Former UK prime minister Boris Johnson’s handling of key Covid meetings was “scatty, incoherent and rambling” an inquiry has heard.
Vaughan Gething, the Welsh health minister during the Covid pandemic, criticised Mr Johnson’s handling of briefings, at the UK Covid-19 Inquiry hearing on Monday.
Mr Gething, who is now the minister for the economy and running to be the next first minister of Wales, said that COBR meetings – cabinet briefings where the Covid response was discussed – were better handled by former UK health minister Matt Hancock.
He made the comments in a written statement to the inquiry, which were read out by Tom Poole, lead counsel for the inquiry.
Mr Poole said: “When Matt Hancock chaired meetings of COBR there was administrative efficiency and it was a matter of regret that the same could not be said for the meetings chaired by Mr Johnson, who you describe as ‘scatty, incoherent and rambling’.”
Mr Gething told the hearing that “the identity (of the chair) really does matter”.
The former health minister also expressed frustration that papers for some meetings were shared with the devolved administrations only 15 to 20 minutes before they started, meaning there was no time to prepare.
He also accepted that the Welsh government was not as prepared for a pandemic as it thought ahead of Covid-19.
“The preparation we thought we had didn’t stand up as well as we thought it would in those early weeks,” he said.
“The hindsight is of course that we weren’t as prepared as we could have been, but also we weren’t as prepared as we thought we were.
“And I think that’s not just in Wales, that’s across the UK.
Previous hearings of the inquiry has heard that the Welsh government had found out it would be in charge of its own pandemic response just days before the first lockdown.
Mr Gething also argued that if the Welsh government had known it would have started planning sooner.
He said: “Through March, even an extra day or two would have made a difference to your preparation.”
The hearing also heard that Mr Gething “made an error” during the first Welsh government cabinet meeting where Covid was discussed.
Unpublished minutes of a cabinet meeting show Mr Gething said there were no imported cases of Covid to the UK on February 25th, 2020.
He accepted that was an error at the inquiry, saying there had already been cases in the UK by that time and what he had meant to say was there were no cases in Wales.
He said: “I plainly made an error there, counsel, because in fact there had been plenty of imported cases by then.”
The inquiry opened with questions relating to Mr Gething’s WhatsApp messages from the pandemic period, which have been completely deleted.
He described their deletion as a “real embarrassment” and insisted they had been lost during a “security rebuild” and that he had spoken with the IT team at the Senedd on multiple occasions to attempt to get them back.
Members of the Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice Cymru group spoke outside the hearing.
They hit out at Mr Gething, saying: “Matt Hancock looks like a strategic planning pandemic genius.”
Anna-Louise Marsh-Rees, who leads the group, said: “We all have to keep remembering that we are here today because thousands of people died in Wales because of these decisions.
“Today his responses were a word salad of waffle.
“In my opinion, he was not qualified to be health minister for Wales.
“He was meant to be in charge of protecting our loved ones, and he just didn’t and my dad did not stand a chance along with all of our other loved ones.
“What’s most upsetting me is that there was zero acknowledgement of any mistakes.
“His arrogance of ‘we know best’ is just astonishing.”
