The next item is the statement by the First Minister on coronavirus and I call on the First Minister to make the statement. Mark Drakeford.

Thank you very much, Llywydd. In my statement today, I will update Members of the Senedd on the latest developments in our response to the coronavirus crisis. In accordance with the Coronavirus Act 2020, Welsh Ministers must review the regulations every three weeks. That three-week period lapsed last Thursday, and on Friday I announced our decisions in light of that review. I will set out our decisions as a Government as well as the evidence underpinning those decisions. We will go on closely monitoring the evidence so as to continue to safeguard the health of the people of Wales. 

Llywydd, once again I will update Members of the Senedd on the latest actions in our response to the coronavirus crisis. As in previous weeks, I will focus on matters not covered in the statements that follow from the Minister for Health and Social Services, the Minister for Finance and Trefnydd, and the Minister for Environment, Energy and Rural Affairs.

Before I do so, I want to start by reflecting on the VE Day celebrations on Friday of last week. Coronavirus obviously changed the way in which we marked this important anniversary, but it was no less poignant or impressive. I had the privilege of speaking to a number of veterans over Zoom and the telephone, and joined tens of thousands of people across Wales in the two-minute silence from the steps of the Welsh Government building in Cardiff. Even in these crisis-dominated times it was absolutely right to find that moment and to recognise the sacrifices made.

Llywydd, last week I updated Members on the progress of the disease. Very sadly, Public Health Wales has reported that more than 1,100 people have died in Wales. Behind each number is a person and a family who are grieving, and these are a sobering reminder of the need for continued vigilance and our shared obligation to go on doing all those things that help us to save lives. And it is because of those efforts that the number of new confirmed cases of coronavirus reported every day by Public Health Wales has continued to fall. About one in 10 people in hospital are being treated for coronavirus at the moment, and around one in five critical care beds are occupied by people with the disease, and this is down from a high point of 42 per cent in the middle of April. Of course, I am very pleased to report that more than 3,000 people in Wales have recovered from coronavirus and have left hospital.

Llywydd, the Welsh Government continues to respond to the impacts of the lockdown on vulnerable citizens, as I set out last week. We know that for some people, home is not a place of safety, and it is essential that those who need help can continue to get it in spite of the current restrictions. The Deputy Minister and Chief Whip has launched a new campaign to make sure victims and survivors of domestic abuse know how they can access support. It encourages bystanders to recognise the signs of domestic abuse and to seek support for those who are unable to help themselves.

And in all this, Llywydd, the work of volunteers in the current crisis is genuinely inspiring. Thousands of people have offered their services. Thanks to the strong partnership structure we have in Wales, county voluntary councils and local authorities moved quickly to match volunteers with the people who need their help, to provide both immediate and long-term support. In Carmarthenshire, for example, more than 360 people responded to a call for help from the local authority to set up furniture and equipment at the county's field hospitals within 24 hours of the appeal going live.

And, Llywydd, the Welsh Government continues to recognise the crucial role of the third sector. Last week, we announced that thousands of small charities in the retail, leisure and hospitality sectors will receive a £10,000 business support grant to help them respond to the financial challenges of COVID-19. This new £26 million package will support an additional 2,600 properties with a rateable value of £12,000 or below, and that includes charity-run shops, sports premises and community centres, which, until now, have not been eligible for this type of support.

Llywydd, I turn now to the statutory three-week review of the lockdown regulations in Wales, which was completed by the Welsh Government last week. This was the second review to have been conducted, and it drew on the latest advice from the UK Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies and the advice of the Chief Medical Officer for Wales.

While we have passed the initial peak of infection, and rates continue to fall, the clear advice from the experts is that it is too early for the restrictions to be lifted. We have, therefore, kept the stay-at-home regulations in place and made three small adjustments, and these adjustments came into force on Monday. We have removed the once-a-day exercise restriction—exercise will need to start and end at home and be local; we have allowed garden centres to open, if they are able to comply with the physical-distancing duty; and we have enabled local authorities to begin to plan for the reopening of libraries and municipal recycling centres.

The evidence underpinning our decision was that the reproduction rate—the R rate—of the virus continues to fall. It is below 1, but if it were to begin to creep above 1 again, we would see the risk of exponential growth. Now, if sustained, these conditions will allow us to take incremental steps over the coming weeks and months further to ease restrictions, but we will only do so when it is safe for that to take place. We will keep the regulations under constant review to enable us to respond to the latest evidence about how the virus is behaving, the effectiveness of restrictions and the levels of compliance.

In all of this, Llywydd, we continue to support a four-nation response to coming out of lockdown, and continue to work with all other parts of the United Kingdom. But, the actions we take and the timing of changes will be determined by conditions here in Wales. In responding to the virus, we have built on our distinctive Welsh infrastructure. Our NHS Wales Shared Services Partnership and our relationships with Welsh businesses have helped us to secure supplies of personal protective equipment from domestic and international sources. But, where there are UK arrangements that can work well for us, we will be part of those as well. On Sunday, the Prime Minister announced a new joint biosecurity centre to advise the four chief medical officers on the level of infection across the UK. We are in discussions with the UK Government and other devolved administrations about how this can operate most effectively across the United Kingdom, and I will update the Senedd further as the project develops.

Later this week, we will provide more details about our plans for the weeks ahead. These are being developed with our partners in the trade unions, in businesses, in local government, in the NHS and other public services. We are planning for the future, and when services in Wales do open, the public can be confident that the arrangements will be safe and workable.

Llywydd, the coronavirus crisis is very far from over. The progress of the disease demands a continuous and highly focused response. I will continue to report each week to the Senedd on the actions taken by the Welsh Government. Diolch yn fawr.

Thank you, First Minister. Leader of the opposition, Paul Davies.

