5. Submissions by Mr Williams, KC

Mr Williams: My Lady, I represent Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice Cymru. I’m going to refer to them, for reasons of brevity, as “Cymru Group”.

My Lady, we were greatly assisted by the submissions made by the representatives of the Core Participants who have spoken so far, in particular by Ms Campbell on behalf of Northern Ireland.

Lady Hallett: Mr Williams, sorry to interrupt you. I can’t see you at the moment. I don’t know if your camera’s turned on, or are you being shy?

Mr Williams: Never known to be shy.

Lady Hallett: Yes, I can see you now, Mr Williams. Thank you. Sorry to interrupt you.

Mr Williams: My Lady, I was just referring to the assistance we found from Ms Campbell on behalf of Northern Ireland. The points that she was making there are similar points to which we have in our area for Wales. We get the impression of some of the documents, which I will just take you to very shortly, that Wales is viewed as an adjunct to the UK Government, that what applies to England applies to Wales, with just a bit of tweaking here and there.

That emerges from the provisional outline of scope in respect of Module 1. There are six matters that the module is going to examine. The first one is a medical issue and no direct relevance to these submissions. The second one is the Government structures and specialist bodies concerned with risk management and civil emergency planning, including devolved administrations and their structures. We would have thought that there would be reference to “devolved governments”, rather than “administrations”, so as to accord the Welsh Government the status is deserves.

Thereafter, from paragraph 3 to paragraph 6 there’s no reference at all to “devolved governments” or “administrations” or anything else. There’s one reference to “Government bodies” in paragraph 5, economic planning by relevant Government bodies, but it only refers to “Government”. It doesn’t make it clear whether it’s the UK Government or whether it also includes the other devolved governments.

It would be very helpful to have some clarity over Module 1, the scope of it. We appreciate, my Lady, that at the moment it’s provisional but, nonetheless, this question of including Wales as a separate institution, separate Government, is very important to those I represent. What they wish to avoid is the UK Government being the primary focus of everything that happens in all the evidence and all the documents, with perhaps an afternoon or a day dealing with Wales. Wales deserves more than that, my Lady. It’s a separate part of the UK.

Although Wales receives funding from the UK Government, responsibility for health and social care has been devolved to Wales since 1999; so the fact that I’m making these submissions in the light of the material you already have shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone.

Wales has its own healthcare system, NHS Wales is comprised of local health boards, NHS trusts and Public Health Wales. Relevant offices and agencies, such as the office of the Chief Medical Officer and Healthcare Inspectorate are specific to Wales. This means that the key decisions made in Wales in relation to the Covid-19 pandemic were largely separate to and often quite different from those taken by the UK Government.

Therefore, the Welsh Government had responsibility for planning for a pandemic, including forecasting and the learning from past simulation exercises and have responsibility for producing emergency plans. Further, the Welsh Government is responsible for public health services in Wales. The organisation responsible, Public Health Wales, is separate to UKHSA.

The Welsh Government also has responsibility for maintaining healthcare more generally in Wales, which lays the groundwork for pandemic resilience.

The Cymru Group considers that NHS Wales’ infrastructure was not fit for purpose by Covid-19, meaning that when the pandemic started to take effect in Wales the health and social care services were insufficiently prepared and not resilient to the challenges faced. These are all matters that Cymru Group wishes to explore in Module 1. As such, we ask the Chair to consider when finalising the scope of Module 1, that the scope will ensure sufficient scrutiny of the decisions taken by the Welsh Government as to and to the extent of preparedness in Wales.

This should include funding provided to Wales by the UK Government and whether the level of funding impacted on planning and preparedness in Wales, intergovernmental or political relations between the Welsh and UK governments. It will come as no surprise those who have been watching the news over the last three years of the difficulties that have arisen between at least Welsh Government and the UK Government. Those issues need to be fully explored to find out why those issues arose and what effect it may have had on the relationship between Wales and the UK and, in particular, what effect it might have had on provision of care. We would like to consider the question of co-ordination between the UK Government and the devolved governments as regards preparedness, variations between those governments in standard of approach to and planning and preparation, preparedness as regards capacity in NHS Wales for coping with and implementing infection control measures in the Welsh hospitals at stake and whether there was an adequate understanding of and adequate resourcing for infection control measures in large hospitals and care homes.

My Lady, turning to the issues that were raised by Mr Keith, at the time of compiling this note, the Rule 9 corporate witness statement of the Welsh Government has not yet been disclosed to Core Participants and may not have been received by the Inquiry. Core Participants have not had sight of the Rule 9 request itself but have been provided with a summary of the request attached to the CTI note, for which we’re grateful, at annex A. It is noted that, as regards the summary of the request to the Welsh Government, there is no specific reference in the following categories: (a) the Welsh Government’s role in resilience and civil emergencies; (b) inter-organisational co-operation and; (c) its planning for a pandemic. However, these specific categories are listed in the summary of the request made to the Scottish Government.

Without seeing the Rule 9 request or the witness statement and disclosures provided under this request and the request made to the NHS Wales Chief Scientific Adviser and Chief Medical Officer for Wales, it’s not possible to evaluate whether the request directed to the Welsh Government has been sufficient.

This includes whether it will have been sufficient information about the role of Wales Resilience Forum and Wales Resilience Partnership Team. We note the CTI’s willingness to issue discrete follow-up Rule 9 requests to organisations and we urge that it reviews whether to do so in respect of the request to the rest of the Welsh Government in view of the apparent disparity between terms of the requests to Scottish and Welsh governments.

