Welsh Government brought in different pandemic rules for sake of it, Covid Inquiry told

Former Welsh Secretary Simon Hart says the differing laws in Wales and England were ‘potentially dangerous’

The Labour-run Welsh Government brought in different pandemic rules for the sake of it, a former UK Cabinet minister has told the Covid Inquiry.
Simon Hart, the former Welsh Secretary, said that Mark Drakeford’s Government in Cardiff introduced alternative rules to England during the pandemic “for the sake of being different.”
Mr Hart, now the government’s Chief Whip, said the decision to have different rules in Wales than in England was “potentially dangerous”.
The Covid Inquiry is currently sitting in Wales as it examines decision making in the nation during the pandemic. Baroness Hallett, the Inquiry chair, has already visited Scotland and will go to Northern Ireland next month.
The Inquiry confirmed on Thursday, that Mr Drakeford, the outgoing First Minister of Wales, would appear next week as well as Vaughan Gething, the Minister for the Economy and former Minister for Health, and favourite to be the next leader of Welsh Labour.
During Thursday’s evidence Mr Hart, who was Secretary of State for Wales from December 2019 to July 2022, criticised the Welsh Government’s response to the pandemic.
Mr Hart was asked by Tom Poole KC, lead counsel to the Welsh phase of the Inquiry, about his witness statement where he said that “increasingly, over time” he was left “with the feeling that Welsh ministers actively sought differentiation in their approach compared to the UK Government’s in England.”
Asked if he thought Wales was “being different for the sake of being different,” he replied: “More in sadness than in anger, I do believe that to be the case.”
He added: “It was difficult to see any evidence which suggested that the outcomes were going to be, or were, any different a a result of some of the divergent policies which were emerging …You could make some perfectly reasonable differentiations based on population dynamics and that sort of thing”.
During the pandemic communities living on both sides of the border found themselves falling under different rules despite living on the same town or being on the same street in some cases and Mr Hart said there was “frustration” that people didn’t know the difference in the rules.
“Anything which led to confusion, anything that led to contempt, anything that led to sort of a lack of confidence in the process, that was potentially dangerous in my mind,” he added.
“I don’t say it with any sense of glee, in a moment of national, international emergency as this was, the risk of that being the only conclusion could reach was heightened and what genuinely worried me was that if what people were thinking then their enthusiasm for complying with the rules was going to be compromised and that would ultimately be bad for everyone,” Mr Hart said.
Earlier the Inquiry heard how Mr Drakeford believed the UK Government’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic was a threat to the future of the union.
Jane Runeckles, the Welsh first minister’s most senior adviser, told the Inquiry that it was felt that the actions of Boris Johnson’s government could lead to a breakdown of the UK.
“I believe that the First Minister had a genuine, sincerely held concern that some of the actions of the UK government in relation to the way they had handled some of the earlier period was a genuine threat to the future of the UK,” she said.
Ms Runeckles said that contact between Mr Johnson and Mr Drakeford was described as “infrequent”, which led to divergence in policy between the four nations of the UK.
Mr Johnson said in previous evidence to the inquiry that he had deliberately not met the first ministers of the devolved nations to avoid giving the impression that the UK was a federalised country.
Ms Runeckles said: “The tensions between the actions taken by the Welsh government and the actions taken by the UK government became more and more obvious, and once we reached the point through the beginning of May, the fact that the Welsh government were taking decisions in a different way to the UK government just meant that there was very little for us to talk about.”
The Inquiry continues on Monday when it will hear evidence from Mr Gething.