{"id":267303,"date":"2025-07-16T18:55:18","date_gmt":"2025-07-16T18:55:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/267303\/"},"modified":"2025-07-16T18:55:18","modified_gmt":"2025-07-16T18:55:18","slug":"plaid-cymru-would-hold-covid-inquiry-if-it-wins-next-election","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/267303\/","title":{"rendered":"Plaid Cymru would hold Covid inquiry if it wins next election"},"content":{"rendered":"

David Deans<\/p>\n

Political reporter, BBC Wales News<\/p>\n

\"GettyGetty Images<\/p>\n

Plaid Cymru has promised to hold a public inquiry into Wales’ experience of the Covid pandemic if it forms the next Welsh government.<\/p>\n

The party’s health spokesman Mabon ab Gwynfor told the Senedd the “terrible chapter” in Wales’ history had to be confronted.<\/p>\n

It comes as a plan for Senedd members to examine Welsh “gaps” in the UK Covid inquiry was formally abandoned.<\/p>\n

The Welsh Parliament’s Covid committee effectively collapsed after the Tories pulled out in March – another committee will take on its work.<\/p>\n

However, the chair of that group – also a Conservative – said he was unsure it could deal with the matter “sufficiently”.<\/p>\n

The Conservatives, Plaid Cymru and the Lib Dems have supported calls for a Wales-specific inquiry, on the basis that much of the response to the pandemic in Wales was handled by the Welsh government.<\/p>\n

Advocates in favour of an inquiry say what happened in Wales cannot be properly understood in at a UK-wide inquiry.<\/p>\n

The Welsh government has refused to commission such an exercise, arguing that the pandemic needs to be investigated in a wider context.<\/p>\n

In a compromise with the Conservatives, Welsh Labour ministers agreed to form a committee in the Senedd to examine gaps in the inquiry’s approach to Wales.<\/p>\n

But the plan fell apart after shortly after its first report after the Conservatives objected<\/a> to a government refusal for ministers and officials to give evidence under oath.<\/p>\n

The committee had found nine areas that should be examined in detail, including to review the benefits of having a Wales-specific approach to a pandemic<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Presiding officer Elin Jones confirmed on Wednesday the Covid committee will be wound up.<\/p>\n

‘Not about pointing fingers’<\/p>\n

Ap Gwynfor told the Senedd on Wednesday: “We remain steadfast in our view that we can and should do so much more and set the very highest standards when it comes to the accountability of our democracy”.<\/p>\n

He said a Plaid government would “establish a Covid inquiry for Wales within the first year of the next Senedd term”.<\/p>\n

“This isn’t about pointing fingers or seeking to apportion blame. This is about confronting the legacy of this terrible chapter in our nation’s history honestly, maturely and transparently”.<\/p>\n

The work of the Covid committee will be taken on by the Public Accounts and Administration Committee, chaired by Mark Isherwood.<\/p>\n

He said that with “limited time” left this term his committee is “likely to only be able to consider module one” of the Covid inquiry – which looked at preparedness for the pandemic, as the module two report on decision making and political governance has not been published.<\/p>\n

He said the committee was concerned about its capacity to deal with the work.<\/p>\n

“We may not be best placed to pursue this work,” he said.<\/p>\n

“We cannot be sure that any outcome will be sufficiently comprehensive to satisfactorily address the issues arising from the module one report, rather than through a Wales specific public inquiry.”<\/p>\n

‘We would waste time’<\/p>\n

Ap Gwynfor accused the Tories and Labour of a “backroom deal” to set the Covid committee up.<\/p>\n

“What transpired from then on was nothing short of shambolic. Months were wasted deliberating the actual purpose of the special purposes committee,” he said.<\/p>\n

He said the Tories were not blameless either, having “effectively pulled the plug” on one committee over oath-taking, “they’re now proposing to belatedly re-enter the conversation by chairing a separate committee that also doesn’t have any authority to compel oath-taking.”<\/p>\n

Conservative South Wales West MS Tom Giffard, explaining why the Conservatives left the committee, said “continued obfuscation” from Labour’s participants made it “impossible” to get answers.<\/p>\n

“Time and again we’d waste time discussing the same issues over and over again,” he said.<\/p>\n

“Some would arrive at the committee tasked with reasons not to do something”.<\/p>\n

He called the committee a “kangeroo court that would never have got to the bottom of the issues that the families deserve”.<\/p>\n

Julie James, counsel general, said Giffard’s comments were “absolutely disgraceful”, and said he should reflect “especially when they abandoned their work half way through”.<\/p>\n

Jenny Rathbone, Labour Cardiff Central MS, said the report of the Covid committee was important with a “lot of suggestions in it, which indicate that there’s a great deal more work to do”.<\/p>\n

“It’s very unfortunate that it wasn’t able to get on and do it,” she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"David Deans Political reporter, BBC Wales News Getty Images Plaid Cymru has promised to hold a public inquiry…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":267304,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5010],"tags":[748,4884,16,15,1764],"class_list":{"0":"post-267303","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wales","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-great-britain","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-wales"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114864437682839854","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267303","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=267303"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267303\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/267304"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=267303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=267303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=267303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}