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

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 2:00 pm on 5 August 2020.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 2:00, 5 August 2020

Well, Llywydd, I thank the Member for what he said in introducing his question. He asks how we make the calculations that we do, and I can explain the process that we go through very briefly. This is the first week of this count—three-week review. What will happen across the Welsh Government is that we will compile the longest list we can of all the different things we might yet do to lift restrictions both on businesses and on individuals, and equestrian centres, as it happens, are on that list. We will then take advice from the chief medical officer by the end of this week, and at the start of next week we will begin to narrow that list down to those things that we think have the most pressing cases for being ameliorated. And then we judge that in the third week against the latest information we have across a whole range of indicators about the current prevalence of the disease in Wales, and it is that that gives us the sense of how much headroom we may have and which measures we're able to take. We're guided by the advice of the SAGE and the World Health Organization in only taking one step at a time, so there is a chance of connecting the action you take and the impact that it has on the circulation of the virus.

The difficulty, I think, in the Member's view of things is this: that this is a virus where you can go from effective suppression to widespread circulation in a matter of just a few weeks. So, in Melbourne in Australia, four weeks before 5 million people have gone back into lockdown, there were days when not a single new case was being reported amongst those 5 million people—not a single new case—and four weeks later, the virus is in such violent circulation that all of those 5 million people had to go back into a more stringent lockdown than at any time previously, and those measures have had to be further increased as the state of Victoria declares a state of disaster. Now, if you are separated from where we are today from a state of disaster by only a few weeks, you cannot afford to take a sunny and optimistic view of how the virus will operate in Wales, and that's not the way that we do it here in the Welsh Government. 

On two specific questions, Llywydd, that the Member mentioned: as far as the arts are concerned, he didn't refer to the £16 million we had previously provided to the arts in Wales from within our own resources. So, the accumulative investment in the arts well exceeds the consequential that we received for that purpose: it's not £6 million less, it's about £10 million more than we received.

And our advice to people in Wales is that if you can effectively work from home, it's still preferable that you do that. Now, 'work effectively' is the right phrase. If you can't effectively work from home, then the case for returning to work is stronger. But here in the Welsh Government, for example, where we have been operating with almost everybody working from home, we have found we are able to do that very effectively indeed and I do not want to see people in large numbers return to workplaces where that is not necessary for the efficient operation of this organisation. Far better, from an environmental point of view and from a public health point of view, that we build on that success and allow more people to work from home for longer.