England getting the most basic thing entirely wrong he has advice from his lawyers which is correct that once the decision had been made to
Use the 1984 Powers then the decisions would move to Scotland Wales and Northern Ireland and for ministers in London for for England and that we would have an obligation to discharge those responsibilities once they were placed in our hands but as late as the 30th of May the secretary of state gets that
Entirely wrong uh in his exchange with Mr go so if we were to look to the Future and draw any lessons from the experience then getting Clarity early about the legal basis on which these most profoundly consequential decisions were being made I I I think that’s when
You work your way through it again it’s pretty alarming that on the 20th of March we are still resolving this but both both Nations knew that they had public Public Health um act powers on their own statute books just playing Devil’s Advocate could it not be said that you
Ought to have been rather than assuming it would be the CCA or a new bill but a version of the CCA uh that would be used as the legislative vehicle to respond to the pandemic should you not have been questioning that as far back as the 18th of February when there’s the first
Discussion about legislative um response and asking well where where where are we where is this going given that it has such as you say a profound impact well I think that would have required quite an imaginative leap on the part of the Welsh government uh Cobra is constructed on the basis that
The CCA lies behind the decisions that it will take and there was no suggestion at all that this was going to be any different all the discussions about legislation seemed to me to be clearly on the premise the decision making National Emergency would lie in the
Hands of UK ministers I think it would have been quite you know a sort of Sid step for the Welsh government to say uh but surely there’s a different way of doing this using powers we’ve already got and quite clearly that had not occurred to me because the 20th of March
Is the first point at which I begin to realize that this is a looming reality you say in your uh evidence that once the decision had been taken this was a decision that you agreed with because uh health is a devolved matter and using public health Powers would
Allow the Welsh government to respond to welles’s specific circumstances and you you go on to say it’s paragraph 195 of your module 2 witness statement um that once the determination was made to rely upon Public Health Powers the responsibility for decision- making was dispersed to each UK nation and you believe that this
Allowed the Welsh government in your words to calibrate a response which reflected our particular circumstances and which sustained the broad support of Welsh citizens again I suppose it’s similar theme to my last question um if you agreed once the decision had been made and you agreed with the use of
Public Health powers for all of those reasons you you explained in your witness statement why were you not advocating on behalf of Wales for public health powers to be used to respond to a pandemic rather than the CCA or a version of the CCA because until the 20th of March
There was no suggestion at all that that was the turn of thinking that the UK government had come to once they once they do come to it uh maybe I would have changed one word in my own statement when I heard you read it it isn’t simply
That a decision to use Public Health Powers allows W ministers it requires wsh ministers these now become your responsibilities you have no option but to exercise them because the responsibility has been placed in your hands you coming back to the the point I said would pick up on um about
Unintended consequences that you refer to in your witness statement um was that something that you thought at the time was appreciated by the UK government I think that’s probably what I meant when I use the word unintended consequences I don’t think it was apparent to UK ministers at the time
That by placing that responsibility at the nation level that meant that there would now be decisions being made by others over which they had no Direct Control so I think that was a Dawning realization for UK ministers you can begin to see it as early as the 23rd of March though the
Decision of Cobra in lockdown because there are already nuances that are different there there’s a discussion in which the mayor of London myself and the first minister of Scotland are arguing the construction sites ought to be covered by the new arrangements and the UK government is taking a different view
So there are already small signs from the very beginning that there would be some differences in implementation but I think it was a Dawning process rather than a clearly plumbed in recognition from the outset now perhaps Mr dford for some of the reasons that you’ve just given um the inquiry has heard evidence
In in module 2 from some UK government ministers and former ministers that they regret the decision not to use the Civil contingencies act uh to respond to the pandemic um Mr Johnson in his evidence uh in module 2 has said that in the event of a future pandemic the UK should
Be treated as a single epidemiological unit and that the best approach is a uk-wide one with no differences between the four nations and that evidence was echoed by um Simon Hart at the end of last week when he gave evidence to to the same effect do you agree that the best
Approach in the event of a future pandemic is a uk-wide response or would you um see a response as with uh this pandemic by using the public health act again well I definitely don’t think that the evidence suggests to me that decisions made in London would have been
Better decisions as far as Wales is concerned uh we are just inevitably closer to the ground more aware of administrative structures alert to the different patterns uh of the disease in the Welsh uh case Simply Better able to communicate in the bilingual way in which Welles uh operates so I definitely
Don’t agree that better decisions would have been made from whiteall in Wales I think there is a different way however in which strengthened ability to coordinate between the four nations would have been preferable to the pattern uh that we ended up with and that that would have allowed uh a
Different degree of coordination and Joint decision making that we ended up with and that’s a preferable way I think before we leave the um question of Divergence you will have been aware that both Mr Johnson and Mr Hart have given evidence to the inquiry um that there was a risk
Of the devolved administrations being in their words different for the sake of being different and in fact Mr Hart arguably went further and stated the Welsh government actively sought differentiation for no other reason than to be different and to set Wells apart from the other nations in the
UK was the need to be different for the sake of being different ever part of your thinking or the thinking of the wel government well I absolutely refute the assertion of the secretary state for Wales for which I notice he provided no evidence at all uh my lady I am a
Believer in the United Kingdom you know I lead a government that wants the United Kingdom to succeed and faces considerable political opposition from people who believe the wales’s future will be better separated from the United Kingdom uh I had no motivation of any sort to make decisions for the sake of
Being different and I think my effort through the whole pandemic is to try and find better ways of coming together to make better informed decisions and I don’t think the prime minister or the Secretary of State could offer you a single specific instance to justify the charges that they have
Made move away now from legislation Devolution Divergence and ask you some questions about the um Welsh government’s initial response response in the in the early months of January to um January to March 2020 you say in your evidence that although you were aware of covid-19 in January and February it was not a
Priority of the Welsh government and you go on to say that as February 2020 moved on responding to the extreme and adverse weather conditions that caused widespread and significant flooding throughout Welles was your words the most urgent matter facing the government uh and it wasn’t until March that Co
Moved up the Welsh government’s priority list until it became the most significant matter is that is that a fair characterization of the position well the early months of 2020 are dominated from a Welsh government’s perspective by the uh risks of a No Deal brexit which was imminent by winter pressures in the
Health Service which are always out there most pressing in early January in our anxieties to pass a budget through the through the Senate we are uh government with a very slim majority and you’ve got to pass a budget and by the first part of February we are dealing
With very significant 40y year uh adverse weather events that affect thousands of people so those are the front of desk preoccupations during those early weeks it is not to say of course that we are not aware of uh what is happening elsewhere in the world or engaging keeping ourselves properly
Informed about it my colleague V Gein starts issuing weekly statements to the Senate on the 24th of January he starts issuing daily updates to ministerial colleagues on the 28th of February before 20th of January I’m sorry both of those are January dates 24th and 28th of January so before February begins we are
Already alert to and engaged in making sure we are are as well informed as we can be of what’s Happening elsewhere but at that point it is happening elsewhere there is not a single case uh in Wales nothing you can point to that is directly affecting the Welsh
Population on the 24th of January um you were advised by Dr Aon that there was a significant risk that the virus would arrive in Wales that’s right isn’t it yes now despite that warning being given on the 24th of January uh covid-19 is not discussed by the Welsh cabinet until
The 25th of February now given that cabinet is charged with making as we’ve discussed any of the key decisions relating to P pandemic response is it surprising for there to have been no discussion at cabinet for more than a month after you’re given that Warning by the um chief medical officer about a
Significant risk of the virus arriving in Wales I think if I could my ladies just important to provide a small amount of com context here the W government is a very small government we have nine cabinet ministers we all work with our offices next door to one another it’s very very
Different to whiteall where ministers are scattered necessarily across a wide geography and where the only time they come together is when they’re in the cabinet room the fact that there was no discussion at cabinet until the 25th of February it should not be read at all as there being no discussion between
Cabinet colleagues because there was a great deal of discussion between cabinet colleagues in the way that we would normally transact business so I would have spoken directly to vaugh gethin after all the Cobra meetings that he had discussed and he would have been involved in other discussions with
Cabinet colleagues at that point there is nothing for the cabinet to decide we’re being kept well informed we are discussing matters between uh ourselves and then there comes a point when it becomes clear that the cabinet is likely to be involved in Cross portfolio decision making at that point it becomes
An item on the cabinet agenda and very quickly it comes to dominate the work of the cabinet isn’t the point that it’s not just a case of being kept informed it’s a case of making sure that people know what is going to happen on the ground what preparations there are um
For example for shielding vulnerable people um um to check that there’s surge capacity it’s not just moning it’s a point I made to VOR gethin it’s not just knowing what’s going on around the world it’s what are we going to do when it comes here which there’s a significant risk it’s going
To so I think the the question for me there is at what point does the cabinet shift from the being kept informed to needing to make decisions that will be necessary in Wales I think that point does not come for us until the second half of February up until then we are
Essentially making sure that we are as well informed as we can be plugged into the knowledge that is available at a UK level there comes a moment and it’s you know it’s Gathering after that 18th of February Cobra meeting so I say I attended because I could see that we
Were moving into a situation where legislation was was going to affect not just the health Minister but the education Minister and the transport Minister and the housing Minister and this was going to become a cross-government uh preoccupation and that’s when the cabinet begins to discuss things Mr dford you you had some
Experience of planning for epidemics as you had to deal with the Ebola outbreak whilst you were Health Minister during your time as a special adviser to the first Minister there was a SARS outbreak and given that experience did you not think or did you not realize in January
2020 the import importance of early action the rapid scaling up of resources thinking about infection control measures and aren’t they issues that ought to have been discussed at cabinet at that stage well the signal to me that we needed to move into that territory was the moment when chief medical officers
Advis at the risk level to the United Kingdom into Wales has moved from low to moderate right until the pointed which the cabinet uh begins to discuss things the advice from AR medical officers is the risk to whales is low and when that is your primary signal it doesn’t read
To me like a signal that we need to start mobilizing in that purposeful way all the things that that you listed when the signal changes and the signal is now it’s gone from being low to being moderate that’s the point at which the cabinet does become engaged in exactly
That list of considerations there’s a there’s a very plausible case well I’m not denying it at all that that signal should have been read earlier and that we should have been we should have moved what we were doing some weeks uh earlier into the year but the signal wasn’t
There at the time at the time the signal is this is a low risk you know it’s not uh it’s not as pressing or right in front of you as some of the other risks that we are dealing with but at the point that the risk level right rises
From low to moderate you see the Welsh government gearing itself up and the cabinet gearing itself up to Grapple with some of those matters Elan Ed Morgan um gave evidence yesterday and and she said that if the Welsh government were given their time again we would recognize that we
Probably should have been making earlier preparations throughout January and February do you agree with that I think I’ve I’ve just said that that there’s a very plausable case for saying that but that is with the lens of hindsight applied to it if we knew then what we knew
Now there are many things we might have done differently with better knowledge in the knowledge of the time we moved when the signal to us uh suggested to us that that was necessary the inquiry has heard evidence from various sources so I’m thinking particularly Professor sir
Chris witty uh he told module 2 that he was under no illusions that the UK was well set up to meet a challenge of a major pandemic because he said he knew investment in healthc care had been suboptimal he knew that the planned flu plans such as they were wouldn’t
Necessarily stand up to the challenges of a Corona virus and also he was aware that there was no sophisticated or scaled up test and Trace system in contradistinction to some other countries in general terms in late January early February were you aware of those concerns was that a Viewpoint you
Shared in Wales well we would certainly have shared the view that a prolonged period in which the funding of Public Services was not what it needed to be would have left the system more vulnerable to a sudden and Major Impact we would absolutely have understood and shared that I would certainly have been
Aware that we did not have a uh test and Trace capacity of the sort that we were uh eventually able to mobilize I received advice in the middle of February that Wales had the capacity to carry out 100 tests a day and that in normal circumstances that was you know
Sufficient to meet our needs but it clearly was not going to be sufficient to meet a mass testing regime so some of the points that uh the the CMO for England makes there I think would have been known to us just before we move can I go back I’m sorry
About this Mr P can I go back to the advice you were getting Mr dford um you said this your CMO advised you in January of significant risk I always call significant a weasly word on the basis it can mean a lot of things to different people but it usually means
Something to Mark significant and then you say you’re getting advised it was low risk that the um virus was coming to Wales did you interrogate that advice and say Well when wait a minute back in January you said it was significant and therefore something that should be marked and and now you’re
Saying L did you interrogate it did you ask questions of why you were getting that advice we certainly have had opportunities to discuss it directly with our chief medical officer but my understanding of the time would have been the risk to the United Kingdom is low the chances of it coming here are
Not significant if it does come here then the risk will be significant that’s the distinction I think that was in my mind the risk of it happening is not it’s it’s at the low end of the spectrum if it were to materialize then the risk will be significant so I think you you
Can understand that the chief medical officer was making two separate but linked points can I say that again is that no it’s the distinction between there’s a risk of serious rain and a serious risk of rain I would have thought that significant risk means that there
Is there’s a a likelihood or POS very real possibility it’s coming so it’s not a risk of serious rign it’s a serious risk of rain well I agree you can you can definitely read it that way had that been the intention I would have expected though that the chief medical officer
Would say and therefore these are the things you need to be doing now and there wasn’t advice of that sort either through sir Chris witty or through other chief medical officers or in or in Wales at that point so I think had the chief medical officer meant ministers to
Understand this is coming and it’s coming your way and you need they would have been and you need to do this but there wasn’t and so I think that what he what he meant was the risk is low that’s what we’re being told if it happens it will be significant and that was
Accepted without interrogation um not with I wouldn’t say without interrogation because we would have had an opportunity to discuss it but the fact that it was unanimously The View had that been an idiosyncratic view of the Welsh CMO then you would have expected quite a lot of interrogation
Given that he is mirroring the advice that all his fellow Chief CMOS are giving in every part of the United Kingdom I don’t think you would have thought that there were major alarm Bells being sounded Mr dford as well as assessing risk one also has to assess likely harms
And given the demogra demographic characteristics of the wal’s population so specifically the age profile of those aged over 65 and aged over 75 would you agree it was always likely that Wales would experience disproportionate levels of impact from covid-19 well um as we say you know
Wales older poorer sicker uh so yes of course that would always have been in the mind of Welsh ministers Health inequalities has been a preoccupation uh of uh wsh ministers throughout the whole of the Devolution period so we would have been aware of course of that so even if the risk um is
Low the harm levels given what you say older poorer they are higher doesn’t that speak to taking earlier action I don’t think that’s an unfair point to make whether by itself it would have been enough to um make whales what would have been an outli in the preparations that were being made
Across the United Kingdom I’m not sure that it bears that much weight and I think In fairness to you you you do say in paragraph 17 of your module 2 witness statement you say looking back on matters and given what we now know there is strong evidence to suggest that more
Stringent action could have and should have been taken sooner just want to um explore with you briefly before we take a break what stringent action you think ought to have been taken um by the government in January and February and if I can just start uh with the emergency coordination Center Wales um
The inquiry has heard evidence from Dr Quentin sanderfer um he was between January and November 2020 the lead strategic director in public health Welles um for covid-19 he’s told the inquiry that on the 22nd of January he invoked the public health Wells emergency response plan at enhanced level and then two days
Later on the 24th of January so coincidentally the same day that you have conversation with the CMO and are advised of a significant risk of the virus arriving in Wales uh the public health Wales called on the Welsh government to stand up the emergency coordination Center uh he received a response from David
Ging um who said I don’t see this event as it is currently moving from being in the public health outbreak management space and into the Civil contingency multi- agency emergency response U and then that position was restated by the Welsh government on the 3rd of March in in an email um Public Health
Wells Dr um sander then spoke to on the 11th of March the date that the who declare covid-19 a pandemic the fact that public health World drafted a paper summarizing the current situation in Wales and providing effectively an evidential summary of considerations that the Welsh government could take
Into account in deciding whether to declare a major incident for health in Wales and Dr sandera told the inquiry uh feedback to that paper was that such a declaration would not be helpful and he said he was astonished that by early March the Welsh government were not treating the pandemic as a civil
Emergency situation looking back is that something that you would do differently well I think the first thing I have to say is that I would not have been aware of any of those conversations those are going on between officials who are themselves experts in the response to an emergency
Um I cannot rule out the possibility that had the public health whales view been more directly communicated to ministers that that would have made a difference to uh the actions that uh we took but the system that we had as you know is that the public health Wales
Does not speak directly to ministers by routine they speak to us ministers via the chief medical officer who is the person charg with the oversight of the public health Wales functions so I I can’t uh rule out of course that had those views come to us in the way that
Dr sander described it might have made a difference but that isn’t the way that they were conveyed Dr sander says that what he thinks was missing was National strategic leadership and coordination from the Welsh government is that a fair criticism and he’s talking specifically the period January to mid February
Uh no I don’t think it is Dr sanderfer Who I’ve worked with many over many years and have a great deal of uh respect for does not work in the Welsh government uh the fact that he is unable to see something happening does not mean that it is not happening it just means
That from the vantage point he has in public health Wales an arms length body that operates outside the Welsh government they were things going on that he didn’t know about my lady if that’s of course secondly um as you know Mr dford we take regular breaks I know I’m very conscious
Of all your other duties and I promise you we will complete your evidence today I’m sorry about the demands on your time uh half past 11 please all rise e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e
E e e Mr Mr dford if we could start please with the 25th February cabinet meeting we can see the um minutes at 00001 29852 uh as we discussed earlier this is the the first cabinet meeting to formally discuss covid if we can go to
The last page it’s page six uh uh under any other business um we were told by Mr gethin we shouldn’t read much if anything into that um 5.3 please um Mr in is um leading and and addressing cabinet at this stage uh the this paragraph was discussed um at quite
Some length with Mr gethin when he gave his evidence uh do you have an independent recollection of what was said about um there being imported cases into the UK or imported cases into Wales I appreciate we are going back four years well the minute is inaccurate it
Doesn’t reflect what was said at the cabinet as you know sometime later before the minutes are published I get S them afraid nailing my reputation for pedantry to the wall I read them and go back in and say I’m sure that minute is inaccurate that’s not what was said and the minute is
Corrected you just to clear this up as well you you do deal with this in your um witness statement for this module it’s inq 30 37129 at page 25 paragraph 77 uh you you say there um it was noted that the minister of Health and Social Services had been updating um uh senate
Members the risk of the UK was described as moderate um information was shared across all four um travel advice public so four lines up from the bottom there had been no imported cases into the UK so that that eror from the minutes has crept into your witness statement um that that
Is also an error as I like it is what is perhaps striking about these minutes is that the um and perhaps if we just go back to them it’s inq 30129 852 please is there’s no consideration by cabinet of what steps should be taken to stop the virus spreading so what
Infection control measures needed to be thought about and put in place um there doesn’t seem to be any discussion about that why why is that I’m not sure I can uh recollect for you precisely enough why some things were discussed and why some things were not
At that moment for me the key thing is is that this is the moment at which the Welsh government’s attention turns to this issue with the significance that he was to command and at that point all those issues are being discussed uh right if I could say just in terms of the watch
Cabinets response at this point I decide that all cabinet meetings should now be attended by all ministers not just cabinet ministers there are 12 ministers in the large government four of whom are junior ministers but I want everybody on the table from now on by the 4th of
March we are setting up a second meeting every week for all cabinet colleagues specifically and only to deal with uh the covid-19 emergency see so very rapidly From This Moment On The W government is gearing itself to deal with the issues that Mr Po has identified Mr J what what was the plan
