And I call on the Minister for health to introduce the regulations. I can't see the health Minister at the moment. The Minister for health.

Llywydd, apologies. Could I just have one moment before starting the debate? There's just something that I need to deal with where I am. I apologise, but could I have just 30 seconds?

Okay. You can have 30 seconds.

I'm going to have to ask the health Minister to come to the microphone.

I don't think the health Minister is ready for this item and, therefore, I'm going to postpone the item until later on this afternoon, and I will, in the meantime, if possible, call the Minister for Housing and Local Government. Is the Minister for local government there? Again, she doesn't seem to be there.

Health Minister, can I ask you if you're now ready to introduce the regulations?

Unfortunately not. If you could just give me 10 more seconds and I will be able to start. Apologies, Llywydd, it's very—[Interruption.]

We're being very patient with you. Do you want to explain to us what the problem is, health Minister? Are you in a position, now, to be able to introduce the regulations?

Apologies, Llywydd. I am now in a position to introduce the regulations, and thank you for the opportunity to reset and to be able to start, Llywydd. I apologise for the interruption in proceedings.

Motion NDM7425 Rebecca Evans

To propose that the Senedd, in accordance with Standing Order 27.5:

1. Approves The Health Protection (Coronavirus Restrictions (No. 2) (Wales) (Amendment) (No. 16) (Conwy, Denbighshire, Flintshire and Wrexham) Regulations 2020 laid in the Table Office on 30 September 2020.

Motion NDM7424 Rebecca Evans

To propose that the Senedd, in accordance with Standing Order 27.5:

1. Approves The Health Protection (Coronavirus Restrictions) (No. 2) (Wales) (Amendment) (No. 17) Regulations 2020 laid in the Table Office on 2 October 2020.

Motions moved.

The regulations before us today that I formally move and ask the Senedd to support are the Health Protection (Coronavirus Restrictions) (No. 2) (Wales) (Amendment) (No. 16) (Conwy, Denbighshire, Flintshire and Wrexham) Regulations 2020. I'll now refer to them as the relevant amendment regulations. The No. 16 regulations refer to Conwy, Denbighshire, Flintshire and Wrexham. And I move the Health Protection (Coronavirus Restrictions) (No. 2) (Wales) (Amendment) (No. 17) Regulations 2020.

As we've seen through the course of the coronavirus pandemic, we have taken an evidence-based approach, taking account of the latest advice from the chief medical officer's department and our own scientific advisers within the Welsh Government. We continue to see a rise in coronavirus across the country. We took the decision to introduce additional measures across four authorities in north Wales on the basis of a continued rise and an expected rise from our professional and public health advisers in the four relevant areas. We use not only metrics around the data in cases per 100,000, but we also use information from our test, trace and protect service about the likely rises in cases, and also our consultants in communicable diseases.

On that basis, we acted to implement the regulations on a consistent pattern that Members will now be familiar with. These introduced requirements to stay within county unless there was a reasonable excuse not to do so, and we have been before through the list of reasonable excuses. We introduced a range of measures, including the ending of extended households. As Members will recall, we have now introduced regulations that mean that single adult households can still group together with another household, but it is a maximum of two in any event, in an exclusive arrangement.

The local travel regulations are the ones that have gathered the most attention, and, again, the current evidence has been that restrictions on travel do have an impact in reducing incidence of the virus. You'll see that, today, the First Minister has written again to the Prime Minister seeking reciprocal arrangements to make sure that people from high-incidence areas can't travel into and through Wales. We've also provided information that sets out again the evidence before us, that travel into and out of areas does make a difference in terms of the virus transmission.

These are difficult and balanced choices that we have to make about how we keep Wales safe. I recognise there is a variety of views on all of the measures that we seek to take, but I do ask Members to support them, in particular as, since introducing these regulations, we have seen the expected rise in cases in these four authorities. But we also now face many more significant and difficult choices to make as we seek to keep Wales safe and, in particular, as we seek to do so ahead of a very, very challenging winter and autumn. I look forward to hearing Members' contributions and responding to the debate. Thank you, Llywydd.

The Chair of the Legislation, Justice and Constitution Committee, Mick Antoniw.

