Covid: Mark Drakeford says he did not delete phone messages

Wales' first minister Mark Drakeford says he has not deleted messages during the pandemic from his phone.

Last week the Covid inquiry heard that former Scottish leader Nicola Sturgeon has removed all of her Covid-era WhatsApp messages.

Mr Drakeford previously said ministers or officials may have deleted messages.

Wales' decision making in the pandemic will be scrutinised when the Covid inquiry visits Cardiff in February and March.

Mr Drakeford said he used "electronic means of communicating... very little" during the pandemic.

On Thursday the inquiry heard that Ms Sturgeon had called former prime minister Boris Johnson a "clown" in an expletive-laden text message.

Asked if any of the messages he has given to the inquiry would be of a similar tone to Nicola Sturgeon, Mr Drakeford said: "I was a very sparing user of electronic ways of communicating, I used them very little and only generally when I simply needed to tell somebody, for example, that a meeting was about to start.

"So I'm afraid there's likely to be very little interest in the few messages that have been sent to the inquiry."

Asked whether he or his ministers had deleted messages, Mr Drakeford said: "I can't speak for everybody because, as we've now learnt, different people's phones had different settings on them and things were happening without people even necessarily knowing that that was going on.

"I don't think there's anything deleted on my phone but there wasn't much to start with."

Mr Drakeford had to correct the Senedd record late last year after he told the Welsh Parliament he did not use the WhatsApp messaging system.

A week later he admitted to the Senedd that he did, although he said he did not use it regularly.