Diolch, Llywydd. First Minister, I'm pleased to see that the Welsh Government has now started publishing the scientific and technical advice that the Welsh Government receives to help inform its policies and respond to COVID-19 here in Wales. As you know, this is something that I've been pushing now for some time, and I think it's important that information is put in the public domain so that the people of Wales can have confidence in the decisions made by the Welsh Government. Now, in that same spirit of transparency and openness with the public, it's important that the Welsh Government comes forward with a road map and a clear plan for exiting the lockdown restrictions in Wales.

The UK Labour Party leader, Keir Starmer, was right to call for a lockdown exit strategy in Westminster, and the Prime Minister has now come forward with the UK Government's plans. Here in Wales, you've already said that the Welsh Government is developing its framework to create a more detailed road map, so can you tell us exactly when the people of Wales can expect to see that road map published, along with a clear set of timescales? Will you also confirm that you'll be publishing the scientific advice that underpins that exit strategy?

Llywydd, I thank Paul Davies for those points. I'm very glad that we are publishing the scientific and technical advice. I agree entirely with Paul Davies that it's important that the public is able to see the underpinning evidence that we draw on in making these challenging decisions. My hope is that we will be able to make our plan for exit, as he called it, public on Friday of this week. It is being worked on still. I want it to be clear and I want it to be capable of being readily understood by the readership of the Welsh public. So, that is my ambition—that we will publish it on Friday and do it in a way that does the job that Paul Davies referred to: helping our fellow citizens in Wales to be clear about the plans of the Welsh Government and to understand the basis on which they are being drawn up.

First Minister, I'm asking for a lockdown exit plan because the people of Wales need that clarity, and right now, there's plenty of confusion over the Welsh Government's regulations and guidance. And I'll tell you why there's confusion: because you yourself have said that two people from different households could meet in a park if they adhere to social distancing guidelines, and then we're told that is not the Welsh Government's advice and members of different households are not allowed to meet in parks; your education Minister has said schools in Wales are closed until 1 June, while your Counsel General thinks that they will definitely be closed for the whole of June; and the Member for Bridgend has said that it's okay for people in Wales to start fishing, allegedly based on a response he's had from you, and yet, in response to a written question tabled by my colleague the Member for Clwyd West you specifically made it clear that, while the restrictions are in place people should not go fishing. And now, it appears that even your health Minister is confused about whether or not he can sit on a park bench and picnic with his family.

First Minister, how are the people of Wales supposed to have any sense of clarity in the Welsh Government's guidance when your own Ministers don't seem to understand the rules themselves? Perhaps the Welsh Government needs to rethink its communications strategy so that the people of Wales are receiving the right messages.

Well, Llywydd, I don't know who advised the leader of the opposition to use that as a line of questioning, but if I'd been the leader of the Conservative Party in Wales, I would certainly have told them to think again. Because, if I needed advice on clarity and how not to confuse the public, I certainly wouldn't be taking it from a party that did everything it could last week to make sure that people in Wales were not clear about how the law in Wales was to operate.

On all the points that the Member has mentioned, I think clarity was there. There's mischief making—people are very willing, I find, to try and pull a meaning out of words that isn't there. When I answered a question about people meeting, that's exactly what I said. I observe people not going out to meet other people—that is not allowed under our regulations—but people who are walking from their own front door down their own pavement and see somebody else who, by chance, is also walking on the same street, and they are able just to—. There's nothing prohibiting people who meet in that chance way from exchanging a few words with one another if they are at a social distance from one another. That is quite different to people purposefully planning to leave their homes to engage in such encounters. So, I'm simply reflecting the everyday realities of people here in Wales. 

As far as angling is allowed, it is allowed under our current regulations, the ones that were passed into law on Monday, but it must be done locally and people must observe social distancing. Here in Wales, we are encouraging people to stay home. That is the best way in which we can help one another to overcome this crisis. That's why we're all making the sacrifices that we are. But people are allowed now to leave their homes more than once a day for exercise, and if your way of taking exercise is to walk from your home to a river and to sit there, not near other people, and to go fishing, then that is allowed within the rules in Wales. But it must be local and it must be done in a way that observes social distancing.

And let me just finish by making that point once again. The question that people in Wales to ask themselves is: is my journey away from my own front door necessary? If it's necessary, then you're allowed to do it within the terms of our regulations. But the best advice to us all is to minimise the amount of contact that we have with other people because that way, the circulation of the virus can be suppressed and we can all go on providing to the safety of ourselves and to the safety of others.

Plaid Cymru leader, Adam Price.

Thank you, Llywydd. Before turning to my question, I would like to make a point of order at the end of the statement, if you would allow that, on the fact that the Government shared its strategy on testing and contact tracing exactly eight minutes before the beginning of this scrutiny session without briefing the opposition parties beforehand, as was promised to me this morning.

Two weeks ago, First Minister, when asked by Channel 4's Andy Davies at the daily press conference if the Welsh Government had gowns in its pandemic stockpile when coronavirus reached the UK, the health Minister confirmed that to be the case. Was that in fact correct?

Well, Llywydd, I don't—. The health Minister provided that answer; I'm sure he was drawing on the best information he had at the time. I do not have in front of me, nor could I reasonably be expected to have in front of me, the details of every item that was in a store on a particular day. If the Member had wanted to have that information, he could have submitted one of his many written questions to me and received it.

First Minister, you wrote to me last week in response to a letter I wrote to you, confirming that there were, in fact, contrary to what the health Minister claimed, no gowns in the pandemic stockpile between June 2016 and February 2020.

Now, in June last year, the new and emerging respiratory virus threats advisory group, the committee that advises the UK Government on the pandemic stockpile, specifically recommended that gowns, which had been one of the main problem areas for PPE, be added to it. Now, when I previously raised that report with you, you said that you would go away and look at it. Can you therefore confirm that someone within Welsh Government saw that recommendation, and can you say when that happened? Or did the UK Government fail to share with you this potentially life-saving information?