Thank you, Llywydd. Both sets of regulations amend the principal Health Protection (Coronavirus Restrictions) (No. 2) (Wales) Regulations 2020. Now, the No. 16 amending regulations came into force on 1 October and, as the title suggests, designate Conwy, Denbighshire, Flintshire and Wrexham as local health protection areas, placing certain restrictions on them. The regulations include the same restrictions that have been put in place for other areas designated as local health protection areas. Our report raised three merits points. Last week, I indicated we would consider the extent to which explanatory memoranda included evidence about why areas are being placed in lockdown. That consideration informs our first merits point. The explanatory memorandum states that the No. 16 amending regulations are a response to the threat to human health from coronavirus and to the threat posed by the increasing incidence and spread of coronavirus both in these areas and more widely. Where coronavirus restrictions are being tightened in any significant way, we believe the explanatory memoranda should set out the evidence that the Welsh Government relies on in deciding that such tightening is necessary and proportionate. Therefore, with regard to the No. 16 amending regulations, our report asks the Welsh Government to set out the evidence that showed, first, that Conwy, Denbighshire, Flintshire and Wrexham should go into local lockdown in the way they did; secondly, that the need for local lockdown in those areas was so urgent that there was no time for the Senedd to approve a draft of the regulations in advance; and thirdly, that areas of Wales did not need to go into local lockdown.

After our committee meeting yesterday, we received the Welsh Government response to our report, and the response is provided with today's Plenary agenda. In our view, the inclusion of such evidence in the explanatory memoranda in future will aid transparency as well as the committee scrutiny of coronavirus restrictions. This will be particularly important in the event that areas of Wales go into a series of rolling lockdowns in the coming months. Our second and third merits points draw attention to the Welsh Government's justification for any potential interference with human rights and the absence of consultation on the regulations.

I now turn to the No. 17 amending regulations, which came into force on 3 October. The amendments to the principal regulations in particular allow a household made up of no more than one adult living in a local health protection area and another household that also lives in the area to temporarily form an extended household. They also permit skating rinks to open, and they make minor consequential amendments. Our reporting points again draw attention to the Welsh Government's justification for any potential interference with human rights and the absence of consultation on the regulations. Diolch, Llywydd.

Minister, thank you for your opening remarks. I appreciate there's been a Government reshuffle, but it does look as if you're requiring more help to keep to your timings on these statements. It was deeply unfortunate, to say the least, the start of these very important regulations being debated and discussed this afternoon.

As Welsh Conservatives, we will be voting against the amendment regulations No. 16, which refer to Conwy, Denbighshire, Flintshire and Wrexham, but we will be supporting the regulations No. 2, which is agenda item number 8, which refer to extended households, which we think is an important addition to, obviously, assisting people who live on they own.

If I could just touch on a few reasons for our objections, which basically mirror the same objections we put forward last week, in voting against the restrictions that were tabled last week: we do not believe that the county-wide restrictions that the Government have put in place are ultimately necessary in all the areas that are identified by these regulations and a far more targeted approach would have been far more suitable in this instance. The Government proved that they can do this twice now—once in Llanelli and, obviously, once in Bangor. Many people in north Wales who are suffering under a county-wide restrictive practice will be thinking, 'Well, why at Bangor with an infection rate of 400 per 100,000, while there a far lower infection rates in other parts of north Wales?' There could have been a far more targeted approach delivered with better outcomes, I would suggest, and so I'd be grateful if the Minister could highlight why the other four counties were identified as needing county-wide lockdowns when Gwynedd only had a town/city-wide lockdown in Bangor, with a far higher infection rate.

I'd also like to understand when the two-weekly review of the effectiveness of previous regulations that we've seen for the Vale, Cardiff, Torfaen, Neath Port Talbot will be made available, because, again, to keep public confidence, it is really important that the public at large understand the effectiveness of these measures and, actually, whether they are having an effect in suppressing the virus.

