At the outset, I would say that I don't doubt the commitment of Ministers and the First Minister, who faced atrocious circumstances last year. This shouldn't be about personal attacks. I'm going to concentrate on a specific issue that I think exemplifies the need for a Welsh-specific COVID inquiry.

On 27 April 2020, I was contacted by a care home manager who thought that COVID was brought into her care home by a resident who returned from hospital for a non-COVID related issue. She believed around 15 residents died as a result of COVID being brought in through this route. She said the patient had not been tested for COVID before their return because the Welsh Government's policy at the time was not to test asymptomatic people. I spoke to other care home managers who had similar stories. Some of them had asked for their residents to be tested before re-entering the home, but their requests had been rejected. They said the Welsh Government's policy up to 23 April was not only not to test asymptomatic people going from hospital to care homes, but to refuse to allow testing, even if a test had been requested.

On 29 April, I raised this in First Minister's questions, and I was told that the tests were not conducted because they offered nothing useful. This was despite there being scientific evidence available at the time, showing that asymptomatic carriers did test positive if they had the virus. Now, when that policy eventually changed, the reason given was not because the clinical evidence had changed but because the Government recognised the need to give confidence to people in the sector. The next day, the Government's stance about the usefulness of testing asymptomatic people was contradicted by the chief medical officer, who said he knew that they could test positive for COVID and suggested the real reason for not carrying out the tests was capacity. And, on 1 May, the First Minister said that testing asymptomatic people did indeed have a purpose.

On 21 June, Llywydd, WalesOnline revealed that 1,097 people were sent to care homes from hospital without a test while the policy was in force. Responding to the story, the First Minister gave a new reason as to why the policy was changed. He said, and I quote,

'When the advice changed, we changed the practice.'

This contradicted the earlier claim that the policy had not been changed because of a change in advice, but was changed only to give confidence to the sector. The following day, the health Minister said that not a single death had resulted from a failure to carry out these tests. So, we had the First Minister on record both saying that the policy had not been changed because of a change in advice, and that it had been changed because of a change in advice. Now, some kind of miscommunication or misalignment happened, we don't know what. I'm sure it would have been inadvertent. No-one would have chosen for that to happen, but it did.

I asked the Welsh Government to publish the advice they'd received, but they refused. I have no power of subpoena that would force its publication, but an official Welsh inquiry would. I have no confidence, Llywydd, that a UK-wide inquiry would give this issue the focus it deserves. And it deserves focus, because people died as a result of the policy—a policy that never made sense, for which a clear justification was never given, a policy where contradictory reasons were given for its changing, a policy that surely necessitates that lessons be learned. 

Now, I'd like to put on record again that the sacrifice and the incredibly hard work of Ministers, civil servants and the First Minister in particular are not in question here; the sacrifices he made were remarkable.

In closing, this debate need not be an ugly exercise in point scoring about what happened under horrendous circumstances, but there were processes that didn't make sense last year—failures that led to deaths; families, including mine, that lost loved ones living in care homes. It is not a comfortable thing to be raising, but not raising it and not seeking to do everything possible to learn from what happened would be a catastrophic mistake.