UK Government ‘simply not functioning’ as it tries to save Boris Johnson says Mark Drakeford

The First Minister has said that the UK Government is “simply not functioning” as it tries to save Boris Johnson’s premiership.

Speaking at today’s Covid press conference, he claimed that the recent decisions made to scrap Covid restrictions were simply a way of trying to ease political pressure on the embattled Prime Minister.

As a result, he said, the UK Government wasn’t able to do its job in a “competent and sensible way”.

“If anybody believes the UK Government’s announcements this week were the results of careful consideration of the science I think that is a very optimistic view indeed,” he said.

“Everything that is done in Westminster at the moment is seen through the lens of how can we get anything else reported apart from the dire difficulty the Prime Minister has found himself in.

“That’s the lens any decision is being taken through. That means the government is simply not functioning. It is not functioning as a normal, ordinary government discharging the responsibilities that fall to it in managing the economy, in taking the day to day decisions that governments have to make.

“This is a government that is at the moment simply not able to doing the ordinary business of government in a competent and sensible way. because it is overwhelmed by the headlines that surround the dreadful events in Downing Street.”

He said that he would not focus “on the fate of a single individual” because his party’s position on that has been “set out by the leader of the Lbaour party Keir Starmer.”

We’re so close to the Sue Gray report now that I can’t imagine there will be any movement at Westminster. I don’t expect there to be any dramatic moves until then – but that report is imminently expected.”

Mark Drakeford also pointed to ONS statistics which he said showed that Wales approach to the Omicron Covid-19 wave had worked better than in England.

“Wales has the lowest rate of infection of anywhere in the United Kingdom,” he said. “The rate of decline in Wales is the fastest anywhere in the United Kingdom.

“One in 25 people in Wales are infected compared to around one in 20 in the three nations. That gap represents thousands and thousands of people who would otherwise have fallen ill in Wales.

“There is a significant gap with England where there were fewer protections.”