Now, we move on to the leaders of the opposition's questions, and Andrew R.T. Davies to ask his.

Thank you, Presiding Officer. Where's Hefin David when you need him, especially on the first two questions?

First Minister, what view has the Welsh Government formed in light of the recent court judgment about discharging patients from hospitals into care homes?

Llywydd, the High Court case was a case that did not concern the Welsh Government; it was a case brought against authorities in England. We will nevertheless study the judgment carefully and respond to it in the evidence that we will submit to the independent public inquiry into the experience of coronavirus across the United Kingdom.

First Minister, you adopted the same policies as other Governments in the United Kingdom, which the court judgment referred to, about the discharging of patients into care homes without testing taking place. You, at the time of the change of policy in England, said that you could see no value in testing patients being transferred from hospitals into care homes, and, indeed, your health Minister at the time said he did not understand the rationale behind it. Shockingly, the same Minister also said that if he had a tripling of the testing capacity here in Wales, he still would not test patients being transferred from hospitals into care homes. It took a whole two weeks from the policy change in other parts of the United Kingdom for the Welsh Government to catch up. Why did the delay in testing happen here in Wales, which the court has now found illegal?

To be clear, the court has found nothing illegal as far as Wales is concerned, because Wales was not a participant in that High Court case. It took no evidence from Wales, it looked at no documents according to Wales, so, let's be clear for the record: when the Member says that the policy was illegal, what the court discovered was that it was illegal in England, where his party was in charge. It made no observations at all about what happened here in Wales.

I'm simply not going to pretend that in an answer on the floor of the Senedd we can explore an issue that took 75 pages of a High Court judgment to explore. And as I think the Member has just conceded, in order to make sense of what happened here in Wales you need to make sense of that wider UK context. We will respond, of course, to those issues, those very important issues that were at the heart of the High Court case, but we will do so in our evidence to the inquiry, which I am very confident will explore this issue along with a wide range of other issues that are there in its terms of reference when it begins its work later this year.

First Minister, I listened very carefully to your response to my second question. I asked you why the Welsh Government policy position took a further two weeks to change to the testing of patients being transferred to care homes. I also pointed out that at the time you said—you said—that there was no value in this testing taking place and that your health Minister—again, his words—said that if there was a trebling in the amount of testing capacity, he still couldn't see the reason to test patients being transferred from hospitals into care homes. That's what I asked you, First Minister. You didn't offer any defence whatsoever to my question to you. That is why we need an independent inquiry here in Wales that looks at the Welsh policy position. We know for a fact, as I've outlined here, that there's a distinct difference in the policy that you've pursued here in Wales on this issue and many other issues. It is a fact that, regrettably, we have the highest death rate of any part of the United Kingdom; it is a fact that many people who were shielding were sent incorrect letters; and it is a fact that your policy position put more patients at risk because you didn't introduce testing that has been found to have been a necessity at the time. Is it the case, First Minister, that you are blocking this inquiry happening here in Wales because you have a fear of scrutiny, or just arrogance that your position is right and it shouldn't be scrutinised by an independent inquiry here in Wales? Because I fail to see why you are still steadfastly objecting to an independent inquiry here in Wales that would look at these policy positions that your Government took, and ultimately exposed patients here in Wales to greater risks.

Well, Llywydd, the Member could not be more mistaken. He answered his own question in his very first set of remarks: an independent inquiry focused only on Wales would never be able to make sense of exactly the sorts of decisions to which he has pointed. Had he been actually following what the High Court said, he would have seen that the High Court referred to the advice that was available to the UK Government, which was the same advice available to the Government here in Wales. You cannot understand the decisions that were made in Wales by divorcing those decisions from the UK context, the UK advice, the UK level of understanding at the time, and the way in which that was available here in Wales. That's why I have always argued that the best way in which people can get answers to the questions that they absolutely rightly want to see explored, and the Welsh Government will take part in the independent inquiry led by Judge Hallett in the most open way that we can. We will provide all the documents that we have; we will provide all the evidence that was available to us, and we will do so in a way that is not designed to defend the position that the Welsh Government took on any issue. I've already instructed those people who are helping to prepare the Welsh Government's evidence that the approach I want us to take is one in which we will explain why we took the decisions that we did and then leave it for the inquiry to decide whether those decisions were defensible. I am not going to go into an inquiry seeking to justify or defend—those were terms that the Member used; they're not the terms that I will use. We will go there to explain and we will provide all the evidence we can as to why we came to the decisions that we did, and it's then for the inquiry, not for the Welsh Government, and if I can say so, not for the leader of the opposition either, to decide whether or not those decisions were defensible in the context of the time in which they were made.

Leader of Plaid Cymru, Adam Price.

