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

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 2:05 pm on 26 August 2020.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 2:05, 26 August 2020

As for face coverings in education, I think we said yesterday that we would make a statement before the end of today. That is still the case. We remain in discussions with a variety of important interests—local authorities, teaching unions, the children's commissioner here in Wales. But I will say this to the Member: that the approach we would take will be consistent with the approach we set out in our local lockdown plan published last week. There is a potential part to be played by face coverings in secondary schools in a local context where numbers rise above a certain threshold, where particular buildings don't allow the safe circulation of young people around a school. It is for a local determination in that set of particular circumstances that those closest to them are best equipped to assess, against guidance that we will provide to them.

I'm sorry if the Member feels that people have felt not welcome to come to Wales; that's never been the message of the Welsh Government, quite certainly. People are very welcome to come to Wales and then to help us all to keep Wales safe by acting responsibly when they are here, and that is the way that almost everybody who visits Wales behaves. And actually, I think the figures don't bear out the Member's anxiety, because Wales has been very full indeed of visitors during this school holiday period, with many people from both within Wales and beyond coming to enjoy everything that we have to offer.

I don't agree with the Member on enforcement powers; while the vast majority of businesses behave very responsibly and do all the right things, it is wrong that those good businesses can be undercut by others that, in a reckless way, fail to observe the regulations, and we've seen too many examples of that not to take action. It's not the Welsh Government that will take action; it is local authorities that have been given the powers. And in Wrexham, which the Member mentioned, we've had an example this week where an enforcement notice has had to be issued to a local business because the way in which it was being conducted contributed to a rising spike of coronavirus cases amongst its customers. And where that is the case—and I want it to be proportionate and I want it to be targeted, but where it is necessary—it is right that local authorities have the powers they need to act.

It's an interesting and important point the Member raises about the fall in the number of people in intensive care beds in Wales as a result of coronavirus, and I believe myself it will be a mixture of causes. Partly, it may be because the recent cases have been more amongst younger people rather than older people, and the course of the illness is likely to be less significant. But it is also because clinicians have learnt, over the months that we've had coronavirus, more effective ways of treating the condition earlier on. We've had a smaller rate of conversion of hospital admissions into ICU beds than any other part of the United Kingdom across the whole months of coronavirus, and that is partly because of the way clinicians have mobilised ways of responding to it.

I notice that the Member takes up the cause of his former colleague Mr Hamilton in regarding Sweden as a poster boy for those on the right of the political spectrum here in Wales. I welcome again his conversion as well to the cause of social democracy, but unfortunately, the Swedish case is not one that bears out his assertions. The number of people who have died from coronavirus in Sweden is at a level not seen by its nearest neighbours who took different courses of action. And while I've carefully studied the Swedish case, it doesn't lead me to believe that they have a formula that we would have been right to have applied in Wales.