At this stage this is the 25th of February it’s being co being discussed for the first time at cabinet what was the plan for practically stopping the spread of the virus into Wales the the nuts and bolts of the plan as you understood it to be you’ve spoken about
Testing and tracing we know that that only dealt with index cases um what was the Welsh government going to do about infection control measures that’s that’s why I say I’m surprised that’s not seen in these cabinet minutes and I just want to know what what was the plan at this stage
Well first of all to be clear there is no plan to prevent the virus from spreading into Wales that would have been uh an ambition well beyond what you would have imagined we could have accomplished but from now on there are very practical things being discussed about how we would respond to Corona
Virus when it arrives and it’s now becoming a when rather than an if so you will see measures being taken we have an early discussion about schools and what we will do with that we are beginning now to think about how we will gear the Health Service up for what it may face
And within another few days and only a few days and as the only part of the United Kingdom at that point we formally agree that we will postpone all non- urgent outpatient inpatient treatments in order for the Health Service to gear itself up for what is coming its way so
Um uh I’m afraid I I just don’t have a detailed enough recollection to be able to pinpoint for you you know at exactly what point we discuss an exact theme in preparation but I’m very confident that from that date onwards all of that is happening and we’ll we’ll work our way through um
March and and look at some um minutes as well to to help your recollection in a moment just a step to one side um you say in your witness statement it’s your witness statement for this module paragraph 82 you say that during the period January to March 2020 understanding of the essential
Features of the virus was in many ways rudimentary you go on to say that the Welsh government’s understanding was no better but no worse than any other and then you go on to say paragraph 83 that during January and February there was some limited and preliminary evidence which suggested the possibility of
Asymptomatic spread but that the Welsh government concluded that there was insufficient evidence upon which to base operational decisions and this has been a topic that’s been explored with various Witnesses over the course of the last couple of weeks the inquiry heard evidence from Mr Hancock in module two that his single
Greatest regret was not pushing harder for asymptomatic transmission to be the Baseline assumption is that so is that a regret that you share well well I I have a slightly different regret I think to Mr Hancock which is that I wish we had known more at that point about the scale at which
Asymptomatic spread would happen uh but we didn’t have it nobody had it the World Health Organization is still saying in July that it is unclear the role that asymptomatic spread uh is playing in the Corona virus epidemic and in February and into March there are very tentative and very with very limited evidence
Suggestions that asymptomatic spread may be playing some unspecified part in transmission now I wish we’d had better information than that but I’m not sure that I share Mr Hancock’s regret that we we didn’t act more decisively on evidence that was as thin and as unreliable as it was at the time given
The risks presented to some of the most vulnerable in Welsh Society do you think the risk of asymptomatic transmission was sufficiently factored into Welsh government decision- making in this period January to March and I suppose the question is I hear what you say about um there being some evidence but not no
Definitive evidence ought a more precautionary approach have been taken in any event well knowing what we know now the answer to that would be definitely did the evidence at the time a monk to sufficient to take even that more precautionary approach well that question was very directly addressed by
Our clinical advisers and as late as the 28th of April they are telling us that it doesn’t ask some questions next before we move into March 2020 just about data and and modeling um we’ve heard evidence that it wasn’t until summer of 2020 that Wales had its own scientific models and
Prior to then modeling output was produced by Professor Ferguson at Imperial University and also spym uh via Sage when those early models um reached Wales the conclusions about MPI Effectiveness were not adjusted for for example wales’s particular demographic makeup its geography the movement patterns of people who lived there and
Also the different relationship that Welsh people might have with their government so likely compliance with any measures put in place and I I certainly mean no criticism by raising this but were you aware that the conclusions that were being made about npis would be most effective and whether they were most
Effective weren’t being robustly challenged or amended by Dr Aton or Dr Orford because they simply didn’t have the uh data or the modeling to make those challenges well they didn’t have the uh the data or the modeling that is uh certainly the case uh I think the inhibition on them
Fine-tuning what the npis might have been in Wales though is more practical than that it’s what could the fine tuning have been what what in practice could you have done because the npis that are available to you are inevit blunt instruments and you you are introducing
Them at a population wide level so I think I think what I’m struggling to think of immediately is even if you had calibrated in the way that you are suggesting even if you had the data to allow you to do it what would the Practical change have been I and I don’t
Think I can immediately think of one I suppose what you what you could have done as first Minister and and you may say you you did do this is you look at what was happening all over the world so did you look at South Korea Japan what
We know happened later in Lombardy and think that there might be lessons to be learned there about quick decisive imposition of npis well one of the things I think we were uh again fortunate with there are some things we don’t have specific data and modeling but one of the things the public health
Wales was always good at was International experience I remember the chief medical officer reporting to me very early on in the pandemic a direct discussion that he had had with colleagues in South Korea and that that had been mediated through Public Health Wales and their International uh links
So I felt we were in possession of good advice from our clinicians on what was happening elsewhere and where you might be able to draw some lessons from it they are truthfully not easy lessons to draw the cultural context of of South Korea is very different to the cultural
Context of The Valleys of South Wales for example so the idea that you could pick up something that was done there and just drop it into the wsh context I don’t think it was ever going to be as simple as that but we were I thought well served by our
Ability to know what was happening elsewhere in the world and what other governments were trying to implement if we move back to the chronology we’ moved our way through February and moving into March now which uh you’ve said in your evidence that’s when covid moved up at the Welsh government’s priority list and
Became the most significant matter are you able to help us understand when would you say that day came because the inquiry has heard evidence from various witnesses that it wasn’t in their view until mid-march that the Welsh government actually could be seen to be taking covid
Seriously well I I would probably put it a little earlier than that but of course I’m in the very center of these things so I am seeing all the things that are happening and not everybody will have that same perspective um if I had to choose a DAT and is an arbitrary nature
To this isn’t there probably the 4th of March uh I would say because by the 4th of March I say we are now meeting every week as a Cabinet specifically on this uh matter so our Core group is established there’s a note you’ll have seen where the Health Minister says to
His office clear my diary for the whole of March so that I can focus exclusively on Corona virus so I think it’s a bit earlier than the middle of March I put it a week or so before that you attended a cobra meeting on the 2nd of March that
Was the first Cobra that was chaired by Mr Johnson and we can see the minutes there that inq 4 is 56 217 if we can have a look please at page five second paragraph uh the chair invited the government CMO and the government U CSA to provide a situation update uh there
Was no sustained Community transmission so this is sorry you’re quite right um and an important correction I’m missing Nots and now we’ve got a there was now sustained Community transmission so this is now 2nd March it’s nearly a week since uh Co has first been discussed by the Welsh
Cabinate we know it’s 10 days after lockdowns been imposed in Northern Italy cases in the UK since late January you’ve had the first confirmed case in Wales on the 28th of February and Cobra is now being told that there is um sustained Community transmission Mr Dr
Did you understand at this point at 2nd of March that containment of the virus had effectively been been lost the virus was here the virus was spreading I see sir uh Chris witty says to the inquiry that he didn’t believe that we had reached that point in the
Second half of February but I think this is the point at which that move down the down the the steps of contain delay and so on this is the point of which delay become contain becomes delay if we can um have a look please at uh fifth page paragraph
Three so same page thank you uh so continuing the CMO said that interventions to delay the spread of the virus must not be implemented too early in order to ensure maximum Effectiveness what was your position in relation to this suggestion was was there a debate about the good sense or otherwise of of
Delaying well um my lady I’m I’m a social scientist that’s how I earned my living so I am while I’m not in any way uh an expert in clinical matters when it comes to Behavioral Science you know it’s it’s the stuff that I am familiar with so I completely could see why there
Was the debate going on as to at what point do you introduce restrictions at what point will these become things that the public will understand that people will be uh willing to comply with and the advice that we were getting and it was pretty consistent advice at this
Point from the CMO from behavioral scientists is if you go too soon you may lose the impact that you’re looking for because people won’t be convinced they won’t see it in their own lives why it is they’re being asked to do these extraordinary things and the compliance
May not follow at the level that you need so um I’m this is this is part of the debate which I I felt I was on stronger grounds myself in being able to understand again what we what we see or what we don’t see in these minutes
Similarly to what we didn’t see in the um minutes from the 25th of February Welsh cabinet meeting we don’t see any debate about the Merit or efficacy of specific measures to to control infection why at this stage given what you’ve said about your understanding that um containment probably had been
Lost at this point why is no one saying to the CMO that look it’s it’s obvious containment is been lost or is about to be lost this fatal virus to which we have no vaccine or antiviral it’s here it’s spreading what is it in Practical terms
That needs to be done or what we should be doing now to prevent the spread of the virus or slow the spread of the virus that all seems to be missing or not debated by Cobra at certainly at this point in time is that is that your
Understanding well of course I I don’t have the minute in front of me and there were a series of meetings at this point but this is the point isn’t it when coobra is informed that Sage is debating the different npis it doesn’t yet have a sense of which of the potential
Repertoire are likely to be the most effective and it doesn’t have a sense of the different combinations the different ingredients on this menu can be put together in different ways and sayage doesn’t yet know which ingredients we should use and what combination we should use so that
Work is going on in Sage that’s what Cobra is told and we’ll get advice as soon as you know the people who are focusing on this with the best ability to offer that advice are in a position to do that and I think if we look at
Page six the um the end of this these minutes next steps it says summing up the chair said uh so I think P page six of these minutes thank you very much um par 4 Next Step summing up the chair said the government’s response must be guided by the science and protecting the
Vulnerable so this this is effectively wait waiting waiting on Sage to inform them of um what could be done that’s that final I I I think it’s either this meeting or the one on the fourth where uh the chair has just summed up a bit earlier in saying it’s
Business as usual so you know I I think I do need to make that point if I could that you know the prime minister’s View and he expresses it routinely in March is that we must carry on you know we must tell people this is a mild illness
They’re not to get uh anxious about it and and that does create a Certain inhibition on some of the advice being taken seriously as I think it was being proposed to us first Ministers of Wales and Scotland being inhibited by the prime minister’s view um Mr Jord when a prime minister expresses a view most people take you know they will
It will be taken seriously I mean I wouldn’t have agreed with him at that point but he did he repeatedly every time we discussed it s of you know said things that were designed to minimize the seriousness of the position we were we were facing and
To you know he he would he might say that he was responding to that advice about not going too early not doing not not doing things in advance of where public opinion lay but I think he has said himself hasn’t he in some of his evidence that looking back he wasn’t
Taking it as seriously as it needed to be accepting the point about um that some say but not going too early although I think there may be debates about that um so you’re waiting on Sage to come up with the various the modeling of the various interventions shielding face mask all
The different closure schools that kind of thing were you aware what work was going on so that should the modelers say you need this range of interventions you need to Shield the vulnerable you need to um test and Tra what work was going on to make sure that once you’d got the
Recommended combination of npis from Sage that basically you could say right we’re we’ll we we’re on it we we’ll get it all ready so that the Welsh people can be as best protected as possible work was I mean I to be honest I’ve heard a lot throughout the inquiry not
Just this module of plans and discussions and I want to know what was actually happening to make things ready did were you aware were at that stage or had you left it to your health minister no no uh we’d have been discussing all of this in our uh in our cabinet
Discussions I think the point that I will probably make is that it wouldn’t be a reflection of the realities of the time to regard these things as happening in sequence it wasn’t an orderly we will think we will plan we will prepare we will do we’re thinking planning and
Doing all at the same time so in this very few weeks by the time we get less than 3 weeks from this point in Wales all schools are closed all Fe colleges are closed most major events have been cancelled pubs clubs and restaurants are closed gyms cinemas theaters Leisure
Centers are closed foot paths Beauty spots tourist attractions and Caravan parks are closed that it’s the the reality of the time is not were you planning were you preparing before you do you’re having to do everything you know in in one very very compressed uh sequence of events and
Actually in a very very short period of time many of the things that we were thinking about on the 2nd of March have actually happened and that that’s only possible because people are thinking and preparing and planning and talking particularly while at the same time getting on and doing things as well
Well at your regular Monday press briefing on the 2nd of March that’s the first mention of covid um we can have a look at inq 30227 479 uh second bullet point you confirm the first case in Wales person being treated at Roy free hospital in London and then if we can
Zoom out and look at under preparations uh you say that Wales in the whole of the UK is well prepared for these type of incidents and that you have robust infection control measures in place now isn’t the reality that Wales was was not at all well prepared I
Mean that much was accepted by Mr GE in in his evidence that he gave in module uh one and to some extent in his evidence that we heard on on Monday for what we actually faced we were not as well prepared as we needed to be for what we thought we would face
What we had planned or planned response then it did have a lot of robust elements in it it is simply that when we came to implement the plan the I’m I’m I’m I’m very allergic to some of the military metaphors that others used in
All of this but if I use one briefly now you know the enemy we faced was not the enemy we were expecting if we can have a look at a at the next Cobra meeting it’s 9th of March we’ve got those minutes inq 4 56 219 uh
This was chaired by the Prime Minister UD Dal in with Mr gethin and Dr Aon I think it would be right to say the main purpose of this uh meeting was to discuss delaying the peak of the virus if we can have a look at paragraph s on
Page five please um so the meeting highlights uh for the first time that the spread of covid-19 in the devolved administrations was not at the same stage as England therefore necessary to consider whether implementation of the response should be staged or uniformally implemented and although it’s obviously
Right to say that Wales was behind the curve uh at this point in time your view was that a single message was preferable is that right it is now you you make a point in your witness statement that the cabinet office minutes which are these minutes that we’re looking at don’t
Accurately record a concern that was raised at this meeting by yourself and also the first minister of Scotland uh the concern was that the Prime Minister and the UK government appeared to be moving away from Reliance on the medical and scientific advice if I can just summarize hopefully
Accurately the point and then you can confirm if I if I’ve got it right um Sage advice for this Cobra meeting defined symptomatic as those exhibiting mild respiratory symptoms and that advice accorded with the advice that also had been given by S Chris witty and the advice from Sage was that those with
Mild symptoms should self-isolate and stay at home however if we look at um paragraph six on page five of these minutes the prime minister’s summary there states that those with heavy respiratory tract infections were to remain at home and it would only be the next stage where those with mild
Symptoms would be told to self-isolate we don’t need to have them up but there is a Welsh government uh note of this meeting and that records the first minister of Scotland stating that the prime minister’s summary did not correlate with the sage papers it was important for there to be a joint
Agreed CMO advice if there was to be a change of options have I have I accurately summarized the position you have um sage and CMO advice was also to consider household isolation that week um but I think I’m wri in saying the UK government thought that that was the
Least practical option and had the most disproportionate impacts and you challenged the Prime Minister on this and expressed The View that if the scientific and medical advice was not going to be followed there had to be a clear uh had to be clear effectively with the public that that was the case
Is is that right yeah no that is absolutely right uh I just want to um Express one nuanced difference uh I’ve been asked a number of times this morning you know did you interrogate the advice did you ask about it um I don’t I myself would not use maybe
You didn’t intend it uh pejorative language about having a robust discussion in say in in cobra that’s what they’re there for and yes you know both the first minister of Scotland and I felt that we’d gone into the meeting with a very clear understanding that the advice we were getting the advice we
Would follow would be that people would be asked to self-isolate on mild symptoms at the meeting the Prime Minister would not use the word mild uh he want to use a different threshold for self isolation and we have a challenging conversation about it but that’s what we were there to
Do was the impression you got there at this Sage meeting that this was an instance perhaps of the UK government um and the Prime Minister not following the science well it’s a gradation the science is is that people should solic he agreed with that it’s the Threshold at which they
Are to self-isolate that he wish to take a different view I myself I’m sure I was guilty of it many times but I tried to avoid using the phrase following the science what we were is informed by the science and then we we made the decision and you know the
Prime Minister was probably entitled to have that debate but he wasn’t you he was he was not advocating an outcome from that meeting which is the outcome that I believed at the start when I went in through the door I didn’t think that’s what we were being asked to
Agree and it turned out that we were and that’s why we both said in that case we need a further advice from all CMOS to you to tell us whether or not they think we are doing the right thing here following the the chronology but dealing with a discret topic that fits
In now which is mass Gatherings um two days after that Cobra meeting so now the 11th of March you attended a CO covid-19 Core group meeting uh there was an update from Dr Aon uh there was now 15 cases in Wales with some Community transmission and uh given the events in
Italy there was a need to prepare he told you for the reasonable worst case scenario U Dr Orford provided a technical briefing on on mass Gatherings and behavioral and social interventions it’s inq 30271 613 uh if we can just have a look at the first paragraph
Please so in the event of a severe epidemic the NHS will be unable to meet all demands placed on it reasonable uh in the reasonable worst case scenario Demand on beds is likely to overtake Supply well before the peak is reached currently the reasonable worst case is
Also considered within the bands of a late likely scenario if we can have a look please at uh second page paragraph 7 uh being told here that as of uh 10th of March uh 17 patients in intens of care likely to increase to 100 within the next 10 days then 300 shortly after
Exponential growth um paragraph 8 please reproduction um rate currently 2.4 needed to be brought uh below one then if we can go to the bottom of page two uh please there’s a discussion about behavioral control measures so restrictions of mass Gatherings would likely reduce infection related deaths by 2% whereas self-isolation of those
With symptoms would have a gr impact likely redu deaths by 11% and then if we go over the page to paragraph 12 uh you’re told that any of the measures listed below could on their own potentially flatten and extend the peak of the epidemic by some degree uh but a
Combination was expected to have a greater uh impact so follow following this briefing this is the 11th of March you knew there was exponential growth in infection numbers uh urgent action was required to control the spread of the virus stopped the NHS in Wales being overwhelmed also obviously reduced the number of
Deaths um there is then a cobra meeting on the 12th of March if we can have a look at the minutes please it’s inq 4 56221 uh if we have a look please at page five uh first paragraph government Chief Scientific Advisor provides an update uh uh number of cases in the UK
Increasing uh numbers would increase quickly and then Sage advice was the UK was approximately four weeks behind Italy expected the UK to follow a similar trajectory in terms of number of cases uh then if we can please skip to paragraph five um the third bullet point notes that the hardest intervention to
Call was whether to cancel Mass Gatherings as the evidence was not there especially for indoor uh sorry especially for outdoor events um just pausing there although the scientific advice was not there as it says to cancel Mass Gatherings you’d been advised the previous day that restricting Mass Gatherings could reduce
Infection related deaths by by 2% that’s right isn’t it yes um and I think you you say in your witness statement that mass Gatherings were in your view you say an unwelcomed distraction for the Emergency Services in Wales that that’s also right that is right yeah and you also say that you
Were significantly concerned because of the need for consistent consistency of public messaging and felt strongly that to say on one hand stay at home but on another to say it was fine to attend the cheltam festival or concert was confusing that that’s also right I argued at this Cobra meeting for
Us to agree that mass Gathering should not go ahead uh I argue that as strongly as I could in this meeting I think I said in an earlier answer to Mr pool that some Cobra uh decisions you found had more or less been made before you got there
Others there was a more uh free flowing discussion and I remember this discussion uh particularly well for a reason I’ll say in just a moment and in this discussion the prime minister in my view did go around the room he took views from anybody who wanted to
Contribute he took views from people who were attending remotely it was a proper discussion and in the discussion I was arguing for a for nation agreement Mass Gatherings would not go ahead not on clinical grounds I can’t do that because all the clinical advice I have is that
That’s not not a supported course of action but I am arguing for it on the grounds of messaging it seem to me we’re trying to convey to people how serious the position is and we’re trying to we’re asking them to do some already some extraordinary things to say that
It’s all right to go to a mass Gathering seem to me to contradict that and my argument was we should all agree that they won’t go ahead the reason I have such a vivid memory of it is that having gone around the table the Prime Minister summed up against
That course of action and he summed it up by saying Dom says no that was his final uh contribution I did not know who Dom was at this point but that was the final thing that the Prime Minister said and that was decision that we were not
Going to go ahead in that way but my argument and I made it as as strongly as I could was on public messaging grounds that was the right thing to do and you you you weren’t alone though Mr direct for word of you because the Scottish government um were in favor of advising