Well, Llywydd, I can't answer that sort of detailed question here this afternoon. I'm perfectly happy to answer that sort of detailed question, but it's not one that I think is capable of being answered in the circumstances we are in. I'll pursue the points the Member has made and reply to him.

On gowns, let's be clear: we have managed to deal with the pandemic in Wales without ever having to tell the NHS in Wales that there wasn't a supply of the gowns that were needed. As a result of contact by the Welsh NHS and by the Welsh Government, we have been able to bring half a billion—sorry, half a million—0.5 million gowns in through Cardiff Wales Airport, with which we have been able to help supply other parts of the United Kingdom in dealing with what is, indeed, a shortage item during the coronavirus crisis. But we've never not been able to supply those to the NHS in Wales, and as a result of the efforts we have made, we now have a supply in our stores that will see us through the weeks ahead while we continue to pursue other sources of supply, domestically and internationally.

Leader of the Brexit Party, Mark Reckless.

Diolch, Llywydd. First Minister, have you read Animal Farm? Why, when you cycle through Pontcanna to your allotment, did you think it okay for people to hang out with someone from outside their household—and you didn't say on their own pavement, but in the park? Do you not understand that, while prohibiting people from driving to exercise may be fine for Pontcanna, but it's not for many who live elsewhere? Have you thought what message it sends when your health Minister relaxes on a bench in the sun, with his family, eating a takeaway, when others doing that have been dealt with by the police?

Which Minister considered it so urgent to change the rules the next day that he evaded a prior vote of the Welsh Parliament? Rather than all being in it together at a time of national crisis, it seems that there are some who are more equal than others. Instead of working with the UK Government to co-ordinate a coherent strategy, you seem to take pride in fiddling with rules just to make Wales a bit different. How is it grounded in distinctive Welsh values to require a two-day gap between when garden centres can open in Wales and England?

More significantly, we see the property market fully reopen in England today, while in Wales, it remains in indefinite lockdown. If that means that we don't raise the taxes in Wales that they do in England, how do we raise the money for our NHS? Will you be asking the UK Government for a bail-out?

In England, the law requires Ministers to revoke restrictions as soon as they consider that they aren't necessary to control infection. In Wales, you've just removed that legal requirement. Instead, Ministers can keep restrictions for up to six months, purportedly, under your policy, if they have a high, positive equality impact and provide any opportunities for widening participation and a more inclusive society. First Minister, isn't it time that you were held to account by the underlying UK law that requires all restrictions to be reasonable and proportionate?

Well, Llywydd, the Member is quite wrong in thinking that that law does not apply in Wales. It does apply in Wales; it continues to apply in Wales.

I know. Indeed, yes, it does—

Well, I think you just said a moment ago—and I can do without being interrupted, actually. I think you said—

Carry on, First Minister.

—a moment ago that Welsh Ministers were no longer bound by the need to remove restrictions if they are found not to be proportionate to the need to deal with the crisis. Llywydd, that is not the case. Welsh Ministers are bound absolutely by that requirement and will continue to be so.

I didn't entirely follow the points that the Member made at the start of his many questions, and I think I've dealt with a number of them already. In relation to the point he made about moving in line with the United Kingdom, there was nothing at all stopping colleagues in England from deciding to allow access to garden centres on Monday of this week had they chosen to do so. We had already announced that our changes would begin from Monday. Had they wished to have a United Kingdom-wide approach to that, they could have done the same thing. It is possible—I know Mr Reckless struggles with this idea—for people in England to come in line with what is happening in Wales, not just the other way around.

As for the property market, we don't plan to do what has been announced in England. There are only so many measures, Llywydd, I believe that it is sensible for a Government to take if it does not risk the recirculation of the virus and a rise in the R value. The advice we had leading up to the changes we made were those three modest things and were sufficient to keep R suppressed in Wales while offering some further freedoms to Welsh citizens. Every time you add another issue to that repertoire, you increase the risk that R will rise again. We took the view that allowing people to walk around other people's houses in order to open the property market—that this was not the right point in the cycle to do that in Wales. That remains our view. We keep that, as well as everything else, under review, because we are bound, quite unlike the Member suggested, to remove restrictions when they are not proportionate to the nature of the crisis that we are facing.

First Minister, my constituents have warmly welcomed the decision you took last week to extend the lockdown and to keep the 'Stay Home' message in Wales, and I also warmly welcome the action you took. My questions are around the perimeter of those decisions. Some of my constituents are very concerned about the decision to open garden centres when those items can commonly be bought in the supermarket, for example.

I also wanted to ask what impact assessments have been undertaken on the decisions that you are taking around the easing of the lockdown. In particular, I'm concerned about the announcement yesterday that golf clubs are to reopen, and I think it's hard to understand that at a time when children are facing so many restrictions. We know too that social isolation is having a massive impact on people's mental health, particularly the most vulnerable and disadvantaged, who can't access things like Skype. So, my question is: what children's rights impact assessments have been undertaken on these decisions that you are taking, and also what wider equality impact assessments are being taken? Diolch yn fawr.

Llywydd, I thank Lynne Neagle for those questions. I think she's right—her experience in Torfaen I think is mirrored across Wales. There has been support for the Welsh Government's position in only being willing to move out of lockdown in the most careful and cautious way.

I think the decision on garden centres actually has been widely welcomed as well. Garden centres operate, by and large, in the open air. We know that the circulation of the virus is much less virulent in open-air circumstances, and, where garden centres are able to open and open safely—because they have to be able to do it in that way too—then the advice we had was that we should allow that to happen and that there are other benefits to well-being and mental health from people being able to use those facilities and then to use the products of garden centres in their own homes. And each of the measures, Llywydd—each of the measures—that we have considered has been evaluated against the tests that we set out in our framework document, published over two weeks ago, which showed how we would assess the case for and the case against any specific moves of the sort that we announced on Monday.

