Therefore, we move to items 6 and 7 on those regulations. I call on the Minister for Health and Social Services to move the motions—Vaughan Gething.

Motion NDM7319 Rebecca Evans

To propose that the National Assembly for Wales; in accordance with Standing Order 27.5:

1. Approves that the draft The Health Protection (Coronavirus Restrictions) (Wales) Regulations 2020 is made in accordance with the draft laid in the Table Office on 27 March 2020.

Motion NDM7320 Rebecca Evans

To propose that the National Assembly for Wales; in accordance with Standing Order 27.5

1. Approves that the draft The Health Protection (Coronavirus Restrictions) (Wales) (Amendment) Regulations 2020 is made in accordance with the draft laid in the Table Office on 6 April 2020.

Motions moved.

Thank you, Llywydd. I formally move the two sets of regulations before us today. I do want to address at the outset a brief drafting issue with the motions because, Llywydd, shortly before this debate it was brought to my attention that the motions before us contain an error. The motions refer to draft regulations, but these regulations have quite clearly already been made, and it is the Senedd's approval for them to remain in place that is being sought. I'd like to reassure Members that this does not alter the content of the regulations, nor does it alter the intent of the motion that the Senedd's being asked to approve today. The Government will of course ensure that future motions for made affirmative instruments are corrected. 

I would like to listen to the debate from Members, as the powers within the regulations have been debated and I think are well understood. I'll be happy to address Members about the content of these, or about the future continuance and the proportionate use of them, having listened to what Members have to say today.

I call on the Chair of the Legislation, Justice and Constitution Committee, Mick Antoniw.

Diolch, Llywydd. The first set of regulations that we'll consider today, the principal set of coronavirus restrictions regulations, were laid before the Assembly during the period when the Legislation, Justice and Constitution Committee were not sitting as usual, as a result of this ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. As such, and in line with the temporary process established by the Business Committee, an advice note prepared by Assembly Commission lawyers was laid before the Assembly by the Llywydd. The note contained the same advice that would have been provided to our committee. The Welsh Government has laid a response to the points raised in that advice note, and both documents have been made available to all the Members and are available to them on today's agenda. 

We considered the amending regulations at our committee meeting yesterday morning and laid our report on the regulations straight after our meeting. Our report contains two technical reporting points under Standing Order 21.2, and three merits points under Standing Order 21.3. Again, our report is available as a supporting document on the Plenary agenda, and I won't comment on each of the reporting points this afternoon. My contribution will focus on our second technical reporting point and our first merits point.

Our second technical reporting point relates to the powers on which the Welsh Government has relied to make the regulations. In making these regulations, Welsh Ministers have not relied on the enabling power contained in section 45C(4)(d) of the Public Health (Control of Disease) Act 1984. Section 45C(4)(d) of the 1984 Act enables the Welsh Ministers to include in regulations a special restriction or requirement.

Regulations 2 and 4 of these regulations respectively amend regulations 5 and 7 of the principal regulations, which require the closure of holiday accommodation and places of worship during the emergency period. Regulation 7 of these amending regulations also amends various provisions of the principal regulations concerning the closure of premises.

In our report, we said that it appears that Welsh Ministers should rely on enabling powers under section 45C(4)(d)of the 1984 Act in order to make the regulations 2, 4 and 7. I note that the Welsh Government's view is that these regulations have been made in exercise of the powers that accurately reflect the content of them. The Welsh Government believe that the power to make regulations is centred upon section 45C(1) of the 1984 Act and referring to section 45C(4) of the 1984 Act would be unhelpful and inaccurate.

So, moving on to our first merits reporting point, which relates to human rights, the explanatory memorandum that accompanies the amending regulations sets out the Welsh Government's assessment of the interference with certain articles of the European convention on human rights. The explanatory memorandum names articles 1, 8 and 11. In our view, the assessment does not appear to be complete, because we believe that article 9 of the European convention on human rights—freedom of thought, conscience and religion—is engaged in respect of regulations 4 and 6 of these regulations. This right is a qualified right, which permits the Welsh Ministers to interfere with the exercise of the rights in the same manner as with articles 8 and 11 of the European convention. And, further, until the end of the EU withdrawal transition period, the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union will apply to the United Kingdom.

