Why I resigned as Wales Covid committee chair

Tom Giffard MS

The Covid-19 pandemic destroyed lives, livelihoods, and its consequences for people’s health, education, and businesses are still being felt. It’s only right that those impacted deserve honest answers.

As the Welsh Conservative Senedd Member for South Wales West, I met people who lost loved ones during the pandemic, and the only thing they’ve ever asked for is the truth.

During the pandemic, Mark Drakeford often said that “In Wales, we do things differently.”

That was his right. But that also means his decisions need to be examined, just as they are in England and Scotland.

There, this means an independent Covid inquiry; but here, Welsh Labour refused to do the same.

Answers

That’s why we forced the Labour Party to establish this committee as a compromise, knowing that a Senedd inquiry committee could never replicate an independent, judge-led inquiry, but nonetheless would get to the bottom of at least some of the answers those families deserve.

We entered in good faith, hoping that all Senedd Members who sat on the committee would approach it with the seriousness such an inquiry clearly merits.

What I found instead was nothing but obfuscation and obstruction from the Welsh Labour Government — aided and abetted by the Labour Senedd Members that sat on the committee — that was never truly serious about wanting to examine its own actions during the pandemic.

Our committee was set up to investigate the ‘gaps’ in the UK inquiry, looking at things that the UK inquiry hadn’t examined in enough detail in a Welsh context. Clearly, there would be a lot.

But I recall quite often, Labour members arguing that there might not be any gaps at all, and the committee might not need to examine anything.

Brazen

To my mind, that was nothing but a brazen, political attempt to protect the very people that this committee was designed to investigate.

To give another example, we felt that witnesses who gave evidence to our committee — such as serving and former Welsh Government Ministers and public health officials — should do so under oath, just as they do in England and Scotland. Such a move would give the public the confidence that the evidence presented to the committee could be trusted.

Our committee voted 4-2 in favour of the proposal, which included the support of one Labour member. By the next meeting, that Labour member had ‘changed their mind’ and decided they no longer backed the proposal — presumably having been lent on strongly by Labour whips in the meantime.

Why would Labour Ministers be so dead set against having to tell the truth about their actions during the pandemic? What have they got to hide?

In light of all this, and much more, I took the difficult decision on Wednesday to resign from the committee after the Welsh Government’s latest refusal to give us the tools we need to do the job.

My Welsh Conservative colleague, Sam Rowlands, did the same, and now the Welsh Conservatives will no longer take any place on this committee.

Whitewash

I can honestly say that I tried my best to make this committee work and deliver the answers that the people of Wales deserve.

But it was clear to me that this committee was intended to be nothing but a whitewash. And I just won’t allow my name and reputation to be tarnished by chairing a committee only interested in protecting the very people it should be holding to account.

Instead, the Welsh Conservatives will continue our calls for a Wales-specific Covid inquiry into the actions of the Welsh Labour Government during the pandemic.

It is my regrettable conclusion that it is the only way the families who lost their loved ones will get the answers they deserve.