The Welsh government was “shocked and dismayed” when a private company set up a testing centre in Cardiff under the direction of Boris Johnson without their knowledge.

As directed by the UK government, consulting giant Deloitte set up a testing centre in Cardiff City Stadium in the Welsh capital in early April 2020. The Welsh government and Public Health Wales had not been consulted.

The subject was dissected at today’s hearing of the UK Covid-19 inquiry in Cardiff as tensions between the Welsh and Westminster governments continued to take centre stage, with Drakeford said privately to have considered Boris Johnson’s decision-making “a genuine threat” to the UK.

“[The government] was very shocked and dismayed,” Jane Runeckles, head of the Welsh government’s team of special advisers, told the inquiry about the testing site. “We were in a situation where a private company had opened a testing centre in a way in which the NHS in Wales’ data collection hadn’t been taken into account.”

It was a concern that positive tests from the testing centre “wouldn’t be fed through into NHS records and into the data collection that we were responsible for,” as it had been set up without consultation, she added.

In the event, however, the senior civil servant said that the Welsh government did end up taking over running the testing centre.

Elsewhere, Runeckles’ evidence continued to paint a picture of relationships breaking down in 2020 between the governments, with meetings becoming “infrequent”.

“The first minister was becoming concerned about the levels of engagement that he felt were necessary due to the urgency of our situation,” said Runeckles.

The senior civil servant said “tensions” caused a relationship breakdown between Welsh and UK government advisers as decisions on how to handle the pandemic deviated: “The fact that the Welsh government were taking decisions in a different way to the United Kingdom government meant there was very little for us to talk about.”

Drakeford was worried about decisions made by the UK prime minister, according to Runeckles.

“The first minister had a genuine, sincerely held concern that some of the actions of the United Kingdom government in relation to the way he had handled some of the earlier period was a genuine threat to the future of the United Kingdom,” she told the inquiry.

Drakeford will give evidence next week. The former first minister had refused to give Wales its own inquiry, preferring to allow the UK one to be completed first. This is likely to take years.

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