'Spiky and colourful' start from Drakefordpublished at 11:29 Greenwich Mean Time 13 March

11:29 GMT 13 March

Gareth Lewis
BBC Wales Political Editor

Drakeford's evidence has been spiky with some colourful descriptions of his UK counterparts.

If you were in any doubt about the difficulties in the relationship between Welsh and UK governments, the first hour of evidence will have left you in no doubt.

We've heard a Drakeford accusation that Boris Johnson put politics before practicalities, concerns about a lack of regular top-level meetings, and UK minister Michael Gove described as a "centre-forward" without any support from his team mates - or manager Johnson.

And ouch... after Simon Hart claimed that Welsh government was different for the sake of it, not only a rebuttal from Drakeford but a dismissal that Hart was "peripheral".

There was also an extraordinary revelation from Drakeford that the then English health secretary Matt Hancock didn't know that public health law was devolved to Wales.

Drakeford's conclusion: he's seen no evidence that decisions then or in the future on a pandemic would be better made in Whitehall that in Wales.

The inquiry is taking a short break.

Mark Drakeford's evidence will resume at 11:30.

Image source, Getty Images

Drakeford argues the Welsh government's level of proactiveness at the start of the pandemic was based on advice being filtered through from the chief medical officer on level of risk, and says the "signal was not there at the time" that this was high.

But he concedes "there is a plausible case that the signal should have been read earlier, and we should have moved [on] what we were doing earlier in the year".

Drakeford is asked why Covid doesn’t crop up on the Welsh government’s cabinet agendas until 25 February 2020.

"The fact there was no discussion at cabinet until 25 February should not be read at all that there was no discussion between cabinet ministers," he says.

He says he was "speaking directly" to the Welsh health minister, Vaughan Gething, who was attending early Cobra meetings, and ministers were "being well informed".

"At that point, there is nothing for the cabinet to decide," he says.

"Then there comes a point when it becomes clear that the cabinet is likely to be involved in cross-portfolio decisions."

Drakeford says this is when Covid response is added to the agenda, and "comes to very quickly dominate" discussions.

The inquiry moves on to discuss Sage (Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies) – which it previously heard Wales had no representative at the first five meetings.

Drakeford says in the "very early days" he wasn’t concerned by this, because "it did not occur to me that there was a particularly Welsh angle in what was a global phenomenon".

But he adds: "As the month moved on, I became more anxious that we had someone in the room and anxious about our ability to put questions to Sage that were pertinent to Wales."

Asked if he agreed the data used by Sage had an "English frame of reference", he says he does "to some extent", but that this should, for the most part, “not be a surprise”.

“However there were times that there would have been specific dimensions that would have been pertinent to Wales [and] you would struggle to see how Sage found the evidence it needed," he adds.

Drakeford says, in hindsight, he’d like to have seen Wales represented from the start.

“In my mind, that would be an important lesson of the experience we lived through,” he says.

Drakeford says he did not agree with Boris Johnson and Simon Hart that in the event of a future pandemic, decisions should be made by the UK government for the whole of the UK.

"I definitely don't think that the evidence suggests to me that decisions made in London would have been better decisions as far as Wales is concerned.

"We are inevitably closer to the ground, more aware of administrative structures, alert to the different patterns of the disease, in the Welsh case simply better able to communicate in bilingual way. I definitely don't agree that better decisions would have been made from Whitehall."

He says a "strengthened ability" to coordinate decisions between the four nations of the UK would have been preferable.

Image source, Getty Images

Drakeford references a message sent by the UK government's health minister, Matt Hancock, to Michael Gove on 30 May 2020 - more than two months after the first lockdown was announced - in which he said public health was not a devolved matter.

"The secretary of state got the most basic thing entirely wrong," says Drakeford, adding this shows a continuing "lack of clarity over the legal basis for the powers that we needed".

He reiterates that, up until 20 March 2020 - just three days before the first lockdown - he was under the impression that "central decision would remain in the hands of the UK government and the devolved governments would be implementers of these decisions".

He says: "It was pretty alarming that on 20 March we were still resolving this."

Drakeford says he would liked to have seen Boris Johnson chairing Cobra meetings sooner in the pandemic.

He says it wouldn’t necessarily have changed actions taken, but would have "sent a stronger signal about the seriousness with which the gathering storm was being taken".

Tom Poole KC puts to Drakeford his own absence from the first three Cobra meetings indicated a similar lack of serious approach being taken in Wales.

Drakeford argues at that stage it was a "health dominated" matter, requiring health advisors and decision-makers.

Image source, Getty Images

Drakeford describes then-Welsh Secretary Simon Hart as "peripheral" to his interaction with the UK government.

He says: "The difficulty was, in the early days, with frankly, very little else to do, the secretary of state filled his days by writing letters to me asking about the Welsh government's responsibilities."

He argues there was a risk he was "beginning to get in the way of our ability to do the things we needed to do".

Drakeford recalls he had to write to Hart to tell him he couldn't go on prioritising replying to his correspondence and that he was not accountable to him but "to the parliament of the Welsh people".

Bethan Lewis
BBC Wales Family & Education Correspondent

Image source, Getty Images

Wales’ education minister during the pandemic offered to resign over her handling of cancelled exams in 2020.

In written evidence to the Covid-19 inquiry, Kirsty Williams says she drafted a letter offering her resignation days after “unfair” A-level results were published.

The results had been decided by applying an algorithm to grades given to students by teachers.

Williams says the first minister and others convinced her to carry on.

The results on 13 August 2020 caused an outcry and unmoderated teachers’ grades were eventually awarded.

Williams, who was the only Liberal Democrat minister in the Welsh cabinet, says it was the only time she considered resigning throughout the pandemic and she drafted a letter on 17 August.

