Image source, Getty Images

The inquiry returns to the period of May 2020, when guidance in Wales and England began to differ.

In Wales, people were now allowed to exercise more than once a day, garden centres could open, and social distancing was to be observed. They were not allowed to pre-arrange outdoor meetings between members of different households, as they could in England.

"We did make real continued efforts to communicate with people and particularly along the border… but of course this is where people were most used to differences," Drakeford tells the inquiry.

But in a media interview at the time, Drakeford was reported as saying meeting up outdoors with someone was allowed.

Asked by Poole if this was misleading, Drakeford says: "I was certainly in trouble over what I had said."

He adds: "We are on our feet, answering unscripted questions and we sometimes don’t say things exactly as we intend."

He says the point he was trying to make was that saying hello to someone you knew when you saw them "by chance and not by design" was OK.

"The point I was trying to make was there was nothing wrong with that," he says.

Figures are still being published on Covid in Wales and show a steady drop in hospital cases since the winter peak at the end of January.

The number of patients testing positive for Covid has fallen to its lowest weekly number since last July – 135 across Welsh hospitals.

Mortality figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show seven deaths due to Covid in the week ending 1 March.

Altogether, there have been about 10,278 deaths due to Covid since March 2020 – with another 2,310 deaths where Covid was a contributory factor.

Image source, Piranha

We hope you enjoyed your sandwiches. We're back under way after the inquiry broke for lunch - with Wales' First Minister Mark Drakeford back at the stand.

Just a quick reminder about what the UK Covid-19 Inquiry is - it was launched by Boris Johnson, the UK's prime minister throughout Covid, to look into decision-making and handling of the pandemic in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Inquiries respond to "public concern" about events and are established and funded by government, and are led by an independent chair.

In this case, former judge and crossbench peer Baroness Hallett is in the chair.

Inquiries can demand evidence and compel witnesses to attend. No-one is found guilty or innocent, but conclusions are published. The government is not obliged to accept any recommendations.

The Covid inquiry began on 28 June 2022 and is in the final week of hearing evidence in Wales before heading to Northern Ireland.

There is no specific timescale for how long the inquiry will last but Baroness Hallett does not expect the public hearings to run beyond summer 2026.

Steve Duffy
BBC Wales

During the morning session of today's inquiry, Drakeford was asked about the Welsh government's policy on care homes. The first minister said he was there to "explain not to justify".

He said the risks of keeping very vulnerable people in hospital when they were fit to be discharged, at a point when hospitals were about to become the "epicentre of the most dangerous place to be" was not a course of action that had merit.

Poole asked him why the Welsh government had not changed its policy to test all patients being discharged into care homes, earlier than 29 April 2020.

Drakeford said if it had been taken earlier, tests would have to have been taken from other areas, and a decision had been taken to prioritise frontline staff in hospitals.

“There were not enough tests to do all we’d liked to have done with them,” he added.

He was also asked about a letter sent to him by MPs, two days after the UK government agreed mass testing of all residents and care home staff in England, on 28 April.

He admitted this was “terribly difficult territory”.

“I know just how powerfully people feel about what happened in care homes here in Wales. I absolutely regret everything that led to loss of life. My own mother lived in a care home throughout this pandemic."

Drakeford agreed while there were instances of Covid coming from discharges into care homes, the primary reason that Covid ended up in care homes was the “necessary ingress of people into care homes who were there to care for people in them”.

The risk increased as Covid grew.

"That’s an uncomfortable conclusion but that’s where the evidence takes us."

Drakeford said the government received letters and advice from all sorts of people all the time.

He said he “couldn’t be buffeted by letters”, he instead had to rely on orderly decision making and said you could see over March and April, how that develops.

On 16 May, blanket testing for all care home residents and staff was announced. But Poole asked him why there was such a delay in making the decision, given that there was some scientific advice to support blanket testing by 27 March.

