15. Statement by the Minister for Health and Social Services: Update on Local Coronavirus Restrictions

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 6:52 pm on 29 September 2020.

Alert me about debates like this

Photo of Vaughan Gething Vaughan Gething Labour 6:52, 29 September 2020

Thank you to the Member for Islwyn, and I'm happy to confirm that Islwyn residents are indeed making a difference. Caerphilly county borough had, as you say, the highest rate in Wales only a few weeks ago; it's now falling—it's hovering around 50 per 100,000. We want to see that fall, and be a sustained fall, under 50 per 100,000, to allow us to consider returning freedoms that we have had to take away. And, as I say, that is not a light or an easy thing to do; it is a significant intrusion into how people live their lives. I am keen to see that return, but the measures that we have taken in breaking apart extended households, in introducing the restrictions on travel—. We know that there are fewer people travelling within and outside the Caerphilly county borough, we know that, because the infection rates are falling, we can be confident that the measures that people are taking are making a difference, and the hope is, and the expectation is, that if in Caerphilly it can work, then it can work in any and every other part of the country too. So, my thanks are to the team within the Caerphilly county borough, not just at the health board and at the council level, led by Philippa Marsden, but, actually, the residents themselves as well. And that, of course, includes the other constituencies of Caerphilly and the Rhymney part of Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney.

And I think that the hope for the future is that it is not inevitable that restrictions have to be a one-way escalator to further and further additional measures and intrusions into people's liberty. I think it is possible to see a reduction and it's up to all of us to do our part—to understand the rules and to follow the rules, and not to look for a way to break the rules, but to recognise they are there for all of us for the benefit of all of us. And if we follow them, it'll be the most effective thing we can do, together with good hand hygiene and social distancing, to reduce the amount of harm that you correctly point out has taken place already within Wales and the rest of the UK.