Mark Drakeford tells Covid Inquiry Boris Johnson was like 'absent' football manager during pandemic

First Minister Mark Drakeford has acknowledged that Wales could have been better prepared for the Covid pandemic, but said that "the enemy we faced was not the enemy we were expecting".

In his evidence to the UK Covid-19 Inquiry, Mr Drakeford also accused former prime minister Boris Johnson of being like an “absent” football manager during the Covid pandemic. 

But he in turn has been accused by the Welsh Conservatives of using his Inquiry appearance to attack political opponents. 

The inquiry has been held in Cardiff for three weeks, focusing on the Welsh Government’s decision-making and handling of the crisis.

The inquiry’s counsel, Tom Poole, put it to Mr Drakeford that “isn’t it the reality that Wales was not at all well prepared?”

In response, Mr Drakeford said the Welsh Government, along with other governments in the UK, had prepared for an influenza pandemic. 

He said: "For what we actually faced we were not as well prepared as we needed to be. For what we thought we would face, we had planned, our planned response... did have a lot of robust elements in it. 

"It is simply that when we came to implement the plan... the enemy we faced was not the enemy we were expecting."

Mr Drakeford also told the inquiry that, while he found Michael Gove a helpful UK Government minister to deal with, the "absent manager was the prime minister because he was never in these meetings or at the table, and while Mr Gove was a senior minister… he has influence rather than the determinative impact which a message from the prime minister would have.”

Mr Drakeford also said it was “extraordinary” to learn that Boris Johnson had deliberately refused to hold regular talks with devolved leaders during the pandemic. 

The inquiry had previously heard from the former prime minister, who said he did not want to meet with the first ministers of Wales and Scotland to make pandemic decisions because it could give "the false impression that the UK was a federal state".

Mr Drakeford was asked by the inquiry’s Counsel what he made of those comments.

He said: “As you know I wrote very regularly to the prime minister asking for a predictable series of meetings between the heads of the four nations. 

“It had never occurred to me until I read that that the prime minister had turned those requests down not on practical grounds, which I could understand, you know and these are very busy times and he’s a very busy man, but as a matter of policy he had decided not to meet did seem to me to be an extraordinary decision.”

He also rejected claims by the former Number 10 adviser, Dominic Cummings, who had told the inquiry there couldn’t be open discussions at UK Government COBRA meetings because of the risks of leaks.

Mr Drakeford said there had been proof the devolved leaders wouldn’t have leaked information from joint meetings about Britain’s departure from the European Union. 

He said: "I sat in JMC [Joint Ministerial Council] after JMC with representatives of the Scottish Government, sometimes talking about very sensitive matters indeed in relation to Brexit and there was not a single example that the UK Government could have pointed to where either the Welsh Government or the Scottish Government put into the public domain information that had been shared with us on a confidential basis. 

“So while I was aware of and to an extent could understand anxieties I don’t think there was an evidential basis for them.”

Mr Drakeford was asked about criticism from the Secretary of State for Wales, Simon Hart, who last week accused the Welsh Government of making decisions on Covid restrictions for the sake of being different. 

Mr Drakeford said while Mr Hart was helpful in areas where he had a role, too often he was “beginning to get in the way".

He said: "My difficulty was, particularly in the early days, with frankly, I think, very little else to do, the secretary of state filled his days by writing letters to me asking me about the Welsh Government’s responsibilities and the risk was that he was beginning to get in the way of our ability to do the things that we needed to do. 

“At one point I had to write to him and explain that I couldn’t go on giving priority to my scarce officials’ time with so many other things to do, to replying to correspondence about things for which he had no responsibility and for which I am answerable to the Parliament of the Welsh people.”

The leader of the Welsh Conservatives, Andrew RT Davies, criticised Mr Drakeford’s evidence, saying: "The First Minister has decided to use the UK Covid-19 Inquiry to attack his political opponents.

"The inquiry is not about political personalities, it’s not about Brexit, but Mark Drakeford clearly went into this process with a view of turning it into a party political broadcast.

"We desperately need a Wales-specific inquiry to get the answers that the people of Wales deserve."

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