I think the point that Lynne Neagle makes about social isolation and children is a very important one. The lockdown doesn't come without its costs. We're doing it because the rewards are greater, because it does save lives in the here and now, and we've seen how that loss of life has such an unequal impact on different communities and different parts of the community. So, it's absolutely right that we do it, but it's also right, in the way that Lynne Neagle has suggested, that we don't lose sight of the impact that that has on people's lives and on children's lives in particular. It's why my colleague Kirsty Williams announced just over a week ago a fund to assist those young people who don't have access to the sorts of facilities that Lynne mentioned, so that they can at least take advantage of the sorts of electronic means of communication for education purposes, but also, as we do, to keep in touch with family and friends remotely, as we must. The Welsh Government will continue to keep a very close eye on the impact of these measures on children and Lynne, I know, will be aware that just this week we set out information about how we are directly gathering the views of children in Wales about what it has been like to be a child during the coronavirus crisis, the impact that it has on them, and what we as a Welsh Government and as a wider Welsh society can do to assist them as we begin to come out of the crisis itself.

First Minister, the purpose of leaving home is to exercise. Going for a walk and then having a picnic or spending a prolonged period on a park bench, for example, is not considered to be exercise, and is not intended to be a reasonable excuse. That was your guidance that was in force last Saturday. If an individual purchased food, ate it on a public bench, they would clearly be breaking the rules. Should they apologise?

Llywydd, I'm not going to get drawn into this sort of personality-bashing approach to the virus. [Interruption.] I can hear—. I heard perfectly well what you asked me, thank you very much, and I'm saying to you that I'm not going to get drawn into that sort of question, which is simply designed to attack an individual out with their family, entitled, I would say, to some privacy in the way that they were going about things, and who will speak for himself. 

It's three weeks since GPs across Wales urged you to prohibit the use of second homes and to tighten up enforcement rules in order to safeguard public health, but you have not acted to date. Surely by this point we do need action, given that we are approaching the Whitsun holiday and in light of the change in rules and emphasis in England. So, I would like to ask you what further measures you will put in place in order to ensure that the Welsh regulations are respected. I would also like to know what your decision is in light of the discussions that you are having with the police forces and local authorities—and you mentioned that the last time I urged you for stricter enforcement. Do you agree with the four police forces that we do need to increase the fines imposed for travelling unnecessarily?

Well, I thank Siân Gwenllian for those questions and for pursuing this issue once again this afternoon. Of course, we do take the comments of local people seriously, and that's why we did have those further discussions with the local authorities and the police forces. And, as I explained the last time, there are a number of important things to take into account in taking any decision—human rights do apply and we must take that into account. And we must have evidence in terms of how many people—[Interruption.] Well, we do have to have that evidence; we must know how many people have travelled to Wales and are using second homes at the moment. As I explained in my response to Mark Reckless, we in Wales do still respect the law that says that anything we do has to be proportionate, and, through our conversations with local authorities, my conclusion was that we couldn't be sufficiently convinced that the problem is one where we tell people who are staying in their homes that they would have to return to their primary accommodation. Of course, we don't want people to travel; we do tell people time and time again not to do it.

In the current situation, where people in England are able to travel by car anywhere they want in England, well, that has created a new issue for us, and we have been making arrangements for that with the police forces this week, and, of course, I am happy to speak to them about whether the powers that they have and the penalties that they can impose on people who fail to respect the regulations—whether they feel that we need to do more. We're doing a number of things at the moment; we're using signage on the M4 and in north Wales to convey that message to people who are travelling into Wales that they shouldn't do so unnecessarily. We're trying to get things in the press in England to explain to people why we're doing what we're doing here in Wales. So, we are seeking to do everything we can and we are still having conversations with the local authorities and the police forces, and, if the situation changes and the case is strengthened for taking further steps, then we are entirely open to doing so.

First Minister, during your press conference on Monday, and again in your statement today, you've touched upon some of the important factors that helped to determine your decision making in Wales, including the health inequalities in our population. Now I know that some people see an opportunity for change in our current circumstances, so, for example, delivering on active travel plans or more gardening to produce your own fruit and vegetables, and I wouldn't disagree with any of that, but I believe there's a real danger that without ongoing action by both the UK and Welsh Governments there's a further and a real risk of this virus creating greater health inequalities, caused by ever more deeply embedded poverty and debt. So, can I ask you, First Minister, if these concerns form part of the Government's thinking and planning about the future, and what do you think will be the first post-COVID steps needed to start addressing some of these inequalities? 

Well, Llywydd, I entirely agree with Dawn Bowden. All the emerging evidence is that this is a virus that attacks those people in our society who are most vulnerable, and poverty is an underlying vulnerability because poor people tend to live more closely by one another, and the virus circulates where people are in more densely-populated areas. If you're poor, you're more likely to have underlying health conditions, and it's a virus that attacks people who have underlying health conditions. And you just don't have the resources that other people are lucky enough to be able to draw on to protect yourself against the crisis that we face. 

So, Dawn Bowden is absolutely right to point to the way in which underlying health inequalities are compounded by the virus. And when we come out of all of this, I just want to echo something that the former First Minister said to me in the session last week: we cannot go back simply to the way things were before, in which we overly value the contribution of some people in our society that has been of no practical use to us in this crisis, and we undervalue the contribution of other people, who are often the least well paid and the least well resourced. 

