Questions Without Notice from the Party Leaders

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:47 pm on 6 October 2020.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 1:47, 6 October 2020

Well, Llywydd, I thank Adam Price for that. I share his sense of disappointment at the Prime Minister's apparent conclusion—and I say 'apparent' because although he gave an interview in which he opined on this matter, he is yet to reply to my letter to him of Monday last week, and I think that is deeply disrespectful, not to me but to the Senedd and to people here in Wales. I do expect to see a reply to that letter and I expect to see a rationale set out in that letter that explains why the Prime Minister appears to have come to his conclusion.

What I asked for in my letter was not a border solution, it was a solution that would have prevented people living in hotspot areas in England from travelling to other places where the virus was not in the same place, whether that was in England, Scotland or in Wales. That's the solution that we have in Wales: people who live in high coronavirus areas in Wales aren't able to travel to England to take the virus with them. And I still think that that is the right answer and I pressed that again with the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster in a meeting held with him yesterday.

In the meantime, Llywydd, we have to prepare against the day when the Prime Minister continues to refuse to take this straightforwardly sensible course of action, and there are a range of ways in which we could act. Quarantine is one of them, Members will remember the five-mile rule we had in Wales, or the five-mile guidance, at least, we had in Wales earlier in the summer, and the possibility that Adam Price has set out is another possibility that we could use within our own powers. I think that is the second-best way to do it. I've put the best way to the Prime Minister. I expect to get a proper answer from him. If he refuses to do that, then, of course, we will think about what we can do, and we are actively exploring what we can do, with the powers we hold ourselves.