Drakeford said he wanted to make the point that the Welsh government "couldn’t pick and choose the advice it received". He said there were other views, but it was a “slippery slope” and he was determined not to go down that route.

Mark Drakeford himself accepts that Covid shone a light on Wales having its own government and powers perhaps more than anything else since devolution in 1999.

That means as a result Drakeford's profile is far higher than any of Wales' previous three first ministers - even though two of the them were in power significantly longer.

Wales had its own rules, health service, test and trace system, and vaccination rollout - and having around 200 pandemic press conferences beamed into people's homes made Drakeford a household name, certainly in the UK.

Speaking previously, Drakeford said about the Covid pandemic: "It has drawn attention to the devolved nature of the United Kingdom in a way that many people hadn't noticed or weren't keen to notice before."

Alex Binley
Live reporter

Image source, PA

Giving evidence this morning, Drakeford accused UK health secretary during the pandemic, Matt Hancock, of getting the "most basic thing entirely wrong" when the UK's health secretary said public health was not devolved when it was.

Devolution means that Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland can make their own laws on some domestic issues.

Health is one of these and the governments of the devolved nations get money from the central UK government to spend on it how they see fit.

This means that each of the four nations has its own health minister, and the devolved governments can make their own rules and laws.

This is why different parts of the UK had different Covid rules at different times. For example in October 2021 when there was a "firebreak" lockdown in Wales, across the border in England there was no lockdown.

If you're just joining us, here is a recap of what's been said at the UK Covid Inquiry in Wales this morning:

• Mark Drakeford, the outgoing first minister, criticised former prime minister Boris Johnson's leadership during the pandemic, describing him as an "absent manager" of a football team
• At the beginning of the pandemic, Drakeford said Johnson was "not taking it as seriously as he should have been"
• Johnson should have chaired emergency Covid Cobra meetings sooner to send a "stronger signal" about the seriousness of the virus, he added
• Early on, Matt Hancock didn't know public health law was devolved to Wales, Drakeford told the inquiry, accusing the former health secretary of getting the "most basic thing entirely wrong"
• The hearing highlighted some of the difficulties in the working relationship between the Westminster and Welsh governments
• There was no representative from Wales at the first five Sage meetings (a group of top scientists who advised the government). Drakeford said they should've been there from the start
• Drakeford said that early on in the pandemic he asked the PM for meetings between the heads of the four nations but those were turned down "not for practical reasons… but as a matter of policy"
• Wales should have gone into lockdown a week earlier than it did, Drakeford conceded

The inquiry is taking a lunch break until 13:45 but stick with us as we bring you a bit more from the first session.

Discussing the change of messaging from the UK government in May 2020, from "stay home" to "stay alert", Drakeford says this was not something he understood or agreed to for Wales.

"With no ability to explain to me what the message meant, I was not prepared to agree to it," he says.

He says he "makes this very clear" to then prime minister Boris Johnson at a Cobra meeting on 10 May, and all of the devolved nations reiterate the importance of Johnson stating the guidance is only for England in his upcoming press conference.

Drakeford says Johnson gave "assurance that he will do his very best to make sure he does that" only to "head to the cameras" and only reference the devolved nations in the context that he is speaking as prime minister of all four nations.

"It’s a clear indication that what he is about to say applies to all the UK and he never says it doesn’t," says Drakeford.

Drakeford says this was a "bleak moment" for joint working between the governments during the pandemic, adding "this is not a slip of the tongue, this is not someone forgetting to mention something, this is a deliberate attempt to convey to people this applies to them when he knows full well it doesn’t".

Boris Johnson catching Covid during the early stages of the pandemic had a "chilling effect" and led to a hesitation in decision-making, Drakeford says.

Drakeford tells the inquiry: "The chilling effect is in the hesitation which the whole system feels about making major decisions when the prime minister himself is not at the table and not able to participate in them."

Drakeford adds he had no complaints about Dominic Raab's handling of the meetings in Johnson's absence.

Raab was the deputy prime minister during that period.