So, it's incumbent on us in the Welsh Government, certainly. It's why we've put, as you know, for example, £11 million more into our discretionary assistance fund to get help directly to people— 11,000 payments made already directly for COVID-related purposes from the discretionary assistance fund; more than £670,000 paid to the poorest families in Wales. And the UK Government will need to match that too. It's very disturbing, isn't it, to hear reports in the newspapers today of the UK Government planning to deal with the consequences of coronavirus by a pay freeze amongst public sector workers—those very workers that we have relied upon to get us through this crisis. That will not be the way to respond and, if we did it that way, then all the inequalities that Dawn has pointed to will be exacerbated rather than eroded, as we are determined to try to do in Wales. 

First Minister, in your statement you mentioned people who don't feel particularly safe at home all the time, and my question is prompted by my worries about them and an increasing number of constituents contacting me about their mental health, and questions arising from Welsh Government guidance about staying at home. Just to be clear, this isn't about differences between England and Wales but Welsh Government guidance itself, reflected, actually, in your confusing comments made a few days ago.

When you publish it on Friday, will the scientific evidence on which you rely explicitly highlight the evidence that supports that a gathering of two people from different households is safe, or that it's safe for two people from different households to come across each in a library, but not for two people from different households, where there have been no symptoms for weeks, going for a socially distanced walk together deliberately, as opposed to the chance meeting you referred to earlier?

And will it also highlight the evidence that says that it's safe to drive and encounter anyone at a garden centre, subject to the social distancing, but not safe to drive—you can walk or cycle, but not drive—to your nearest lake or beach to go fishing by yourself? Or can you confirm that 'local' does in fact mean 'nearest' in those circumstances? 

Well, Llywydd, 'local' means the common and everyday understanding of what 'local' is. Our advice to people in Wales is stay home: stay home, protect the NHS and save lives. That's been our message for the last six weeks and it's our message now. So, if you are leaving your home for exercise or for other purposes, stay local, because by staying local you stay safe. It's not an invitation to jump in your car and drive somewhere else to do things that you could do just as easily on foot and from home. 

So, some things are not done as easily in that way, and you may have to be in your car if you have to be, but it's only when you have to be, not because it's something that you would find convenient or entertaining to do. The more you travel, the more we go around, the more the virus will spread. And all the efforts we have made have been designed to stop that from happening, and we've succeeded in doing that. So, what we don't want to do is to put that at risk by encouraging people to do things that add to the risk levels.

We made a very carefully calibrated decision to do three things that we thought we could make available to people in Wales while still staying below the level at which the R value will rise and the virus will start to circulate again. That's the lens that people should be using to think about any of these decisions. The more we do outside the home, and particularly when we don't do it locally, the more risks we will be causing to one another, and the Welsh Government's advice and the scientific advice that we are drawing on is all clear about that. It needn't confuse anybody. And it's not helpful, I think, to try forever to be finding ways in which you can pull sentences in one direction or another in order to cause a bit of a confusion. The position in Wales is simple: stay at home, stay local and stay safe.

Carers have been woefully underpaid and underappreciated for a long time, and your policy to give £500 to carers is welcome, but it doesn't go far enough. All care home workers, including cooks and cleaners, should be entitled to that payment because they are at risk as well. Unpaid carers deserve to be recognised, in my view, too. So, will you commit to recognising everyone who's a carer, or who works in a care home setting, with this one-off payment? And, as this one-off payment doesn't address the ongoing low pay of carers, will you agree to do the same as the SNP Government has done in Scotland, and give all social care staff an immediate 3.3 per cent pay increase?

Well, I thank Leanne Wood for that, and I want to join her in recognising the work that carers, informal carers, and the people who do such important jobs in the care sector do. Our decision to offer £500 to all those people who provide direct personal care in domiciliary and residential settings was one that balanced our wish to provide that recognition against the current financial restrictions that we face. So, what I am very happy to say is that we go on looking at that. If there's an opportunity to do more, we would really like to do more. It is not about devaluing the contribution of other people who don't provide direct personal care but provide other important services in the sector, but if you're devising a scheme, you have to have some criteria that the scheme can operate within, and you have to be able to deliver it with the budget that the Welsh Government has available. It's going to cost £32 million to provide for the 64,000 people who are covered by the scheme as announced, and we will continue to keep that under very careful review and see whether it is possible to do more in the future. 

We've chosen to do it that way rather than in the way that the Scottish Government has done, and our £500, I think, has some advantages, in that it is a progressive measure. We're offering it to all care workers who provide personal care, however many hours they are working. So, it makes the biggest difference to those who have the least. And, in thinking of the question that Dawn Bowden was asking about inequality and our ability to try and make some impact on that, our scheme is designed with some deliberate aspects of it in order to make sure that the help is felt the most by those whose need for help is greatest.

I very much welcome the £500 that we've given to care workers, because they are very much in the front line of risk, looking after the most vulnerable people living in very close circumstances. I also very much welcome the mobile testing units that have been launched to enable residents and staff in care homes to get tested, to see whether they've got the virus. But I'm sure you'll acknowledge that one mobile testing unit for the whole of Cardiff and the Vale is insufficient to cover all the care homes and all those vulnerable senior citizens who we need to protect. So I wanted to probe your plans for enabling us to massively increase the numbers of testing units. One report talks about 94 teams working seven days a week. It would appear that we can't rely on health personnel unless we want to see all the other important health interventions they deliver abandoned, and I wouldn't want to see that. So I wondered what consideration has been given to recruiting other people. In your statement, you paid tribute to the voluntary sector, and I'm aware that, in Sheffield, the pilot for testing and tracing was led by a retired director of public health; it also involves volunteers in supporting the tracing aspect of it.

Can I have a question from Jenny Rathbone now?

So I wondered what the Government's strategy for involving a whole army of new people, including volunteers, in the mass testing campaign required to take control of the spread of COVID-19 might be.

