Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 1:58 pm on 23 September 2020.
Well, Llywydd, I'll see if there's anything in what the Member has said to which I can make a positive response. I entirely refute any disrespect. This Government has answered questions on the floor of the Senedd right throughout the coronavirus crisis, including right through our recess period. We have been more available to this Senedd than any other Parliament in the United Kingdom has been able to question Ministers that are responsible to those different democratic forums. We were making decisions here, as I said, well into last evening. I am not responsible for the time that the BBC requires material to be supplied to them; that's not a decision that I make, it's a decision that broadcasters make because of their scheduling obligations, and we pushed that to the very limit in order to try to make decisions in the way that I think they need to be made in Wales. And I'm very pleased to be here this afternoon, at the earliest opportunity, answering Members' questions.
For the rest of Adam Price's contribution, I'm not sure exactly what I can make of it, Llywydd. He asked me to follow the advice of a chief medical officer who was a chief medical officer 20 years ago when I have a chief medical officer here today whose advice I am able to take and do my best to follow.
He complains about people hearing things in news conferences rather than in the Senedd, and then urges me to reinstate news conferences on every day of the week. He talks about one size not fitting all, and then urges me to go much further in restricting the freedoms available to people in their daily lives in Wales. Well, I don't agree with him. I think he is not compliant with the obligation that we have under the regulations in Wales to be proportionate in every action we take, to weigh up the public health risk, and then to take measures that we think are commensurate with that risk. It's why we will have an approach in Wales that remains cautious. How many times on the floor of the Senedd have I been urged by Members not to be so cautious, not to lag behind—as people have put it to me—when other parts of the United Kingdom have gone further, including from the leader of Plaid Cymru himself when he was pointing to Scotland as an example? Our careful, cautious approach has stood us in good stead. We will go on being proportionate as much as we can in the decisions that we make.
The Irish model, which the Member referred to, amongst his many other references to places for which I have no responsibility whatsoever, in Antwerp and Sweden and other parts of his international travel prospectus—. In Ireland, they've had to review their model so often that it is very difficult, I think, for people to keep up with the changes that are being made. We are trying, for simplicity's sake and to enable people in Wales to have a fighting chance of understanding the rules that we are asking them to abide by, to make those changes as seldom as possible. That is the course of action that we continue to follow here in Wales, and the announcements made and reported to the Senedd today are consistent with that approach.