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

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 12:05 pm on 3 June 2020.

Alert me about debates like this

Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 12:05, 3 June 2020

I thank Carwyn Jones very much for his questions. Viewers to this will be, I think, believing that there was some collusion between him and Jenny Rathbone in her question urging the reopening of hairdressers in Wales.

But, to his serious points, on tennis, the point is this—I've answered it once already, Llywydd—that tennis can make a case for it by itself being capable of being reopened, being organised in a safe way. There are some challenges in tennis that people don't always think of in that. This virus can live on a tennis ball, and, when you play tennis, normally, certainly, a ball comes over the net and people pick it up and the person on the other side of the net picks the same ball up as well. So, it's not without its challenges to make tennis safe, but, even if it can be made safe, then, you know, gliding can be made safe, jet skiing can be made safe, bowling can be made safe. Many Members here will have received letters from different interests. What the Welsh Government has to do is to add up all those marginal extra risks and decide whether or not, in the round, that is a risk we are currently able to take. We decided last week that all the headroom that we have, more or less, was to be taken by allowing family and friends to see one another again, and we didn't feel that we could take the additional risk of opening up other parts of our normal life. We will continue to consider tennis alongside other outdoor sports as part of the current three-week review.

Llywydd, Carwyn Jones makes a very important point about lifeguard services and safety on beaches. Across the whole of the United Kingdom, the RNLI will only be operating 30 per cent of normal coverage this year because of the constraints that coronavirus has caused, and in Wales that means that there will only be 10 beaches in the whole of Wales that will have lifeguard cover, and that from 20 June to the beginning of September. So, it is very important to say to people, even people who live locally, even people who can get to the beach within 5 miles, that they will have to take particular extra care this year, because the help that would have been there normally, the supervision that would have been there normally to make sure that people can use the sea safely, will not be available in Wales in the way that it has been, and people will have to take very direct responsibility for making sure that they factor that into their plans, because safety will need to be their major consideration, and they won't have a fully operational RNLI service of the sort that we've all been so pleased to see in Wales over recent years.