North Wales MS Mark Isherwood said that “No person, body, Government or Party intending to tell the truth should object to taking an oath or making an affirmation when giving evidence to the Wales COVID-19 Inquiry Special Purpose Committee”.
Just days after the fifth anniversary of the advent of lockdowns during the Covid-19 pandemic, Welsh Conservatives put forward a motion in yesterday’s meeting of the Welsh Parliament calling for the Senedd's Standing Orders to be amended to provide the Wales COVID-19 Inquiry Special Purpose Committee with a discretionary power to require witnesses to take an oath or make an affirmation when giving evidence.
Speaking in the Debate, Mr Isherwood said:
“As the Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice Cymru stated to me, ‘the Senedd Committee is a direct response to the UK inquiry, and its purpose is to identify gaps in the UK inquiry's consideration of Welsh issues. In these circumstances’, they said, ‘and given that all evidence at the UK inquiry is on oath, it must follow that for the Committee to be credible, and for reasons of parity, the Committee should be provided with a discretionary power to require witnesses to give an oath’.
“As they also stated:
‘The bigger question is why Welsh Government don't want this? They refused a Welsh inquiry, haven't pushed for more Wales in the UK inquiry, and, in fact, benefited from minimal scrutiny. For example’, they said, ‘in Module 4 – Vaccines - not one single question was asked by the Inquiry to the one Welsh Government witness, despite stacks of disclosure about how the Welsh Government proactively delayed vaccines in care homes by four weeks. With an Inquiry Committee set fully in the political arena’, they said, ‘rather than an Independent Public Inquiry in Wales, the Welsh Government now doesn't want witnesses to give oral evidence under oath. We cannot underestimate the potentially damaging impact of the failure to provide the Committee with a power to require witnesses to take an oath or make an affirmation’, they said, adding, 'and this matters'.”
“Regardless of what the Welsh Government believes, the oath issue is the critical tip of the iceberg.
“Although the UK Government announced an independent public inquiry into its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK in May 2021, and three months later the Scottish First Minister announced the creation of a Scotland-focused investigation into the impact of the Scottish Government's decisions on how the pandemic was handled, the Welsh Government repeatedly denied our requests for an independent public inquiry into the handling of the pandemic in Wales.”
He added:
“Ahead of the UK COVID-19 inquiry's first module 1 Hearing, the COVID Inquiry Legal team confirmed that the Welsh Government failed to disclose all relevant documents to the Inquiry in the first draft of their witness statement, and that the Inquiry had to go back to the Welsh Government a second time to request full disclosure. These, and countless other examples, reinforce the need for the Welsh Government to show that they are not afraid of accountability to the Wales COVID-19 Inquiry Special Purpose Committee and, therefore, the people of Wales. And if they continue to block the Committee's request for a discretionary power to require witnesses to take an oath or make an affirmation, the people will ask, 'Are they afraid, frightened, frit, ofn?'.”
Labour defeated the motion by 1 vote.