I thank Jenny Rathbone for that question. Of course, we have plans to expand significantly the number of tests that we will be able to provide in Wales when we move into the new world of test, trace and protect. And that will involve new ways in which we can deliver tests directly to where people live—an expanded home-testing regime—as well as the mobile testing units that we now have available. And of course, Jenny Rathbone is right that, when we move to that more community-based system, we will need a lot more people to be involved in contact tracing. And she's right as well that we can't take those people from important health jobs that they are currently doing.

Now, my colleague Vaughan Gething will answer questions on this later this afternoon, Llywydd, and I know you don't want us to just go over ground we will both cover. But in the test, trace, protect document that we have published earlier today, it says that we're looking for about 1,000 people in the first instance when the system begins. And we think that most of those people will come from local authorities—people who are not able to do the jobs they would normally do, but are being paid by local authorities and can then be put to work in this new way. The volunteers have done a fantastic job across Wales in the coronavirus crisis—we've had 7,000 people deployed on coronavirus-related activities across Wales—but those 1,000 people are going to be needed every week for many weeks to come, and volunteer circumstances are inevitably a bit volatile—they may themselves go back to work, they may have other things they need to do. So, our first thoughts at this stage are that recruiting those 1,000 people primarily through our local authorities, so that people are being paid for the job they do and can devote their working week to doing it, will be the way we will set about recruiting the staff we will need.

The reason for introducing the draconian restrictions upon human freedoms and people's right to work started out as being to protect the NHS from being overwhelmed. It seems now to have morphed into stopping the R factor, the reproduction factor for the disease, from rising above 1. But does the First Minister not understand that this is a fool's errand?

Professor Giesecke, the Swedish Government's chief adviser on the coronavirus, wrote an article in The Lancet last week, in which he said that the disease spreads almost always from younger people with no or weak symptoms to other people who will also have mild symptoms. There's very little we can do to prevent this spread. Lockdown might delay severe cases for a while, but once restrictions are eased, cases will reappear. I expect, if we count the number of deaths from COVID in each country a year from now, the figures will be similar, regardless of the measures taken. The First Minister said earlier, quite rightly, that the lockdown is a major generator of poverty and inequality, therefore we must lift the restrictions as quickly as is consistent with stopping the health service from being overwhelmed in its ability to treat severe cases.

In Sweden, the infection rate of the disease is actually less than here in Britain. And in Stockholm county, a quarter of the population have now had this infection, but the death rates in Sweden, although higher than their neighbours, are not dramatically different from the death rates in other western European countries. So, does he not see that the overall best interests of the people of this country are in being bold, rather than timid, which is what the Welsh Government seems to want to do?

Llywydd, apologies that I struggled to hear a little bit of what the Member was saying, but I think the thrust of his argument is that we are 'foolish', I think was the word he used, to focus on the R value and that we should be bold. Well, let me tell him what being bold would mean: the R value in Wales, we think, at the moment is 0.8, and even at 0.8 we have to anticipate that over the next three months another 800 Welsh citizens will die because of the virus. If the R number were to rise to 1.1—so that's a tiny number of one-tenths of one—if it was to creep up to 1.1, the number of deaths over that three-month period would be 7,200. So, the price of being bold is the death of 6,500 people in Wales.

I see that the Member doesn't agree, but I'm not making it up. I am giving him the very best figures that our epidemiologists and public health physicians offer. And this is a figure that will be agreed right across the United Kingdom. At 0.8, 800 people very, very sadly may die over the next three months. At 1.1—just that tiny increase—it's 7,200. It's easy to sit here and be bold. I'm not going to be willing to be bold when 6,500 of our fellow citizens would have to bear the brunt of that boldness.

Before I call Huw Irranca-Davies, can I just make sure that Members have their microphone close to their mouths when they're speaking? I've only just noticed that perhaps Neil Hamilton's wasn't at that point, but it was just about possible to hear. So, just a reminder to all Members, and—who did I say? Yes, Huw Irranca-Davies.

Diolch, Llywydd. I hope you can hear me.

Yes.

Could I ask you, First Minister, for your emerging thoughts on the work being taken forward by the Counsel General on rebuilding post COVD-19, and the similar work being developed by some of the big city mayors in England on the theme of 'building back better'? In this terrible ongoing tragedy of coronavirus, people have also seen, first-hand, the benefits of cleaner air, lower traffic, and more liveable streets and communities in places that were previously choked with pollution and congestion. And under lockdown, people have seen first-hand the quality-of-life benefits of vibrant, green spaces, as compared to tarmac and concrete, and more space and freedom to walk and cycle rather than to drive. So, First Minister, can I ask what measures can be put into place right now, and going forward as the restrictions may be eased, to enable more and more people to get around for work and recreation by walking and cycling, especially while the capacity of public transport remains constrained, so that we can avoid a calamitous return to traffic congestion, air and noise pollution and the associated health impacts, and so that we can respond to the very real underlying climate change emergency?

Llywydd, I thank Huw Irranca-Davies for that. Can I just begin by admiring the tribute that I can see behind him to people from the Llynfi valley who lost their lives in fighting fascism during the 1930s?

He will have seen the statement that my colleague Lee Waters put out last week, inviting expressions of interest by 21 May from all local authorities to take advantage of the fact that roads are nowhere near as busy as they otherwise would be to try to lock in some of the advantages that Huw Irranca-Davies has referred to. We've all at least benefited during this crisis from the declines in air pollution and noise pollution, and we really don't want to simply go back to recreating all those difficulties if we can avoid them, because of the health impacts and the impact on climate change that we knew they had.

