How Covid exposed strengths and failings in devolved Wales
It completely changed society, here and globally, for two years but now that life is slowly getting back to normal, what exactly happened to us all? Here, in part of our special report, Welsh affairs editor Will Hayward continues his analysis of the and UK Governments’ handling of the crisis
It is hard to look at the contact-tracing regimes of the Welsh and UK Governments and not conclude that in this area the Welsh Government significantly outperformed the UK Government.
Both decided to set up their own contact-tracing regimes: Track and Trace for England, which was relied heavily on private contracts to companies like for Serco and Sitel and also consultants, some of whom received £1,000 a day, and Track Trace Protect (TTP) for Wales, largely run by local authorities.
Let’s take a look at the rough costs: The Welsh Government TTP programme cost just over £120m during 2020-21. This works out at around £38 per capita.The UK Government’s NHS Test and Trace spent £13.5bn up to April 2021. This works out at around £241 per capita.
Now there are some caveats for these figures. Much of this spending was spent on testing and a significant proportion of the Welsh programme used testing supplied by the English Lighthouse Labs, so these figures won’t have been accounted for.
However, even with this taken into account, the Welsh system was better value for money. This was especially true given that the Welsh system managed to consistently perform better than its English counterpart in terms of time taken to reach contacts.
This doesn’t mean that the Welsh system was perfect.
There were long-standing issues with TTP when it came to actually being effective at tackling the virus once the disease got going. Though there were successes when the virus was repressed, most notably in meat processing plants. Once the virus accelerated, the TTP system was completely overwhelmed.
As with many parts of the responsem both the UK and Welsh Government fell short in an international context. Take the definition of what constituted a contact – Taiwan had an average of 17 per case whereas the UK average was two.
Verdict: The Welsh Government performed considerably better than the UK Government when it came to contract tracing both in terms of effectiveness and value for money.
FOLLOWING THE SCIENCE AND ACTING QUICKLY
This is a very hard thing to quantify for a whole host of reasons.
For one thing, “the science” of an emerging disease is constantly changing and, especially during the pandemic’s early days, is far from categorical.
For another, even if the science says: “Do this to avoid a spike in cases”, there are still other factors for policymakers to balance, such as: Are the measures affordable? Could they cause other harms? Will people follow the rules?
However, there were instances during the pandemic where both governments clearly deviated from the advice stated by scientists – often with devastating results, but sometimes to little effect whatsoever.
For example, despite the Welsh Government marketing itself as more cautious, it only brought in compulsory mask-wearing on public transport on July 27, 2020.
By contrast, the same rules were introduced in England six weeks earlier, although they would then be lifted sooner in England.
However, if we are talking about the direct loss lives from a decision, perhaps the biggest call policymakers had to make was when to lockdown going into the winter of 2020.
On September 21, 2020, the UK’s top scientific advisory body, the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), published advice where it called for a circuit-breaker lockdown. This advice stated: “Cases are increasing across the country in all age groups. Not acting now to reduce cases will result in a very large epidemic with catastrophic consequences in terms of direct Covid-related deaths and the ability of the health service to meet needs.”
The advice suggested a package of measures including:
A circuit-breaker to return incidence to low levels;
banning all contact within the home with members of other households;
closure of all bars, restaurants, cafes, indoor gyms, and personal services (eg hairdressers); and
all university and college teaching to be online unless absolutely essential.
It concluded: “The more rapidly these interventions are put in place, the greater the reduction in Covidrelated deaths and the quicker they can be eased. However, some restrictions will be necessary for a considerable time.”
So here we have categorical advice from the leading experts in the UK– “lockdown now and lockdown hard”.
To follow the science would be to follow this advice. But neither the UK nor Welsh Government followed the advice – but they failed to follow it in different ways.
The Welsh Government opted to continue with the failing local lockdown policy which left most of Wales under restrictions, but pubs open – a policy that Wales’ Chief Medical Officer Dr Frank Atherton subsequently admitted failed.
More than a month after the lockdown advice was issued, Wales went into its firebreak lockdown on October 31. This proved far too short to really get on top of the virus and the restrictions the people of Wales faced after the firebreak were incredibly lax.
As the virus started to spike again heading into December, Mark Drakeford, desperate to keep to his promise of no more lockdowns before Christmas, didn’t order a lockdown, but instead restricted the sale of alcohol in restaurants and pubs.
The UK Government, by contrast, didn’t go into a full lockdown until November 5. This lasted more than two weeks longer than the Welsh one with restrictions in place until December 5. This longer period allowed them to get more on top of the virus and probably contributed to the second wave being slightly less severe in England.
So who did better?
