Wales fallen behind on coronavirus testing, says Welsh Secretary

Wales has fallen behind the other three nations in testing for coronavirus, the UK government's Welsh Secretary Simon Hart has said.

Mr Hart said it "makes progress" with recovering from Covid-19 "so much slower".

The Welsh Government has been under pressure over the number of tests it provides daily, after it abandoned setting targets in April.

It said all four UK governments have faced challenges.

The Welsh Government had set targets to reach capacity for 5,000 tests-a-day by mid April.

That was dropped, with ministers blaming problems with procuring equipment.

Wales now has capacity for more than 5,000 tests-a-day for critical workers and hospital patients with symptoms, and care home staff and residents.

It has also joined a UK-wide home testing service which provides additional capacity for the general public.

Simon Hart, who heads up the Wales Office in the Conservative UK government, said that throughout the pandemic he had "tried to be as pragmatic and as sympathetic to the challenges Welsh Government are having as I possibly can".

"But on this particular issue, on the testing issue, it is becoming obvious that Wales has fallen behind the other three nations.

"That just makes progress with this whole recovery process so much slower."

"Progress on that UK-wide, having had a difficult start unsurprisingly, is now pretty well meeting targets," Mr Hart told BBC Radio Wales Breakfast with Claire Summers.

"We're trying not to be critical of each other's efforts," he claimed, before adding: "It's probably not quite where Welsh Government want it to be."

Last weekend the Welsh Government scrapped its own online-portal for booking tests, joining a UK-wide system instead.

As of Wednesday, however, it was still not fully up and running - with key workers seeking a drive-through test directed back to the gov.wales website and a set of email addresses and phone numbers.

Drive-though centres are not currently open to the public in Wales.

Home testing kits, which are available to the general public and handled centrally by the UK government, also saw a period of unavailability on Tuesday morning.

Asked about the unavailability of tests on the portal, Mr Hart said: "My immediate thought is that cannot be right, there must be an issue here which ought to be easily resolvable.

"We can't have a situation where Wales is disadvantaged from the rest of UK."

A Welsh Government spokesman said: "We are dealing with one of the biggest public health emergencies in a generation.

"All four governments across the UK have faced a number of challenges since the beginning of the Covid-19 outbreak, but our collective focus must continue to be to protect the health of the people of Wales."

Analysis by BBC Wales political correspondent Paul Martin

Simon Hart says he's been trying not to be critical of the Welsh Government but he didn't quite succeed on Wednesday morning.

Testing has been a long-running problem for ministers in Cardiff, so he was punching a bruise with his observation that Wales has "fallen behind" England, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

During the crisis, ministers know the public don't want to see inter-governmental bickering.

It was notable how much more positive Simon Hart was about Mark Drakeford's "roadmap" out of lockdown last week compared to the Tory Senedd leader Paul Davies, who described it as "hopeless."

But relations between the UK and Welsh governments have become more frayed lately, with claim and counter-claim over whether they are giving each other adequate briefing and notice of announcements.

It will take a lot of discipline on both sides to stop relations worsening if coronavirus policies continue to diverge.