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Mark Drakeford believes the way his Welsh Government handled key decision-making in Wales during the Covid-19 pandemic was better than how similar issues were dealt with by the UK

Government. Both Mr Drakeford and former health minister Vaughan Gething gave evidence at a Covid-19 inquiry in London on Tuesday. The inquiry is looking at the approach of the UK Government

and devolved nations to testing, tracing, and isolation adopted during the pandemic. The hearings are being held at Dorland House in London between Monday, May 19, and Thursday, May 22. As

well as expert witnesses and treasury officials the inquiry will also hear from decision makers at the time of the Covid-19 pandemic including those from the Senedd, the Northern Ireland

Assembly, and Westminster. On Tuesday former Wales First Minister Mr Drakeford and Mr Gething, also a former First Minister but who was health minister at the time of the pandemic, answered

questions. _For our free daily briefing on the biggest issues facing the nation __sign up to the Wales Matters newsletter here_. Mr Drakeford told the inquiry: "I think there is a

general difference in approach between the way UK Ministers made decisions and the way Welsh Ministers made decisions for Wales. In my experience, the approach in England was to announce

first and then plan. "So you can announce that something is going to happen, but if you don’t have a plan for making it happen, it actually doesn’t happen. "In Wales, we took the

opposite approach - we planned first, and then we announced, and sometimes that makes us look like we are later [at] doing things than was happening elsewhere but I believe that our method

was more effective, it delivered better on the ground, and it certainly I think explains why there were higher levels of trust in Wales between decision-makers and those affected by

them." Mr Drakeford also told the inquiry it was important that people in Wales were notified of a need to self-isolate by someone with a knowledge of their local area and/or language.

"One of the key reasons it was decided why we would have our own system is because of language," he said. "It seemed to be from the very beginning asking you to self-isolate

you would be more likely to act on that advice if it came to you from someone who knew the area who would be able to pronounce the name of the town or village you were living in and I

couldn’t see how that would be done effectively from a call centre in Billericay." In his evidence, Mr Gething admitted the early stages of the pandemic were a "challenging"

time. "Public Health Wales told us ‘this is what we think we can do’ and there was lots of questions about testing at this point," said Mr Gething. "If you’re going to have

sustained community transmission you need a much bigger testing infrastructure. The scale up didn’t happen, some of that is down to the Roche (Roche Diagnostic Limited) agreement (to provide

testing equipment) that never was and some of the testing that was ordered didn’t actually come through in the times expected. "The Roche tests would have been 5,000 tests a day so

that is over half of the increase in tests that we were expecting to be able to achieve. I’m really keen not to point fingers at people. It’s what happened. There were plenty of people

bruised by what happened. It was challenging." You can see much more detail about what both Mr Drakeford and Mr Gething told the inquiry on Tuesday below. Both Mr Drakeford and Mr

Gething previously gave evidence at a Covid-19 inquiry in Wales last year, which revealed that Welsh Government officials and ministers used WhatsApp, against Senedd rules, to discuss what

was going on, and later deleted messages – going against proper record-keeping. Mr Drakeford told the inquiry during that hearing: “I don’t claim we got everything right.” You can read more

about the Wales Covid inquiry here. This week’s hearing represents the seventh out of 10 ‘modules’ of investigation and is focusing on the approach to testing, tracing and isolation during

the pandemic. Previous modules have focused on preparedness and resilience, the pandemic’s impact on healthcare systems, vaccines, therapeutics and anti-viral treatment across the UK,

procurement, and the impact of the pandemic on the publicly and privately-funded adult social care sector. YOU CAN FOLLOW LIVE UPDATES FROM TUESDAY’S HEARING BELOW AND REMEMBER TO JOIN OUR

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