Obviously, in Plaid Cymru, we do support these regulations, though as has already been noted, this vote is retrospective as the regulations are in place, and as a member of the legislation committee, I support, naturally, the excellent comments from our Chair, Mick Antoniw. The fact is, though, the R rate remains too high to risk a further wave of cases, and we were too slow to enter lockdown, it's cost lives and it means we have to stay in lockdown longer. And that's why we need a more cautious approach in easing restrictions; in the long run it means not having to re-impose them again. But, we do have several concerns.

First, the Welsh Government's communications have been all over the place here. People are allowed now out to exercise more than once a day, as we have heard, provided they don't drive, but some people are still very unclear about all of this, and I have a filling inbox as well to that effect. Obviously this hasn't been helped by the contempt the UK Government has shown Wales with no consideration that its changes to allow driving would inevitably lead to people driving to tourist spots here in Wales. We're also concerned by the failure to properly prevent an exodus to second homes. We note new COVID cases are on the rise in Betsi Cadwaladr.

Now, moving on, I realise the Welsh Government has published its exit strategy with its traffic lights; there's a distinct lack of detail in it though, and many people will be none the wiser about basic questions relevant to their lives now, like when can they take their children to see their grandparents. Key to being able to answer all of this of course is suppressing the virus, in our view, but instead, what we have from both Governments is managerial intonations about mitigating and managing the R rate to prevent a second wave. The maths of it is simple: a few more weeks of relentless efforts to keep R below 0.5 will yield far greater results than months of attempting to keep slightly below 1. Testing and contact tracing will be key.

Now, this country used to have a superb public health and communicable disease control system, with a system of notifiable disease notification and personal contact tracing reaching back over decades. That excellent public and environmental health infrastructure has been decimated by austerity and Government complacency about the possibility of pandemics in general. Now, Welsh Government are on the charge to install a new layer of private testing and app-based tech as though we've never thought of contact tracing ever before in our lives. Local public health teams need to take back control. Contact tracing and testing, case finding, isolation and quarantine are classic public health measures that have always been used for controlling communicable diseases since Victorian times, since Dr John Snow, in fact, isolated the Broad Street water pump in Soho in London in 1854 as the source of a cholera epidemic.

In closing, huge personal sacrifices have been made in lockdown to suppress the virus. We are not there yet. Cases of COVID infection are still on the rise in parts of Wales. Voting against any of these regulations today though makes no sense, because it'll be like turning the clock back to not allow visits to garden centres, and not allow more exercise—things that have already kicked in. That's due to the retrospective nature of both the debate we're having and the voting that we will shortly undergo. So, we shall be supporting the regulations. Diolch yn fawr.