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.