Covid inquiry: Worries raised over Welsh pandemic work in 2018

Reg Kilpatrick is Welsh government director general of local government and Covid recovery

A senior civil servant in Wales raised concerns in 2018 that the Welsh government was not helping enough with UK pandemic planning.

The Covid inquiry heard that Reg Kilpatrick had said the Cardiff administration could assist the UK government more than it was.

In an email he suggested Wales had been waiting for the UK government to produce guidance.

One key guidance document had not changed from 2011.

Mr Kilpatrick told the inquiry Wales would have been in a "better position" had plans been updated.

"I think we would have had a better understanding of the risks as they currently were at that time," he said.

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But, in a potential nod to the focus on flu rather than coronavirus or other infectious diseases, the civil servant said "we were working on a set of assumptions, and those plans would have been based on those assumptions".

The email, dated 6 July of 2018, was sent to several other senior civil servants including Chief Medical Officer Sir Frank Atherton and Andrew Goodall, then chief executive of the Welsh NHS but now permanent secretary to the Welsh government, its most senior official.

Mr Kilpatrick, who was director for local government at the time, wrote about a discussion regarding a UK review of pandemic flu plans.

He said there had been requests from the UK government "to provide some practical input and support to the development of the guidance".

Referring to the Department for Health (DH), the email read: "While the pressures were 'noted', the approach whereby Welsh government simply waits until DH produces guidance which is then revised for Wales was putting considerable pressure on DH to get the products completed in the first place."

He adds: "Given that this is a UK review, they asked specifically for some resources to help in that task which seems a reasonable request.

"In view of the total emergency planning capacity across the NHS Wales, I would expect us to be more cooperative than we currently are.

"The pace of development of the review and guidance is therefore at risk, so this needs to be exposed to ministers along with the resource issues."

The email from Reg Kilpatrick was sent to several senior civil servants.

Quizzed by Nia Gowman, representing the Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice Cymru group, he denied there was an attitude of apathy or complacency in the Welsh government.

Mr Kilpatrick, who is now director general of Covid recovery and local government, said: "I know that the colleagues who were copied into this email are extremely diligent and hardworking, and understand the breadth and importance of their work".

He said some of the concern had been around work on a UK parliamentary bill for pandemic flu, which had been "completed on time to enable the legislation to be brought into force when it needed to be".

In the inquiry on Monday Sir Frank Atherton said the email had been part of correspondence debating concerns about the progress of work, which was felt needed to be brought to the attention of the then health minister.

Sir Frank said Mr Kilpatrick had been concerned "we weren't signalling sufficiently the need for additional resource".

He said the "compromise was to change the advice that was going up to make it much clearer to the health minister that those were salient issues".

Sir Frank later said the work on Wales' pandemic planning guidance had "all stalled" because resources had been moved to Operation Yellowhammer - preparatory work for the prospect the UK might leave the EU without a deal.

Earlier this week former Health Minister Vaughan Gething admitted that problems in planning for excess deaths had caused hurt to families of those that died during Covid.