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

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 2:23 pm on 6 May 2020.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 2:23, 6 May 2020

Well, Llywydd, can I thank Darren Millar for that question, for the opportunity to say something about the seventy-fifth anniversary, and to thank him for the assiduous way in which he makes sure that we are thinking about these events and how we mark them?

I spent a good part of yesterday afternoon in a series of conversations over the telephone and by video link with Welsh veterans of VE Day, and they were wonderful conversations. I think the youngest person I spoke to was 94 years old and the oldest person I spoke to was 100 years old, from Aberystwyth. All of them full of memories of their time, and full of sadness as well, because for them VE Day—it is a matter of celebration of what was achieved, but it's also a matter of profound sorrow for those people who they knew and who stood alongside and who didn't survive the war in the way that they did. And I didn't speak to a single person who didn't mention by name somebody else who had been close to them and who wasn't a survivor as they were. But they were wonderful conversations. It was fantastic to see people managing technologies that they never thought they would need to and having those conversations by Skype and by Zoom and all other things we have to do.

I will certainly be marking VE Day myself. I'll be at the cenotaph here in Cardiff at 11 o'clock on Friday, as part of our national marking of that moment, and it's being marked, as Members will know, in very different ways because of the time that we are in. And then we do need to look beyond the time to see what we will be able to do when we're better able to get together again, and discussions are going on so that when the moment comes that we're able to do things in ways that we are more used to, we won't have forgotten the need to make sure that marking VE Day will be something we'll be able to do in the future as well as on Friday.