There are corresponding protections to those in the European convention on human rights contained in the EU charter of fundamental rights: subject to the principle of proportionality, limitations that affect the rights under the charter may be made if they are necessary and genuinely meet objectives of general interest that are recognised by the European Union or the need to protect the rights and freedoms of others.

Fundamentally, in our view, the justification given by the Welsh Government in relation to the articles 8 and 11 of the European convention applies equally to interference with the rights under article 9 and the EU charter of rights. Thank you, Llywydd.

Thank you for bringing forward these regulations; as you say, they're already in action. The Welsh Conservatives are going to be supporting them, but I do have a couple of questions, Minister, that I would like to ask you, about them as we go forward.

We do welcome the part of the regulations that actually says that people must not leave, for any length of time, their home. In other words, this is a way of stopping people going to second homes and deciding to take up residence there. But I have been asked for clarity on this by a number of organisations. Do these regulations actually give the police the power to knock the door and say to the occupants, 'You now must get in your car and go away' or is it still that the police can only advise them that they should be returning?

It is very welcome that these regulations have brought forward the ability for people to go out and undertake all forms of exercise more than once a day if they fall into a certain sort of category, and I'm grateful for that. And I know that that's actually brought a great deal of cheer to some families under enormous stress because they have children with learning disabilities and who need to have that ability to go outside and do further exercise.

Could you please tell me how you have risk-assessed these lockdown measures, or the regulations that lead to this—so, both the original set of regulations and these? I'm assuming that there is a cognisant process around it that looked at what risks are in place while we have these regulations. So, I'm assuming that risk assessment would have looked at mental health issues, how people are going to react to this—it might have looked at social isolation issues—and I'd be really interested to know if you're able to give us some insight on this, especially if these regulations are going to have to continue for a specific length of time, going forward.

And that brings me to my last point, which is: will it be via these regulations or another amendment to them that you would start to seek to lift lockdown? Because I've made an assumption, and it may well be incorrect, so I'd be grateful for your steer, that, as we move forward and if we are able to lift some of the lockdown, then these regulations will need to be constantly altered and shaped. Will you continue to do that and will these regulations be the ones that will actually still say to people, 'You must be 2m apart', or would you be seeking to bring in longer term legislation?

We're in a very difficult situation, and I've had, obviously, an awful lot of e-mail traffic, as I'm sure others have, from people who are beginning to feel that perhaps this is an infringement of their human rights. I know that the Chair of the committee did raise that point and just made an observation. We're in unprecedented times. I think these regulations are as light touch as they can be, but I do think it would be very good if we could let people know how long you would see these to be going on as we move forward. Thank you, Minister.

[Inaudible.] It's very important that we appreciate the gravity of what we're discussing. We are talking here about some of the greatest decisions that the Assembly has faced in its history, in a way. The question facing us, in reality, is: are we convinced that we should support Welsh Government regulations that put that legal mechanism in place to enforce these unprecedented and far-reaching changes to the way of life that we have seen imposed over the past few weeks?

Now, the main regulations and the amending regulations are made under the affirmative procedure, but it's being done retrospectively, as the Minister mentioned in his opening remarks, and I think that reflects just how extraordinary the situation that we find ourselves in is. So, they are already in force, but the Government must secure the support of this Assembly within 28 days of the date of the making of the regulations, so that they can remain in law in Wales.

Restrictions of this kind on our freedom are not introduced lightly. We see further recognition within the regulations as to just how far-reaching they are, in terms of the requirement on Ministers to review the need for these restrictions placed by these regulations every 21 days—and I paraphrase the regulations there. That is most appropriate in order to secure public support for these steps and also to ensure that we make decisions that are based on the latest evidence, and the evidence does change; we are always learning.

Now, the next review date, as has been widely reported, will be a week tomorrow, 7 May. Now, we have seen just how great an impact these regulations and these restrictions have had, but there is a context to this, of course: the undoubtedly positive impact that these steps have had in terms of limiting the spread of coronavirus to date. We are just beginning the debate on what would need to be in place before we can even consider relaxing these restrictions in any way—the need that was discussed earlier in this session for robust plans in terms of community testing and so on, and planning infrastructure to ensure the move to the next phase.

