A Senedd Committee has called for urgent improvements to Wales's emergency planning and response systems, warning that lessons from the Covid-19 pandemic must be fully embedded to ensure real and lasting improvements for the people of Wales.
Leading the Debate on the Public Accounts and Public Administration Committee report: “Consideration of the UK Covid-19 Inquiry Module 1 Report”, Mr Isherwood, who is Chair of the Committee, said there is a duty to scrutinise decisions made during the pandemic and learn lessons for the future.
He said although important reforms have been introduced since the pandemic – including the Wales Resilience Framework and updated governance structures – the Committee heard that concerns remain about monitoring, accountability, and the absence of external verification.
Speaking in the Senedd Chamber, he said:
"The COVID-19 pandemic was one of the most consequential and devastating events in living memory. It touched every community across Wales, claimed lives, disrupted businesses, and placed an unprecedented strain on our health, care, and education systems, as well as our economy and public finances.
"For many, its consequences continue to be felt and will be for decades to come.
"As a Senedd, we owe it to those affected to examine the decisions that shaped Wales’s experience of the pandemic and ensure those decisions are subject to robust and transparent scrutiny."
Mr Isherwood stressed that the Committee's work is not a substitute for a Wales-specific COVID inquiry.
He added:
"The decision on whether or not to commission a Welsh statutory public inquiry is ultimately one for the Welsh Government and not the Senedd.
"Through our inquiry, we heard about the reforms the Welsh Government has introduced since the pandemic, including the development of the Wales Resilience Framework, the reconstitution of the Wales Resilience Forum, and steps it has taken to strengthen governance and risk management.
"Yet while significant progress has been made, we heard that concerns remain about the absence of independent scrutiny to assess Wales’s revised resilience and preparedness arrangements.
"Stakeholders felt that much of the Welsh Government’s reporting on progress is too reliant on self-assessment.
"We heard that - while structures may have been streamlined on paper - there is insufficient publicly available evidence to demonstrate how effectively these revised systems are working in practice, or whether they would withstand the pressures of another major emergency.
"The people of Wales should feel confident that our systems will hold up under pressure, and subjecting emergency plans to external scrutiny is essential to building true resilience."
Mr Isherwood also spoke of the critical role played by voluntary organisations in strengthening Wales’s national resilience and called for them to be integrated fully into emergency planning.
Further, he highlighted the inequalities exposed by the pandemic and the report's recommendation for inclusive communication and planning.
He added:
"We heard how regular preparedness exercises are vital to ensure that our response systems are stress tested and ready to respond to a vast variety of potential emergency scenarios.
"Yet we remain concerned about the resourcing challenges facing emergency responders, who need to balance maintaining frontline services with preparing for future emergencies.
"To address this, we have recommended that the Welsh Government establishes a national multi-agency training and exercising unit – similar to that in Scotland.
Concluding, he said:
"As a Committee, we approached this work with a clear intention: to ensure that the difficult lessons of the pandemic lead to real and lasting improvements for the people of Wales.
"Our objective has been to not only scrutinise, but also to contribute constructively to the development of a civil contingencies system that is robust, stress-tested, independently scrutinised, and capable of protecting our communities.
"Our report sets out lessons that should be learnt from the pandemic to ensure that Wales is more resilient and able to effectively respond to the challenges that we will inevitably face in the future.
"The people of Wales deserve no less."