Against Gatherings of more than 500 people if we can have a look at um page six of these minutes I think it’s the ninth bullet point says here Scottish government minded to advise against Gatherings of more than 500 people so as to ensure Frontline emergency workers were able to prioritize the response to
The pandemic and then we have a look at the conclusions it’s page 8 uh par 15 and as you’ve just told us the UK government took the decision not to prohibit Mass Gatherings but it is noted that the PM respects the Scottish government’s decision to cancel Mass Gatherings to
Manage pressure on emergency responders so why didn’t why didn’t you follow Scottish government and take a decision on behalf of the Welsh government uh to either ban or or if as we’ve heard some evidence the thinking was there wasn’t a legal power to ban to at least advise
Against Mass Gatherings going ahead well two reasons because I would not have been able to aduce any clinical evidence in support of that but secondly because of the final sentence in the extract that’s in front of us here it was crucial for the government to stick to the sage advice and the sage
Advice did not support Banning Mass Gatherings and the four nations should try to stick together as one United Kingdom now as we know this was um there was a six nations rugby match to be played between so Wales and Scotland due to be played in Cardiff um the following
Weekend on the 11th of March the inquiry has seen evidence from Gareth Davies the the then chairman of the Welsh Rugby Union uh he says that he contacted your office to express his concerns about that match going ahead um you you presume are you aware of those concerns
Being expressed by the wru at that time I was aware that there were conversations going on with the uh the Wu were you aware of a conversation between U vaugh gethin Dr Robin how and Dr Tracy Cooper of Public Health Welles on the 13th of March about the match and
Public health Welles expressing um to Mr get in significant concerns about that match going ahead not to my present recollection the concerns were not simply that 70,000 people would gather at the principality Stadium um but also that significant numbers of fans would be traveling from Scotland there would
Be crowding in pubs and bars in Cardiff before and after the match and the inquiry understands that ultimately it was left to the Welsh Rugby Union to take the decision whether or not to postpone that match and that decision was taken at lunchtime on the thir 1th
So that was the day before the match by that time 20,000 Scottish rugby fans had already arrived in in Cardiff and Mr Davis’s eviden in the inquiry is that it would have been Reckless to allow the match to proceed um do you do you agree it would have been Reckless to allow
That match to proceed well I had already been arguing Cobra for the match not to go ahead so you my position was it would be preferable for the match not to happen but I had no uh medical evidence to that I could make to support that uh
Conclusion I had no agreement from the UK government to that uh position and I have no legal power actually to enforce that decision because the power lies exclusively with the w should be Union um I had a conversation as you might be about to say Mr pool sorry if I’m
Anticipating you uh directly with uh Mr Davis uh this was a I think I think one thing we missed in this discussion so far is just what a hotly contested decision this was you know a rugby match in Wales is never far from the headlines and it was in the headlines all that
Week with very very strongly differing views as to whether or not it should be allowed to go ahead and what I said to Mr Davis in my conversation with him is that whatever decision the WBY Union made the Welsh government would back it there would be no criticism from us of
Whatever decision he made if he decided to go ahead we would not criticize him for doing that because he would be relying on the medical advice that was available to us if he decided that he wouldn’t go ahead we would support them in that as well you you say in your witness
Statement that you do not believe that the Welsh government was in a position to absolve the wru of its own responsibilities but might it not be said that it was in fact an application of responsibility on the part of the Welsh government who after all had you
Had had the debate in Cobra you knew all sides of the argument you had not only the scientific um and medical advice uh but you also knew the position that Scott Scottish government were taking um surely it was a decision ultimately that ought to have been taken by the Welsh
Government well I want to be clear I don’t think the Welsh government had the vies to make such a decision what we could have been is clearer with the russ Union how we thought they ought to exercise their responsibility uh but what basis would I have would I have had for doing that
When in front of me I have evidence from the chief medical officer that there’s no case for doing so so you know I while my own view as I’ve already expressed it is that the game should not have gone ahead uh if I’m going to convey that to
Somebody else as the decision maker I need to know that I’ve got the ground firm under my feet and I can point to the advice I’m relying on and I would not have been able to do that and just to just so I understand um your what you
Say about not having the legal power not having the viras um you accept though that there is a there would have been a power under the public health legislation but you’re saying because the medical and scientific advice was not there that you couldn’t trigger the power under that
Legislation is that right the trigger you have to use it’s well set out in the 84 act it has to be um Public Health Emergency and your response has to be proportionate that’s the test isn’t it has to be proportionate if I have evidence from my medical advisers that this is not the
Thing to do I do not know how I pass that test of proportionality changing um topic slightly but still in the same um chronological run we’re still mid-march um Hospital discharge and and Care Homes uh the inquiry heard evidence from on Monday from U VOR gethin that on the
13th of March uh he gave a joint press conference uh with you regarding uh the framework of actions which included a direction to expedite the discharge of vulnerable patients from acute and Community Hospitals it also suspended the protocol which gives the right to a choice of care home
Um how much of this was led by the UK government or was this a decision taken by the Welsh government in a devolved space namely Health this is a devolved government decision it’s made in advance of a decision by the UK government for England now as we discussed with Mr Guin
On on Monday discharging vulnerable patients to care homes presented an obvious risk that had to be managed do you think that the risk of spreading the infection from hospitals into Care Homes which obviously contains some of the most vulnerable people in in Welsh Society was properly managed by the Welsh
Government my lady I’m I’m trying to be clear in my own mind before I answer the question that I’m here to explain not to justify I’m not here to try to defend actions that the inquiry will draw its conclusions I’m here to try and provide the best information I
Can about how we acted and why we acted so I’m don’t want to sound in answering that question as though I’m saying to you we did everything right and it wasn’t a mistake that was made that that’s not my starting point I can explain to you why we made the decision
That we made and in fact in reading a vast number of documents before coming here in some ways I think this is best captured of all in sir Chris Wht uh account of the decision to discharge patients uh in England because you know he makes the point that the risks to
Very vulnerable people of staying in hospital when they are medically fit to be discharged at a point when hospitals are about to become the epicenter uh of the most dangerous place you can be uh then that was not a course of action that had uh Merit you are discharging
People back to their homes some people live in Care Homes but it is their home and they are fit to be discharged there and there are protections that can be put in place to try to manage the impact of the disease when they get there uh
That was the line of reasoning that we were following at the time that the safest thing that we could do was to remove people who didn’t need to be in hospital out of Hospital given the impact that the disease was about to have on those Hospital services and that
When people went home they were precautions that could be taken to try to manage the risks that they would face there now we know it wasn’t until the 29th of April that the Welsh government changed its policy um and from that point onward tested all patients being discharged from hospitals to care
Settings irrespective of whether they displayed symptoms should that decision have been taken earlier than the 29th of April if it had been taken earlier then the coroller of that decision would have been that the tests that would have been used for that purpose could not have been used for another purpose at
This point there are a limited number of tests available for all the different things that the Welsh government might have applied those tests to achieve our decision was to use them in the first instance for Frontline staff in hospitals and the choice was not to add another purpose to the list had you
Added that purpose you would have had to have displaced another purpose they weren’t enough tests to do all the things we would have liked to have done with them and we were creating a priority uh order and that’s the debate that lies behind that decision obviously
The the issue didn’t um didn’t begin and end with with testing on discharge we we know that the reason wales’s Care Homes had such poor outcomes during the first wave of the pandemic was due to infections actually being seeded in the homes through staff and and we know that
The UK government announced on the 28th of April Mass testing of asymptomatic residents and staff across all care homes in England two days after that u a group of UK MPS wrote to you expressing their concerns about wales’s failure to do so um what steps did you take in response to that letter
Well my I think this is terribly difficult territory because I know just how powerfully people feel about what happened in K homes here in Wales and you know I absolutely regret everything uh that led to loss of life my own mother lived in a care home in Wales throughout this pandemic these are
Matters that in a wassh context decision makers are not immune from the decisions that we take but the evidence I think is the evidence Mr Po has just cited that of course there are instances where Corona virus is seeded into care homes by people being discharged from hospital
But the primary reasons why Corona virus ends up in a in a care home is because of the necessary Ingress into Care Homes of people who are there to care for people in them and as Corona virus rises in the community the risk that it will be
Carried into the care home in that way increases and you know I know for a lot of people that’s an uncomfortable um uncomfortable conclusion but I think it is where the evidence that I have seen takes us uh once we had received you we are receiving letters and advice and
Suggestions from all sorts of people all the time uh what we had was I hope and believe at the time an orderly and predictable way of making decisions which advice comes to ministers very regularly from people who are focused entirely on this matter of how to try to keep Care Homes safe what
We can do to enhance uh that and I can’t be buffeted by letters that want me to do something different over here or something else over there I have to to rely upon the orderly decision making approach that we have laid down and as ministers get advice you can see over
March and certainly through April how our approach to Care Home testing and the protection of people who lived in that vulnerable setting how that develops on the 2nd of May Mr gethin made an announcement that the evidence does not support blanket testing of staff and and residents in the UK
Exactly two weeks later on the 16th may he then made a further announcement that everyone in care homes in Wales would be able to get a coronav virus test now the inquiries heard evidence um from some scientists that they had the science to support blanket testing since at least the 27th of
March how in light of that can you account for the delay until the 16th of May when blanket testing was was um introduced well if I could I’d like to make you know for what seems to from my point of view as the first Minister an important point it’s a contested point
But my view all the way through and I had to convey it sometimes to my colleagues is that the wsh government cannot pick and choose the scientific advice that it gets there are a plethora of scientific voices out there and you know they don’t agree either the wsh
Government has a root to the advice that we receive we receive it through Tac through our chief medical officer through the chief scientific adviser and what we mustn’t do as politicians is to say I like your advice on this topic and I don’t like your advice on that topic
So I’ll pick and choose I’ll decide when I like your advice and when I don’t like it uh so yes of course there are other people who take a different view and say they’ve got evidence that would lead you in a different direction but as a politician as a decision maker I think
That is a very very very slippery slope and I was very determined not to go down that way of decision making and as I say advise my colleagues of that from time to time sometimes we didn’t agree I could have told you on the table we did
Not always agree with some of the things that we were being advised but I wasn’t prepared to go down a path which we substituted our lay judgment for the Judgment of the professional people who were charged with giving us that advice we followed the advice that we had through the established roots of
Providing us advice while being aware you know I thought very hard at one point about an invitation that I received to go to a meeting with independent sage and in the end I decided not to go there not because I am not naturally curious you know from my own background
In hearing different points of view but I decided that I couldn’t do that that that would undermine the relationship we had with the on which we had to rely so that that’s I I wanted to make that slightly General point because it was a fundamental part of the way that we
Approached this dilemma of somebody says this somebody else says that why didn’t you follow that we followed the advice of the people who were charged with giving that advice and didn’t pick and choose between it but supposing they gave you advice say just take lockdown as example it’s the most controversial
Um NPI so supposing you have advisers who say right you got a lock down and you are conscious of all the impacts of lockdown on people we all know that they spread far and wide um mental health children’s development education everything um by just following your
Expert who happens to be in the pro- lockdown Camp um you’re never listening to an expert who may say well wait a minute lockdown is not necessary so for example those who signed the Great barington declaration so did you deny yourself the alternative argument well not in the sense of not
Being aware of it because these things are widely reported and widely debated but imagine if we had imagine if we had said well the advice to the W government from our chief medical officer not just him by the way but all four chief medical officers is that we should do that but
We’d rather take the advice of somebody else so we fancy their advice a bit more what a what an unraveling of decision- making follows from that as I say it’s a it’s a from my point of view it’s a terrifically slippery slope to allow yourself to do that but can’t
Can’t you justify that approach by saying right well I’ve heard this advice Pro lock down I’ve heard this advice anti-lockdown I’m now going to balance all the factors which has the decision Mak you have to do so you balance the socioeconomic factors as well as the scientific evidence and so on that
Balancing all the factors I’m going to go for the advice from an outside Source I would not have been prepared to do that right I think that would have unraveled proper decision making inside the Welsh government very very quickly indeed it’s uh once you take that first step you’ll
Under mind durability I think to conduct government in the way that government should be conducted thank you I suppose it follows does it Mr Dr from what You’ just said that it is therefore crucial to ensure that you have a range of opinions at your disposal within your structures
That you are taking advice from so for example Sage or spym or tag and Tac is that right of of course the fact that we in the end have a single piece of advice because you’ve got to make a decision you there’s there’s a folk in the road
You’ve got to decide which way you’ve got that does not mean that behind that final piece of advice there is not a wide variety of views and a lot of sharp debate as well of course you want to have that that’s that’s very important I think you see that played out in the
Minutes of those bodies but in the end that has to crystalize in a choice between the the two if it is a binary choice between the two courses of action you could take Chang topic slightly but staying hopefully chronologically we now move to the 18th of March um the decision was
Taken in Wales on the 18th of March to close schools in Wales early for Easter U was that a I think you might have answered this right at the outset when I gave you the example of ministerial decisions within their own portfolio but was this a consensus decision taken by
Cabinet or was this a decision taken by the then Minister for Education Kirsty Williams um important to say of course it’s not a decision L government does not have decision making uh capabilities it’s advice that is given to those who have decision making uh this is a decision that is made under enormous
Pressure of unraveling events uh I answered questions on the floor of the Senate on the 17th of March and I firmly repeated the position of the wsh government which is that we did not want schools to close before before Easter by the end of that after afternoon we are already getting reports
Of schools closing in many parts of Wales either as staff fall ill and cannot be in the classroom or as parents withdraw their children of their own valtion I think something we haven’t touched on at all you but comes home very powerfully to me in rereading the
Papers is just the degree of fear there is amongst people at this point people are really afraid afid and they are afraid sending their child to school is putting that child at risk between the evening of the 17th of March and the end of the morning of the 18th I think I met
The education Minister on at least six different occasions as the evidence accumulated through the day that more and more schools were just closing around us and at least one education Authority is now saying to us it will close all the schools in its area we are also getting powerful pleas
From the W Local Government Association teacher unions for the W government to try to put some order around what we see happening in front of us so that parents and teachers and others have a sense of schools coming to an ally end and by the end of the morning that is what the
Education Minister and I have concluded there is no opportunity at this point for the whole cabinet to be gathered around that decision but as I say we are not deciding to close schools in many ways what we are doing is trying to put some sense of order
Around a series of events that are happening beyond our Direct Control in any event and is it there your evidence that closing schools on the 18th of March is really something that could not have been avoided at that point in time it was happening already it was happening
In front of our eyes what we wanted to do was to try to make that system predictable communicable to parents uh and staff and then to take action immediately to put in place alternative arrangements for those vulnerable children children of key workers who we knew would still need to be able to attend
School on the evening of the 20th of March you announced that the Welsh government would use Public Health powers to close restaurants pubs bars other facilities where people gather um the inquiries heard evidence that on the 22nd of March there was then a meeting between uh your s Secretary State for
Health health ministers from the devolved administrations obviously including also Mr Gein and you say that one of the actions that arose from that meeting on the 22nd uh was to prepare a lockdown plan would I be right to infer from that that at that stage 22nd of
March there was no plan as such for a Welsh lockdown what I think you see there is that for the first time I am agreeing that we need to think of a whales only lockdown plan this is the 21st and the 22nd of March our weekend days we’re meeting right through the weekend
Meeting on the 22nd as you say the cabinet meet in full at the end of the 22nd and I have been told that there will be a cobra that day that I’m expecting to attend a cobra and I’m expecting the prime minister to propose that there will be a uk-wide
Lockdown when the Cobra doesn’t happen I’m now beginning to wonder why it hasn’t taking place and I’m bound to have some anxiety that it may be because the Prime Minister isn’t going to agree to that course of action so at this point I ask for legal advice and policy advice as to
What we what we would do if we were in the position of having to do that alone I think it’s highly improbable that we would have been able to do it and I think they were very large barriers in our path but given that we might have to face it and over
That weekend I ask for that advice on the 23rd of course we have a oober meeting and it transpires that the proposal is for a uk-wide lockdown so I don’t need to act on any of that advice but on a precautionary it may be necessary basis that advice is uh
Commissioned you have said in your evidence that your perception is that the actual decision to lockdown was taken by the UK government shortly before the Cobra meeting that you attend on the 23rd of March is is that right well that is an impression so I mustn’t
Put any more more weight on it than that but um we were not getting indications earlier in the day as you sometimes would that you know this meetings are happening decisions are being made this is the direction of travel this is what you should expect when you come to the meeting at
5:00 my impression was is that the sorry I’m going to use you another football analogy now you know the ball was still in the air until quite late in the day and obviously you you attend that c meeting on the 2 of March um at that stage you you all knew that
There was exponential growth once control had been lost the virus would be rapidly spreading now not withstanding that understanding the four governments had introduced measures previously on this on the 16th of um 16th of March to try and control the spread and slow the spread of the virus why weren’t those measures given
Longer to to work prior to imposing lockdown on 23rd of March because I think the evidence was too Vivid uh that insufficient numbers of people were complying with the decisions that had already been taken that was the anxiety I received my lady reports over that
Weekend of the 21st and 22nd of March it was a beautiful weekend Barry Island I saw a note is rammed uh beaches in sessi are overflowing Pavan which is a tourist hotspot in Wales has got hundreds and hundreds of people Gathering and walking up and down the mountain you know the evidence was
There already that the measures we had agreed only a few days before were not being observed with sufficient consistency to have the impact that we know we needed to extract from them do you consider then by the 23rd of March a national lockdown was absolutely
Necessary uh that was my view but I was confident that it was the view of my cabinet colleagues as well we’d met on the Sunday we’d met on the Monday we’d been rehearsing all of these arguments although the decision on the spot was a decision I had to take on behalf of
Wales I was entirely confident that this was what my cabinet colleagues would have wished to have supported had different decisions been made leading up to this point on the 23rd of March do you think there is a chance that lockdown could have been avoided well we are entirely in the
Realms of speculation here my own speculation is that lockdown would have happened and should have happened earlier not that it would have been avoided but the timing of it would have been altered when should the UK have locked down in your view well I’m I’m an amateur
Witness uh on this matter I’ve seen what other people have said I don’t have any reason to desent much from what seems to me a fairly you know broad consensus that uh it could have happened a week earlier than it did want to next look at the period following the implementation
Implementation of national lockdown up to the uh Autumn of 2020 now as we know imposing the lockdown in Wells using public health Powers meant that there was a legal duty to review uh the need for restrictions and uh requirements every 21 days uh early April you were pressing the UK
Government to convene a cobra meeting in good time before the 16th of April which was that first 21-day review uh date so that the four nations could discuss a further set of coordinated announcements if we could please have a look at inq 30 25682 uh this is a letter written um by
All of the uh devolved administrations to the Prime Minister on the 4th of April if we can have a look at the uh first paragraph refers to uh Mr Johnson’s recent covid-19 diagnosis now we know that on the 27th of March uh it was made public Mr Johnson had tested
Positive for covid he was later admitted to hospital on the 6th of April where he remained for six days uh you have said in your evidence that Mr Johnson’s illness and hospitalization did have an impact on decision- making you describe it as having had a chilling effect um
Just describe to us in what way you say that um Mr Johnson’s illness and hospitalization had an impact on decision making in the way you describe could I say to begin with that I have no complaints at all about the way in which meetings in the absence of
Mr Johnson were conducted by Mr Bob who chaired those meetings he was a good chair uh of a meeting the chilling effect is in the hesitation which the whole system feels about making major decisions when the Prime Minister himself is not at the table and not able
To participate in them so to my mind you could you could detect very easily the hesitation that was there amongst people who were left to make those decisions in the absence of the Prime Minister if we can have a look at the third paragraph please of this letter um