And I will conclude these remarks by asking a question, and to ask for an assurance. Now, we haven't reached the peak in many areas, including here in Ynys Môn, and we must be wary of not moving too swiftly in relaxing these regulations. Of course, we would expect the Government to do what is right for all parts of Wales. So, as I say, while we do support this, I would be grateful if the Minister in his response could confirm that it would be entirely premature to see any relaxation of these regulations before the bank holiday weekend, which is a week next Friday. We will support the regulations, but we're not willing to let them go yet, for the benefit of everyone's health.

We supported the legislative consent motion for the UK Coronavirus Act 2020, and we might have taken a different view on these regulations if they had been considered by the Assembly around the time they were brought into force on 26 March. But, at that stage, we faced a very real prospect of our NHS being absolutely overwhelmed, and our critical and intensive care simply not being able to cope in the way that we'd seen in north Italy. It was thought it was necessary to flatten that peak of the pandemic to ensure that the NHS would be able to cope. We've done that, and I'd like to thank everyone involved, particularly the public service NHS staff, but also the Welsh Government for the work that it has done.

However, we're now at 29 April and the number of cases, the number of deaths—of course, a lagging indicator—and the number of infections have been declining, at least on a UK and a Wales-wide basis, for some time now, particularly in my region of south-east Wales where we did see some of the highest infection rates early on. Those numbers, I'm pleased to say, are coming down. The restriction on liberty, the damage to the economy and the damage, frankly, to people's well-being that we can justify is less when those cases are on a firmly declining trajectory than when they were on a sharply rising trajectory with the real likelihood of the NHS being overwhelmed. So, for those reasons, we propose to oppose these regulations in a vote today.

We have two other key issues about these. First, we are unhappy with Welsh Government legislating differently through regulations from England simply for the sake of it. I was told earlier by the First Minister how dare I suggest that we are acting or should be compared to a template set by England. But that's exactly what we're doing. These coronavirus regulations have largely been copied and pasted from these English versions, and if you look at the first page of it, the only changes as we passed ours a couple of hours later—the Government didn't lay them for the Assembly until the next day—are where it says 'Secretary of State' it's deleted and it says 'Welsh Ministers', and where it says 'England' it has been changed to say 'Wales'. So, for Wales, see England. And when some changes have been made, particular changes we don't agree with. This restriction on exercise, where it's in law that it should only be once a day in Wales, but not in England, we don't see the justification for that, particularly because the virus is harder to get outside than it is in an enclosed, internal space. We're concerned that this pettifogging, this micromanaging of exactly what people do in terms of external exercise brings the rest of the restrictions, or the rest of the exhortations as to what people should do, into doubt. I'm pleased to say the National Police Chiefs Council have given some coronavirus briefing for Wales, and they say:

'Welsh officers and staff can use the briefing for England'.

It does then tell them that they should be aware that the exercise once a day is in law in Wales, but it says that they don't need to worry about Government guidance around exercise, all this stuff about not driving to exercise, or only cycling within a reasonable walking distance of your home, because all that is just guidance and isn't in law, so police officers and staff can instead use the regulations that they put for England that don't have this, and don't prevent people driving a reasonable way in order to exercise.

We're also very concerned about how Welsh Government says they're going to end these regulations. How they should end them is in law. It states in the regulations that, as soon as they're not necessary to prevent the spread of infection proportionate to that, they should be removed, and the UK Government has set five tests that go to that point. Welsh Government has, instead, published a much longer list of seven areas and then quite a lot of supporting stuff. Supposedly, they'll look at whether they have a high positive equality impact or what they do about an equal or greener Wales, or the future generations Act, or do they widen participation and give a more inclusive society. I'm sorry, if you put these regulations at this degree of strictness, not that far short of house arrest, you need the strongest possible requirement in order to keep them. You can't just have your ideological lodestars and say, 'Oh we're going to keep them longer, possibly for all these reasons', which you don't have any basis in law for saying. So, for those reasons we'll be voting against these regulations.

I call on the Minister for Health and Social Services to reply to the debate. 

Thank you, Llywydd. Thank you to the Members who have contributed to the debate. Perhaps it's worth setting out that we have taken unprecedented steps to protect public health from the risk of coronavirus, and even though we have been successful in preventing a much wider and more catastrophic spread of coronavirus, this is still not over and it is certainly not trivial, with more than 1,000 confirmed deaths across Wales. And we know there will be more to come. But the approach we have taken with the rules we have set out and the behaviour of the public has undoubtedly helped to save lives, and I'm tremendously grateful still not just to our front-line staff, but to members of the public who have followed the rules and made a real difference.

