First Minister ‘will answer questions in front of the inquiry’ over pandemic hospital discharge to care homes without testing

The First Minister has said he will answer pandemic questions at the UK Covid inquiry, rejecting questions in the Senedd yesterday.

The UK Covid-19 Inquiry has been set up to examine the UK’s response to and impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, and learn lessons for the future.

Welsh Conservative Leader Andrew Davies MS raised the issue during First Minister Questions, “First Minister, today is the first day of the UK COVID inquiry. I had very much hoped that I would be able to say that today is the first day for the Welsh independent COVID inquiry, but clearly, that’s not going to happen on your watch as First Minister.”

“One of the points that has come out that the inquiry will spend some time looking at in the early part of the COVID inquiry is the decision by Governments across the UK to discharge patients from hospitals to care homes without testing. There was a full pandemic preparedness exercise undertaken in 2016, as I understand it. That preparedness exercise highlighted that this was a major risk and major concern. Do you agree that that was a risk too far, and that discharging patients from hospitals to care homes without testing should not have happened?”

First Minister Mark Drakeford replied, “First of all, I welcome very much the fact that today is the first day of full hearings at the independent UK inquiry. I hope very much that it will be able to provide answers for those families who lost loved ones and whose lives were affected by the awful experience of COVID. I think that they will be at the forefront of our minds, as well as the minds of the inquiry today.

“The matters that the leader of the opposition raises are now matters for the inquiry. That is why there is an inquiry, and I’m not going to be able to offer him a running commentary on individual aspects of the inquiry’s work that he chooses to raise with me. The issue of care homes and care home discharges, I agree with him, is a very important issue. It is identified by the inquiry as such. It is in the programme of modules that the inquiry will pursue in the autumn. I have no doubt at all that it will require evidence from the Welsh Government and, no doubt, witnesses from the Welsh Government on the decisions that were made here. But the point of an inquiry is for the inquiry to pursue those issues now, and that’s where the Welsh Government’s efforts will be focused.”

Andrew Davies MS went again, “First Minister, I didn’t ask you to comment or offer running commentary on the inquiry. I asked you about a specific Welsh Government decision that was taken by you as First Minister, and by a Minister who is sitting in the Cabinet, when he was health Minister—now he’s economy Minister. This is First Minister’s questions. It is perfectly reasonable, surely, on the floor of the Welsh Parliament, for the opposition to ask the Government about policy decisions that were taken. I am merely seeking to see, given the passage of time, whether you believe that that was the right decision taken at that time. That is a perfectly reasonable line of questioning, and I will offer you a second time to answer that question, because if, all of a sudden, all this is going to be taken off the table, what is the point of the Welsh Parliament?”

The First Minister pointed back to his initial answer, and said he would give his answers on the matter to the inquiry, “It’s a reasonable question, and here is my answer, and it’s the same answer I gave him the first time: that these are matters now in front of the inquiry. Personally, I think it is disrespectful to the inquiry to try to shift the responsibility that they have into questions to me here.

“I will answer those questions in front of the inquiry that has been set up for this purpose. I won’t second-guess what will be said there, I won’t anticipate what the inquiry will want to know from me. There’s an inquiry established, I want it to succeed, that is where my attentions will be directed. That’s where answers to questions on this and many, many other aspects of the COVID experience are now properly to be answered.”

The Q&A moved to more of a wider in-chamber debate between members, “I can’t believe that on the floor of the Welsh Parliament we cannot get…. (interruptions audible) The Member for Ogmore is going, ‘Work it out, Andrew’, and this is the Member who stands up time and time again and talks of disrespect from Westminster to the Welsh Parliament in his role as Chairman of the legislation committee. How on earth can it be legitimate in every other legislature, whether it be Westminster or Holyrood, to have Members stand up and ask the respective Government Ministers about the biggest event that has happened to this country in a generation or more? It is perfectly reasonable for me and other Members to question, and the arrogance of the response from the First Minister will be noted by those COVID bereaved families in you not providing those answers.”

Returning back to the questions Andrew Davies MS again asked the First Minister, “I’ll ask you again, for the third time—and you can turn me down again, but three times—it reminds me of many interviews that are done on the tv where people try and stonewall—are you hiding from something, First Minister? Because we deserve the respect of putting the answer on the record to make sure that people hear what their First Minister says. So, was it the right decision to discharge patients from hospital to social care homes without testing that you took and your health Minister took at that time?”

The First Minister dismissed the questions and was critical of the opposition leader, “I think the leader of the opposition lets himself down, and, more importantly, he lets down the families who look to the inquiry to give them answers to those questions. When Ministers are asked that question in Holyrood and in Westminster, they will have the same answer, that the establishment of independent public inquiries to investigate these matters means that that is where these questions must now be answered.

“They are not to be answered in a piecemeal fashion by shadow-boxing on the floor of the Senedd, when there is an independent inquiry with all the expertise that has been assembled around it to explore those questions and to give people the best answers that they can get. He can ask me the question every week, he will have the same answer: the right place, the place I believe where those questions are to be pursued, is where they ought to be, in the independent inquiry that has been established for that purpose. That is what Ministers in his Government will be saying in Westminster as well.”