6. What discussions has the First Minister had with local authority leaders regarding local lockdowns? OQ55644

Llywydd, I thank the Member for that question. In a series of meetings last week, I met with the leaders of 20 of the 22 local authorities in Wales to discuss these and related matters. Further meetings will take place this week.

Thank you, First Minister. You've obviously covered a fair amount of this with previous questions, so feel free to be brief. You've mentioned discussions with local authority leaders. In answer to Laura Anne Jones earlier, you reiterated that those discussions—. I spoke with Councillor Peter Fox this morning, the leader of Monmouthshire County Council, currently an amber authority, as I'm sure you're aware, regarding the possible use of hyperlocal lockdowns within that local authority area. Now, I fully understand that, in some cases, it might be easier to have wider lockdowns across a full county area, but could you tell us how you're going to ensure that you can look seriously at the hyperlocal lockdowns? If, for instance, an area in my constituency such as Abergavenny is particularly affected, but other areas in other parts of the county aren't, then it does make a lot of sense to only close down and specifically close down a certain area of the economy like a market town like that without affecting other areas of the county area. So, I wonder if you could tell us what discussions you've had with Peter Fox and with other council leaders about that.

Llywydd, I've had discussions, as I said in answer to an earlier question, with Councillor Peter Fox, and Nick Ramsay has just given us, I think, a practical example of the point that Andrew R.T. Davies made in the last question, and I said then that I thought that was a sensible way of thinking about these things. I'm happy to repeat that in relation to Monmouth. I study the Monmouth figures every day, and Nick Ramsay will be aware that the figures in Monmouthshire have drifted upwards over the last seven days. But this morning I also studied the report from the local incident management team, which tells me that those cases are well known, they've been identified by the TTP process, they are being contained in that way and there is no present case for introducing local restrictions in any part of Monmouthshire. If that were to change and there were to be a concentration of cases in any particular part of that county, then provided that the geographical segregation of that area could be successfully achieved, then we would certainly look at that as a hyperlocal response.