The UK government’s handling of the pandemic made Welsh people feel like “second-class citizens”, a Welsh minister has told the UK Covid inquiry.

Eluned Morgan, Wales’ minister for health and wellbeing, said on Tuesday that she felt ministers in Westminster had failed to properly support Wales’ firebreak lockdown, which was introduced on 23 October 2020 to stem the spread of the virus.

The lockdown lasted two weeks, but Morgan suggested it might have been longer if the UK government had been willing to provide more financial help.

“Scientists were suggesting that we should be doing [the firebreak] for three weeks and we didn’t have the economic power to maintain a three-week firebreak,” said Morgan.

A similar national lockdown in England was announced one week after Wales’ firebreak started. It began on 5 November 2020 – days after the introduction of a pre-planned more generous Job Retention Scheme – and lasted a full month.

“It ​​was really disappointing that the UK government was not forthcoming in terms of financial support, and then two weeks later when they wanted to go into a firebreak, they suddenly announced a very different approach.”

“It was a very difficult time for us as a nation,” Morgan added. “I think people felt like we were second-class citizens in the context of the UK government – what was suitable for them was not suitable for us two weeks earlier, and I think that was a huge disappointment to us”

Chair of the inquiry Heather Hallett put on record that there was “another side” to this interpretation”, saying she had “heard evidence that suggests the UK government wasn’t taking that approach”.

The inquiry was shown a letter Rishi Sunak sent to Welsh first minister Mark Drakeford, who had asked the UK government to bring forward the expansion of the Job Retention Scheme, which was always due to start on 1 November, to coincide with Wales’ firebreak lockdown.

In the letter, sent on 19 October, then chancellor Sunak said this would not be possible “due to the limitations in HMRC delivery times”.

Sunak previously told the inquiry he did not agree with Drakeford’s claim that the UK government treated Wales differently to England during the pandemic, saying there was an “incredible benefit for the people in Wales” in being part of the UK.

Speaking on a wet and windy day in Cardiff, Morgan told the inquiry that she considered Wales’ move to enter a firebreak before England “quite a brave decision”.

“We were still not sure whether [the public] would follow us,” she said, though she admitted that “in retrospect, we probably should have gone a week earlier and should have been for longer but there were reasons why that was the case”.

Morgan also conceded that the first national lockdown should have also been earlier.

“I think there's an agreement across the United Kingdom that given our time again, we would have gone into lockdown slightly earlier,” she told the inquiry.

“I think also there has to be an awareness that in Wales, lots of people get the information from the UK press, and for us to have initiated something before England would have been very difficult.

“I think if we had our time again, we recognise that we probably should have been making earlier preparations.”

Morgan’s claims echo evidence from the former health minister Vaughan Gething, who on Monday told the inquiry that an earlier national lockdown could have saved more lives.

“The timing of it could have been different potentially,” said Gething. “A few days could have saved more lives, but I honestly can’t see there would have been a way to have avoided that lockdown.”

Morgan, who was previously minister for the Welsh language, gave some of her evidence in Welsh.

Wales’ outgoing first minister Mark Drakeford, who led the country during the pandemic, will appear at the Covid inquiry tomorrow.

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