Welsh Government ministers ‘did not understand’ own Covid rules

Welsh Government ministers did not know their own rules during the pandemic, a hearing of the UK Covid inquiry has heard.

Simon Hart, the former Welsh secretary, has criticised the Government in Wales for diverging from Parliament’s coronavirus protection measures during the pandemic.

Mr Hart, who is now the Conservative government’s chief whip, told the UK Covid-19 Inquiry on Thursday that WhatsApp messages collected by the inquiry suggest that members of the Welsh Government were unsure of their own rules.

He said: “I thought it was quite revealing the lengthy exchange of WhatsApp messages between Welsh ministers, members of Mark Drakeford’s own cabinet, were expressing a surprising amount of confusion themselves about what they were able to do.

“Mark (Drakeford’s) own team were WhatsApping each other saying ‘I don’t actually fully understand the rules, can anybody tell me if I can go from here to there, not sure if it’s a work event or not, or if I’m coming do I have to wear a mask?’

“All of that is laid out in some detail in their WhatsApp exchanges and that’s not a criticism, it’s an observation.”

He argued the divergence in rules led to “significant confusion” and that the Welsh Government chose different rules for the sake of it.

“More in sadness than in anger, I do believe that to be the case,” he said.

“It was difficult to see any evidence which suggested that the outcomes were going to be any different as a result of some of the divergent policies which were emerging.”

Mr Hart argued that if a similar event should occur in the future it should be handled by the UK Government rather than the devolved administrations.

“We had four different administrations all with some slightly different ideas about how to deal with this, but a population which was very fluid, this was going to lead to problems,” he said.

“I found it increasingly disturbing that we were looking at the problem through the lens of a political boundary, geographical boundary, between England and Wales, rather than looking at the population and the way the population and the economy crosses the border.”