Covid Report ‘largely lets Welsh Government off the hook, despite highest death toll’

Martin Shipton

The latest report from the UK Covid Inquiry largely lets the Welsh Government off the hook for presiding over the highest death toll in the UK, according to a bereaved relatives group.

After being given early access to the Inquiry’s Module 2 report on Core UK decision making, Anna-Louise Marsh-Rees of the Covid-19 Bereaved Families For Justice Cymru group said: “It shamefully writes Wales out of our own tragedy.

“It confirms that Wales suffered the highest Covid death rate of all four nations – over double – yet offers nothing but two token recommendations for Wales: that the Welsh Government attend SAGE meetings and improve its data.

“No analysis. No challenge to failures. No accountability for the thousands of lives lost. It’s as if the Cardiff hearings — and our loved ones — never existed.

“How can the Chair [Baroness Heather Hallett] call out that Wales had the highest death rate between July and December 2020, yet provide no scrutiny or explanation as to why? Yet she highlights how well the Welsh Government functioned and that Mark Drakeford was considered a good leader by his Cabinet. If it was all so well run, how come there were all these deaths?

“This Module report failed to correlate the decisions with the catastrophic consequences. When it sat in Cardiff, we emphasised that analysing the decision-making process alone is insufficient. The Inquiry must consider whether they effectively served their ultimate purpose: saving lives. Clearly they didn’t in Wales.

“The only Wales divergence called out in the report was masking. RThere was no mention that they literally did everything so much later – care home testing, asymptomatic testing, vaccines and much more. Each of these delays cost lives.

“For Welsh families who endured the very worst, this is a deep and devastating betrayal.

“We need a Wales Covid Inquiry – and we will not be silenced. Wales deserves truth. Wales deserves justice. Wales deserves answers.”

Text messages

Ms Marsh-Rees also criticised the low-key reference in the report to the deletion of relevant text messages by former First Minister Vaughan Gething, who was Health Minister during much of the pandemic period. He stated, in a message leaked to Nation.Cymru, that he was deleting them because they would be disclosable under FoI legislation. He later lied about the matter while giving evidence to the Inquiry.

The report stated: “Although Welsh Government-issued phones did not support the use of WhatsApp, a number of relevant WhatsApp messages were disclosed to the Inquiry from ministers and officials from either personal devices or devices issued by the Welsh Parliament.

“Welsh Government policies required any instant communications that formed part of the public record to be saved on official systems, while ‘personal WhatsApp accounts may not be used for Welsh Government business.’ Nonetheless, concerns were raised that some individuals in the Welsh Government might have felt pressured to use instant communications in breach of policy to avoid being left out of relevant discussions.”

‘Nonsense’

Ms Marsh-Rees posted a message stating: “Oh yeah, remember @vaughangething et al at @WelshGovernment who deleted all their messages? Yes? That was because they all felt ‘under pressure’ to do so because they were using their personal phones. Absolute nonsense from @covidinquiryuk

“Wales has had the lightest touch possible and this is not the end of the matter. “