The Secretary of State for Wales said he wished that Wales hadn't been able to set it's own Covid rules.
Speaking to Matt Chorley on Times Radio the UK Government Minister Simon Hart was asked about comments made by senior Conservative Lord Frost that it was "nonsense" for Wales to have its own Covid rules.
In response Simon Hart replied: “I must say that I wish that we could have approached all of the Covid reactions and interventions as one UK. I think it would have been easier to communicate that to the population. I think it would have been easier to administer.
“We would have got a greater degree of public understanding and compliance for longer, and the real truth is, and sometimes people do say well ‘you know didn’t Welsh Government handle it rather better? Weren’t the outcomes rather better?’.
“The reality is if you look at all of the measurements of success or failure, whatever they might be in Covid, actually there was precious little difference between England and Wales.”
Mr Hart also made the bizarre claim that the had never heard of the Barnett formula (the well known method which calculates the amount of money Wales receives for Westminster) before becoming Welsh Secretary.
The MP for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire, said: "It’s this thing nobody has ever heard of, including me before I took on this job, the Barnett formula.”
In the same interview he also said that he had doubts over whether Wales' First Minister Mark Drakeford was actually in favour of the United Kingdom after he was "happily in the material bed" with Plaid leader Adam Price.
Mr Hart said: "I am not sure of how much of unionist Mark Drakeford really is, he has just got into bed with Plaid Cymru. He is happily in the material bed with the separatists. Getting into bed with Adam Price comes with a price. Every single deal that Mark Drakeford does with Adam...will be to enhance the chance of an independent Wales."
Over the last month Mr Hart has regularly defended the Prime Minister over the repeated parties in Downing Street at the height of the lockdown. In the in interview he repeated this line suggested that not many people actually wanted Boris Johnson to resign. He said: "He also suggested that not many constituents had told him they wanted to the Prime Minister to resign over the repeated parties in Downing Street."
