A pattern emerged at today’s hearing of the UK Covid inquiry in Cardiff: clear questions from the lawyers leading the charge, followed by evasive answers that needed more probing but received none.
Decision-making in the Welsh government is getting just three weeks of scrutiny as part of the wider UK inquiry. Bereaved families in Wales have criticised outgoing first minister Mark Drakeford’s refusal to give the nation a full probe of its own, and at times today it felt like lawyers were in a rush to get through all the witnesses – there are 12 squeezed into this second week alone.
Concerns that the Welsh government was too slow to act in early 2020; the admission of hospital patients to care homes; Wales’ Covid-19 testing capacity, PPE provision; and the impact of the pandemic on Black and minority ethnic healthcare workers in Wales all featured in questions put to Andrew Goodall, now permanent secretary to the Welsh government and the former chief executive of NHS Wales, and Tracey Cooper, Goodall’s replacement at Public Health Wales.