In that call for expressions of interest from local authorities, backed up by money from the Welsh Government, we're looking to local authorities to bring forward proposals for footway widening, temporary cycle lanes, speed restrictions, bus infrastructure improvements and other things and that local authorities, in an imaginative way, as the call for proposals makes clear, use the moment we have to try to lock into our infrastructure some of the advantages that we've seen from being a major reduction in traffic over recent weeks, with the benefits that we're getting from it now and want to be able to go on seeing those benefits in the future. 

Can I ask, First Minister—? I listened very carefully to your answer to Andrew R.T. Davies before, but, I have to say, I'm not very satisfied with it. It's very clear, from the guidance that prevailed here in Wales on Saturday that, going for a walk and having a picnic cannot be considered to be exercise and is not intended to be a reasonable excuse. You changed the guidance on Monday, and many people will think that that might be because of the fact that the health Minister was photographed sitting on the park bench having a picnic with his family over the weekend.

Now, it looks to the public that it's one rule for the health Minister and another rule for them. So, don't you agree with me that Vaughan Gething has had his chips? And when are you going to remove him from the park bench and put him on the subs bench, where he belongs? 

Llywydd, I've already said, I'm not going to be drawn into that sort of distasteful personal attack on anybody. A brief stop to allow a child to eat is not a picnic in anybody's language, and just for his information, before he tries to spread the sort of slur that he tried in his question, the decisions that the Welsh Government made on the measures that we were going to change were made on Thursday of last week. They were made in a Cabinet meeting that was properly and officially minuted; it had nothing to do with any incident that he is referring to and he should stop trying to imply that it did. 

I'm sure the First Minister will agree with me that, while the extension to the job retention scheme, the furlough scheme, is welcome, it's really regrettable that we still have approximately 22,000 Welsh citizens who should have been able to be helped by that scheme who are not, because they were changing jobs at the time that the scheme was introduced.

May I ask the First Minister for two things this afternoon? Will he commit to continuing, as I know the economy Minister has already done, to advocate to the UK Government for those Welsh citizens who have been inadvertently, I believe, but most unfairly, excluded from the scheme? And will he also have discussions with the Welsh Minister for the economy to see if there's any possibility that if the Chancellor remains intransigent on this matter that the Welsh Government may be able to provide some assistance to those citizens who have been let down? I should be clear here, Llywydd, I'm not suggesting that Welsh Government would be able to afford to replace furlough, but there may be some other kind of assistance that can be provided if the Chancellor cannot be persuaded to include these people. 

Llywydd, can I thank Helen Mary Jones for those very constructive suggestions? I will share with her that we welcome the furlough scheme and we welcome its extension, and I think she's right as well. But the unfairness in it, particularly to those people who were changing jobs at the time, was not an intentional unfairness, but it is a very real unfairness in the lives of those individuals, and we do and will go on putting those points directly to the UK Government as evidence of some of the unintended aspects of the schemes put in place by the UK Government become more apparent.

Helen Mary Jones will know that we paused our own economic resilience fund to take stock of it, to see whether there is any fine tuning that we could make to be able to meet some additional gaps in the provision made by the UK Government. We're working hard inside the Welsh Government now to see if there are any further ways in which we might be able to collect some money together to bolster that fund still further. And I will absolutely make sure that I discuss with Ken Skates the plight of the people Helen Mary Jones has highlighted this afternoon.

First Minister, as we go through this pandemic, it's becoming increasingly clear that there is greater incidence of the disease in our black and minority ethnic communities. I know that there's work going on at a Wales and UK level to try and understand the reasons for that, and address it as effectively as possible. But, as we move out of lockdown, First Minister, and perhaps we move towards trace, test and protect, I think there's going to be a stronger need still to make sure that engagement with our ethnic minority communities, communication and messaging is everything that it needs to be, given language and cultural differences. So, I just wonder whether Welsh Government will be stepping up its efforts to make sure that we are understanding and engaging with our ethnic minority communities ever more effectively given the particular threat posed to them by this terrible virus.

Llywydd, can I thank John Griffiths for those important questions? I think I said last week in answering questions that I was going, during the rest of the afternoon, to attend part of the meeting of the advisory group that we have set up from black and minority ethnic communities. And I did indeed do that, and I'm looking forward to some of the recommendations from the work that is being chaired by Judge Ray Singh and involves people from a wide range of relevant communities in Wales.

The point that John Griffiths has made this afternoon was echoed in that part of the conversation that I was able to listen in on, which is that community-level engagement will require a different sort of approach, and as we move into trace, test and protect, lots of what that will rely on will be web based and telephone based, but we will need some capacity of people able to walk around in communities and communicate with people in that way. So, we're thinking that through, we're thinking through the points that John made about language and literacy, and how we get messages into communities that are not likely to get their information or their advice from more conventional forms of media. So, I thank him for raising those points. I want to assure him that they were being debated in a lively way inside the advisory group and that that strand in their thinking is making a difference to the way in which practical planning for the test, trace and protect service will be designed and delivered in Wales.

First Minister, Animal Farm has been mentioned, and I'm sure that Mark Reckless was doing a good impression there of being the Boxer to Nigel Farage's Napoleon. I do hope, of course, he doesn't end up being taken away, and nor would I want him to.

The Snowball figure, perhaps, is Daniel Kawczynski, isn't he—the Conservative MP for Shrewsbury who, in answer to not being able to go to the beach, is to abolish the Government and Parliament of the country in which that beach is situated, and in fairness, he's been condemned by members of his own party about that. I'm sure also he'll join me in condemning Darren Millar's parliamentary colleague, David Jones, who is at this very moment on Twitter using the hashtag #StayAlert and is using another Government's strapline. I know he's often tried to pretend he's living in England, but this is another mistake as far as his constituents are concerned. I'm very sure that Darren Miller will join in in that condemnation.

