Minister used disappearing messages - Covid inquiry

Disappearing messages were used during the pandemic by Wales' health minister, the Covid inquiry has heard.

The limited amount of messages disclosed showed Welsh government senior special advisors deleted communications, Nia Gowman said.

Ms Gowman, speaking for the Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice Cymru group, said reminders were sent to "clear out WhatsApp chats once a week".

The timing of the government's response to the virus also came under scrutiny.

Tuesday was the first day of the UK-wide inquiry sitting in Cardiff, with Welsh ministers and government officials set to give evidence over the next three weeks on the Covid response in Wales.

Evidence heard included how Health Minister Vaughan Gething turned on disappearing messages, and a deputy minister called it "odd" that Welsh Labour cancelled its conference but allowed 20,000 Scottish fans to travel to Cardiff for a Six Nations game.

"We have made it clear that we continue to engage fully with the inquiry to ensure all actions and decisions are fully and properly scrutinised," a Welsh government spokesperson said.

Asked if he had deleted Whatsapps at a TV debate last week, Mr Gething said: "Everything I have got I have provided to the inquiry."

Despite telling the Senedd he did not use Whatsapp, First Minister Mark Drakeford was regularly using it to discuss policy announcement and seek clarifications on the rules, Ms Gowman said.

She said any government "would be hard pressed to match the shocking display of arrogance and central government toxicity within Westminster at that crucial time".

But she said the Welsh government "must be judged not solely by comparison to what was happening in Westminster, but by its own standards".

She said the group remained "bitterly disappointed" at the lack of a Welsh inquiry.

The Welsh session also focused on the timings of lockdowns and the rationale for doing things differently to the UK government.

The Welsh government's cabinet did not discuss coronavirus until a month after the UK government did at the beginning of 2020, the Covid inquiry heard.

Counsel to the inquiry Tom Poole set out the core questions the Welsh government will have to answer over the next few weeks.

One will be whether the government took the threat seriously enough, or believed the UK government had things under control.

He said Wales' Chief Medical Officer Dr Frank Atherton had given advice on 24 February there was a "significant risk" the virus would arrive in Wales.

Mr Poole said the Welsh government's cabinet did not discuss Covid until 25 February, "a whole month later" than the UK government.

Setting out one of the many questions the inquiry will be asking of Welsh government decision making, Mr Poole said: "Does the fact that Covid was not discussed by the Welsh cabinet throughout January indicate the threat posed by the virus was not taken as seriously as it ought to have been?

"Or did the Welsh government [think] the UK government had things under control and there was no need to take independent action?"

In his opening statement, he revealed that Lee Waters, deputy minister for transport, said in a WhatsApp message that he thought it was "odd" that Welsh Labour had cancelled its 2020 conference but not the Wales versus Scotland Six Nations match.

The match was in the end cancelled the day before by the Welsh Rugby Union, but not before 20,000 Scottish fans travelled to Cardiff.

The handling of mass gatherings is one of the issues being examined.

Mr Poole said that hundreds of messages have been disclosed to the inquiry but that some have been deleted.

It is not clear who has deleted them - and whether they are officials or ministers.

On the day lockdown was announced in March 2020, Vaughan Gething emailed himself an account of "chaos" in a Welsh hospital from a consultant.

"No protection for nurses, very low morale as being asked to care for patients admitted to orthopaedic wards by medics with respiratory symptoms, masks not being released," it read.

At the start of the hearing Baroness Hallett acknowledged that some had hoped for an independent Welsh inquiry.

She said that was not a decision for her, but she promised that the UK inquiry will do its utmost to "investigate and analyse fully and fairly the most significant issues that concern people in Wales".

The inquiry showed a video of testimonies of those impacted by Covid.

The emotional video detailed delayed diagnosis of cancer, the experience of trying to see relatives in hospital, and of patients catching Covid when they were admitted for other conditions.