She was the education minister until May 2021 when she left the Senedd.

She has submitted written evidence to the inquiry but has not appeared in person.

In the statement, the former minister says she “agonised” over whether the decision to close schools in March 2020 should have been made earlier.

She says she also asked herself whether they should have done more to keep schools open for longer.

“I do not see what else we could have done,” was her answer to both questions.

Steve Duffy
BBC News

Image source, Getty Images

Drakeford says calls between the devolved leaders and the then-chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Michael Gove - a role which made him the most senior minister in the Cabinet Office after the PM - were "certainly useful" but not a replacement for direct contact with the prime minister.

Drakeford describes Gove as a "a skilful centre forward without a team lined up behind him and where the manager was largely absent".

He clarifies Boris Johnson was the "absent manager", adding he was "never at these meetings or at the table".

He says contact with Gove "needed to be supplemented by some additional regular contact between first ministers".

“He had influence rather than determinative impact."

The inquiry has previously been told the devolved nations were often not told of Cobra meetings until very late, with briefing papers shared just a few minutes before they began.

Drakeford admits this meant devolved nations were "at a disadvantage", as it took time for them to catch up on proceedings.

He adds he was aware of "anxieties in the UK government" about the "leaking" of details from these meetings to the press allegedly by Nicola Sturgeon – Scotland’s first minister at the time – but says: "I would also have known that they could not have pointed to a single example."

The inquiry is told pandemic prime minister Boris Johnson deliberately did not meet leaders of the devolved nations at the start of the pandemic in case it gave "the false impression that the UK was a federal state".

Drakeford describes this as "extraordinary", adding: "I wrote very regularly to the prime minister, asking for a predictable series of meetings between heads of the four nations.

"It never occurred to me that the prime minister had turned down these requests, not for practical reasons… but as a matter of policy.”

Drakeford says it would have been “preferable” to have had these meetings, as it would have allowed for "joint", if not identical, decisions to be made.

"Regularity of meetings improves trust. In a pandemic when things were moving so quickly, trust is a very special commodity," he says.

Drakeford confirms all decisions made during the pandemic in Wales were those of the Welsh cabinet.

He says his role was "to make sure the decisions we arrived at were the collective decisions of the whole of the cabinet".

He says these decisions were "almost always" taken directly in cabinet meetings, but were occasionally made at UK government-level meetings where he was the only representative for Wales, "drawing on the knowledge of what the cabinet would have decided, from prior discussions".

He said he accepted responsibility for all decisions, and signed off those decisions.

Mark Drakeford has now stepped up to the stand and begins answering questions from Tom Poole KC.

The inquiry is running through Drakeford's background in politics, leading up to his appointment as first minister in December 2018.

Image source, UK Covid-19 Inquiry

Image source, Getty Images

It’s Mark Drakeford’s final week as first minister after more than five years at the helm, and he’s set to give a whole day of evidence to the inquiry, following his initial appearance last week.

During Covid, Drakeford was ultimately responsible for the country's lockdown rules - his government is in charge of the NHS, education and councils.

He secured a second term as first minister after the 2021 Senedd elections, where Welsh labour won 30 of the 60 seats available.

Major policies during his tenure include the scrapping of the M4 relief road in 2019 and the introduction of the 20mph default speed limit in September.

Drakeford, born and brought up in Carmarthen, became a councillor with South Glamorgan County Council in 1985 and went on to become a lecturer at Swansea University and later a professor of social policy at Cardiff University.

Mark Drakeford's wife, Clare, died suddenly in January 2023 aged 71. The couple had lived together in Pontcanna, Cardiff, for 30 years. He said that work was what kept him going as he was "unprepared for the ferocity of grief".

Image source, Getty Images

After almost three weeks of evidence in the Wales module of the Covid inquiry, First Minister Mark Drakeford is facing a full day of questions on the penultimate.

In one of his last duties before he officially steps down next week, Drakeford will be asked to tie up the loose ends on this inquiry in Wales, with key themes such as ministers' WhatsApp messages, co-ordination with other governments, handling of care homes and lessons learned all likely to crop up.

Drakeford took on the first minister title in 2018, rising to wider recognition as a devolved government leader during the pandemic.

His replacement - Vaughan Gething or Jeremy Miles, both of whom have already given evidence this week - will be announced on Saturday.

Image source, UK Covid-19 Inquiry

Yesterday was a bumper line-up, with three ministers taking to the stand.

These were the highlights:

• Current Health Minister Eluned Morgan said the Welsh government should have been more prepared for the pandemic
• She said lack of financial support from the UK government for the October 2020 "firebreak" lockdown left Welsh people feeling like "second-class citizens"
• Morgan was also quizzed on notes she made, including: "Is Matt Hancock hopeless?"
• Next up was Finance Minister Rebecca Evans, who spoke about the set-up for Wales to make financial decisions during the pandemic, and the unease this caused some ministers
• She added it felt like the UK government treated Wales as "another department" rather than a country, making for a "very uncomfortable" financial position at times
• Finally, Welsh Labour leadership candidate Jeremy Miles - who was counsel general during the pandemic - spoke about the "good joint working" with Westminster in the early pandemic stages
• Miles revealed that guidance to councils urging school closures were "welcomed", despite lack of legal powers
• He also disagreed the Welsh government's five-mile "stay local" guidance was "confusing" and defended the fines for "unlicensed music events" including notorious raves
• He said, on reflection, "simpler" messaging became the go-to approach

Image source, Getty Images

Good morning and welcome to day three of the final week of evidence for the UK Covid Inquiry in Wales.

Mark Drakeford is set to give a whole day of evidence today, and is the last person to take the stand before the module wraps up tomorrow.

The outgoing first minister has just days left in the role, and will be grilled over Wales' strategy and actions during the pandemic.