Rhun ap Iorwerth: Thank you, Llywydd. I certainly agree with the Minister that the situation is very serious, and I thank in advance all of those healthcare workers, vaccination services and test and trace services, and so on, who are going to be under a huge amount of pressure in the coming period, and that would have been a time of great pressure anyway, regardless of omicron.
Rhun ap Iorwerth: To add a more positive note, I hope that the early evidence that we've seen is going to play out and that we are moving into a less dangerous time. But, we don't know that for sure at the moment, and we do need to realise that large numbers are going to catch the virus now. Even if the proportion of people who become very ill is lower, it is going to lead to a huge amount of pressure on our...
Rhun ap Iorwerth: Thank you to the Minister. We will be supporting these new regulations today. They are very sensible at a time that is clearly a dangerous one during this pandemic. It is important that we do the fundamentals right and, of course, isolation is one of those fundamentals and we need to be quite strict on that at this point. So, I welcome this change that appears to us to be proportionate to the...
Rhun ap Iorwerth: I'm going to start with a confession. When I and my Plaid Cymru colleagues called for the public inquiry into the pandemic in Wales in the first few months of the pandemic, I had perhaps failed to make something clear enough: when Government signalled that it too was supportive of having an inquiry, I had wrongly assumed that they, as I was, were referring to a Wales-specific inquiry. And...
Rhun ap Iorwerth: Thank you, Minister, for today's statement. Yes, we are in a very uncertain situation. The numbers of positive cases are very high. We know that—I know from the experience of my entire family and from testing positive myself on Christmas Day how much community transmission there has been. But looking forward is what's important now. I know that the Minister wanted to strike a very serious...
Rhun ap Iorwerth: Thank you for the opportunity to outline Plaid Cymru's views on these regulations. I will take them in order, starting with the easiest, the No. 22 regulations. I don't see that there is much that is contentious here; they are minor changes, in reality, in terms of some definitions around the COVID pass and the use of face coverings, and we're happy to support them. The only thing that I...
Rhun ap Iorwerth: But things aren't quite as straightforward with the second set, which are the No. 23 regulations. The central aim here—we're very happy with it—is the regulations on working from home. That made sense and it followed clear advice from scientific and technical advisers to the Government. But there are elements of these regulations that we're uncomfortable with, namely the element of the...
Rhun ap Iorwerth: Thank you, Minister, for taking this intervention. I do take what I have heard from the Minister there as a positive step, that she is willing to discuss this issue. I think one of our demands is that this should happen as a matter of urgency. Can we get a stronger commitment in terms of your willingness to move very quickly on this? Because I do think it is necessary, if there is a change...
Rhun ap Iorwerth: Thank you very much, Deputy Llywydd. We are facing a health crisis: a crisis that is putting lives at risk, which kills; a crisis that means that the vulnerable face the greatest threat; and a crisis that we should all be desperate, some day soon, hopefully, to put behind us. And, no, I am not talking about the pandemic. I am talking about the health inequalities that exist within Wales. The...
Rhun ap Iorwerth: Health inequalities include many different factors. We're talking about differences in life expectancy—healthy life expectancy—and difference in access to healthcare. We're talking about the differing levels of prevalence of long-term health conditions, physical and mental, and differences between who—well, it could be along socioeconomic lines where poverty drives so many health...
Rhun ap Iorwerth: Over the next hour, we will hear a number of examples of inequalities from my fellow Members as we try and paint a picture of the challenge that we are facing. The fact that so many different organisations have come together to push for a strategy tells us so much. And I'm grateful to many of them for their direct collaboration in preparing for today's debate. The Royal College of...
Rhun ap Iorwerth: 'Meaningful progress will require coherent efforts across all sectors to close the gap.' They suggest what a strategy—the kind that we're calling for today—could look like, what a cross-Government response could look like. It should define 'health equality' and what exactly success would look like. It should provide clear, measurable targets and outcomes with a defined timescale. It...
Rhun ap Iorwerth: Thank you very much, Llywydd, and thank you, Minister, and thank you to everyone who's participated in this afternoon's debate. I don't have much time. I appreciate the Minister's thanks to us for bringing this before the virtual Senedd today, but we're not doing so because we like talking about health inequalities; we are doing this because we believe action is required on those health...
Rhun ap Iorwerth: I really am grateful to Members from across the political parties for their contributions, and the sheer range of inequalities that have been put forward by everybody highlights, doesn't it, the scale of the problem that we face. I think the seriousness of the situation is reflected in the seriousness of the contributions that we have heard today from, I'd say, almost all Members, other than...
Rhun ap Iorwerth: I don't have very many comments to make today, truth be told. A week ago, I was calling on the Minister to give greater attention to the positive signs that I certainly thought were coming to the fore according to the statistics. She was reluctant to do that, but I understand, of course, that she was being cautious, but things were starting to look better and, indeed, things look much better...
Rhun ap Iorwerth: The fund has been one way of helping businesses, but some businesses managed to survive by becoming part of the response to COVID. And I've written to the Minister and to the Government in the past on the need to maintain the supply chains created during the pandemic. Brodwaith in my constituency, as well as companies such as Elite Clothing Solutions, which is a social enterprise in the...
Rhun ap Iorwerth: Thank you very much, Llywydd. Seventy per cent of care home residents live with dementia, and social contact, particularly with family or informal carers, is very important to them in terms of keeping hold of their cognitive skills and so on. The safety measures during lockdown were crucial in terms of preventing the spread of COVID, but given the evidence, such as research by the Alzheimer's...
Rhun ap Iorwerth: Thank you for that response. And, yes, it would be a major step, but an important step too. And the whole point of placing it in legislation would be to ensure that the principle couldn't be ignored; one would have to act on that principle. In Wales, very promising steps have been taken—the principle of care partners in the Wales dementia action plan, for example—but there is a great gulf...
Rhun ap Iorwerth: Thank you for the opportunity to make a brief contribution to this debate. And, firstly, let me say how much I sympathise with all those people, the many, many thousands, who have spoken about their deep concerns about the change in the cervical cancer screening regime. Screening has, of course, become a valuable part of the preventative armoury when it comes to women's health, and many, many...
Rhun ap Iorwerth: Thank you very much, Deputy Presiding Officer. I have brief comments today. It's clear that this motion is dated. It's calling for a series of things that are already happening, so we will be abstaining today. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, isn't it? And listening to Russell George there passing judgment on something several weeks after the evidence that was presented to us on the threats...
