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

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 2:11 pm on 26 August 2020.

Alert me about debates like this

Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 2:11, 26 August 2020

Llywydd, I thank Lynne Neagle for both of those points. I, too, have seen a rise in the number of concerns raised directly with the Welsh Government by people who feel that some supermarkets have retreated too quickly from some of the safeguards they had in place earlier in the pandemic. It is by no means a universal picture; many supermarkets continue to work very hard to make sure that their premises are properly organised with staff on hand to assist and people reminded of the need to behave in a way that doesn't put other people at risk. But that clearly is not universal given the postbag I have seen and the points that Lynne Neagle has made. As a result of that, our colleague Lesley Griffiths wrote again to supermarkets at the start of this week reminding them of what the law requires here in Wales. As the Member will know, it's a bit of a continuous battle to remind some organisations that operate beyond Wales that the law in Wales can be different, and their legal obligations here are of exactly the same order as they would be if those regulations were made elsewhere. Lesley Griffiths has a meeting—one of her regular meetings—with the supermarket group that we work with here in Wales later this afternoon, and she will be reinforcing those points with them again there. 

As for mental health, I've had an opportunity briefly to look at the Mind Cymru survey. It is a sobering document with over 900 people responding to it, and as we've said many times in these sessions, there is more than one form of harm that comes from coronavirus. The measures that we have had to take in order to suppress its circulation have undoubtedly had an impact on the mental health and well-being of people who've had to bear the brunt of that in terms of isolation and restrictions and so on. Ahead of the winter—and I agree with Lynne Neagle, there's a challenging period coming—what we're doing in the Welsh Government is to try to reinforce those tier 0 and tier 1 services that are most readily available, including strengthening the Community Advice and Listening Line mental health helpline, launching the young person's mental health toolkit and then working with our health services, which did do their very best to keep as much of mental health as they could going during the pandemic, albeit in different ways. I know that the absence of face-to-face discussions is particularly challenging for some people with mental health conditions, but we are working with our local health boards to see how they will be able to maintain those essential services as well as gearing themselves up for what may be additional mental health demands as the long-term impacts of responding to the virus become clearer.

And in a phrase that the Member will very well recognise, we have to make this everybody's business. It cannot just be left to the health service alone. Employers have a responsibility, schools will have a responsibility, we each of us have some responsibility in our own lives to think about and to make some provision for the mental health and well-being of our fellow citizens, particularly those who have found this experience the most difficult and most stressful of all.