Both governments took too long to act. The Welsh Government acted first, but didn’t make its restrictions long enough or strong enough. The UK Government took much longer to act but did lockdown for longer – in part because it had more data because of how the firebreak had played out in Wales.
It should also be noted that part of the challenge facing the Welsh Government was that the furlough scheme was due to come to an end on October 31. To lockdown businesses without furlough would likely have led to catastrophic job losses.
Mr Drakeford requested that Chancellor Rishi Sunak extend the scheme in Wales for a longer lockdown but he refused despite the Welsh Government offering to pay the difference.
Mr Sunak then subsequently extended furlough once England went into its lockdown.
Verdict: Both administrations took far too long to act upon the expert advice in the autumn of 2020. Credit to the Welsh Government for acting first but it locked down for too short an amount of time and subsequent restrictions were too lax. It was somewhat restrained by the UK Government’s actions but this didn’t affect the decision-making after the firebreak. By contrast the UK Government dithered for longer than the Welsh Government but did use the extra available data coming out of Wales to extend its lockdown for longer.
SUPPORTING SHIELDING PEOPLE AT THE START OF THE PANDEMIC
As the pandemic kicked off in spring 2020, vulnerable people were told to shield. This included not going to do their food shop at the supermarket. To get their supplies all of these people turned to the online deliveries by the supermarkets.
A scheme to offer priority slots to shielding people in England was created but two weeks after this was set up, no such scheme yet existed in Wales.
When pressed about this issue, the Welsh Government had initially responded by referring to its own
weekly free food box for people without family support networks.
However, commendable as this scheme was, it wasn’t useful for many shielding people who had very specific dietary requirements.
Additionally, many didn’t want handouts – they just wanted to be able to buy their own food. The strangest thing about this was the Welsh Government seemed to have no idea why there was a delay.
Minister for Environment, Energy, and Rural Affairs Lesley Griffiths said the delay was because of her personal concerns about data protection issues, whereas just a fortnight later Mark Drakeford said there was actually “no delay in getting supermarkets the information” but the firms were slow in taking it.
When the Western Mail approached the supermarkets, they all said the reason for the delay was because the Welsh Government had taken time getting them the information.
■ Verdict: The scheme in England was set up quickly and efficiently. It allowed vulnerable people to get the supplies they needed. The Welsh Government by contrast was wedded to a system that wasn’t working for too long. Then when it did U-turn, it couldn’t decide on the reason for the delay. This may seem like a small thing in the grand scheme of things but it caused real
suffering and concern for many of Wales’ most vulnerable.
SCRUTINY AND OPENNESS
Having an open government which allows scrutiny is vital at all times – especially during a pandemic where people’s liberties are being severely restricted. Unfortunately, principles of scrutiny and openness are hard to quantify when it comes to comparing the performance of two different administrations. However, it is hard to argue any way other than that the UK Government performed considerably worse than the Welsh Government on this issue.
Again, this doesn’t mean the Welsh Government didn’t have problems.
Mark Drakeford’s insistence on not holding a Welsh-specific inquiry into Covid has been widely condemned – especially from those families who lost loved ones as a direct result of Welsh Government decision-making.
The Welsh Government was also glacially slow at times in publishing data related to the virus.
Throughout the pandemic, even when it was ordering people to only leave the house once a day, the Welsh Government would only publish the scientific advice underpinning its decisions 10 days after the advice was given. This made real-time scrutiny of
their decision making virtually impossible.
However, the UK Government was immensely poor. Even before ‘partygate’ where the Prime Minister and Chancellor broke laws they themselves wrote, there was the Dominic Cummings affair and the farcical drive to test his eyesight, after which there was a noticeable drop in compliance with Covid restrictions.
Scrutiny also involves making yourself available to answer questions from the media but this was something the UK Government sought to avoid increasingly as the pandemic went on.
After the Cummings affair, journalists were no longer allowed to ask a follow-up question – and were muted if they tried to – in UK Government press conferences.
In the immediate aftermath, England’s chief nursing officer Ruth May was seemingly dropped from the broadcasts after she declined to endorse a view from Boris Johnson’s adviser at the practice session beforehand.
In one press conference England’s Deputy Chief Medical Officer Jonathan Van-Tam said he was happy to answer questions on Cummings saying that: “In my opinion [the rules] are for the benefit of all. In my opinion they apply to all.”
This led to a massive scaling back of scientists appearing on the briefing, with research by the i newspaper finding that for the first 11 weeks of the Downing Street briefing, from midMarch until the end of May 2020, there was a weekly total of between eight and 12 scientific or medical experts alongside ministers. In the first two weeks of June this dropped to four and three, respectively. There were also occasions when major changes affecting England – such as the move from “stay home” to “stay alert” in May 2020 – were deliberately pre-recorded into order to avoid having to take questions.
