3. Statement by the Minister for Health and Social Services: Coronavirus (COVID-19)

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:38 pm on 29 April 2020.

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Photo of Vaughan Gething Vaughan Gething Labour 3:38, 29 April 2020

Yes, the technical advisory group is chaired by our chief scientific adviser on health. He co-chairs it. It does include a range of scientific expertise; it does include modellers; it includes people from public health backgrounds and others as well. So, it's a variety of people to try to understand the science and then to convert that into advice that is useful for our system and for Ministers. So, yes, we do have that expertise available to us, as do other Governments within the UK as well. You'll find similar arrangements, although they may have different names, in both Scotland and Northern Ireland too.

On your broader point at the outset about having a public health surveillance plan as part of the essentials that we'll need to move out of lockdown, which will include testing as part of it, that is work where there's a re-focus that's been undertaken. I'm still the Minister with responsibility, as you would expect, but we had a military planner who's done a review for us to look at where we are, and so we've looked at an internal reorganisation to give some internal leadership to that, so that the system we have, not just within the Government, but with our partners, can see more clearly how and where decisions will be made. Now, that doesn't make a particularly interesting press release, and we certainly can't turn it into a Twitter soundbite, but actually in terms of getting the system right, it's actually really important. So I'm expecting that grip and focus to be improved, and that should help us to get to where we all want to be, not just with a bigger programme with bigger capacity within it for testing, not just being part of that wider whole, but making sure that we actually get to use it in the way that we want to, with ease of access, ease of use, and that really should help us with the surveillance work we'll need to undertake as we exit lockdown, because as your colleague David Melding recognised, this isn't a simple or straightforward matter, and other countries that have gone first are finding this quite a difficult challenge to get through. It's been much easier to go into lockdown than to successfully come out of it.