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

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 1:56 pm on 13 May 2020.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 1:56, 13 May 2020

—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.