Turning then to the question of disclosure to Core Participants, the question of timing has now rather been overtaken by events because of the difficulty of redacting. The only thing I would say about that at the present time is the fact that things may be delayed by putting everything back by a month shouldn’t be used to put everything by way of disclosure back by a month. We hope that this means that there is greater time for Cymru Group to consider the documents that are going to be disclosed and also to consider at length the statements which we hope will be disclosed.

So far as contents of disclosure, from our clients’ own knowledge and from what has been uploaded to Relativity thus far, we have been able to ascertain a timeline of reports and exercises related to pandemic preparedness and that’s annexed to our submissions, my Lady.

However, what appears to be missing from the disclosure at present is what happened next. We note disclosure is yet to be received from the Welsh Government. For our clients, this will be key in understanding the actions or admissions of the Welsh Government in relation to pandemic preparedness. We hope to be able to review into departmental communications, communications between civil servants and ministers, responses to the various exercises and reports carried out above, actions agreed upon following those exercises and reports, any audits of whether or not these actions were completed and, finally, the ministers’ and/or civil servants’ own assessments of Wales’ preparedness for a pandemic.

Without this evidence, we merely have the background of what should have been done but we’re not able to analyse the decision-making of whether it was actually put into effect. It is anticipated that there may be a great deal of memos, emails, ministerial briefings and other material which will need to be considered in detail.

The Cymru Group has received some disclosure that relates to Wales. We’ve not yet received any witness statements which are Wales-specific. The material provided to date properly considers Wales as part of the UK but given the devolution arrangements as set out above, Wales must also be considered independently of the UK. Its status should not be added on at the end of the Inquiry into the UK Government.

My Lady, we then turn to Relativity.

Lady Hallett: Mr Williams, sorry to interrupt, just before you do, I have been getting a little anxious – it’s not your fault – but your predecessors in addressing me have been referring to the pros and cons of various commercial operations. I wonder if we could just keep the submissions to something more neutral without using specific names, if that’s possible, please.

Mr Williams: Yes, of course, my Lady. In fact, I wasn’t going to refer to Relativity. I was simply going to adopt the submissions made by Mr Weatherby. So that saves that time and saves me referring to something I shouldn’t.

Lady Hallett: Thank you very much. Sorry to have interrupted you.

Mr Williams: No, not at all.

So far as Parliamentary privilege and the instruction of expert witnesses, we simply repeat our submissions there. It’s too early for us to make a comment on it and we will if it’s necessary at the appropriate time.

So far as evidence to the proposal of procedure Rule 10, we have tried to set out a way forward in terms of discussions between the CTI and the various Core Participants’ legal advisers. There are a number of ways of doing it. If I may mention one other way, in the Infected Blood Inquiry the Core Participants were required to submit their questions that they wanted considered or issues they wanted to consider to the CTI a week before the questioning of the relevant witness was undertaken and then, after the evidence had been given, the parties had an opportunity to email any additional issues quite shortly but any additional issues that could be gone through. It was a system which, taking into account the 150 or 200 witnesses that were called, it worked very well.

The question of witnesses and hearing timetable, we require quite a lot of information from the CTI before we can take that very much further but we would like to have the opportunity to meet with the CTI remotely following the receipt of the witness list and timetable so we can discuss how the matter can be forwarded.

Opening and closing statements, my Lady. We realise the difficulties on this in that the longer we have to talk about it, the less time we will have to hear them but we would like the opportunity in which to do written opening and closing submissions and, if possible, a brief oral submission at the very end.

The Listening Exercise, my Lady. Well, we have throughout these hearings, provisional hearings, offered its commitment to exercise working with the Inquiry team to assist in the development of a Listening Exercise and we do so again. We wish to be of every assistance we can.

Public hearings. The problem we have with public hearings, as emerged in the Infected Blood Inquiry, is that not all the United Kingdom has appropriate standards in terms of the internet connection throughout Wales. One way forward on that is to provide a room in a particular town, whether it is the north, mid, west or south Wales, where people could go, where there was good connections with widescreen TVs and so they could follow the proceedings without worrying about getting a good connection.

Doing that engendered a sense of community and it allowed people who had suffered terrible losses to give mutual support to each other and have someone with a medical background who can offer support at the same time.

My Lady, those are my submissions.

Lady Hallett: I’m very grateful to you and especially for your helpful ideas about informal ways in which we can make sure the Core Participants contribute to the evidence-gathering process.

Can I just assure you, Mr Williams, as I think you probably know, for my part and for the part of the Inquiry team, Wales is definitely not seen simply as an adjunct to the Westminster Government and I’m sorry if the use of language has given those you represent that kind of impression. I undertake to ensure that in future that the status of the devolved nations is properly recognised in language as well as in intent because I hope that you understand, and those you represent understand, we fully intend to ensure that the interests of the people who live in Wales are properly recognised during the course of this Inquiry.

So please do not think that anything that you’ve seen written is meant to be suggesting that Wales is any kind of adjunct or a secondary nation. It is not and I’m very conscious of that.

So I hope that in future you and those you represent will get the kind of clarity and information you need on the extent to which we will ensure that the interests that affect the people of Wales are properly investigated.

So thank you very much indeed.

Mr Williams: Thank you very much, my Lady.

Lady Hallett: Right, now, I think it’s Ms Gallagher.