The health minister for Wales during the pandemic said the fact his WhatsApp messages from the time are missing is “a point of embarrassment”.

Vaughan Gething, who is now the Welsh government’s economy minister, told the UK Covid inquiry that his personal and professional WhatsApp messages happened to be wiped when he got a new phone in 2022.

“I certainly do regret the fact that all those messages aren’t available to you because you could see them and satisfy yourself that all of the information there is consistent with all the information in the records you do have in front of you – it’s a point of embarrassment,” he said. “WhatsApp wasn’t used to make decisions and it wasn’t used to circumvent processes within the government.”

He added: “It is a matter of real embarrassment, because if I’d been able to recover those messages we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

Asked whether he accepted it was wrong to use WhatsApp for admin purposes, Gething told the inquiry: “Having looked at the rules now in much more detail, I think that’s what the rules suggest.”

He added: “I think you’ll find that informal messaging as it was used in the pandemic won’t take place in the future.”

Gething, who is currently running to be the first minister of Wales, denied that official business had been conducted on WhatsApp, arguing that any decisions would have a paper trail elsewhere and that the messages were mainly “blowing off steam and being supportive.”

He also denied that he used a disappearing messages function on earlier WhatsApp groups, explaining he wasn’t “aware there was a disappearing message function” until long after the pandemic.

In a damning indictment of political transparency, Rishi Sunak, Boris Johnson, and Nicola Sturgeon have all struggled to provide the UK’s Covid inquiry with some or all of their WhatsApp messages during the pandemic. Many Scottish government ministers deleted their messages, claiming it was policy.

Gething is the first Welsh government minister to speak in the UK Covid inquiry’s module on political governance in Wales, which is hearing evidence in Cardiff.

Discussing relations between the UK and Welsh governments, Gething said meetings run by Johnson were difficult as he was “scatty, incoherent and rambling”.

The outgoing first minister of Wales, Mark Drakeford, will appear in front of the inquiry on Wednesday.

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