I absolutely support an inquiry, but I want to first put on record and pay tribute to all those front-line workers who did keep us safe, and who we'll be relying on in the immediate and foreseeable future to carry on doing that work. And I think it's also right to put on record that people have complied with the restrictions that have been placed on them in a way that they would never have expected, and neither would we ever have expected to have asked them to do that. 

Whilst I do agree that we need a review or a public inquiry, whichever form that takes, into the handling of this COVID-19 pandemic; I agree that it will help and guide us through the possibility of dealing with another pandemic in the future, and also continuing to deal with this one, but where I probably differ from the ask that is in front of us this afternoon is: where do we start that inquiry from and where do we end it? Because, quite clearly, that is hugely important.

I think we have to start it by looking at the national pandemic plan that was in place and then was dropped by the Tory Government. As a consequence of that happening, we have seen many, many statements, by many, many experts, across the piece, saying that the UK was really not well placed whatsoever to deal with any pandemic. And in fact, we did see accusations from Tory Ministers, saying that there was an overreaction and that there was too much money being spent on Westminster officials preparing such a plan, and that they dropped that initial planning. Now that has a consequence; it has a consequence for all of the UK, and that is why I bring it to attention here today.

I think we need to also look at public health experts from Johns Hopkins University, where they ranked every single country worldwide and their preparedness for a pandemic. And they stated that, after a decade of Tory austerity, the UK was the second to last of 195 countries, with the last one being the US. All these things are relevant because they all lock on to how prepared we were. So it's fairly obvious that, whilst I agree that we need an inquiry, we need an all-encompassing inquiry. If we just focus on Wales alone, we won't reveal the real and the urgent need to understand the causes, and neither by ignoring all of those aspects—and some of them have been mentioned here today—will we get the proper answers.

We need to look at the very early statement on herd immunity that was made by Boris Johnson. Undoubtedly, that herd immunity, and that failure to lock down very early, was given to his key adviser. And had we have locked down much earlier, that indeed would have helped. Had Wales gone it alone and decided to lock down way ahead of the UK Government, I can't imagine for one minute that we would have had UK Government giving us the finances that we would have needed to support the businesses if we had gone alone. So, whilst I understand that—. Angela Burns has given a list of some of the things that we could have done all on our own; one of the things we clearly could not have done on our own, without UK Treasury support, was ask people to furlough their staff.

Again, on PPE, I'm reminded to look at the consignment that came from Turkey, and the 400,000 pieces of PPE that were returned back. I'm certain that some of that would have been heading to Wales. And there was a grand statement—we can all remember seeing it on the tv and being much relieved that there was some PPE coming our way, only for it to be put back on the plane because there was an absolute failure to test whether, in the first place, it would be of any use. It was absolutely useless. So I think what we need to do here is remind ourselves very clearly of all the failures, to look at and understand how and why they happened, and then—and only then—when we've got an all-encompassing inquiry that looks at all the aspects, do we move forward. That is my view, and that is why I will not be supporting this today in the way that is written.

We can also—