The High Court, in its decision, did make the general point, didn't it? It came to the general conclusion that, given the growing appreciation that asymptomatic transmission was a real possibility, there ought to have been a change in the approach to the discharge of patients from hospitals to care homes and, specifically, that asymptomatic patients should have been kept apart from other residents for 14 days. That advice, which the High Court has found to be the only lawful position, was that advice, was that policy incorporated here in Wales during March and April? Was that advice given to care homes?

Well, just again to be completely clear with the leader of Plaid Cymru, that is not an observation that the High Court has made in hearing anything at all about decisions that were made in Wales. The Member can try if he wants to try and imply that because it made a general observation that must, somehow, apply here in Wales. I don't think he's entitled to do that. This was a hearing about two English cases. It didn't take a single word of evidence about what happened in Wales. But the point the Member asks is about asymptomatic transmission. The inquiry will, I think, need to explore the point at which it became clear that coronavirus was a disease that could be spread by asymptomatic individuals; at what point did that advice crystalise and become known to Governments; and at the point when it did become crystalised, what would be the policy consequences of it. Those are absolutely proper questions—no doubt at all about that—and the inquiry will want to grapple with them.

Well, the High Court can help us out in that way, can't it? Because it actually goes into the very question that you've just raised, First Minister. This is what it says:

'there was no scientific proof in mid March 2020 that asymptomatic transmission was occurring, but it was well recognised by the experts that such transmission was possible.'

'Ministers', they go on to say, the High Court judges,

'were obliged to weigh up not just the likelihood that nonsymptomatic transmission was occurring, but also the very serious consequences if it did so.'

The very points that were being made here in Wales as well. The science of asymptomatic transmission wasn't different, was it, here in Wales compared to England. The level of knowledge during the time period that the High Court was referring to was the same here, and the consequences of getting it wrong—the fatal consequences, I'm sad to say, of getting it wrong—were exactly the same. So, don't you accept, based on the judgment set out by the High Court, that the failure to recognise the possibility of asymptomatic transmission led to very, very fatal consequences here in Wales? And it would be good to have an honest answer to that now from the First Minister, given the strength of feeling that exists out there amongst the Welsh public, not least amongst the bereaved families.

Well, Llywydd, I try to provide an honest answer every time I speak at this dispatch box. That doesn't mean to say that I'll give an answer that the Member would like me to give. That's not a test of honesty. He shouldn't imply that it is. He said a moment ago that the High Court found that, at the point when decisions were being made, there wasn't scientific certainty that asymptomatic transmission was taking place. I think it's important for people just to recognise for a moment that, at this point in the history of understanding this disease, we were learning, everybody was learning new things about it every single day.

I agree with the point that the leader of Plaid Cymru makes that you cannot divorce the understanding in Wales from the understanding across the whole of the United Kingdom, because the advice that we were relying upon was advice that came, very often, from that UK level. It's why the constant belief that a Wales-only inquiry could give you answers is so mistaken, because it wouldn't be able to explore exactly that issue, because none of those people would be around the table able to give evidence to an exclusively Welsh inquiry.

I don't think it will be in anybody's interests for the Chamber to act as though it were the commission of inquiry. We're not. The commission of inquiry is independent of this Senedd, as it is independent of the Government here. These issues, which are absolutely proper issues, deserve to be heard in the detail that they would require, with the forensic examination that the inquiry will provide. Then we will see whether the decisions that were made here in Wales, in the state of knowledge at the time, with the evidence and advice that we had available to us, were defensible or not.

You refer to the exhaustive analysis and the evidence that went into this one question in relation to England; can you promise that those bereaved families will get that same level of forensic and exhaustive analysis that the families in England have had through the High Court in relation to this specific question? Will the terms of reference of the UK inquiry include answering the question as to whether the policy in relation to the discharge of patients into care homes in Wales was lawful? Or, if not, is the only option available to the bereaved families that they have to go down the legal avenue as well, to get the kind of certainty that has been now laid out by the High Court in relation to England? As I understand your position, you do not accept that it applies to Wales. Can we be sure that we will get the level of focus on the decisions made in Wales with the UK inquiry? Will the families get the certainty through that process?

I believe it is right and proper, and indeed inescapable, that the independent inquiry will indeed focus on this issue alongside a series of other matters that families have raised. As the Member knows, I've met myself with representatives of bereaved families here in Wales. I undertook then to write on their behalf, in the response that we have made to the latest round of consultations on the terms of reference, asking that certain matters that were, I think, implicit in the terms of reference could be lifted to be made explicit on the surface of those terms of reference. I've got no doubt at all that the inquiry will focus on this issue. As the leader of Plaid Cymru said, it was from the beginning a matter of very considerable public interest and investigation, and it's, I think, for the judge in the end—. I must be careful not to trespass into things that could be regarded as in any way interfering with her independence, but it seems impossible to me that the inquiry will not focus on this, with a level of forensic detail that I think the topic will deserve.