I welcome calls to establish an independent public inquiry into the Welsh Labour Government's handling of the pandemic, separate to a UK-wide inquiry. A year ago, my colleagues in the Welsh Conservatives, along with health professionals, and, most importantly, the bereaved families of the people who have died in Wales from COVID-19, called for this inquiry, and a year to the day this Welsh Labour Government has denied this request, only wanting to have a few paragraphs in a UK-wide report.

The Welsh Labour Government is denying the people of Wales the answers on the decisions it made. The Government want to call all the shots whilst avoiding a Wales public inquiry, because they know they won't like the outcome or the scrutiny. Public inquiries are an opportunity to learn best practice, and, if the First Minister is confident in his approach, I don't see why there is a reluctance here to have a Wales-specific inquiry.

The First Minister states he would prefer that UK-wide inquiry. Yet his Government has complained bitterly that Wales's voice is not being heard in the union, or that the UK Government do not care about Wales. However, when he and the Welsh Government want to avoid scrutiny, they are more than happy to hide behind that four-nations approach and pass any responsibility up the M4 and blame somebody else. 

The First Minister was in charge of the handling of this pandemic in Wales, and he and his Government need to own their decisions. So, let's just take a quick trip down memory lane and see what decisions and actions the Welsh Government took independently and I think are trying to brush over by denying this inquiry. The Government supported, to start, a four-nations approach, and then they said they were going it alone. As far as I'm concerned, that shows then the responsibility that comes with it.

The Government sent out more than 13,000 shielding letters to the wrong addresses in April and May in 2020, and that's a huge mishandling of public data. That needs to be looked at. This Government claimed it backed businesses, but many businesses have had months of uncertainty, last-minute decisions and the poor rolling-out of Government funding. That needs to be investigated. This Government had a chaotic start to the vaccination roll-out, with the First Minister himself saying, 'It's not a sprint; neither is it a competition.' That isn't a very good comment to make. Even the BMA termed his comment as 'truly bewildering'. And the Government has also seen a situation where children in Wales have lost the most amount of learning of any part of the UK nations.

These things need to be looked at, and I could go on and on about the decisions that the Welsh Government took on their own, and the decisions that they also made for the better, or the worse, and all these need to be scrutinised. So, I hope that Members do the right thing and put party political differences aside in order to give the people of Wales the answers they deserve and vote to have an independent public inquiry into the Welsh Government's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. Diolch, Deputy Llywydd.