Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 11:24 am on 24 June 2020.
Well, Llywydd, the announcement that we made on Friday does give hope to the tourism industry in Wales. It came as a result of very detailed discussions with the sector itself. The sector must now prepare to demonstrate that it is able to reopen safely in self-contained accommodation, and that it is able to take its local communities with it, because community consent remains a fundamentally important part of the plan for that industry.
When the industry has demonstrated, as I certainly hope it can, that it is able safely to reopen on the terms we have announced so far, then our aim will be to add to the repertoire of things that can be done by that industry. But it is important we do it step by step, that we provide confidence to local communities, by demonstrating that the reopening of the industry can be done in a way that protects the health of staff, visitors and people who live in those localities. And I think the industry understands that very well.
Llywydd, the siren call for clarity in a set of circumstances that are so intrinsically unclear seems to me to miss the point by a very wide mark indeed. If the Member is able to tell me what the state of the virus in Wales will be six weeks, let alone six months, away from where we are today, then we would be able to provide clarity of the sort that he requires, but it's just not possible. And I'm sure he does understand that—that none of us know how this disease will progress as we move through the summer and into the autumn. We do our best to provide forward guidance to sectors in Wales, but to ask us to provide clarity where none is possible would be to provide a false prospectus to those industries, not something helpful of the sort that we wish to provide.