By contrast, the Welsh Government maintained thrice-weekly press conferences throughout the first two waves of the virus and attending journalists were permitted to ask follow-up questions.
The UK Government also fell short when it came to a public inquiry into Covid – although it agreed to an inquiry, Boris Johnson delayed its start to this year so that it will be unlikely to conclude until after the next general election.
■ Verdict: The Welsh Government’s failure to hold a Welsh-specific Covid inquiry continues to be a real black mark against Mark Drakeford’s administration – especially given the great political capital the First Minister made of claiming, “in Wales we do things differently”. Power without accountability is not good. However, set against the backdrop of the UK Government’s conduct, the difference is stark. Literal law-breaking, defending the indefensible, actively avoiding scrutiny, kicking future inquires into the long the grass – all of these mean that the Welsh Government far outperformed the UK Government when it came to scrutiny and accountability.
THE LEADERS’ MESSAGING – JOHNSON v DRAKEFORD
It would be impossible to break down and assess every decision made by the respective leaders of the UK and Welsh Governments through the entire two years of the pandemic.
Ultimately, all of the big calls throughout the crisis end up at their doors. You could go through this entire article and see it as a judgement on both men’s performance.
Both are at the head of huge operations and don’t control the minutiae of every decision. However, as the leaders of a country they are uniquely placed to set the tone during a crisis.
That can be bringing a sense of calm, conveying a sense of seriousness, or reassuring people that things are in hand. Messaging always matters in politics but during a global pandemic, where slight changes in behaviour can lead to death, getting it right is vital.
Before the first lockdown, on March 3, 2020, Boris Johnson proudly told a press conference that he “was at a hospital the other night where there were actually a few coronavirus patients and I shook hands with everybody you will be pleased to know”.
On the very day he said this across the world the number of people infected with Covid-19 hit 90,000 people in more than 40 countries. Of these 3,119 people had already died. In China huge field hospitals had been built, the virus was transmitting in the UK and Italy had been in a partial lockdown for more than a week as its health service was overwhelmed.
From a Welsh perspective, he caused chaos in early May – the first time the rules in Scotland and Wales diverged from England – when he told the people of the UK “you can drive to other destinations” when in fact these rules only applied to England.
At no point in this entire speech did he once mention that none of these rules applied to Wales or Scotland or Northern Ireland. There were still travel restrictions on how far you could journey from your home in Wales prompting Welsh police chiefs to implore people in England to not travel to Welsh beaches.
Many times throughout the pandemic, when it came to detail, Mr Johnson was simply not across it. He didn’t even attend many of the Cobra meetings early in the crisis just as the virus was accelerating.
Contrast this with Mark Drakeford who was forensic in his studying of the latest Covid data. The former academic knew the details. When the details save lives, this is a commendable trait.
This isn’t to say that there were not shortcomings in Mr Drakeford’s messaging. Juxtaposed to Mr Johnson, many found Mr Drakeford’s dry delivery refreshing, while others found him humourless and he failed to bring them with him. This was more the case as the pandemic went on and lockdown fatigue began to bite.
Dr Simon Williams, senior lecturer in people and organisation at Swansea University, told the Western Mail: “Overall, polls suggest that the Welsh public had more confidence in the way that the Welsh Government was handling Covid policy in Wales, compared to the way in which the UK Government was handling policy in England where confidence was lower. Part of this was to do with communication – the Welsh Government took a more measured and cautious approach to communication, whereas oftentimes the UK Government messaging was perceived as being a bit more general and focused on less precise guidance around ‘common sense’ or staying ‘alert’.
“However, a major issue for public understanding and compliance was the fact that the messages and communication styles were sometimes different in England and Wales – causing confusion for many and a sense of mixed messages. In our research we called this ‘alert fatigue’. Over time we also saw a shift to more support for a more individual responsibility-focused approach and the more cautious messaging in Wales towards the end generally had less buy-in and support.
“Finally, messages and communication don’t take place in a political vacuum and so things like partygate tended to undermine trust in government and this the advice being given. There were generally less controversies in Wales and Scotland which might have also helped for many a sense of perceived credibility – at least relative to those coming from the UK Government.”
■ Verdict: The polls, difficult to unpick though they are, suggest the public was far more responsive to Mark Drakeford’s methodical style of leadership and communication. Though frustrations certainly grew with the First Minister in the latter stages of the pandemic, there is a selfevident advantage of having a leader who is demonstrably across his brief. The very fact that in his messaging Boris Johnson was vocally proclaiming that he was shaking hands with Covid patients demonstrates a serious error of messaging and seriousness. This is without mentioning the misleading comments around rules in different parts of the UK.