You say uh picking it up where whereas hurridly convened Cobra meetings early in the pandemic were understandable there is no reason not to ensure an orderly process ahead of this predictable Milestone did you find it surprising that you and the other um first ministers um were having to write to the
Prime minister in in this way on the 4th of April well I think it it does illustrate some of our anxieties that a regular reliable rhythm of engagement at that level have been put in place a few days after this letter was sent you describing your evidence a call
With Mr Gove on the 8th of April uh but you say there was no commitment being given on behalf of the UK government to hold a cobra meeting um you must have been somewhat surprised then to receive a calling notice at um 10 to 7 that evening to attend the Cobra the
Following day um that was chaired by Mr Rob it’s the Cobra meeting of the 9th of April if we can have a look at inq 4 83830 please um of these minutes you’ve said in your evidence that they Accord with your recollection that uh your words a consistent message was required across
The four nations to ensure the message landed in the most clear way and I think in fact we see that noted if we have a look at paragraph 5 page three there uh now in the in the Welsh government this is cabinet office uh minutes but in the
Welsh government notes of this meeting you are recorded as saying our clear message is that people stay home and restrictions remain in place we are not throwing away everything we have gained were you concerned at this stage that the UK government might not be on the same page as the Welsh government
And the the Devol other devolved admin ation and also the mayor of London well if I was concerned um then events prove me wrong because the UK government does agree that the further uh 3 weeks of the same level of restrictions is necessary I probably do have some
Anxiety as to whether or not they share uh that view but more importantly in practice when we had that Cobra meeting there was a continued foration agreement that the level of intervention that we’ve seen in the first three weeks must continue for another three weeks you refer in your witness
Statement to a four nations phone call with the Prime Minister on the 7th of May uh you say that the UK government’s road map adopted a different approach to the approach that the Welsh government was taking just want to explore what you mean by this by reference to some
Minutes of an ex covid meeting on the 7th of May uh it’s I n q 00216 499 uh please and if we look at the in the middle of the page the permanent secretary has noted as reporting that he had been told by his counterparts in the
UK that the view in Westminster was that the population was over complying with the work from home message and we’re overlooking the part of the message which said it cannot work from home sorry work at home then you should go to work and PR is social distancing uh
Reportedly the Prime Minister wanted to correct the over compliance and was concerned about the economic Outlook and then there was discussion at this meeting on the 7th of May as to whether to retain the stayhome save lives messaging if we just have a look at the bottom of page two please of these
Minutes we see Toby Mason’s uh comments this absolutely not just messaging but a policy difference and notes that if Wales retained stay at home it will be different to England who were looking to ease some restriction to allow activity Outdoors now in terms of the stayhome message you say in your evidence Mr
Dford that changing policy from stay at home to stay alert was not something that you could and would support can you just explain why uh given that the UK government and the Welsh government um were drawing on the same scientific evidence uh you didn’t feel able to support the UK government’s change of
Policy well having said at the start of my evidence that you know there was always more that we agreed on than we disagreed on this was one of the bleer moments uh during the conduct of intergovernmental Affairs um I’m not part of the meeting that You’ just quoted here but I do go
To a cobra meeting on the 10th of May and I hear for the first time that the UK government intends to to abandon the message that we’ve all agreed on and to move away from stay home to stay alert I’m hearing it in the meeting and
This is one of those examples when I feel that the decision has already been made not we’re not really being asked to participate in whether to move we’re being told the UK government has decided to move I hear from the head of Communications in the UK government
Someone who advice i’ heard many times and you respected a lot but there have been focus groups carried out around this change of messaging none of which we either knew about we didn’t know they happened and we certainly had no access to the results of them and I simply was
Not prepared to agree to such a major change of policy on the basis of the information that I had in front of me at that meting I was very unconvinced by stay alert I have no idea what stay alert is asking me to do my advice to a well citizen to stay
At home well they know what I’m what’s being asked of them if I’m asking them to stay alert I have no idea what it is that they are expected to do in response to uh that injunction so for all those reasons no prior notice no sharing of
The basis on which the change should be made no ability to explain to me what the new message was meant to convey to anybody I wasn’t prepared to agree to it I had no cabinet to cover for doing that because we’ never we didn’t know that we
Were going to be asked to agree so at that meeting on the 10th of May I make it very clear that if prime minister decides to go ahead in that way then he must be very clear that this is a decision he is making for England and
That in Wales we will continue with the m that we have very successfully persuaded people to stay with uh in those first six weeks and I I think it would be fair to say that the announcement that’s made we’ve seen the text of it with with other Witnesses um
There’s very little in that announcement made by Mr Johnson to suggest these measures applied to England only um did that cause confusion in Wales I think it’s the opposite of there not being much to convey that there is a difference and I’m doing my best not you know only um
Not to sound as cross as I felt at the time perhaps but in that Cobra meeting we have a very direct rehearsal with a prime minister of the need for him to be clear in a press conference which he’s told us he’s about to have so we know
The decisions made because he’s got a press conference lined up to announce it in that press conference he must make it clear that what he’s about to say does not apply in Wales or Scotland or Northern Ireland and he assurances in the Cobra meeting that he will do his
Very best to make sure he does that he then heads to the cameras and he he provides uh a script in front of the cameras in which the only time he refers to Scotland Wales and Northern Ireland is when he says early in the press conference as prime minister of Scotland
England Wales and Northern Ireland it is a very clear indication to people that what he’s about to say applies to the whole of the United Kingdom and he never once says that that is not the case that’s why I describe it as a bleak moment because this is not a
Moment when and you know I understand that people can use Britain Northern United Kingdom England interchangeably if that’s the way they’ve been brought up uh but in this case this is not a slip of the tongue this is not somebody forgetting to mention this is a deliberate attempt to imply to people
That what the prime minister is about to say means them when he full well knew that he didn’t and I think the following day the 11th of May you you give a press conference making some of the points you’ve just made and we’ll come to that after the break certainly quarter to two
Please all e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e
E e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e
E e e e e e e e e Mr Paul uh Mr dford before the break we were talking about the 10th of May and um on the 11th of May you held a press conference to explain the changes to the regulations that would come into effect
In Wales that day and we can see the text of that at inq 4990 562 and the fourth bullet point there um outlines the changes uh people allowed to exercise more than once a day Garden Cent L to open people must comply with social distancing uh if we have a look a bit
Further down the page um there’s an acknowledgement that confusion uh may be caused as a result of differences in the messaging between Wales and England then if we go over the page to the second bullet point on page two you say uh I want to be clear in Wales Welsh rules will apply
Um going back to where we left off um before the break could more have been done to make it clear that the UK government’s stay alert message only applied in England well as I said before the break I certainly think the Prime Minister could have done more to have explained
That when he announced it uh we did make really consistent efforts to communicate with people and particularly people along the border where those differences are most acute although of course that is where people are most used to differences because there are differences all the time after 25 years
Of devolution but I myself would give interviews not simply to Welsh media Outlets but I would be giving interviews to the shuur star and to other local newspapers along the border in order to do whatever we could to communicate to people people the rules that would apply
To them while they were in Wales in a um question and answer session I think following on from this press conference that we’re looking at here you were asked about comments that had been made I think that morning on Breakfast Television by the then Deputy Prime
Minister Mr Rob Mr Rob had said that people in England should use common sense when meeting up outdoors and provided that they observe 2 met social distancing that is okay now in Wales the regulations were clear leaving for a pre-arranged meeting with someone from another household was not permitted even
If this was Outdoors observing social distancing and when asked to comment on what Mr Rob had said you are reported as saying that it didn’t amount to any real change the rules you said in Wales are that two people can meet providing they observe social distancing so if one
Person from a household is going out and meeting another member of their family then under our rules that would be permitted I think it would be right to say that um your comments were interpreted by Sum in Wells as meaning effectively it was okay to arrange to meet someone from another household
Outside provided social distancing was observed but that was not permitted and I think the Welsh government issued a statement after your press conference to correct any wrong interpretation of what you had said do you accept that your comments were potentially misleading well I’m certainly in trouble over what I had said uh and
You you are on your feet you are answering unscripted questions you sometimes don’t say things in exactly the way that you’d intended what I was trying to the distinction I was trying to make is the one Mr Po you’ve made but and I made the point at the time I used
To in those very early days cardi Council kept a lot Ms open for the one hour you were allowed out so I would cycle to my alotment uh for 45 minutes and cycle home again and I would do so I would see people absolutely scrupulously obeying the rules and by chance Not By
Design they would see somebody they knew on the other side of the road and they would say hello to them I hope you’re okay and I was being asked whether that was somehow against the rules so you couldn’t even acknowledge somebody the point I was trying to make was that
There was nothing wrong with that going out purposely to meet other people was clearly against the rules and that’s the distinction that we we tried to clarify you say at paragraph 49 of your witness statement for this module that you are in favor of strong debate when
Difficult decisions had to be made and you say when physical meetings were not possible some of the interaction defaulted to informal means and obviously during much of the pandemic particularly lockdown periods virtual meetings became the default and you say these obviously would be supplemented by telephone calls uh and emails and one of
The informal means of communication that you specifically reference in this context uh where physical meetings were not possible is the use of text and WhatsApp messages so I want to ask you some questions about your use of text and WhatsApp during the pandemic now it’s been widely reported
In the press that you had to correct the record in the seni when you said that you did not use WhatsApp and just to be clear it’s right isn’t it uh Mr dford that you did use WhatsApp to communicate with Welsh ministers and others such as the first minister of Scotland during
The pandemic I used WhatsApp on 11 occasions in the whole of the very many months of the pandemic I don’t believe I use WhatsApp to communicate with the first minister of Scotland I would have had text messages with her certainly but in terms of WhatsApp I’ve had the record checked
There are 11 occasions one of those I say thanks that’s one of them and another one I complain that I can’t hear the sound of the Senate when I meant to be answering questions uh so uh I did it’s certainly true I did use but I’m a very very infrequent user of WhatsApp
I’m a much more frequent use of text messages Dame Shan Morgan was taken to a number of Welsh government policies concerning the use of informal methods of communication and also the importance of keeping records uh do you accept that using WhatsApp to discuss Welsh government business was prohibited by
Those policies um I I I do accept that it’s the policy the throng not the practice do you accept as uh Jan rles your most senior um adviser did when giving her evidence that using Whatsapp even for administrative purposes was was wrong um it was against the policy of
2009 in the circumstances of 2009 the policy no doubt was a sound one the circumstances of dealing with a pandemic the policy did not make sense even if the policy were to change to allow the use of WhatsApp and text messages and other informal methods of communication I assume you wouldn’t be
Advocating for a change to the policy of the importance of retaining such messages U because as you know it’s not simply um a question of whether informal methods such as text and whatsa we use to make decisions it’s necessary to see U discussions that led to decisions or
LED to um decisions not being made and that’s important to retain those records do you agree I understand the point that’s being made um my own experience is looking at text messages they’re not used even for background uh to policymaking very often and there are many other far more
Informative sources available that show the workings out before a policy uh is concluded but I don’t disagree with the point but I don’t myself believe that they would be very helpful to anybody looking to understand the arguments that lay behind decisions certainly no more certainly much less useful than many
Other sources that are available did you ever give a direction to Welsh ministers and and Welsh uh government officials for messages not to be deleted and for records to be retained no when you were made aware of um this inquiry being formed did you uh discuss with cabinet colleagues or or officials
For the need for uh such messages to be retained for the purposes of this inquiry no why not um it would not have occurred to me that I would need to do so you’re aware that the disappearing messages function was turned on by a number of officials including Jane rles
Also Mr Mars yesterday said that he enabled this um when it became available on on his phone um is that something that surprises you in so far as I am uh you know well informed about these things I think it’s what people do all the time um and I don’t think people
Would have been doing it with an eye to a future inquiry when they did so now that the spotlight has been sha on these matters in the way that it has then it would have been better had things not been deleted uh but I don’t believe that
It was in order to escape the Gaze of anybody else that people would have taken that very ordinary decision and it’s right to say that although you have shared messages with the inquiry you have not been able to recover messages for the period July 2018 to March 2021 from your senith
Issued mobile phone have you apparently not can you tell us what efforts have been made to recover those messages well I use only one telephone there are a number of telephones you could use but I use only the one and that’s the one suppied to me
As a member of the Senate not as a marsh government Minister uh I have no knowledge of or expertise in the way in which messages are stored or not stored and soon as the inquiry asked for messages then my phone was handed over and all the messages available have been made available to
The inquiry um I would have no way of knowing where they were stored or how they were stored or which were still available but efforts would have been made by Senate technical staff with that competence to make sure that the inquiry had everything that was available Mr
Dford um changing topic and we’ve looked at the 10th of May um which appears to be something of a turning point in terms of coordination between the four nations and the inquiry has heard evidence that would tend to indicate that between um some differences between the four nations were obviously simply a
Matter of timing others were more substantive the general pattern though perhaps with the exception of schools where um England reopened schools first in early June and then that was followed by Wales with that exception the General pattern seems to be England and Northern Ireland easing restrictions and then reopening the economy first followed
Next by Scotland and then Wales um Dr D Lloyd who’s the chair of the Health and Social care and Sport Committee in the senith he told the institute for government uh that the Welsh government had taken a general cautious approach which is reflective of Welsh Society does does this explain the
Pattern that we’ve just been looking at um or and if not um what is the explanation well I think it is true to say that we did take a more cautious approach to the lifting of protections uh mostly that is done because of the advice that we have which
Is that in opening up whales again you ought to do it one step at a time and with sufficient time between measures to be able to assess the impact of those measures on on the Circ ation of the virus that is the essential reason Dr Lloyd is right however that Welsh opinion was
Always put it slightly differently if I could for every one person who replied to various opinion surveys in Welles who thought we were too slow in lifting protections they were two people who thought we were going too quickly so The Temper of public opinion in Wales was in
Favor of that more gradual and cautious approach so we were acting consistently with the center of gravity of Welsh public opinion there’s a cabinet meeting on the 27th of May if we can go to those minutes they’re inq 4 48 926 um and if we can have a look at page two please
Paragraph 1.1 the focus of this meeting was on the next 21-day review which had to be carried out uh by the 29th of May if we can have a look at paragraph 1.5 please transmission rate at this point 27th of May was um under one it was 0.87
Um substantially changed since the last review there had been decreases in admissions suggesting that the rate was falling and then if we have a look at um page three please paragraph 1.9 there is a thank you there’s a proposal the regulation to be amended to change the stay-at-home Provisions to
Stay local and then uh further down that same page 1.14 was proposal to allow two different households to meet outside subject social distancing being maintained and I’m writing saying cabinet agreed both of those changes ought to be made to the regulations that’s right isn’t it that’s
Right what did cabinet decide uh at this point in time so this is 27th of May in respect of reopening schools and child care settings at this point the cabinet decides that we want schools to be able to resume uh education we have a plan that the education Minister leads which would
Be to bring the school term to an end early and for schools to reopen early in August because that would have given us the maximum amount of time for schools to be in operation at the best time of the year when the risks were lowest so we are planning for
The resumption of face-to-face education and the education Minister has proposed that as the plan that would give children the maximum amount of time in the classroom and in the safest conditions uh we are unable to bring that plan to fruition because it is opposed by the teacher unions whose
Argument is that they have a contract that means that they can’t be asked to rearrange their holiday time uh the education Minister moves to her next plan which is to ask schools to continue the summer term for one week extra and to bring children back to
School for four weeks before the end of the term and to give schools that one week back in Holiday term time in October uh again unfortunately in my view uh the teacher unions oppose that as well three education authorities out of 22 in Wales go ahead with the education Minister’s
Plans but the other 19 feel they can’t um overcome the objections of uh teachers to it so we end up with schools going back in Wales uh before the end of the summer term but for three weeks in most cases rather than the four we would have preferred I think M Williams Kirsty
Williams then minister of Education she says in her witness statement on the 29th of June 2020 schools across Wales opened pups from all year groups for limited period periods during the week with only a third of pupils in school at any one time she states that she was
Proud that Wales was the only UK Nation where all pupils had the opportunity to attend school before the summer break there had been advice given by Tac um in the report to the cabinets on 27th of May that there was insufficient Headroom for schools to
Reopen do you think in in light of that that the correct decision was made to um for schools to resume some form of face-to-face teaching prior to the summer holidays I do because that is a month later from the tack advice and the basic patterns across the United Kingdom are the same
And at this period we are all heading into better times better territory and we are all looking to use the Headroom as we called it that that provides to be able to restore some of the activities that otherwise would have would have been there on the 27th of May we didn’t
Open schools that day but we are giving what the B giving them would call forward guidance and we are anticipating the fact that things will continue to improve our Sage has told us they will and we’ll come to a point when it will be safe for that to happen and we’re
Planning purposefully for that in June 2020 that’s when um mig’s ministerial um intergovernmental groups were replaced with covid S Prime Minister’s strategy group kovo the operations committee that we know was chaired by Mr Gove I’m writing saying that the devolved administrations were not invited to attend covid s meetings and
Were not invited to attend covid o meetings on the standing basis until October 2020 what impact did the decision to replace migs with Co o and Co s have on Welsh government decision making well I think the first thing to say is that we’re not involved in that
Decision no uh attempt is made to ask devolved governments how those arrangements might best be deployed where we simply informed that decision has been taken it means I think that we are even further away from that regular reliable engagement between us that I would like to have seen we’re not
Involved at all in the Strategic uh thinking of the UK government and we’re only involved in the operational side of it when they decide that it will be useful for us to be in the room I don’t not believe that that was a satisfactory basis on which
To navigate a full Nation approach to the challenges that we all faced and you you voiced some of those concerns in the letter you write to Mr Gove on the 11th of June um we can see that letter inq 30 is 26519 now second paragraph on that first
Page you point out that Cobra last met on the 10th of May you last heard from the Prime Minister on the 28th of May this is obviously now the 11th of June uh Through official channels You’ also learned that Cobra had been stood down and that there were plans to scale back
The sage arrang ments uh you then note three announcements um that had been made by the UK government fourth of June mandatory face coverings on public transport 5th of June face masks in NHS facilities and 10th of June bubble for single person households and you make the point that those announcements were
Made with minimal or no prior communication you then say that those have big practical implications for Wales directly or indirectly um just explain to us what you what you mean by that uh last sentence well uh I’m afraid that those announcements will again have been made with very little reference to the fact
That they were announcements for England and not for Wales so many people in Wales get their news from London sources there is no strong Welsh press there’s a good Welsh broadcasting system but even then the closer you are to the border the more likely you are to get your news
From Bristol or from man Chester so there would be a direct effect of people hearing these announcements made by the UK government and thinking that it meant them in Wales so there’s that very direct uh decision and then there is the fact that had we known about it and had
We had a chance to you know be part of the decision making then had we chosen to do it at the same time which we might might have done in that context then they would have been practical things that we would need to have done putting
Face masks in NHS for facilities in that way in place you’ve got to make sure that there’s a supply you’ve got to make sure that they arrive in the right place and so on so there are intensely practical implications that we might have been able to navigate together had the
Opportunity come our way you you say in this letter I think it’s the same page we’re looking at but the last paragraph and and slightly over the page you say that without a predictable rhythm of Engagement it is not credible for you to continue to defend the four nations
Approach as you had done consist L until now at the time of writing this letter did you consider that the UK government had effectively given up on a four nations approach to the covid response um I don’t want to say that because that implies that there’s a sort of Monolithic view of the