As we know, the two sets of regulations debated today were introduced under the Public Health (Control of Disease) Act 1984, under emergency procedures. Rather than the criticism made by the Brexit Party, I think it's a good thing that Governments of the United Kingdom, the four Governments, have shared information and then made choices for the country and people that we are responsible for within each of the four respective Governments. I don't accept the out-of-step and, in my view, misguided view from the Brexit Party that we should simply do what England has done, and we're certainly not dealing with an ideological lodestar. We're looking at the purpose and the proportionality of the regulations we have in place and the purpose of them. 

The principal regulations came into force on 26 March, and those brought in the view about people only leaving home for limited purposes, including essential shopping, exercise once a day, any medical need or to provide care or help to a vulnerable person, and travelling to and from work if necessary. To deal with Angela Burns's point, the police cannot require people to leave homes when they are in residence. It's a matter we're still talking through with both the police and local government about the issue, and I don't want to trivialise it, of people in second homes. That's an issue we still discuss because of the ongoing review of the regulations. But the main purpose of the principal regulations is to minimise the extent to which people leave their homes during this continuing emergency period to help contain coronavirus, to minimise the burden on health services and to save more lives. So, unjustified and unnecessary journeys are prohibited. 

The amendment regulations that came into force on 7 April made a number of important changes, including the social distancing measures in places of work. And, actually, we've been followed by other parts of the United Kingdom, having introduced those rules. They were made to both protect individual health and minimise the risk of transmission in the workplace. We also made clear in those regulations that businesses can continue to provide services online or by telephone or post.

Llywydd, it remains my view and the Government's view that these are sensible restrictions introduced to deal with a national health emergency. This is still a once-in-a-century event, and there will be many more difficult days ahead of us. We are constantly reviewing the requirements and talking to stakeholders to see what amendments need to be made. And, in some areas, that may well mean strengthening or changing legislative requirements, and that may well mean that Wales goes first or in a different direction to other parts of the United Kingdom, because we have to respond to the responsibilities we continue to have, and we cannot contract out of for the people of Wales. In other areas, they may be eased, where it is safe to do so. 

Now, as Members will be aware, we further amended the principal regulations last Friday, as part of the ongoing review process. Those regulations make a number of revisions, including permitting exercise more than once a day because of a particular health condition or disability, and making it clear that visiting a cemetery or other burial ground to pay respects to a deceased person is a reasonable excuse for leaving where you live. And those amending regulations will come before the Senedd shortly.

I just want to deal with some of the challenge about the collective approach that we have, and the central messages remain the same: anyone can get the virus, anyone can spread it, and we do still need to continue to stay at home, protect the NHS and to save lives. I think the tone of some of Mr Reckless's contribution was not as helpful as I would have wished it to be in reinforcing that message, because we are seeing the effects of those measures and are taking the steps needed to help our NHS to cope, to keep essential services running and to protect the most vulnerable, but there's still a long way to go. So, we are reviewing the measures and making changes to respond to the challenges being faced in parts of the country and by families throughout Wales.

The regulations implemented in Wales are essential on the basis of the clinical and scientific advice to respond to this situation. The measures are temporary and proportionate to the threat that we face, and they will only be in place for as long as they are required. They're continuously reviewed, with advice on the balance of risk in this public health emergency, and there is a formal 21-day review period looking at the seven tests published by the First Minister last Friday to determine the necessity for the regulations to continue. And in my view, we're in a better position in Wales for having been more open and provided more detail about those tests for the continuance of these regulations, and the possible paths through lockdown. Nobody should expect that the restrictions will end for the bank holiday weekend; they will not. The path out of lockdown will be phased and cautious.

So, I ask the Senedd to support these regulations and agree that they are necessary for ensuring the protection of the citizens of Wales we are responsible for. They will, as I've said, be kept under review and removed or amended as soon as it is safe for us to do so. 

The proposal is to agree to the motions. Does any Member object? [Objection.] Yes, I see an objection and therefore we move to vote on the motions. 

Voting deferred until voting time.