Before starting, I'd like to put my thanks to the Minister and the Government on record, and to express my support for the action that you've taken in extending the lockdown. On this piece of legislation, the Minister and her team have done a great deal of work already, and I'd associate myself with the comments made by John Griffiths, as a member of his committee.

When the Bill was first introduced, I thought there was a lot to welcome in it—I still do think that. Votes at 16 and the removal of barriers to participation in the political process, in particular, are really important provisions. Under normal circumstances, we would have been supporting this Bill today and looking towards strengthening it via amendments and testing the will of the Government with some new ideas. But these are not normal circumstances, and now is not the time to be discussing this Bill. There will be many people who will be wondering how this could be any kind of a priority for the Government at the moment, when people are dying every day. All of us should be resolutely focused on helping the nation deal with the biggest health emergency in decades, in which it would not be an exaggeration to say that we are pretty much on a wartime footing.

From a practical point of view, it's extremely difficult to communicate at this time, and impossible to scrutinise effectively. We don't actually know, with clarity, what the Welsh Government's intentions are with this Bill going towards Stage 2, as, clearly, thorough scrutiny of a piece of legislation that is this extensive would be impossible, at least in the foreseeable future. It is Plaid Cymru's view that if we can't legislate properly because of the circumstances, we shouldn't be legislating at all, and to do so would be irresponsible.

We have limited time today to scrutinise the Government this week, and all of this time should be devoted to the scrutiny of the Government's coronavirus response. It's dismaying that, of the scheduled time we were given, half of that was given over to this debate on legislation that we would argue isn't time-sensitive.

I do note that the Government has said that it needs to pass this legislation today in order for work to be undertaken in time for 2022. I'm not certain that this does completely add up. If we're really saying that a delay of a few months would jeopardise a project of many years, I'm sure that there are questions over the project management of that two-year project that has no slack in the timescale. It's also worth highlighting, I think, that it is legislative lethargy that has delayed matters already. Votes at 16 has been the express will of the Senedd on a cross-party basis for several years now. We are paying a price in a time of emergency for the Welsh Government's inaction during normal times. So, Plaid Cymru will be voting against the Bill today, not because we disagree with the general principles, but because we believe firmly that this debate and this vote shouldn't be brought forward under these circumstances.

But now I want to turn to some of the comments that the Conservatives have been circulating on social media in particular. All I'll say is that if it's wrong for the Government to be continuing with this Bill at this time, it's also wrong for the Conservatives to be misrepresenting this Bill and pushing some quite disgusting attacks on it. The Conservatives have been saying that—well, falsely claiming it contains provisions for votes for prisoners, when the Bill that we're voting on today doesn't contain those provisions. Those are amendments to be tabled at Stage 2 by the Government at an unknown date in the future, and certainly won't be applied to murderers, as some members of the party have claimed wrongly. The leader of the Welsh Conservatives made this claim himself, which was really delving into gutter politics, I would argue, when the leader of his own party is in intensive care. So, I would welcome Paul Davies having the opportunity to apologise for misleading the electorate for narrow party political gain at this time.

Furthermore, I understand that 10 prisoners have already died from COVID-19, and over 100, possibly many more, are infected. To attack them at this time is, frankly, appalling. I would suggest to the Llywydd that the standards committee may be the appropriate forum, if elected Members think this is a good time to promote fake news about this institution.

So, to close, I look forward to revisiting the Bill in the future when this crisis is over, but, for the reasons I've explained, it's obvious that we should not be discussing this today, when we should be discussing PPE, testing and saving lives. So, Plaid Cymru will be voting against.