World by the UK government they were parts of the UK government that I think were very keen to maintain a for nation approach work quite hard to to do it what what we now lacked was an impetus from the Center of government to sustain that for nation approach the Machinery
Had been eroded and withdrawn and too many decisions were being announced which applied only to England without any prior notice or opportunity to engage in that decision and you know I would be very regularly asked in press conferences about consistency in four nations approach and I always wanted to
Argue for it because that was always my my preference but I was explaining to Mr G that that was getting harder and harder when I would be confronted all the time with practical examples of where the UK government was not acting in that way you you received a letter from Mr go on
The 22nd of July um so some six weeks after you you had written that letter we’ve just looked at don’t need to see a copy of that response Mr go agreed with you that regular engagement between the UK government and the devolved administrations is crucial did you see any marked improvement in engagement
After that this point this is 22nd of July 2020 well it’s a characteristically emolient uh reply from Mr Gove and you know contact through him and in the way we described uh during the morning uh is a much better part of the landscape there is no there is no
Um uh resumption of contact at Prime ministerial level so again you know I want to give proper credit to the things that did work while just arguing that they weren’t necessary but they weren’t sufficient you were present at some of the discussions that took place when they took place um Prime ministerial
First Minister level to what extent do you think certain personality clashes about which I’ve heard might have affected the attitude of the UK government to these meetings I should say my lady that I had the highest regard for the first minister of Scotland and the first Minister and Deputy first minister of
Northern Ireland they were never anything but Collegiate uh people they took fun calls they were involved in discussions I I had a very high regard for them all the UK government was always anxious about their Interac with the first minister of Scotland um because you she did have a different
Underlying ambition for the future of Scotland and that colored their attitude towards her she was also a formidable politician and many UK ministers were afraid of her uh and would rather not have uh been engaged in a in a confrontational dialogue with her that wasn’t to the prime minister he was
Happy to talk to to anybody but and I don’t think he avoided discussions for that reason he avoided them because he did not want to give the impression that the prime minister of the United Kingdom was somehow On a par with first Ministers of other nations it was the
Optics that he objected to I think rather than the personality between writing your letter that we’ve looked at on the 11th June and receiving the response from Mr Gove on the 22nd of July you you had a call with Mr Gove on the 23rd of June again
We don’t need to display the note of that call uh Mr Gove reported on decisions that were made before the UK government um cabinet that afternoon and one of those decisions was whether to relax the 2 meter social distancing Rule and you’ve commented Mr dford and your W
Statement in module 2 uh paragraph 109 you say that the underlying advice had not been shared with the devolved administrations prior to that morning and there had been no consultation with us surely whether or not to relax the social distancing rule was a matter for the Welsh
Government did you did you really need to have been consulted first by the UK government before you can take that decision for yourselves I don’t think that’s the point I was making uh in what you read out Mr P uh I was being asked to
Agree uh in that meeting to do the same in Wales as the UK government had decided to do in England but I got no evidence to help me to make that decision I’m told what the UK government is going to decide for England and the implication the
Invitation is clearly there to do the same but without being able to understand what lies behind the decision that’s being taken in England I’m simply not in a position to go along with it when we did investigate it we found that we didn’t find the evidence compelling and our contract
Particularly through our social partnership Council which I don’t think I have mentioned but was such a powerful part of our landscap in Wales the social partnership Council were very clear that they wish to see the 2 meter social distancing rules in Wales continue and that’s what we decided to
Do if we move on to um some questions now about face masks the UK government made it mandatory from the 15th of June to wear face masks on public transport with the exception of people with certain conditions uh disabled people and children under the age of 11 the UK
Government made the wearing of face mask mandatory in shops and supermarkets then a bit later on the 24th of July and you you’ve said in your evidence that face coverings were the subject of you say regular and probing consideration the scientific and medical advice was always contested and then you say and it’s
Paragraph 209 of your witness statement for this module um that you set the bar High against a pick and mix approach to Scientific and medical advice and you say while cabinet remained the final decision maker it could not be on the basis of selective adherence to the most authoritative advice
Available and I think this goes back to an answer you gave um this morning when there were finally balanced scientific and medical Arguments for and against a certain NPI in this example face masks how would cabinet decide well our cabinet would be influenced by a range of different considerations fundamentally here the
Chief medical officer of Wales advised us very regularly not to put the weight of the was government behind the wearing of face masks he says in his witness statement to you that they were only two examples in the whole of the pandemic where the views of ministers and the
Views of the chief medical officer differed and this is the most important one of them and maybe if I could make one slightly wider point but it’s relevant to this one of the big differences between being a minister in Wales and being a minister in England but in Scotland as well is
That we don’t live Separate Lives the first minister of Scotland spent the pandemic in but house you know in her official residence we have no such thing we are directly engaged with the mood of the people I remember very vividly if I could say the week after the pandemic we
We made the decision uh we need food at home um my wife and my mother-in-law are shielding I am the only person in our house who can go shopping so I leave the government building in KES and I go few hundred yards away to to a little and I
Joined the queue oh outside and it’s beautiful the weather is beautiful and people are standing outside at a 2 m distance I find myself standing behind somebody I already know and lo and behold the person who comes after me is somebody else that I know and I am
Observing the extent to which people are already wearing face coverings of their own valtion in those more risky uh situations and so when Welsh ministers debated as I said we did very much with the chief medical officer whether this was the right advice to give we’re drawing on our own lived experience of
Seeing the way our fellow citizens are behaving in these extraordinary circumstances and worrying about the gap between the advice that we are given and we are giving and people’s own conclusions that they’re drawing in their in their own lives in the end and it does as you say
Take me back to the point we debated a little before the the break the chief medical officer’s view is very clear advising face coverings is not only of marginal utility but could positively harm the efforts that people are making because it would lead them to do more risky things in the belief that
They were protected from those risky things by wearing a face covering and uh in the end as I say we don’t pick and choose we follow the advice that we’re given and it would be right to say we we know that Dr Aton remained at the skeptical end of the spectrum of opinion
In respect to face coverings U his advice was always explicitly against making them mandatory and you say in your witness statement you felt it important to support that position why because of the arguments I made this morning um imagine if I if we had decided to go against the advice of the
Chief medical officer advice that would be publicly available everybody would see the chief medical officer has advised this and you have done something different the following day I would go to the social partnership Council and I would be in a difficult conversation with tourism interests in Wales and I
Will be saying explaining to them I’m afraid we have to do this because the advice we have is that that is important what were there first answer to me be well you ignore the chief medical officer in his advice on face coverings so why do you feel you’ve got to follow
His advice this and that was not a not a line of argument that I felt it was in anybody’s interest to open up but you could have Justified it if you if you felt that it was sensible to take the advice in one example but not another um
Couldn’t you just have said to your partnership Council well in this respect I have huge amount of time for Dr Aon but I happen to disagree with him and I’ve looked at all the evidence and I’ve seen what other countries are doing and because we’re trying to be cautious in
Wales I’m going to go this way couldn’t you have done that I could have done absolutely I could have done it would have undermined the chief medical officer uh I think in the eyes of people who had known that the Welsh government had seen his advice and decided they
Didn’t want to follow it that would have given his advice in other contexts less weight and it would have been more vulnerable and we were constantly being asked by different groups to make an exception for them they could see why it was necessary for us to do this but
Couldn’t we see that they whatever it would be and there’s a very long list of them need to be treated differently and my strongest offense always was was that the advice we had was that we needed to act in the way that we did and I wasn’t
I absolutely agree the choice was there the choice I made and my colleagues made was not to create a in the wall of the argument that we were making but aren’t you then slavishly following the science which this morning you said you weren’t doing you were being Guided by
It but if you always follow it aren’t you slavishly following it well I don’t think we were slavishly following it because as the uh extract said we were in um vigorous discussion with the chief medical officer officer on this point and testing him and asking him things
Like that in the end his professional assessment was always clear you can do it but you’ll be doing more harm than good and I don’t think that was a position my ministers would have willingly put themselves what about consistency of messaging was there not an argument and quite a powerful argument for charting
The same course as England and Scotland just to ensure a consistency of messaging on face masks yes there was and I’m absolutely certain those points were made in the discussion we would have had there’s a um covid-19 Core group meeting of the 14th of July don’t need
To display the minutes but it was noted that there had been a great deal of coverage in the media about the use of face coverings and in short the public were questioning why it wasn’t mandatory to wear face coverings on public transport um face coverings were made compulsory on public transport in Wales
From the 27th of July was that decision influenced by public opinion yes 6 weeks um after that decision had been made by the UK government um is that six weeks delay justifiable in in your view I think it’s explainable um I don’t think it’s for me
To justify it but I think uh I can explain it in the way that I the way that I have is that we are Thro we come back to this topic you know far more often than maybe the uh significance of the wearing of a face mask Justified but
We come back to it very regularly because of the public interest in it because we can see that people in Wales are acting in a way that’s not consistent with the advice that we are giving and we want to test that advice uh regularly and probe it and challenge
It and all of those things over time the advice uh changes and part of the reason why it changes is is that it’s um it erodes confidence in some of the other things you’re asking to people to do if too big a gap opens up between what people are concluding in their own
Lives and what it is that the was government is advising them to do when you changed it what was Dr aon’s advice at that stage uh well I think Dr Aon was always at the more skeptical so you didn’t follow him when you changed it no
I I think I think he had moved away from the argument that he would do more harm than good he was skeptical always that he did any good uh you know and and always anxious that people would think they were protected by a face covering and therefore you not observe social
Distancing for example because I got a face mask on it’s okay so he was always anxious about that I think by the time we changed the advice his feeling was given the way the people were behaving that’s while he didn’t do much good uh the argument that he would be positively
Harmful was no longer as strong as he would have articulated it at the beginning one of the one of the reasons that Dr Aton um explained in his evidence when to the inquiry of his view while he was at the skeptical end as you’ve just alluded to is that um it
Would make people complacent if they were to um wear a face mask and from what you’ve just said about your your trip to little and seeing people in the queue at wearing face masks even though it wasn’t mandatory in Wales at that point I mean did you see evidence from
England or anywhere else in the world that actually wearing face masks made people complacent such that it might support Dr aon’s views I don’t think I could say that I saw direct empirical evidence I certainly saw Dr aon’s view expressed by a whole range of other scientists who also argued
That the there was a risk in encouraging people to wear face coverings that it would undermine their willingness to adhere to far more effective npis the inquiry heard evidence in in module two from s Patrick Valance um and his evidence was that there was there was clear advice on the benefits of face
Masks in June 2020 and he said anything else was politics did you consider that playing politics is perhaps how the different policy decisions being taken by the Welsh government would perhaps appear to members of the public I don’t think there’s any evidence of that satisfaction levels with the Welsh government and people’s
Confidence in the advice they were given was at a very high level during all of these months change topic briefly um eat out to help out August 2020 um saw the introduction of that scheme we know obviously it was a scheme implemented by the UK government um we’ve heard the
Inquiries heard evidence that Sage wasn’t consulted about the scheme only knew about it when it was announced and I’m right in saying there wasn’t any um consultation with the Welsh government about it is that right that’s right um were you given any opportunity to ask questions as to its scientific
Rationale we weren’t offered any opportunities and just to be clear this was an entirely nonevolved scheme carried out by the UK government using their own reserved powers and there would have been no there would have been no receptivity at all to the Welsh government saying we’d
Like to talk to you about this are you sure it’s the right thing to do we would I’m absolutely certain have been told that it was nothing to do with us it was a UK scheme and it was happening everywhere I think it it’s quite clear from your your your witness um statement
That had you been consulted you would not have supported the scheme is that right I don’t want to over state it had we been offered the opportunity we would have asked some fairly skeptical questions about it but I we would have weighed up the the answers and the
Evidence that we were we were given we know now that you know it very likely uh helped the spread of the virus at the time I don’t want to go further than saying had we had the opportunity we would have asked them proving questions about it and wanted
Would have wanted to have seen the evidence on those points for ourselves change topic now and deal with the period um September through to October and the Welsh fire Break um you say at paragraph 215 of your witness statement for this module um when describ in the use of local
Lockdowns to deal with local outbreaks of covid-19 in September 2020 you described that as a failed experiment um explain why you have said that well the pattern in whales uh my ladies the one we’ve described things get better during the summer and the first Sunday of July we have the first
Day since March where there are no deaths from covid we have 11 days in a row in August when there are no deaths things are getting better and the last time we have a 3-we review in August the advice is that we can expect things to continue to be relatively benign with
Some warning signs about the autumn in fact things got worse much more quickly in September than we had anticipated and very soon we find that there are some local areas where there is a significant upswing in the virus so the county of Caril for example had a
Third of all the cases in Wales in that early period of September and what we follow is a classic Public Health response to it one I was very familiar with for my time as health Minister when I dealt with outbreaks of measles in Swansea and tuberculosis in Chi you find
The source of it you track you trace you contain and you try and put a ring around problem and restrain people’s lives there but don’t affect people’s lives where there is no virus in circulation that’s what we set off to do in September and as I say it’s textbook
Public Health response to an outbreak by the time we get halfway through October though we have got local lockdowns over almost half or more of Wales and every week we’re having to add more look areas to in in other words it just hasn’t worked that’s what I meant
By a failed experiment I’m not saying that it didn’t have an impact I should make that clear I think there are figures that show for example the the county burough of tvine in southeast Wales on the day that it went into lockdown it had in a local
Lockdown it had the same level of Corona virus as the town of Bolton in England um Weeks Later the rates in tvine are between 50 and 60 per 100,000 and in Bon where there’s been no restrictions is over 300 so I’m not saying it didn’t have any impact but
What it didn’t do was to contain the outbreak in that local area in the way that we had hoped let’s just look at the information that was um coming through to the Welsh government throughout September and into October if we start on the 15th of September there’s a daily ministerial call uh you
Received an update from Mr gethin uh we don’t need to go to the minutes of it there’s a Tac report um was that Wales was in an equivalent position to early February the r rate was above one uh urgent decisions needed to be made as to whether to persist with the local uh
Lockdowns or take National measures and then on the 18th of September 3 days later uh Tac advis that more needed to be done to bring the r rate back below one uh so in summary again the T advice was a package of npis may be needed to
Bring R below one and an action would be most effective if implemented early and we know that a circuit breaker or five break lockdown was recommended by Sage on the 21st of September perhaps if we just have a look at the minutes um f fiss Ben attended on behalf of TAC their inq
46566 and I’m looking at page two paragraph two please Thank You Sage advice package of interventions would need to be adopted to reverse the exponential rise in cases single interventions by themselves unlikely to bring R below one top of the list of interventions we see their circuit
Breaker to return instance to low levels so this is 21st of September 2020 uh and then if we can look at paragraph six on that same page please the more rapidly interventions are put in place and the more stringent they are the faster the reduction in instance and prevalence greater the
Reduction in covid related deaths um to which high confidence both local and National measures are needed measures should not be applied in to specific a geographical area just continuing so we know what the information was that you had four days later 25th of September we can take
These um minutes down thank you the need for early infation is reiterated by Tac again don’t need to go to the advice it was that if current measures do not bring R below one further restrictions will needed will be needed to control the epidemic in Wales and then a week
Later on the second of OCT oober rather more Stark warning from tac unless measures bring R below one it is possible that infection instance um and Hospital admissions May exceed scenario planning levels so the advice seems to be pretty clear um certainly from Sage on the 21st of September and then
Reinforced by Tac and tag that uh immediate steps such as a circuit breaker are needed uh and that they would be most effective if introduced early um so at this point we’re now now beginning of October what is the Welsh government’s thinking as regards a a circuit
Breaker well the W government took the advice uh very seriously uh you’ll know that I raised it at Cobra meetings prime minister told me he wasn’t prepared to introduce a national uh lockdown I asked for a special meeting of Cobra to consider the circuit breaker advice I was supported
By that by the first minister of Scotland but that meeting never took place there are a series of headwinds to the W government being able to act on that advice um there are Financial headwinds to it there are political headwinds to it given the prime minister is not just not prepared
To do it he’s actively opposed to doing it and says so publicly and criticizes the Welsh government when we say that we are intending to do so I think Professor Dan wiut says in his advice to the inquiry that decisions in Wales are often made in the shadow of
Decisions that are made by our next door much bigger next door neighbor and I want just to underline the the headwind that that does create when when you are trying to do something in the active face of active opposition from others there is acceptability to the
Public you know we’re four weeks on from the summer holidays only four weeks ago people are on the beach and things things look like they are much better four weeks later to say to people that they’re heading into a national lockdown there are real concerns in my mind about
Being able to persuade people of that and then there is the balance of harms which we are more aware of in the leadup to the co the lockdown period the the circuit breaker period than we were back in March we’re now more aware of the other things that we have to to balance
So we spend October trying to Grapple with those things and to come to a decision that balances the advice we are very clearly getting from sage and increasingly getting from Welsh sources with all the other things we have to take into account so let’s um just look
At the you you mentioned two headwinds a political headwind and and the economic headwind um and you mentioned the Cobra meeting I think the Cobra meeting was on the 12th of October um we don’t need to bring up though we’ve got the minutes so why don’t we look at them as they’re
There thank you very much inq 4 is 83851 um page 7 paragraph 11 you ask the Prime Minister whether a c break or fire break lockdown would be considered as had been advised by Sage um and I think talking about a political headwind you had formed the view had you
Not even at this um relatively early stage in in October that the UK government were not with you on on the the need for a um fibrate lockdown is that right well I I had formed that I don’t it’s there in the minute I don’t want to over rely on Mr Dominick
Cummings’s evidence but this is what he says about the prime minister’s attitude at this point enraged the Prime Minister made his comment no more expletive lockdowns Let the Bodies pile high in their thousands um now you I don’t over rely on that but it does give you a sense of
It’s not just the UK government is not convinced or is neutral about it they are positive determined not to do what they’re being advised to do and positively going to oppose Welsh efforts to do what we thought we needed to do was of course the evidence of Mr
Cummings I I’m I hope I’ve cave ated my Reliance on it following this Cobra meeting of the 12th of uh October you updated Walsh ministers as to what had been discussed at this meeting that was on the a daily ministerial call of the 13th of October again we don’t need the
Note of uh that meeting but it records your recollection of the Cobra meeting um the UK uh CSA and CMO repeatedly telling the Prime Minister that tier three measures would not be enough to reduce the r rate below uh one uh but thus a circuit breaker would and it’s at
This point 13th of October you invited Welsh ministers to consider a circuit breaker and it’s recorded in the uh minute Dr Aon informed the meeting that the four CMOS of the UK supported a circuit breaker Public Health Wales Tac and Sage all agreed that that was that was the right
Approach so at this point in time we we’ve seen Sage advice um going back to the 21st of September talking about circuit breaker would I be right in understanding that as of 13th of October no plans had been put in place by the Welsh government for the introduction of
A circuit breaker well that is a decision in principle so it’s not a decision about the detailed planning uh first of all I need to know whether this is a course of action that the cabinet are prepared to Embark upon so we do have a very
Detailed debate and at the end of it there is a unanimous agreement despite those headwinds that I’ve outlined this is the right thing to do and we make that in principle decision that that will be our policy and I think it’s it’s right to say um also on the 13th of October you
You wrote to the Prime Minister you raised an issue about the English Welsh border that we might come back to about those moving from high prevalence areas to low prevalence areas but in at the end of that letter um we don’t need this um brought up you invite the prime
Minister to convene a cobra meeting to discuss a uk-wide circuit breaker um so although you say on the 12th of October at Cobra you had formed the view um that this was not something that the UK govern or the Prime Minister was ever going to countenance you seem to still
Be writing on the on the following day on the 13th of October inviting a meeting to discuss it why because I thought the prime minister’s approach uh on the 12th of October was extraordinary uh it is very unusual for very senior civil servants to be as blunt with the Prime Minister as both
