Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 11:45 am on 1 July 2020.
Well, Llywydd, while I don't disagree with some of the Member's diagnosis, I very much disagree with his description of the recipe. He is right to say that coronavirus has a disproportionate impact on some members of our society, and those most disadvantaged to begin with feel the impact of this disease most significantly. The best way to help them is to make sure that the Welsh economy has a smooth and reliable recovery from coronavirus—that we don't have a recovery in which we open up too much too soon and then see a clampdown being needed again so the economy goes into reverse.
So, he offers us a sort of Texas approach to coronavirus, in which you lift the lockdown rapidly, you let all sorts of things resume again because you think that's right for the economy, and, lo and behold, the virus is off circulating again everywhere and you have to clamp down all over again. That is what we're avoiding here in Wales in the way that we are doing things. We are reopening our economy, we are doing it step by step, we are monitoring it as we go, we are doing our best to make sure that we can have confidence in our economy and that we will not find ourselves in a position of having to put all of that into reverse, because nothing could be worse for the economy or for those people who rely on it.