2. Will the Minister make a statement providing an update on the support and resources that will be available to local authorities in developing contact tracing capacity following publication of the Welsh Government's strategy for lifting the current restrictions? TQ434

Thank you for the question, Delyth. We are supporting local authorities to develop and grow local contact-tracing capacity. They are pivotal to preventing the transmission of the virus. Discussions are ongoing to identify their resource needs, and lessons learned from the trials will be invaluable in helping to form the next phase of our response. 

Thank you for that response, Minister. It's widely accepted that the most important part of any strategy to tackle COVID-19 is the test, track and trace aspect. Put simply, we have to have that kind of test and track regime in place before we can consider any substantial lifting of the current restrictions. I'm sure you'll agree with me on that. 

Now, on Monday, I was really pleased to see Ceredigion council publish its own coronavirus adjustment plan for the county, which is looking to the next phase. Now, that plan includes details of their already operational contact-tracing system. I'd like to take this opportunity to congratulate Ceredigion for being at the forefront of these efforts, and I'd like to invite you, Minister, to do the same and offer to consider how the Ceredigion model could be used as an example to boost best practice in other areas. 

Now, Minister, local authorities are, of course, identified as having a key role in the successful delivery of your Government's test, trace and protect plan, but they do still await details at a national level from the Welsh Government about how contact tracing will operate on the ground across Wales and, crucially, what resources and support—particularly financial support—is going to be available to local authorities. Lots of the now invaluable public protection expertise within local authorities might have been lost through austerity, so I'd welcome your thoughts on how we can ensure that we come back from anything that's been lost in that regard.

Finally, just some specific questions to you, Minister. Could you update the Senedd, please, on how many people you envisage will be required to undertake contact tracing work across Wales? How many people have already been allocated to these roles, whether they are going to be taken from the existing local authority workforce or whether there is external recruitment that has been undertaken to add to this? What timescales will be involved would also be good for us to know. And, in terms of the technical resource to support the work of human contact tracers on the ground, is the Welsh Government recommending the use of a single app for local authorities and others, and could you give us details of that, please? Thank you. 

Thank you for that series of questions, Delyth. I'll do my best to answer them. I'm aware of the Ceredigion situation, of course, and Ceredigion have worked very hard to get that in place. They are amongst the many authorities that are building on and rapidly growing the contact-tracing expertise that's already existed in our local authorities and health boards and it's at the very heart of our test, trace and protect strategy. 

The reality is that the national plan will only work if we make full use of existing local knowledge, skills and expertise, and that has, as you rightly say, been built up over many years within the health protection teams of our local authorities and health boards, specifically in environmental health arrangements. That's exactly the approach that we are taking in Wales. We are very proud of our local authorities and their local expertise. I'm acutely aware that they will need our full support and that the resource implications are likely to be high. We are very committed to providing the resources that are necessary to do that. 

We've been working in close partnership to identify the full cost implications, and further advice and guidance will be issued when we have come to the end of that piece of work. All our health board and local authority partners have responded with determination and commitment to operationalise the tracing plan, as set out in the test, trace and protect plan.

Delyth will know—I know because I've had conversations with her about it—that I have a regular phone call with all of the leaders in local authorities in Wales and, later this week, I will be talking to them again. I am aware that, in the call this morning—which I wasn't part of, but I am aware that, in the call this morning, everyone expressed satisfaction with the way that it's going so far and continues to commit to the engagement that we have in rolling out the small-scale contact tracing trials that are under way in four of our health boards.

I'm not in a position to answer about the app as that's within Vaughan Gething's portfolio, but I'm sure that we can get an answer around that. However, I can say this about it: we are very determined to root this in our local communities and in their local knowledge and expertise. The app, I'm sure, will be assisting in that, but it will certainly not be the only solution.   

Mark Isherwood. Microphone needs to be unmuted.

There we are. Okay, thank you. Reinforcing the statement by the leader of the Welsh Local Government Association that tracking and tracing coronavirus cases in Wales is a mammoth task, and councils would need significant additional resources for the vital work, Welsh Conservative local authority leaders told me yesterday that they seek clarity from the Welsh Government on its 'Test Trace Protect' programme and the commitment to fully resource this. In stating that it wants the programme operational by the end of May, the Welsh Government has acknowledged this would require significant resources and said some 1,000 staff would initially be needed, including people working for local authorities. Alongside specially-trained council public protection officers and partners in health, other non-clinical staff will need to be either recruited or redeployed. How do you therefore respond to the statement made to me by local authority leaders that if the Welsh Government does not totally commit to fully financing its 'Test Trace Protect' strategy, some local authorities will be crippled? 

Thank you for that, Mark. As I said, we work very closely with all the local authority leaders in Wales. All of them join the call that I join them on at least once a week, sometimes many more times than that. As I said, we are developing a set of pilots that will explore key aspects of this particular plan: key aspects of manual tracing, scripts, volumes, workforce roles, training requirements, data capture, information flow, potential legal issues, including scenario planning and high-risk contact requirements. So, we are working with our local authorities to understand all the ramifications of that, and to understand what their resource requirements are. And as I said in response to Delyth earlier, we are fully aware that they need to be fully supported in that, and I've made that very clear to the leaders.  

Andrew Morgan, the leader of the WLGA, is absolutely right—it is a mammoth task—but I'm very pleased to say that our local authorities have all stepped up to that plate and are working very hard with us and with the piloting authorities to make sure that we all work together in partnership to deliver this very important plan for Wales. 

I thank the Minister.