Image source, Wales News Service

Drakeford says, while lockdown in Wales in March 2020 was “a decision I had to take on the spot”, he is “entirely confident” it followed the wishes of his cabinet colleagues.

This was due to “insufficient compliance” with the measures already in place, he adds.

Drakeford says on the weekend of 21 and 22 March 2020, he was informed “Barry island is rammed”, it was “bustling in Llanellii” and Pen y Fan had “hundreds of people gathering”.

He says it’s his view lockdown was “entirely necessary” and “should have happened earlier”.

Pressed on when he thinks the UK should have locked down, he says he’s an “amateur witness in this matter” and has no reason to disagree with the “widely agreed consensus” that a week sooner would have been good.

Drakeford says he didn’t "pick and choose" whether he followed medical advice provided, claiming this would cause an "unravelling of proper decision-making".

"As a decision-maker, I think that is a very, very slippery slope and I was very determined not to go down that way," he tells the inquiry.

"Sometimes we didn’t agree with some of the things that we were being advised but… we followed the advice we had through the established routes."

Drakeford says he "thought long and hard" about attending a meeting of an "independent Sage" (Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies) group which he was invited to, but declined, “not because I wasn’t curious… but I decided that would undermine the relationship we had with Sage”.

Baroness Hallett pushes Drakeford to explain why he couldn’t justify following outside sources if he saw fit, to which he responds: "I would not have been prepared to do that."

Image source, Getty Images

Recalling a Cobra meeting on 12 March, Drakeford says Johnson said "Dom says no" when the prospect of cancelling mass gatherings was discussed.

Calling off mass gatherings was widely regarded by scientific advisers as the hardest intervention to call, especially outdoor ones.

Drakeford says he thought they were an unwelcome distraction for emergency services and worried about the contradiction around public messaging.

The Cheltenham Festival was in its third day while this meeting took place, while Stereophonics played two shows in Cardiff on 14 and 15 March.

“I argued at this Cobra meeting for us to agree that mass gatherings should not go ahead. I argued as strongly as I could,” Drakeford says.

He says Johnson went around the room taking views from anyone who wanted to contribute.

Mr Drakeford says he had a vivid memory of the discussion because having gone around the table, the prime minister summed up against that course of action by saying "Dom says no".

"I didn't know who Dom (Dominic Cummings, the PM's then chief political adviser) was at this point," Drakeford says.

Image source, Getty Images

Drakeford is asked about the cancellation of the Wales v Scotland Six Nations match on 13 March – just a day before kick off, after 20,000 Scotland fans had descended on Cardiff.

He says he was aware of a "discussion" his office was having with then-chairman of the Welsh Rugby Union (WRU) Gareth Davies, who expressed "concerns" about going ahead with the match.

Davies previously told the inquiry it would have been "reckless" to allow the match to go ahead.

Asked if he agrees, Drakeford says: "I had already been arguing in Cobra for the match not to go ahead, but I didn’t have medical evidence that I could make to support that conclusion, no agreement from the UK government… and no power to enforce that decision."

He says the responsibility lay "exclusive with the Welsh Rugby Union" but adds he told Davies the Welsh government "would back whatever decision [they] made".

He says whether the match should go ahead was a "hotly contested" topic, adding: “What we could have been was clearer with the WRU on how we thought they should exercise their responsibility, but what basis would I have had for doing that, when I had in front of me evidence from the chief medical officer that it could go ahead?”

Did Wales realise the threat soon enough?published at 12:12 Greenwich Mean Time 13 March

12:12 GMT 13 March

Owain Clarke
BBC Wales Health Correspondent

A recurring theme of this inquiry has been whether the Welsh government realised early enough the scale of the threat of Covid.

In January the first minister was warned by the Welsh government's chief medical officer Frank Atherton that the virus posed a "serious risk", yet the Welsh cabinet didn't formally discuss Covid until more than a month later.

