Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:44 pm on 16 September 2020.
Thank you. Perhaps I'll deal with that final point first. You'll recall that we had real difficulty and challenges at the start of the pandemic in significantly increasing our own testing resources. We had equipment on order that was held up and not able to be delivered into Wales. That was because of restrictions provided in other countries. And we then also had some challenges when equipment arrived—one piece in particular that took several weeks to settle down and function properly. So, it's why there is some difficulty both in increasing our own testing resources and the people who are needed to make sure those tests are processed properly, together with some concern over the difficulties that lighthouse labs currently face. Because whilst Matt Hancock has indicated it'll be a number of weeks—up to around three weeks, he hopes—before lighthouse labs are back on an even keel with much more capacity, able to meet the demand that they face, we know it's possible for other events to intervene, and that's why we're already switching our capacity.
We're not waiting three weeks and saying, 'We just need to tough it out'; we're actually increasing our own capacity available to the public through NHS Wales laboratories. And that's partly the reason why we've increased our own capacity to make sure that there is an alternative to publicly available testing. It's also, though, that we increased that capacity ready for the autumn and winter period, when we expect we'll have more people coming into our hospitals, more people seeking healthcare, and we'll need to have testing facilities available, and it will allow us, as we are doing, to deploy testing in hotspot areas. So, we're doing exactly what we thought we would need to do, but it's earlier and in a different way because of the challenges that the UK programme is facing.
It's not a simple matter of blind faith; it's actually a matter of the practical reality of where resources are. It's a UK programme and, actually, a few months ago, the unified criticism of me was that we weren't taking part when other nations were taking part. We resolved the data issues and the lighthouse lab programme actually worked pretty well for the last few months. We now need to deal with the challenge that we all recognise is taking place and the anxiety that is causing constituents.
On enforcement, I'd like to praise environmental health officers in every local authority, regardless of the leadership of that council. Environmental health officers have been a huge part of what we are doing and I really do want to pay tribute to them. They are all going above and beyond the normal call of duty to check on premises, to enforce and to keep the public safe. We're not looking to introduce COVID marshals as the UK Government suggested they were going to do. We're looking to see more recruitment of people to assist environmental health officers through proper recruitment processes and local authorities are already looking at how they're going to do that. My colleague Julie James, the Minister for Housing and Local Government, is working with local authorities and being clear that we want to see them co-operate with each other. Because, actually, given the sustained increase in cases in Caerphilly, they have needed support from others, and it's about how councils work together, crucially to make sure that 22 authorities aren't competing against each other for the same limited resource.
I do, though, want to pay tribute, not just to environmental health officers, but the leaderships of the particular local authorities that we've been working with. I can say that, at the start of this, with the first incident in Ynys Môn, the Plaid Cymru leader there was very responsible and I thought did a very good job in leading her council through that first significant incident. And we're seeing that now with Philippa Marsden in Caerphilly and Andrew Morgan in Rhondda Cynon Taf. And that relationship, where we're talking regularly with them, is really important. They're getting unified communication as well, so that people on the ground, with their local responsibilities in local government, are discharging those with the support of and in a consistent way with Welsh Government. And that is also about the simplicity of our message.
We've actually had a pretty consistent message here in Wales. We have challenges with different messages and the way the media communicate those, and different messages in particular across our border, where lots of people get their media from. So, we have been republishing messages, through not just social media, but using the Welsh media too, and Ministers have had a very high profile in not just Welsh media, but across UK stations as well. We'll continue to do so to try to deal with people's anxiety about not just the message, but about how to get a test and when to get a test.
The symptoms are a high temperature, a new continuous cough or a loss of a sense of taste or smell. That's when you should be going to get a test, and if you do need a test, don't go to a healthcare facility. Don't go to a hospital, don't visit your GP, don't go to a pharmacy—that's exactly where we don't want you to be. Please, if you can, book your test from home, or if you need to go to a walk-in centre, make sure that you're not breaching social distancing rules in place with other members of the public.