Sir Tris witty and S Patrick Valance were uh in that meeting they both repeatedly said to him your plan for three tier three lockdowns will not bring the rate below one and it’s rare for advice to begin as bluntly as that and to be repeated during a meeting in
That way so I wanted the prime minister to have another opportunity to reflect on that advice and that evidence and in a meeting where we weren’t talking about lots of other things but where we had as the whole purpose of the meeting the advice we had from Sage the advice we
Were hearing from senior uh advisers and I would not have given up hope at all that if we’d done it we might yet have come to a greater consensus about the need to act in line with the advice we were receiving we’ve addressed um the political headwind that you say you the
Welsh government faced um dealing next to them with the economic headwind um I think you say that had you the confidence that the UK government would provide the money needed to support people during the fire break you would have probably implemented the lockdown sooner that’s that’s right is it it is
Just exploring that with you if I may um the job support scheme was announced on the 9th of October um and Mr sunak has said uh that he confirmed that the date of the 1st of November could not be brought forward prior to that announcement on the on the 9th of OCT
October suppose first is is that right do you agree that you knew that the date of the 1st of November was not a Movable Feast I would have known that that is what the chancellor of the ex cheer had said didn’t mean that I necessarily
Agreed with him you wrote to him on the 16th of October if we can have a look at that letter please it’s inq 30 26554 um the first paragraph you tell Mr sunak the Welsh government is actively considering introducing a Welsh circuit breaker and that the plan is that it
Would run from the 23rd of October to the U 9th of October I think that is captured in the next paragraph um but if we can turn over please to page two and look at the third bullet point you say um that hmrc could administer a scheme
Of this sort given the systems put in place and you then say that the Welsh government would be willing to reimb hmrc for the additional costs of paying 67% of the wage costs of eligible employees instead of 60% so that’s your letter of the 16th of October Chancellor’s response or then
Chancellor’s response um if we can see that please it’s inq 30 216555 and it’s the first main paragraph effectively saying unable to bring the forward the claims uh date to 23rd of October due to limitations in hmrc delivery timelines and now it’s fair to say that you were deeply disappointed with this
Response and you said as much in your letter back to the then Chancellor of the 20th of October um returning though to the point you make about the timing being tied up with or influenced by UK government financial support your your first letter is the 16th of October that’s a week before the
Fire break was to come into effect you knew prior to to the jss announcement on the 9th of October that the 1st of November had been effectively a date set in stone by the then Chancellor why were you not making these these inquiries uh much earlier especially given the sage advice in
Mid-september well I think the fact that I was raing it much earlier the first time I raise it is on the 22nd of September in a Cobra meeting where I make a point there’s a huge amount of very naughty detail in this issue but there’s a very
Simple principle behind it which is that if the public health circumstances in any part of the United Kingdom were such that action needed to be taken there needed to be a process in which the treasury could be asked to support that action clear it was never my uh proposition nor indeed the proposition
Of a first Ministers of Northern Ireland Scotland that it would simply be a matter of us saying please send us however many pounds and it would follow we wanted a process that we would all agree on whether first minister of Northern Ireland would say things are so bad in
Northern Ireland at the moment I need to take this action will I have the financial support needed to to allow me to go ahead uh and that’s what I was looking for from as early as the 22nd of September a recognition that any part of the United Kingdom could have a call on
Treasury support where it could be demonstrated that that support was needed and after that that is what I’m pursuing all the time here here is a letter from the chancellor that tells me it can’t be done practically of course he was able to do it practically as soon
As England asked him to do it so there’s you know there’s a little bit of a gap between what he’s saying to me he had no more time to change his plans for England when they asked him that I was asking him uh in Wales uh and uh as you
Know there is a document that I would like to draw attention to if I could because I think the Chancellor’s reply offers half of the reason uh that he had rather than the whole of the reason yes and just for the record so we can see it there displayed it’s inq 00 3971
93 so I asked if I could to attention to this my lady because I I hadn’t seen this document until Friday of last week it’s a debate between officials in the treasury as to how they should respond to the request that I have made and you
Will see that there are two reasons why the request was turned down there is the Practical reason they they they continue to identify that in here but they say that there is a policy a policy of the UK government not to support the devolved administrations going further than the UK government on
Npis so it is the policy position of the UK government that devolved administrations are never to be offered more help than has already been offered to England sorry where do I find that Mr you would find that it’s under handling advice and it’s in the second line the point we previously discussed
About da is going further than HMG on npis my request they say is not possible and goes to the point we previously discussed and they say in the first paragraph that that is a matter of policy a policy I’m not sure I’m reading it exactly that way
Well so they’re basically in the first paragraph We have two reasons um a matter of delivery which we know about as well as policy well policy there could mean policy to do with um whether or not they should all apply to the United Kingdom and when all the fact is
Going to apply to the whole United Kingdom and when policy doesn’t necessarily mean it could be all sorts of things couldn’t it do not necessarily relations with defa Nations so then we come to and and anyway Furlow carries on to the end of October which I suspect a point Mr
Paul was about to come to then handling advice we’ve had the attached data can’t bring it forward as you know this is not possible bringing it forward and anyway goes to the point we previously discuss about da going further so I believe that that is a statement of their policy the policy
They refer to in the first paragraph which is that they have made a decision that we will not at any more help than has already been provided to England none of that appears in the Chancellor’s letter the only point he relies upon is the Practical point but you will see in
Point two of a handling that this is a relatively cynical decision to put pressure back on the first Minister will he go ahead with the actions that I am explaining are necessary to protect public health and prevent people dying in Wales knowing that we the treasury won’t bail it
Out that is the recommended option this is put to the chancellor of the EXA this is not just Junior officials debating amongst themselves this advice is put in front of the chancellor of the excha and he agrees it and I think my only point is is that in public the chancellor
Relied on it’s just not practical for me to do it although as I say it turned out to be practical only a few days later uh whereas in fact it was more than just practical objections there was a policy position in the treasury not to support the devolved government even when we
Needed it I see that’s your reading I’m not quite sure I read it the same way but it maybe it’s open for discussion for which we do not have enough time so I apologize for entering into the debate my lady not at all um and I think it’s
Only fair to say that um the then Chancellor I think his when the relevant passage of your witness statement which you’ve just elaborated on orally was put to him in in module two I think his answer was was twofold I think he first of all pointed
To the fact that Furlow ran until the end of October Uber but he also pointed as well as to the Barnet consequentials he said The Upfront funding guarantee that the UK government introduced in July 2020 which he said provided an extra 5 billion uh pounds for Wales and provided
Wellsh government with extra Financial flexibility and security so in other words he said a significant sum of money was made available to Wells in advance of need is that an answer to the point you make about timing absolutely not and in fact in the additional statement that Mr sunak has
Provided to you he he doesn’t mention that because he realizes that that was not actually available the money that CES comes in the baret guarantee for which we were very grateful and I should again just say time and time again I tried to say how much I appreciated the
Enormous efforts that the treasury did make in many of the schemes that they put forward and the baret guarantee was a very helpful uh thing for us but the b a guarantee money was to be spent on devolved responsibilities only we could not have used it to spend on schemes for
Which only the treasury had the responsibility so although the chancellor said that in his oral evidence in his follow-up written evidence he Retreats from that completely Mr sh I’m sorry I’m going to enter the debate again having told myself not to um what I don’t understand
Is this I have heard a number of um representatives of the Welsh government basically blame the UK government for a delay in bringing into existence the fire break on the basis that the delay was really caused by their refusing to give you the financial backing you needed then yesterday we were discussing
This matter with um Miss Mason and she explained when pressed that in fact the fur scheme was going to keep going till the day before the new scheme came into force and therefore you had the financial backing it’s just that the new scheme would have provided greater Financial backing so I’m sorry I
Don’t understand the argument and I’m happy for you to explain it if you can as to how the Welsh government can blame the UK government when there was Financial backing in existence it just doesn’t wasn’t as much I I’ll do my best to explain I think there are two reasons
Why that argument doesn’t uh would not have been sufficient for us at the time uh first of all it would have required every business in Wales uh who was now going to have to uh fur somebody because they would no longer be able to operate
To apply for one scheme for week one and then a wholly new scheme for week two we thought that was not a reasonable burden to put on businesses and employees when it could be avoid it but the second and the more important reason is is that the qualifying criteria for the two schemes
Was very different and the qualifying criteria for the first week was much more restrictive and it would have been for the enhanced uh job support scheme So Not only would people have had to have applied twice but far fewer people would have been successful in those applications in the
First week than would have been true in the second week and the reason the chancellor had put in a new scheme and a more generous scheme was to recognize the Gathering difficulties of CO’s um new sweep up through the autumn So Not only would it been difficult to
Do it practically but actually it wouldn’t have delivered for very many people anybody working in Hospitality would not have qualified for the first week of help at all so we would be saying to people in Wales you’ve got a you’re not allowed to go to work and
There’s no help for you at all all of that could have been put right by the UK government by simply adjusting one week in the introduction of the scheme and we were prepared to recognize that there would be additional costs for them in doing that and we would have paid for
Them out of our own resources the UK wasn’t prepared to do that so I understand that You’ have much preferred it to come in and that you made your contribution offer what they don’t follow is if on one side of the argument or the one side of the equation
You have the health of your nation and the possibility of many more infections and many more death and the fact you’ve come to the conclusion you have no alternative but to lock down and on the other hand some difficulties except would not be easy for employers and
Certainly wouldn’t be easy for people in Hospitality but I don’t see how those two end up with your being able to blame the UK government for delaying the fabre well what I’m arguing for is a Level Playing Field when UK ministers go to the treasury and say things are so
Bad we need you to change the scheme the scheme is changed immediately when Welsh government goes to so what was the example of that I’m sorry I meant to ask you what was the example because within a couple of weeks of our fire break the England is in a
4-we lockdown but did they bring forward any scheme then I’m I’m not following why you said they were able to bring forward schemes I’m sorry it is fishlyn at that point he doesn’t move from one scheme to another he rolls forward the first scheme for another month to accommodate the
Changing circumstances in England when it’s as simple it really is as simple as this when English ministers ask him for help he says yes when Welsh ministers ask him for help he says no and that’s not fair that is the treasury not operating as a UK treasury it’s
Operating as the treasury for England and that’s why this was such you know I think I say in my in my evidence this was one of the for somebody who believes in the United Kingdom this was one of the hardest moments in the whole of the fire brick because we were not being
Treated fairly we were not being treated as we would have been had we been English ministers asking for that help Mr dford um just before we take a break um try and finish this topic of of the fire Break um and circling back around to to timing it was the 14th of
October that the fere implementation group was established there was then an emergency cabinet meeting of the 15th of October um we don’t need to look at those binits um the scientific advice was that a minimum twoe lockdown was required but it was said that 3 weeks was preferable suppose just pausing there if
You’re being told that the 3we fire break was preferable why was It ultimately decided to go with a two we fire break well it wasn’t a two we fire break it was three three weekends two weeks so a 17-day fire break and there’s a trade-off here between length and
Depth the advice we get thing is you can either go longer and have more shallow restrictions the shorter the FI brick the deeper it has to be and the watch government decides to have a 17 day fire break and to have it as sharp as we can
Make it so every time you will see in the papers there are a series of choices ministers are asked to make between more intense restrictions or less intense restrictions and every time we decide on more intense restrictions because we have got fewer days of those restrictions in place so it’s the
Balance between length and depth and we resolve it in that way the emergency cabinet on the 15th of October um makes an in-principle decision that’s to have a fire Break um that’s not formally approved until cabinet then meets again until on the 19th of October why does it take a
Further four days to formally make a decision that’s already be made in principle well it’s because of the way in which we made decisions in Wales which I think if I could sum them up you know the process was exhaustive and exhausting because my aim was to make
Sure that we involved as many voices as we could in these difficult decisions my lady I can say to you you know from my experience the easy way for a government to ask is to ask as few people as you can get away with our objective was to
Do the opposite we aimed to talk to as many many people as we could about the impact of our decisions would have on them so in this period the cabinet is meeting daily sometimes twice daily we are also meeting with social partnership Council we are Consulting with the children’s commissioner my colleagues
Are talking with all their sector organizations from a Minister’s point of view as I say that’s that’s an exhausting way to make decisions and it makes the burden of decision- making more difficult in some ways because now you have to take into account all the difficulties that everybody will have explained to you
That this is going to make mean for them and that does take a couple of days to do it but my aim throughout the whole of the pandemic was to never come to a final decision unless I felt that we’d had every opportunity to listen to people in Wales and their representative
Organizations and for every question that any one of my ministerial colleagues uh that they wanted to raise that they’d had the opportunity to raise it and you know there that does take a couple of days and those that’s what was going on in the days between the F the
15th and the 19th of October that intensive work of Engagement with people about the major decision we were about to take we now know that the second wave had a greater impact in Wells than the first more lives were were lost do you consider that um different decisions should have been taken throughout
September and October and ultimately should a fire break have been brought in sooner and for longer well um I said you that the F bre decision was about balancing the four harms and the harm that is most in the minds other than the harm from the virus itself
In our minds at this point is the harm to children we had agreed as a cabinet that keeping schools open would be our top priority the schools would be the last to close and we were very committed to making sure that a week of the fire break coincided with half term in order
To minimize the impact on children’s lives so there’s obviously a very closable argument that you could have vought it forward a week and still had a week of half term uh in it but it’s the process of weighing up all those different harms that leads us to the timetable we
Eventually adopt it’s not the only timetable I’m not defending it I’m explaining it as best I can and that’s one of the driving considerations for us at this point is trying to minimize the impact of what we’re about to do in the lives of uh children who have already had the
Education significantly disrupted in Welles my lady if that’s TR Point yes of course quarter past 3 please all e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e
Thank you um my lady as you came to the end of November 2020 um Mr Drake for detention turned to the approach to adopt over the Christmas period and it was recognized that if possible there should be a foration position on what was and what was not going to be allowed
Over Christmas if we can have a look at a cobra meeting minutes of the 24th of November please inq 408385 we have a look at page six paragraph 4 please uh Dr Aon is noted as saying relaxing the rules for winter festivities would bring a cost to it uh
Paragraph six on the same page Christmas Proposal was put together as there was a significant risk of non-compliance otherwise and it allowed the public to come together when needed in a more managed way uh Paris 7 please The Proposal was for up to three households to come together in in an exclusive
Bubble with the four nations being able to Define households slightly differently and then if we go to page s please par 10 you are noted as agreeing to the to the top messages of The Proposal uh would need to ensure Clarity of public messaging now one of the concerns that
Was voiced at Cobra was that Wales was the only nation uh at this stage without a tier system and so needed to give thought to what to revert to after the 27th of December do you consider a tier system ought to have been introduced earlier than
The 4th of December as it had been in the other three nations I don’t think so at this point we have our own uh method of uh responding in Wales and I don’t think I felt under any pressure just to come into line with what others were
Doing no um we know that a new variant of the virus had been identified that spread very quickly and on the 16th of December you announced that Wales would move into alert level four so the highest level effectively lock down from Christmas day and that a smaller
Christmas is a safer Christmas um Mr geing told the inquiry uh in his evidence on Monday that by the 15th of December it was his view that there was a clear rationale to move ahead of the agreement that uh you had reached with the other nations of the UK he told us
That cabinet was split um you set out a case for a different course of action namely delaying further restrictions my question is is simply this given given you and Mr gethin were drawing on the same scientific evidence including Dr aon’s advice uh why were you and Mr gethin on different pages it seems
Regarding a the timing of a Christmas lockdown at this point well this was the most difficult period of decision making the whole of the pandemic for the Welsh government uh the health Minister was in seat of direct advice from the director general of the NHS about the risk to the
Health Service and from the chief medical officer about the continuing rise in infections in Wales I am concerned about the other harms that would occur if we were to bring forward a lockdown to the pre Christmas period instead of the immediately post Christmas period that we have
Identified uh and I’m anxious about that for a string of different reasons uh I’m anxious for businesses because many businesses make their you know the difference between them surviving and going under is the week before Christmas that’s when they make uh money and we have promised them that they will have
That week to trade there are many people in Wales my lady weekly paid people who only buy Christmas presents in the week before Christmas cuz they’re not able to manage money in a different way they they rely on that final pay packet and then they go and make
Christmas and we’re about to take that away from them and even more so I am very heavily weighing very heavily with me is the impact on children in my own constituency I have a school which has one of the largest proportions of children on the at risk register of any
School in Wales it’s a fantastic school had teacher sets off at 8:00 in the morning to go and collect children whose parents otherwise wouldn’t manage to get them ready to to get to school if those children have a Christmas they have it in school if they have a Christmas present
It’s because the school gives it to them if they have a Christmas party it’s because it happens in school if they have a Christmas dinner it’s because the school provides it in that final week they’re not going to get it at home and we’re about to say to them that day of
Christmas is completely cancelled and you know I think I am lucky that I don’t have many sleepless nights even in these difficult days but at that moment I am I am really worrying about what we are faced with dis deciding we have a cabinet meeting the cabinet is evenly
Divided between whether to bring forward the restrictions or to stick with our original plan although I had approached it from a different starting point than the health minister of course I sum up at the end of the meeting in favor of his position not mine and the reason for that is a point
My lady I think you made earlier and it’s why in the end some of what look like really difficult decisions I thought were resolvable because the advice we are having from our medical colleagues is is that if we don’t act now people who otherwise would be alive would lose their
Lives and although a child in school if we close them early they will be losing their education and in some children’s cases they will be losing an awful lot more than that in the end they will get Christmas back another year and we can do things to restore their education I
Cannot give them back their Nan and so in the end for me the decision was never that difficult if you have advice that says you need to do this or lives will be lost despite the other harms that’s the way in which the wsh government resolved the decision and in
That meeting where that is the very dilemma we were faced with although I had started from a different place to the health minister I resolved the discussion in favor of the arguments he was making for exactly that reason and we don’t need to go to the
Minutes but just for the record that was a cabinet meeting on Saturday the 19th of December it’s inq 44883 and the decision as you said Mr drwood was to bring forward alert uh level four restrictions for the whole of Wales from Midnight that night want to um just go back to schools
And education in this pre- Chrismas period briefly um because on the 2nd of December there was a draft tag paper titled statement on mpis in the pre- Chrismas period um if we can have a look at that it’s inq 30 3539 if we can turn to page seven please second
Paragraph um the available evidence indicates that schools being open is ass is associated with higher rates of infection in the population although there is no clear evidence of a causative relationship if we can have a look at page 12 please under the schools policy option uh this provides modeled estimates of
The impact of schools moving to Blended learning from 14 to 18 and if we just turn over the page to 13 uh and look at the table this sets out the difference in outcomes using different reproduction rates between schools being open and closed and we can see that the difference is reason reasonably
Sizable Miss uh Williams Kirsty Williams set out her thoughts on this Tac paper in an email uh to the minister for Health and Social Services and your special advisers and your private office if we can have a look at the email it’s the 6th of December it’s inq 30
3544 uh third paragraph she explains that the paper so that namely the draft tag paper we’ve just looked at is deeply difficult for education and then the next paragraph the fourth paragraph that it is contrary to the agreed position of the government that education is a
Priority and it is right isn’t it that as a result of Miss Williams’s concerns uh you asked for the paper to be held back from publication and an updated paper was published on the 7th of December before we just look at that updated paper is is I’ve got everything
Right so far correct uh that updated paper is inq 30355 7 and if we look at the modeling charts they’re Pages 12 and 13 please just having in mind what we saw earlier that the section setting out the differentials in Impact when schools are closed has been removed from this
