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

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 2:36 pm on 6 May 2020.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 2:36, 6 May 2020

I thank Delyth Jewell for those. I have confidence that the UK Government wants to do the right thing in relation to privacy and the app. I had a chance to discuss this with UK Ministers and with the First Minister of Scotland yesterday, so I don't doubt their intentions. I think there is still a gap between the intention and being able to offer the guarantees that I think people will need in order to feel confident that their information is being shared for the purposes that they're prepared to share it and not vulnerable to being exploited for purposes for which they haven't given their permission. That's why I said in my answer to Paul Davies that I think the UK Government should publish a statement of privacy arrangements alongside the app, so people can go and see what guarantees are there, and if they're not able to provide those guarantees, and some other aspects of the app being confirmed, then the chances of 60 per cent of people using it will be diminished. I'd like to be able to recommend it to people in Wales, but I'll need to know that those things are properly in their place before I could make that positive step, but that's where I'd like to be.

And then, of course, Delyth Jewell is right that the app is only one aspect of all of this. You have to have, in that new world, community-based testing, tracing and isolating arrangements. The Public Health Wales leaked non-final paper that we've spent a bit of time talking about today is a detailed account of how we might be able to get to that position. It is being refined in further discussions. Local authorities, I think, will have a really important part to play in helping to populate the teams that we will need, partly because they have people who are not able to do the jobs they would normally do, and also because they have that local intelligence and understanding of populations on the ground.

We will work over this week to identify the number of tests we really think we will need, the number of contact tracers we really think we will need, the split between people who will be contacted and traced online by the telephone and on foot—because you have to have some bits of all of that—and then we will publish our implementation plan demonstrating how those systems will be achieved here in Wales.