Mark Drakeford insists that advice was essentially saying “if” the virus comes then there would be a "serious risk" in Wales, but chair of the inquiry Baroness Hallett questioned whether the correct interpretation should have been - there is a "serious risk" that the virus “will” arrive.

But in any case, the inquiry's already heard that public health experts in Wales were banging the drum loudly for quicker action from late January and were becoming increasingly frustrated.

But Drakeford insisted they wouldn't have necessarily known about what was going on within the Welsh government at that time.

Image source, Getty Images

Drakeford says the attitude of the prime minister had a direct effect on how seriously people took Covid in the early days of the pandemic.

“The prime minister’s view, and he exercises it routinely in March, is we must carry on, we must tell people this is a mild illness, they are not to get anxious about,” says Drakeford.

He says Boris Johnson may have felt he was following advice about not moving too soon, but adds this "does create a certain inhibition on the advice being taken as seriously as it was proposed to us".

Drakeford says he "would not have agreed" with Johnson at the time, but says "he repeatedly, each time we discussed it, said things that were designed to minimise the seriousness of the position we were in".

He adds it's his understanding Johnson has admitted in his own evidence "that, looking back, he was not taking it as seriously as he should have been".

Poole asks Drakeford when he would say the Welsh government began to take Covid seriously, referencing previous suggestions to the inquiry that this was about mid-March 2020.

Drakeford says he would put it “a bit earlier” than that, but says this is likely because he was “at the centre” of discussions and saw more of what was going on behind the scenes than others.

“If I had to choose a date, probably 4 March, because by 4 March we were meeting every week as a cabinet on this matter," he says.

He adds that then-health minister Vaughan Gething had asked his office to clear his diary for the whole month of March, so he could “exclusively” focus on Covid.

Steve Duffy
BBC News

Counsel to the inquiry Tom Poole KC, says what is "striking" about the minutes of the Welsh government cabinet on 25 February was there seemed to be no consideration of what steps needed to be taken to stop the virus spreading.

Drakeford says this is the moment the Welsh government's attention turned to the issue with significance.

"At this moment, all those issues are being discussed. I decide all cabinet meetings should be attended by all [12] ministers.

"Very rapidly from this moment, the Welsh government is gearing itself to the issues Mr Poole has identified.”

Drakeford says from then on, very practical things were being discussed about how the Welsh government would respond to Covid when it arrived - becoming a "when" rather than an "if".

There was an early decision abut schools and minister were beginning to talk about gearing the health service up – and within a few days they would formally agree to postpone non-urgent NHS treatments to prepare for what was to come.

Drakeford says he doesn’t have "a detailed enough recollection" to pinpoint what was and wasn’t discussed in February 2020, but confirms "there was no plan to prevent the virus from spreading into Wales – that would have been an ambition much beyond what we could accomplish".

He also addresses the "inaccurate" minutes from the cabinet meeting on 25 February 2020 – the first in which Covid was discussed – previously touched upon by Vaughan Gething.

The first draft of the minutes stated that there had been no imported cases of Covid into the UK at this point, which was not the case.

What was meant, was there had been none imported into Wales yet.

Drakeford confirms he read the minutes before publication and asked for the line to be removed entirely, "pinning my reputation for pedantry to the wall".

Our quick break is over and we're back to hearing from Wales' first minister.

Steve Duffy
BBC News

Drakeford tells the inquiry that Wales was "older, poorer and sicker" and it was suggested to him that earlier action should have been taken to step up the emergency response.

He said it "wasn't an unfair point to make."

"Whether by itself it was enough to make Wales an outlier in preparations being made across the UK... I'm not sure if it bears that much weight."

In his written evidence statement, Mr Drakeford says: "looking back on matters and given what we now know, there is strong evidence to suggest that more stringent action in Wales could have and should have been taken sooner."

He says he was not aware of views within Public Health Wales (PHW) that there was astonishment that by early March the Welsh government was not treating it as a major incident and civil emergency situation.

He says PHW did not speak to ministers, directly, by routine.