Published paper uh as has the suggestion that schools move to Blended learning from the 14th to 18th of December why did you consider that the tag paper should be amended in in this way because I agreed with the educ ation Minister that there had been insufficient discussion with her and her
Advisers uh about the content of the paper she wished to interrogate that data further she wanted more discussions with the authors of the paper to understand the basis on which this advice which was contrary to as she said uh the position that we had aimed to sustain up until that point uh before
That information went into the public domain I wanted to be sure that my education Minister was confident in it and she clearly wasn’t confident thought she hadn’t had the opportunities that she needed I didn’t want to hold the paper up uh longer than was necessary so the paper was published but it allowed
Discussions with the education Minister and her advisers to go to go ahead I understand um as we entered 2021 cases remained very high in most parts of Wales there were rapid increases in Northeast Wales in particular so despite the Christmas restrictions the new strain of the virus appeared to be
Driving an increase in cases uh fourth of January all four CMOS um for the four nations recommended the UK alert level move from level four to level five and we don’t need to go to the minutes but that was discussed in a four Nation call with Mr Gove and in summary the decision
Was made that measures would remain in place until the 15th of February with with no review before before then that that’s right isn’t it yes um want to again just look briefly at decisions that were made in respect of schools in this period in early uh 2021 uh if we
Can see a tag paper published paper 7th of January U it’s inq 4066 357 if we can have a look at page six please Under The Heading education and schools uh I think it’s about six lines down it starts slightly indented it is difficult to quantify the size of this effect and it
Remains difficult to quantify the level of transmission taking place specifically within schools compared to other settings open schools also being associated with adults attending work more travel and commuting and schools day wraparound community and Sport activities in the end uh to end day if we can uh turn to page eight please second
Paragraph pattern of confirmed cases and uh clusters of cases associated with schools in Wales reported by public health Wales during the Autumn term did not indicate a large proportion of transmission associated with schools and then over the page page nine please uh on CIS data from 2nd of
September to 16th of October show no evidence of difference in the rates of teachers education workers in England testing positive compared to key workers and other professionals medium confidence and then finally um over page 11 please second paragraph schools should not be dis proportionately used as a control
Measure for reducing rate U particularly if existing non pharmaceutical interventions are not being observed as well as they could be uh EG indoor mixing the aim to maintain schools operations to minimize avoidable harm to children would be accompanied by a clear communication strategy that there should be no wider relaxation of
Precautions um Miss Williams in her wit statement to this module um when discussing this paper she says it was discussed in a ministerial call on the 7th of January 2021 and it was decided that schools could not fully reopen on the 18th of January and that it was
Unlikely that schools would return to face to-face uh teaching before the halterm in in mid-February why was this decision taken given the um advice and the evidence set out in this in this tag report well first of all Mr PA I think in in the extracts you’ve uh highlighted
You see the complexity of the advice in this area and its inconsistency it was never that we had a definitive set of information about the impact that schools had on transmission the difference between different age groups the effect of parents congregating at the school gate you know at different points the advice pushed
You in different directions and although this advice would be very consistent with the watch government s ambition which is to have children in school there is lots of other advice extant that gives people of a different view you know evidence that they can point to
To say this is not the right thing to do you during this period the education Minister and I are both separately served with a a legal document from the National Association of head teachers saying that they will prosecute us if we open schools in Wales uh no no I obviously would not
Agree with that but the National Association of head teachers is not a frivolous organization uh and it would not have come to that conclusion if he didn’t believe seriously that reopening schools in these circumstances the alpha wave and so on uh that that was putting their members at serious risk so while there
Is the evidence you have uh quite rightly pointed to here it’s not unambiguous and it’s not the only advice in town there are other people who feel very strongly that schools must not reopen to the extent that they’re prepared to take legal action against the wsh government to prevent that from
Happening Mr Drake for changing topic now but staying um anchored in 2021 wanted to ask a few questions about international travel uh you’ve said in your witness statement that engagement between the UK government and the Welsh government regarding international travel was a low point in intergovernmental communication
Throughout the pandemic um on on the 23rd of June 2021 uh you wrote to Mr Gove regarding the UK government’s proposals for relaxing the self-isolation requirement for those returning from Amber list countries we don’t need your letter displayed but in that letter you say it is important for decisions regarding international travel
To be taken on a uk-wide basis and you hope that changes would not be made without agreement between the four nations uh now we’ve seen calls for four Nation decision- making before when it came to international travel did unilateral decision making present an even bigger problem well in this area the wsh
Government had only theoretical powers of agency because most people who travel abroad from Wales don’t do so from Wales and back to Wales they go through ports in in England and airports in England so while theoretically we could make rules of Our Own in practice they would have had no
Uh no impact so in effect we simply had to do whatever the UK government decided in this area I don’t think the UK government was slow in coming to that realization themselves so the amount of discussion with us was pretty rudimentary uh often very late in the
Day personally I disagreed with the UK government’s approach to international travel from almost beginning to end but in practice that made no difference at all to citizens in Wales because the practicalities of international travel were not not in the hands of the W government on the 23rd of July you
Describ in your witness statement receiving an email informing you that the UK government was proposing to relax international travel restrictions for fully vaccinated Rivals from EU countries in the USA um it’s inq 00256 899 we’ve got it on screen there a page uh bottom of page one there’s a proposal
To be discussed at coido with it coming into Force as soon as the 2nd of August uh you are asked for your views um and I think it is yes page uh page one right at the top you say I think my reaction is as it has been throughout
That the risks from international travel remain real and that the UK government’s approach is not proportionate to that risk can you just explain what you what you meant and why you say that in that email well I believed from the beginning as I say to the end that more could have been
Done to mitigate the risk of Corona virus and particularly new variants of Corona virus arriving in the United Kingdom through international travel uh the Instinct of the UK government was always to liberalize uh travel as much as possible and that meant in my view that they were prepared to take risks on importation
That would better have been avoided so it’s just a fundamental uh difference of view when it plays out week after week in all the practice IC alties we would have had a stronger grip on international arrivals in the United Kingdom and when they did arrive we would have had stronger precautions to
Make sure that they were safe to be here and we would have lifted those restrictions more gradually and for fewer countries at a time of you in a practical sense counted for nothing because we couldn’t make it effective but uh that’s what I mean there that throughout the time their
Approach underestimated the risks in a letter you wrote to Mr Johnson on the 5th of August um you described the UK government’s approach to international travel and UK borders as chaotic and the engagement with the devolved administrations as shambolic looking ahead um to a future
Pandemic H how is this to be improved in the future in your view well it is chaotic and shambolic because of the pace at which changes are made you really would need to be running a travel agency to have kept up with whether France is on the list today and
Tobago is on the list tomorrow because the lists were constantly changing and the criteria against which it was decided whether or not a country would be on a list were were changing as well so I suppose my answer I haven’t given it a great deal of thought
Truthfully but my answer will be rooted in some of the answers I’ve tried to give earlier which is that consistency and predictability of action would be as welcome in this area as it was in others and it was very absent in this area heading into winter 2021 Omron as
We know emerged as a variant of concern do you consider that the Welsh government was overly cautious or overly pessimistic in the way that it responded to Omron in in Winter 2021 I don’t the advice we had was that Omron was significantly more transmissible and there were two things that we didn’t
Know about it we didn’t know whether the available vaccines would have been as effective in dealing with this new variant as they had been with the pre-existing ones and we didn’t know whether Omron would not simply be more transmiss ible but it could be a more serious uh
Disease now you could uh try a luck and you know gamble on the fact that it wouldn’t be more serious and that the vaccines would work um trying your luck wasn’t a basis of the decisions we would make uh we acted on a precautionary principle that it
Could either of those things could have been true until we were confident that it wasn’t true we will protect the was public from the potential uh impact changing topic Mr director than just touching on public health messaging which I appreciate we’ve already touched on uh already um you’ve said in your
Evidence that you were determined throughout the pandemic that the Welsh government Communications should speak to the people of Wales in a way that was clear direct and honest I appreciate this is probably asking you to mark your own homework to a certain extent but do do you consider that that was achieved
During the pandemic well um I I’ll make one point and maybe if you don’t mind I’ll tell one story just to illustrate I’ll do it as quickly as I can so the the general point is is that my aim when I went to give press conferences was to share with
The people listening the information that I had and then to explain why the was government had come to the conclusions we had come to based on that information but that information would allow people to make a different conclusion if they wanted to I wanted
Them to know what I knew and so I would set it out week after week i’ said this is you know this is the state of the virus this is what we’re being told and this is what we now think we need to do but I wanted to make sure that they
Always felt that if they if they thought there was a different conclusion to be drawn people would be able to do so were we effective here is my very brief story I woke up one morning at home probably in July one of the days when things are getting better cafes have
Just been allowed to open uh outdoors and a BBC reporter is interviewing a group of ladies who have gathered at veres which is a coffee shop in the mumbles in kif which they’ve not been able to do for many weeks uh and uh he says to them um how
Have you been able to follow you know the rules it’s all been very difficult and this person says to him well at quarter 12 on a Friday we draw the curtains we sit down we listen to the press conference and we do everything Mr Drakeford tells us to Do that point I’ve had a rather sinking feeling really but that in a way I think I don’t think that was untypical the number of people who follow the press conferences was enormous and the number of people who relied upon them to know what our advice to them was was
Huge and the willingness of people in Wales to comply you with the extraordinary things we were asking of them was I think well beyond what you might have reasonably expected there were some high-profile instances of ministers and officials within the UK government appearing to contravene covid regulations um we’ve
Heard U Mr cummings’s about Mr cummings’s drive to barard Castle uh do you consider from a Welsh government perspective that those incidents had any impact on the Public’s confidence in your government’s handling of the pandemic I think there’s some empirical evidence on this uh every month the UK
Government uh paid for research I think it was by Mori we paid for a Welsh booster sample to get the views of people in Wales at the start of the pandemic trus in the Welsh government and the UK government are more or less at a par maybe the UK government is
Slightly ahead of the Welsh government in terms of trust there comes a point and it’s around that time when there’s a big Divergence in trust so from there on the wsh government’s trust rating is around the 70% sometimes a couple of points below sometimes quite a few points above and the UK government’s
Trust ratings are 40% or lower so a 30 % Gap opens up between people’s feeling that they can rely on what the UK government is telling them and what they think they and how they think they can rely on with the Welsh government is telling them and I think it’s very very
Much connected to a feeling that in some parts of the United Kingdom there were people issuing instructions to others that they did not feel they had to follow themselves and I don’t think people thought that was true in Wales and I can give you an absolute guarantee
That it wasn’t true Did you ever consider that your own ministers or wealth official behavior during the pandemic uh dented public confidence in Wales you know there are one or two incidents that are reported and much is made of them but they’re very infrequent well my you will know that a
Television company had complete access to the Welsh government for months and months and you know filmed us at work exhaustively I don’t think you will see anything there at all other than people absolutely scrupulously observing the rules that we had set for others and determin that we would always live up to
What we were asking others to live up to I want to deal next with the Welsh government’s consideration of vulnerable and at risk groups um and you say in your witness statement to this module it’s paragraph 70 that you initiated a significant amount of data collection
And modeling in relation to at risk and vulnerable groups and those with protected characteristics um first of all how how did the Welsh government assess who would be considered vulnerable and at risk during the pandemic well we would essentially have relied on the protected characteristics uh
List dealing then if I can with with older people first you make the point in your um witness statement paragraph 68 that data and modeling in Wales took into account the relatively higher proportion of older people in Wales and you point to the fact that the older people’s commissioner was a member of
The Shadow social partnership Council professor nazu in um expert report for all of the module 2os has highlighted in evidence to the inquiry that there has been no comprehensive study of Aging in Wales to capture the experiences of people as they grow older if that is so what sources of
Information were used to inform the Welsh government’s approach to vulnerabilities of older people during the pandemic I was puzzled when I read that because I know from my own work at the University that there are very distinguished uh Welsh researchers who have reported uh on those matters in
Wales so I’m not actually certain that I agree with the point that was uh made the work of Professor Judith Phillips just to cite one example you know is very significant and very highly regarded and Judith is a professor who focuses on older people and has worked
In Wales extensively so I’m not sure I I sign up to the idea that there isn’t as you know there wasn’t information available uh but it is true as I said in one of my first answers that the scale of research available on a population of
55 million people is always going to be greater than is available on a population of 3 million so I’m I’m not saying that there are not gaps you know there are but I’m not sure that some of those gaps were quite as extensive as the advice the inquiry has had suggests
Pandemic planning appears though to have treated older people as a homogeneous group and not paid attention to which categories of older people might have been a particular risk I mean do you agree with that proposition um I think T extent I don’t think it would be true for example in
Our approach to uh black and minority ethnic communities where we had some very specific policies aimed at older people in those communities so I’m not going to say that across every protected characteristic we were able to disaggregate our efforts according to age but I uh I think where it was most
Available to us to make that that difference we did briefly what steps did the Welsh government take to mitigate risks to older people um in respect of particularly I’m thinking the MPI that were introduced in response to the pandemic well I suppose the most obvious one is that many many older people were
Asked to shield from the very beginning I don’t think I’ve made theologies if I have that you know four members of my own ministerial team were shielding from the very beginning uh so we were very alert as a group of cabinet colleagues that they were older people
Who were who we were asking to take even greater measures to protect themselves against the the virus so that’s the most obvious example and then through our local Authority colleagues we also instigated a series of measures to try to make sure that isolated older people would have the contact that they need
Particularly through delivering food to them making sure medicines were collected and delivered to them and so on Debbie Foster gave evidence um in respect of disabled people uh which was looking at the impact on disabled groups in Wales um and she said was largely she was largely left to her own devices and
She compared that with um to give an example the black Asian minority ethnic group and this was interpreted she said by some members of the Welsh government that they saw their work as less important is that the case uh well I’m very uh grateful to Professor Foster and
To members of the disability forum who did advise us throughout the pandemic and who uh produced a locked out report which I attended a meeting with the authors including uh Debbie Foster shortly before the senate elections in May 2021 um it’s difficult for me to put myself in in her
Position I my doubt just want to say you know I was very keen indeed that the Welsh government took full account of the needs of black and minority uh ethnic citizens and disabled citizens before the pandemic started at all uh by the end of 2019 we had working in the cabinet and I
Was very insistent that these individuals would sit on the floor where cabinet colleagues would see them every day so we appointed Professor um WBY oo AI from the race equality uh Council of Wales to be a specialist adviser to the L government and we appointed John luxon who is you
Know a leading campaigner in the field of disability to be our advisor and that was before the pandemic and they sat on the cabinet floor where colleagues would see them and meet them and hear from them all the time and while I’m quite certain there are things we didn’t do
And could have done the fact that by the middle of April within three by the middle of April within 3 weeks we were engaged with people from the race equality uh forum and the disability Forum my colleague Jane Hut met absolutely regularly throughout the pandemic with them and we’ taken action
On the reports that they provided you know I don’t want to overplay it I don’t want to make claims beyond what we can but I can say confidently that those matters always were in the minds of watch ministers we know that the British Medical Association raised um concerns
About the impact of the pandemic on ethnic minority groups and we heard evidence uh in the first week of hearings from Professor ogbon at the race Council cumy wrote to you in early April uh the first time you were briefed by the black Asian minority ethnic
Advisory Group was the 20th of May uh does that suggest an unjustifiable delay in focus on a significant vulnerable and at risk group no that really would be to misunderstand the sequence of events because it’s not that we get contacted on the 14th of April it was a letter
From Judge Ray Singh and then don’t do anything about it until the 20th of May by the 20th of May the work of the Forum was well underway including the production of the risk uh assessment tool that members of Black and minority ethnic clinicians themselves devised in
Order to make sure the people from those communities were not unfairly placed in the front line given the susceptibility to the virus and that risk assessment tool was used not just in Wales but very widely including in the houses of Parliament as well and all that work was
Going on between the receipt of the letter and the time that professor ogbon and Professor Kesh sangal an orthopedic surgeon who’ led the work on the risk assessment tool by the time they came to speak directly to the cabinet about it the inquiries heard evidence that at
The start of the pandemic Wales had the highest level of child poverty in the UK at 31% what measures were put in place to ensure a minimum level of welfare provision for children living in poverty during the pandemic well the um the levers available to the Welsh government
To directly affect poverty are very limited the the major levers are the Social Security System the benefit system and you know macroeconomic policy but we were the first uh government in the United Kingdom to guarantee that free School Meal payments would continue throughout the school holidays and we
Contin them for longer than any other part of the United Kingdom as well so there is one intensely practical action that was in the hands of the L government and which aimed to support those families with the least resources to assist children young people during the pandemic we also as I said earlier
Having closed schools or advised the schools should be closed on the 18th of March by the 23rd of March schools were open for vulnerable children and children of key workers and one of the reasons why we differently to other parts of the United Kingdom asked every child in
Welles to come back to school in the end of June and beginning of July of 2020 was because of our anxiety about safeguarded children children who wouldn’t have been seen by a social worker in those months who normally would be visited regularly we wanted to make sure that those children presented
Themselves somewhere where adults could make an assessment of their well-being So within the limited levers that we had I think we did our best to use them to the benefit of those children who needed to help the most it has been set out in the inequalities evidence of Professor bicz
Who reported on the impact of the pandemic on lgbtqi plus communities that there is an increased prevalence of preexisting physical and mental health conditions among lgbtqi Plus communities first question I suppose is was the Welsh government aware of this going into the pandemic and then secondly did it factor into decision
Making um I could not uh claim that I was aware of some of that uh evidence going into the pandemic uh for the purposes of ensuring that the needs of that community in Wells were known about and discussed I relied primarily on two ministers in my min ministerial team who belonged to
That community and who were assiduous in making sure that where they were issues drawn to their attention that were relevant to that community that they would be shared with a cabinet where we were able to take Collective action to address them but I can’t say that it was necessarily more systematic than that
But we did have Representatives around the table every day who had particular capacity to make sure we were aware of those issues digital exclusion has been highlighted by a number of the inequalities experts as a bar to receiving timely updates about the rules guidance access to help and also
Healthcare during the pandemic how was the risk of this form of isolation taken into account in in Welsh government decision- making well the fact that we relayed our decisions through televised news conferences and from the very beginning we had a British sign language interpreter uh there with us to
Communicate to people who wouldn’t be able to hear what we were saying and that there were 250 I think press conferences held during the whole of the pandemic I think that was our major effort to make sure that we weren’t simply relying on a website or forms of
Access that people uh wouldn’t otherwise have but you know it it is a rare person in Wales who doesn’t have access to a television and given that we were using that as our primary means of making sure the most widespread communication was available I think that was a reasonable
Course of action uh Mr drf for final topic um Lessons Learned you contributed to the Welsh government’s Lessons Learned for good practices and areas for further development it was published in 2022 um we can see it on the screen for the record it’s uh 308
2549 if we can have a look at the second page of that the third paragraph uh thank you set out there that’s a summary of the key lessons emerging from from that exercise would I be right to assume that you would commend those key lessons
To the inquiry well uh I I do commend them but I just want to be clear that they are recommendations about the internal workings of the Welsh government rather than wider recommendations the exercise was to look at how how the wsh government itself had discharged our responsibilities um it’s uh it drew on
The experience of many many people who worked in the W government during that period and the the key lessons are well summarized on that page but they don’t necessarily translate into wider lessons beyond the internal workings of the government itself and if there was a single lesson that you learned during
