3. Statement by the First Minister: Coronavirus (COVID-19)

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 2:20 pm on 6 May 2020.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 2:20, 6 May 2020

Well, can I thank Alun Davies for that? And, actually, I don't think my position is different to the one that he set out, because I too believe that the principle of trying to work on a four-nation basis across the United Kingdom is an important one, but that would not mean that I would be willing to adopt in Wales policies known to be failing elsewhere. So, it is not a slavish adherence to that principle; it is the lens I want to use—I want a four-nation approach. I have been working hard this week with other Governments in the United Kingdom to try to bring that about. But it's—. We've always said that if we need to do things differently in Wales, because that is the right thing to do, that is what we will do, and that's a really important principle as well. 

And we do, Llywydd, continue to learn lessons from around the globe. Every week, I receive reports of developments, either directly because of conversations the chief medical officer has in Sweden, in Germany and South Korea, for example, or in literature searches that we are carrying out inside the Welsh Government to track what is going on in parts of the world where the lockdown has been lifted already, to see what is working, to see what does not appear to be working, and then to feed that information into our thinking so that we identify the measures that we think have the greatest chance of success, wherever that evidence comes from around the world.