First Minister, do you agree with me that what we've heard today regarding the health Minister is deeply misleading? We have a situation here where somebody goes out for a walk, for exercise with his family, including a five-year-old child. They then have food because the five-year-old child is hungry, and sit down and eat it. Well, I'm sorry, but nobody fair, rational or indeed proportional in any way would see that as being anything wrong. And I'm suspicious about this because on Friday, we had the announcement regarding what was happening in Wales and on Sunday in England. The Sun normally takes no interest at all in Wales. I wonder if the First Minister knows, perhaps, whether The Sun was put up to this by somebody and the fact that it's been used today does give me some cause for concern. 

Finally, First Minister, could I ask you this—? You've been very helpful in clarifying the situation with regard to golf and angling particularly, and you have said—and it seems quite clear to me—that the default position is to stay at home but there are, of course, exceptions. One exception is to do something that's necessary—going, perhaps, to the supermarket where it's necessary to drive to the nearest supermarket. That much is clear, I think, to the public. But you've also said, of course, that exercise is another reason. Exercise is not necessary, but nevertheless, it is permitted. And what is clear is that, with exercise, there are more stringent rules in the sense that people should not drive to exercise. There's no need to do that anyway; that's not essential or necessary. But, of course, what you've done today is to clarify the situation with regard to some sports and pastimes. With golf, I think it's probably right to say, isn't it, that golf clubs shouldn't really open, but golf courses could be opened with the appropriate safeguards and following the appropriate rules? When it comes to angling, of course—

Can I ask Carwyn Jones to come to his question, please?

I am coming to it. I know I'm trying your patience, Llywydd. Can I thank the First Minister for providing the clarity again about angling? At the moment, it's not good weather for angling, I have to say—

We don't need to know what the weather's like. We all know that the weather's good. Can we come to the question?

I was simply going to say: can I thank the First Minister for the clarity he's provided with regard to golf and angling particularly and, of course, the clarity he's provided for the whole of the last few weeks in contrast to what we've seen sometimes over the border in England? 

First Minister. 

Well, I thank Carwyn Jones for those points. I think the position in Wales is clear. The advice is, 'Stay at home'. You leave home by exception, and when you're engaging in one of the exceptions, then you stay as locally as possible for those exceptions, because that's the way in which we help to save lives.

I agree entirely with the points that my colleague, Carwyn Jones, made about Vaughan Gething and his family. I'm afraid I'm not a reader of The Sun newspaper, so I'm not able to help the former First Minister there.

Let me go to the big points that he made at the start of his contribution. I want to be clear, Llywydd, the Welsh Government believes in a four-nation approach. We think we've still got a four-nation approach, because all four parts of the United Kingdom are still moving in the same direction in the same careful and cautious way. What you don't want is to turn the legitimate use of the powers of the Senedd, to fine tune those things so they fit for Wales, into something that is divisive as the Member of Parliament for Shrewsbury so clearly deliberately set out to do, or, indeed, confusing. The advice in Wales is clear: stay home, protect the NHS, save lives. All Members of Parliament should be telling Welsh citizens the position that is here in Wales, and it is only confusing where people are trying to do something different. 

Finally, Jack Sargeant.

[Inaudible.]—between Wales and England in Alyn and Deeside. There is, however, a street in my constituency called Boundary Lane, and residents on each side of that street are in either nation. For residents, the Prime Minister's statement on Sunday caused real confusion, particularly in the area of work. Residents who work in Wales are protected by social distancing in the workplace laws that your Government introduced; those who work in England are not. Will you join me, First Minister, in calling on Boris Johnson and the UK Government to introduce similar laws and rules to protect my constituents who work across the border in England?

I thank Jack Sargeant for that. Llywydd, we put the 2m rule into the regulations in Wales to give workers confidence that, if they were going to work, their employers would have taken all reasonable measures to protect their health and well-being, and the huge majority of employers in Wales do exactly that. I think having had that rule in the law here in Wales for weeks past gives us a head start in getting people back to work with the confidence that they need that their health and well-being is going to be protected. So, I think we did the right thing. I think that it has helped. I think that it would help in other parts too to have that rule there in the law, because it's one thing to encourage people to do something, another thing to give them confidence, in a time when people are fearful for their own safety and the safety of their families, that they can do the things they're being encouraged to do in a way that does not put them at risk. We've worked really hard here in Wales with our trade unions, with our employers and employer organisations, and I think that is paying dividends in allowing Welsh citizens to go back to work knowing they're safe, and people who live in Wales and work on the other side of our border are entitled to an equal level of insurance. 

I thank the First Minister. A point of order from the leader of Plaid Cymru, Adam Price.

Diolch, Llywydd. Earlier today, the Government published 'Test Trace Protect', probably, actually, one of the most important documents it's published so far as part of its policy around the virus. It was published at 13:22, so Members will not have had the opportunity, obviously, to study the document—eight pages long—in the depth that it requires. This will be our only opportunity today to scrutinise the Government and ask questions of the Minister in relation to this strategy for the next seven days, so I was wondering if you would consider, Llywydd, using the power that you have under section 12.18 of the Standing Orders to call a short break of half an hour so that Members can have the opportunity to read the document before they respond  to the health Minister's statement, or, alternatively, using the power that you have under section 12.17, to change the order of the statements today so we have the health Minister's statement later in the afternoon, once again giving Members the opportunity to read the strategy document first, so they can ask questions fully informed about the Government's policy.

Thank you for that point of order. As Members know, it is good practice to circulate statements in advance of the statements being given, and I appreciate that this is an important statement that we're about to hear, but I don't think it's appropriate at this time to be delaying that statement, so I hope that all Members' attention has been drawn by Adam Price to the document that was circulated at 13:22, and I'm sure that the health Minister will be making references to that during the statement. But it is, as I've said, good practice to give Members as much time to consider important information as is possible.