The pandemic what would that be yeah um that’s a difficult question to to um think of late in the day well I I’ll probably just return to a theme which I’ve raised a number of times that predictability orderly conduct of government the willingness to be around the same table together even when
Decision making is dispersed availability of authoritative evidence which has signs of internal challenge uh in it and then a commitment to follow that advice as part of the decisionmaking process uh to varying degrees those qualities were not sufficiently present in the way that the pandemic uh um received a response across the
United Kingdom and if if those lessons could be learned and those strands strengthened for the future I think it would be to the advantage of us all Mr dord thank you there are all the questions I’ve got for you but there are some questions from core participants this
Happen good afternoon first Minister I represent the covid-19 breed families for justice cry um in your witness statement you state as follows sadly too many families have lost loved ones this cruel virus has stolen lives and it has left their loved ones with questions which they rightly want answered first
Minister you entirely correct the Welsh brief do want answers but they want to see that you’ve openly reflected on your handling of the pandemic and learned some lessons now the Welsh briefed have poured over every word in the statements that you’ve given to this inquiry and indeed they’ve sat here today and
Listened very carefully to everything that you have said they are therefore deeply disappointed that in all of your evidence to this module including your oral evidence today you will not accept that there was anything that the Welsh government and in particular you did wrong now you so
Told CTI at the start of your evidence that you are not here to justify and you are not here to defend but unfortunately that’s exactly what you have done you’ve refused to accept that you should have read the signals of risk earlier and acted sooner instead relying on hindsight on asymptomatic transmiss
Mission you’ve refused to accept that a precautionary approach should have been taken you’ve refused to accept that you should have canceled Mass Gatherings you’ve refused to give an unconditional acceptance that You’ failed to plan for the pandemic you’ve defended the two delays by the Welsh government on introducing testing in Care Homes and
You’ve tried to explain away the Welsh government’s obviously illogical Divergence on Facebook coverings now Nicholas sturon Matt Hancock and even Boris Johnson were able to identify some things that they got wrong when they gave evidence to this inquiry so first Minister can you please explain to the Welsh public why you are
So reluctant to accept that the Welsh government indeed yourself may have made some mistakes in the handling of this pandemic well uh first of all my lady I’d like to thank m members of the B families cry for the opportunities I’ve had to meet with them and to pay tribute
To them for their being here at the inquiry I tried to say at the beginning that I I wasn’t here to justify I wasn’t here to explain uh I don’t think the test for me is whether I got everything right because I don’t think anybody could
Possibly pass such a test what I have tried to do is to explain why I think the actions we took at the time were reasonable in the context of the information that we had at the time and that is not to say at all that another reasonable person could not have come to
A different conclusion so miss Heaven I I suppose I I don’t sign up to your propositions I hope that in the decisions that I made and my colleagues made we were reasonable in our assessment of that evidence I don’t make a higher claim than that I say again
Other reasonable people could have come to a different conclusion that’s not the same as saying that we got everything right I don’t claim that at all okay let me move on then to my topic of the fire break now you have been asked a lot about this so I’m going to
To just cover sorry if I stole any of your thunder no no no um not you I’m going to go on to new topics now we know that money was eventually made available in Wales and indeed we know obviously that the fire break did happen um and
I’ll look at a moment in the at the money um you you’ve seen the sage advice obviously on the 21st of September you’ve been taken by CTI to that tag advice and series of advices which was track tracking the deteriorating picture so my question is this um knowing what you did then in
September did you commission anyone in the Welsh government to consider the financial implications of introducing a fire break and the funding options that might be available to the Welsh government in September or is the very first time you put pen to paper and think about this issue the 16th of
October when you write that letter to the chancellor Rishi sunak no of course we’ been thinking about that topic well before then uh as I said in my earlier evidence I had raised it as early as the 22nd of September with the UK government the Welsh government is mobilizing
Enormous sums of money to assist Welsh businesses over and above the money that comes from the United Kingdom and there is evidence throughout the month of October of how we are looking to see what more we can do from our resources to be able to go on assisting businesses
Given that we know that a fire break has to be considered what we’re not able to do is we’re not able to mobilize resources at the scale that only the UK government can and we’re not able to use the mechanisms that are only available to the UK government to get that money
Into the pockets of people who need it first Minister can I press you there because you provided a very detailed witness statement and and we have gone through it we can’t find any evidence that you personally commissioned somebody to look at the Welsh government finances in September on receiving that
Really quite devastating advice that we’ve looked at with CTI as a matter of urgency to understand whether you have the resources to introduce a fire break so can you give us a bit more specificity when did you commission that advice well I think probably you’re you’re looking for the wrong piece of
Evidence because that is not how it would have happened so my colleague Ken skates as the economy Minister and Rebecca Evans who you heard from yesterday were together to find money that we could use to support businesses through these very difficult times they were working on that throughout those
Early weeks of October and there is plenty of evidence that is already available not in my statement necessarily but in the workings of the wsh government to show how that I I wouldn’t have commissioned it I think well let let me move on let me move on
Because as you know I’ve got limited time I want to ask you about a document then please iq3 Z’s 395 839 please well that comes up I must apologize I think I called Miss Evans Miss Mason earlier so yes Rebecca Evans sorry yes not not Toby Mason it was
Rebecca Evans yesterday yeah so this is an email here from fiss Ben 5th of October and of course she needs no introduction um that was sent to your office and to your special advisers given the likely increase in covid across the board the fact that we do not
Yet have enough evidence to show that people are complying and the need to have a definitive effect on the r number I would suggest that the first Minister may wish to ask CDL whether they are willing to provide economic support for a firebreak SL circuit breaker around
Half term so that as we can see goes to your office to two emails and it goes to Jane ricles now I can tell you um I I’m not going to put this up but I you can take it from me that you had a call with
CD L indeed on that day at 1545 and there is absolutely no reference to a fire break and there is no reference to economic support the topic just didn’t even come up can you assist us with that please uh well I don’t have the notes to that meeting in
Front of me so I imagine that it was dealing with other matters but the record shows as clearly as can be that well before the 5th of October I am asking the UK for the financial help that will be needed and I continue to do that at the opportunities that I have
Directly with the Prime Minister undoubtedly uh with Mr go and it culminates in the exchange of letters that we rehearsed earlier this afternoon of course it was fundamental to us to have the support of the UK government for the actions that we were taking and you I can I can absolutely assure you
That I raised that wherever I thought I was like to get a positive response even though in the end we didn’t moving on to the Cobra meeting that we know took place on the 12th of October we don’t need to bring it up um CTI has shown you
The note of that um we can obviously see there that on that day the chancellor explains the package amongst other things and you make a contribution on that day don’t you you’re talking about I think the Border issues you’re also asking is there going to be another
Cobra uh on the fire break so can I ask this why on this day on the 12th of October at this late stage are you still asking where the Cobra would be held to discuss circuit breakers surely by this stage the Welsh government should have met with its own cabinet it should have
Conducted all its planning and it should have taken its plans and demands to COBRA and is the fact that you didn’t do this an example of your poor leadership I’m sorry I’m just is it an example of your poor leadership the fact that by the 12th of October here’s your
Opportunity you’ve got a cobra that you didn’t go there prepared with your modeling with your data with your plans agreed in cabinet um you’ve spoken to the unions you’ve got it all lined up and there you are you’re going to present it to the chancellor on the 12th
That was your opportunity and you missed it didn’t you well I think that would be quite badly to misunderstand the context of the Cobra I will be so far in advance of the facts and particularly where the UK government was that it would been an effort not only wasted but very likely
To be counterproductive the reason I asked for a special meeting on uh the circuit breaker advice is the reason I provided earlier which is that the Prime Minister was so emphatic in that meeting that he wasn’t prepared to agree to a fire brick uh and that he wouldn’t be
Willing to support the w government in our actions that I needed to have another run at that argument with him separately from The Wider set of issues that were discussed had I turned up there not only to ask for the UK government’s General support for that proposition but with a detailed plan for
Doing so I really don’t think we would have had a hearing at all final document then please can we look at iq30 227 915 now just just you understand you’re not at this meeting this is um minutes from the finance subcommittee group partnership Council Wales 2nd of
November now it turns out Wales had its own fundraising capacity and reserves to support a fire bake and to support workers so if we just have a little look down onto the next page please um if we see 0 five as a result of the firebreak additional funding has been made available to
Businesses and Employers in Wales and this will be reviewed in light of recent developments in England the mft that’s obviously Rebecca Evans had announced on the 23rd of October an extra 10 million to help protect workers at risk of falling through the gaps so pausing there first Minister
It’s right isn’t it it’s totally disingenuous of you and the government to blame the UK government um for the timing of the fire break because in reality Wales had the money to support a fire break the only person responsible for the timing of the fire break in Wales
And the fact that it probably came too late is you so will you now not accept responsibility for this and for the inevitable spread of the virus and the death that occurred because of your lack of decisive action will you accept that well I absolutely accept that it was my
Responsibility in the end to uh decide on the implementation of the fire break I’m afraid the question very badly misunderstands uh the level of financial assistance that would be needed in Wales to support not just those groups who were not covered by the UK government’s schemes that’s what that 10 million
Pounds is for it’s for the Freelancers fund for example Freelancers weren’t covered by the Furlow scheme that the chancellor funded 10 million is a small amount of money to pick up people who weren’t covered in the main scheme I’m afraid I think you’ve answered your first question you
Suggested to me that we weren’t doing anything to model the money that will be needed here is the Practical example of exactly what we were doing we were using our resources to supplement what only the UK government could do and my responsibility was to do everything I
Could to get them to support the public health action that we knew we needed to take in Wales just finally though what I put to you is that you were being disingenuous in your witness statement to the inquiry where you were blaming the UK government for the timing of the
Fire break that’s right isn’t it you can’t blame the UK government no no is is absolutely wrong and it completely misunderstands the division of responsibilities between the Welsh government and the UK government we were able to mobilize our resources to fill the gaps in what only they could
Do without their willingness to provide the help that only they were able to to do we were inhibited from taking the action we needed to take in Wales that’s what those letters are about I failed to persuade them and I cannot help but notice that as soon as
It was necessary for them to take that action they did find the resources but my efforts at this point are all directed to asking the UK government we’ve got to take this action please will you help us and there’s no chance at all that the Welsh government can simply step into
That space we have neither the resources nor the mechanics we cannot instruct hmrc to make payments to anybody so it’s not disingenuous in any sense at all it is simply a factual explanation of where the responsibilities and the capabilities for Action lay and the fact that I wasn’t able to persuade the UK
Government to take action that only they could take had an inhibiting effect on our ability to do what we wanted to do in Wales thank you first Minister thank you my lady thank you Mr uh Mr strong um good afternoon I represent John’s campaign and Care rights
UK um you mentioned towards well at the end of your evidence um with Mr Paul um that among other other areas the availability of authoritative evidence wasn’t sufficiently present during the pandemic um now um some stakeholders including those involved in the care sector considered that concerns they had
Raised weren’t taken into account um or weren’t acted upon um is this one of the areas in which not enough was done to obtain and make available evidence I don’t think that the point that the sector was making was about lack of evidence I think they felt and many
Other sectors felt that getting their case heard and recognize on the two terms that they would have put it to the Welsh government was as straightforward as they would like it to have been but I’m not sure that it was absence of evidence that they were pointing to rather than
Access so so um trying to understand then um whether there was a point in the sort of chain chain of decision making where that there was a problem so they they’ve um said um that they’ve made their concern and the concerns weren’t acted upon they weren’t implemented is there some point
In that chain where there was a problem I I think there are a whole series of difficult factors at this time is to sheare scale of everything that the wsh government is trying to respond to the sector itself as you know is a quite a disperate sector in Wales we the
Characteristic ownership pattern of K homes in Wales is not the pattern in England with a small number of very large corporate uh providers we still got lots and lots of owners of Care Homes who have one or 2K homes and the sector has uh uh a job what it works
Hard to do to be able to represent the views of a very disperate audience uh evidence is gathering all the time around us at this point as well so it’s not as though there is a fixed body of knowledge that everybody can agree on and point to so I think there
Are many contributory reasons to the the point that you made in the in the in introduction so so perhaps sort of getting together these disparate sources of evidence may have been an issue would that be fair I think that is possible but it’s not just evidence it’s sheer
Practicality of things like how do we get PPE to khomes in Wales there is no single register of where every care home in Wales is located we were very fortunate my lady to have some expert logistical support from the Armed Forces early on in the pandemic and one of the
Things that they focused on was something as basic as being able to help us to make sure that we had you know all the information we needed and the most effective way of being able to mobilize the help that we wanted to provide to the place where it was
Needed um looking at another part of the process so from bringing forward the evidence from stakeholders to then uh implementing the concerns that they raised um the um older people’s commissioner and also Professor Debbie Foster have talked about an an implementation Gap so even where the concerns of stakeholders were recognized
In central government it got stuck somewhere so so the concerns weren’t then implemented would you agree that that was um a problem well I certainly agree with this that if if you believe there is a model of government in which you know in KES Park here in C if a
Minister pulls a lever and something happens out there on the clean Peninsula then it really isn’t like that at all uh there is a complex pattern of intermediaries and there are many ways in which particularly in the beginning making sure that decisions were translated into practical impact on the ground was was
Challenging in in terms of learning lessons is there something that can be done to improve the position in future well I I do think there are and I think some of those things are the lessons that we leared uh during the process itself so just something as
Simple as there not being a central register of every care home in Wales each local Authority would have its own register but there isn’t one Consolidated place where that information is kept so I think there are some very practical lessons that can be drawn from from The Experience just
Making sure we have those basic components in place so that then we can act more swiftly and more effectively than we were able particularly in those early weeks um just one more question about this topic and to try and illustrate the sort of broader systemic problems just
With a specific example um a number of um stakeholders raised concerns about about the adverse impacts of bans on visits uh to those in care and you yourself on the 11th of November 2020 in a call with other first ministers and Michael Gove um appeared to recognize
The problems in that you you drew attention to the really heartbreaking set of restrictions as you put it on care homes on on those in care and suggested liberalizing them um by use of testing now despite what you’d acknowledged at that point there there remained essentially a ban in place until May
2021 does this illustrate any sort of broader issues in in the systems in place could could something have been done better to ensure that changes which had been recommended were put in place well I hope so um I said right in the very beginning you I visited my mother on the 22nd of
February at her 19th birthday I didn’t see her again for many many months so you know the Heartbreak that people feel about being separated from people who mean such a lot to them is very real I think there are two areas where I wish it was much you know we could have done
Much better I wish it was easier for people to visit into Care Homes but I knew because of the evidence I saw that the importation of Corona virus into Care Homes full of vulnerable people was generally brought in by people who were coming in from the community to do so so
Much as I would have wished myself not to have been standing outside a window trying to talk to somebody I also knew that I would be a risk to them if I if I did go in so that’s what you’re balancing so I wish we had a better
Formula for it we tried some practical things we tried to find outdoor spaces where people could meet and things like that they were you know they’re all things we should learn from and look at and I very much wish that we could have found a different formula for people to be able
To meet with loved ones in their final days or ours um because of the time available I’m going to have to move on I’ve just got two more topics um the first concerns um uh expert groups so you you explain how the black and minority ethnic uh covid-19 Advisory Group was
Formed and that’s of course was a very important group um but those needing care were also at the really at the sharp end of the pmic and the response I me just to take an example in the first three months of the pandemic uh statistics indicate that around 39% of
Deaths in the UK involving covid-19 were deaths of care home residents um would you agree that an equivalent Advisory Group similar to the B group should have been formed at an early stage well we have the older person’s commissioner for Wales who is specifically charged with representing
The views of older people and she has done any enormous amount uh with people who uh lived in Care Homes and worked in Care Homes and was a very powerful voice uh for them throughout the pandemic uh personally you see I’m a Believer in just as we have a school’s Council in
Every school in Wales I’d have a Care Council in every care home in Wales myself because I do think that the voice of people who live in those settings does need to be Amplified uh the idea that’s put to me is is one of them but during the
Pandemic itself we relied very much on the good offices of the older persons commissioner and she was a very powerful and I think effective voice on behalf of people in the care sector and Beyond well the the suggestion of a Care Council is is very interesting one um
The the last topic um discharge um from hospital into Care Homes um firstly you’ve discussed this already with Mr Paul so um I’ve got just a couple of specific questions about it you noted earlier that there was limited testing available at the time um but um
In fact there were only a pretty limited number of people being discharged per day from hospital without prior testing so some of them already had testing it’s the asymptomatic ones didn’t I think the figures are somewhere between 11 and 18 people being discharged a day whereas in
Mid March there were about 1,800 tests available um and the number increased um would you agree that allocating this pretty tiny proportion of the tests to discharged patients um was justified by the huge risks involved could make maybe one point I have made earlier and I think sometimes
In the sort of you know public prints on on these matters it is it it appears as though what happened was in March that there was a wholesale uh discharge of people from hospitals into care homes in fact fewer people left Care Homes fewer people left hospital for care homes in March and
April 2020 than had left in the previous year so actually it wasn’t and this is this is a fair point that’s being made the numbers were not uh you know were not enormous and maybe the amount of testing that would have been needed could have been accommodated that’s not
The advice that ministers had at the time but I think it’s a fair point that’s being made um you fairly made the point earlier that um these patients were unsafe in hospital because of what was happening but there’s a slightly different question which is about whether they should be tested whether asymptomatic
Test patient should be tested prior to discharge um do you accept that taking the government and its scientific advisors collectively ly so not you specifically but the whole lot um that this this was a mistake well I’m afraid I think this is classically an example where knowing what we know now about asymptomatic
Transmission if we’d had that state of knowledge at the time we would undoubtedly have been testing people at the time that knowledge didn’t exist you know the advice that we were still getting at the end of April and was still being um advocated by some scientists for a couple of months after
That was it asymptomatic transmission was not a primary cause for concern so it’s a matter of what you know at the time isn’t it had we known at the time I think we would have acted differently but we didn’t know at the time and what
We were told at the time would not have supported diverting tests from other purposes to testing asymptomatic people okay I’m going to have to finish there but thank you very much just before you sit down Mr in case I rais um just sorry um Mr haven’t quite followed that I thought
You agree with Mr straw that it was a Fair Point to make that given the limited number of those being discharged they could have been tested because those with symptoms were tested is that this was the point you’re making Mr and I thought you agreed that it was a fair
Point that those without symptoms were sufficiently low in numbers that that and I thought you agreed that could be accommodated and then you seem to have said but we weren’t getting that advice at the time therefore so is it a fair point or isn’t it well it’s it’s a fair
Point in in this way it’s not a fair point in that the evidence we had didn’t say you would do that but I think the point that was being put to me was even though you have a limited amount of tests the number of tests you would have
To divert for this population could have been small enough to accommodate even within the limited number of tests uh that you had and um you know I I think that is a fair point I would need to go away and look at the numbers and look at
The availability of test to see whether that was a practical proposition but as a basic proposition you haven’t got many tests but you don’t need many of them for this group I you know it’s a reasonable point to make as well and we know how vulnerable people in Care Homes are we
Do thank you thank you Mr STW does that complete the questioning it does my lady yes Mr raford thank you very much indeed for your help both um in this module and the previous module I don’t know what life has in store for you when you Ste
Down as first Minister but obviously we wish you well thank you thank you thank you so does that complete the evidence for today it does my lady and therefore tomorrow we turn to closing submissions at 10:00 please all e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e
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………..Zzzzzz.
Scum of the earth this guy is!