3. What assessment has the First Minister made of the effectiveness of the actions taken by the Welsh Government during the COVID-19 pandemic? OQ55329

I thank the Member for the question. The effectiveness of all our actions is assessed through the lens of public health, keeping people and communities safe in Wales during the pandemic. The three-week review cycle means that everything we do is assessed in the light of the most recent available evidence. 

I thank the First Minister for that answer. I do understand that there can be no real definitive answers until an inquiry has been convened and the report produced, and that will, of course, take time. But I would at this time ask the First Minister to put together an interim report, one that would allow corrective actions to be put in place quickly, based on the knowledge gained over the last few months.

Well, let me begin, Llywydd, by agreeing with David Rowlands—it's very important to learn from the experience that we are having, and we are doing our very best to do that every single day as we think over the events of recent weeks and plan for the challenges that lie ahead. But I do want to explain to him—and I know that he is likely to understand—that the Welsh Government is absolutely flat out still in dealing with the crisis that is in front of us, just this week dealing with outbreaks of coronavirus in north Wales, looking at the impact on the meat processing sector more generally, continuing to make sure that we provide testing in our care home sector, that we look at further opportunities we may be able to offer people in Wales to resume freedoms that they've been denied during the crisis. All the people we have—and the huge majority of Welsh Government employees are not working in the normal way; they are still working from home—are being deployed still to focus on the immediate challenges we face to prepare for the coming autumn and winter. The moment will come, as David Rowlands said, where there will be an opportunity to stand back and do a formal review of these things. Informally, we learn all the time and apply that learning, but until we are in calmer waters, where we are not every day having to deal with the impact of this crisis in the lives of Welsh people and Welsh communities, that moment has not yet come.

Thank you, First Minister, for that response. One measure I welcome in recent weeks over the COVID regulations is obviously the opening of schools next week. I declare an interest as a member of a local authority, and, in particular, our local authority has issued guidance to say that they are unable to take the opportunity to open schools on the fourth week, because the contractual negotiations haven't been concluded with the unions by the Welsh Government. Do you think that is a fair reason to have schools closed across Wales— because Welsh Government have failed to conclude contractual negotiations with the unions?

Well, Llywydd, my colleague Kirsty Williams will answer a topical question on this matter later this afternoon. Let me just repeat that the advice that the Welsh Government provided was that, if it were possible to create four weeks of resumed education in Wales, the case for doing that was strong. We always recognised from the beginning that there was a contractual issue in the fourth week, which is why we proposed that, for teachers who worked in the fourth week, there would be an extra week of holiday restored to them at the October half term. But, as the Welsh Local Government Association said in welcoming our proposals, it was for them to take the proposals and put them into operation in the different circumstances that each local authority in Wales faces. And that's the way it has to be, because they are the employers, not the Welsh Government.

There will be children in Wales who will be in places where four weeks of school opening is possible, and I'm very glad that those local education authorities able to do so have been able to reach that agreement. Other local authorities will face different challenges, different circumstances, and come to different conclusions. That's inevitable in the way that things are done.