The Minister, in his opening remarks, did touch on the letter that the First Minister has sent today to the Prime Minister asking for more travel restrictions, and I did ask the First Minister, but I didn't get an answer from him, about the SAGE advice that was given in September about the effectiveness of travel restrictions, and they said—this is the SAGE document I'm reading from—they would have a low impact and they had moderate confidence in the outcomes. They also said exemptions and enforcement are likely to be very complicated to be delivered. I'd be grateful if the Minister could identify whether he is actually working from this advice that SAGE have provided to the Government when he does talk about travel exemptions, especially when they talk about low impact and only moderate confidence. It does seem there's a lot of headline chasing rather than following the science with some of the regulations that are coming forward from the Government at the moment. In particular, when it comes to the letter that has been sent by the First Minister today and the talk about the briefing document that's gone with it—and that briefing document has not been peer reviewed—it does not constitute definitive proof. These are the words that have been leaked to the press today, because the press have seen this document but we as Assembly Members haven't seen this document. So, again, from these benches, we will be very sceptical of the way the Government is proposing (a) a circuit breaker and (b) further travel restrictions, because from what we're seeing in the evidence that's been presented, the evidence doesn't stack up for that road. I'd also point out that the World Health Organization's European representative today is on record as saying that a circuit-breaker lockdown would not be effective and have far higher detrimental impacts on mental health and physical health and well-being, and I think that's something the Government need to reflect on, rather than following Keir Starmer's request at 5 o'clock today for a lockdown.

As with last week, we will abstain on one of the regulations today, for the same reason as we did last week. Last week, we were discussing restrictions across a number of counties in south Wales. I said, as did many other Members, including the Chair of the legislation committee, that the situation is unacceptable, where we're asked to approve regulations that place restrictions without having seen the data that would provide a sufficiently comprehensive picture for us to come to a decision as to the appropriateness of those regulations. And although the Government had almost a week to respond to those comments, unfortunately that detailed data wasn't provided to the legislation committee once again or to us as lawmakers for the next set of regulations that we are discussing today relating to four north Wales counties.

We do recognise that this situation is exceptional and that there are circumstances where the Government does need to act by placing restrictions or introducing other urgent changes in a way that moves more swiftly than the normal scrutiny process provides for. That's why we as a Senedd agreed to this general approach, but, first of all, the Government must try to ensure that that scrutiny can happen as swiftly as possible—a point we have made previously. But, secondly, they must enable us as those doing the scrutiny work by providing the data that they use to come to their decisions. In this case, we are simply asking for detailed data as to where the COVID cases are, where there are clusters, what the patterns are, where the higher risk areas are, so that we can decide whether we agree that the targeting is happening as effectively as it could. So, we will abstain on the No. 16 amendment.

And whilst I am discussing the need to share data and communicate with us as a Senedd, may I emphasise the frustration that I hear from local representatives—not just Senedd Members, but also at a local government level—that the Welsh Government needs to communicate more effectively on the rationale behind restrictions, the data, the background, the implications, and not just for our sake, to facilitate our work, but so that we can better communicate and answer questions from our own constituents? Yes, there have been phone calls coming from the Minister at the last minute, but I am asking now for the development of protocols as to how information should be shared, what information should be shared, and when, because communication is a hugely important part of the battle against the virus.

Moving to the second set of regulations, we will be voting in favour of this. The Minister will be aware that I have raised my concerns many times about the impact of the pandemic in terms of people's well-being, mental health and isolation. I hear anecdotal evidence from health workers who are concerned about an increase in self-harm, mental health problems and even suicide. What we have in these regulations is the ability for people living alone in high-restriction areas to come together, and that is a positive thing, but I would ask the Government to bring a very clear strategy to show us that well-being is a central factor to the Government's steps in tackling the virus, because there are threats here to the well-being of people from the virus itself, and there is a threat to broader well-being and health.

Finally, in terms of other legislation and other regulations we would like to see, I know that the First Minister has written on a number of occasions now to the UK Prime Minister, and I think the time for correspondence has come to an end and that the time for action is now. Although the First Minister decided to play a strange unionist game in responding to Adam Price this afternoon, our point as a party is very clear: whether it's within Wales or between different nations, there is a risk, and I know that the First Minister agrees with us on this, in people travelling from high-risk areas to lower risk areas. We believe that there should be restrictions on travel. The restriction does exist in Wales. It doesn't exist from England to Wales, so I'm asking you to square that particular circle and to ensure that there is consistency. Use the powers that you have.

Rhun ap Iorwerth there talks about squaring a particular circle, but as I understand it, the demand is that England do for high-risk areas in England as the legislation is in Wales, yet Plaid are abstaining on the legislation to put these four counties in north Wales into lockdown. They demand that the UK Government should, by force of law, vote to have those lockdowns around county areas or local authority areas in England that they refuse to support for Wales. I'm delighted to see that the Conservatives are again voting against these lockdown measures for the four north Wales counties, as they did for south Wales, except for Llanelli.

The lack of clarity here: why a county border? Why is it going across the county border? In an affected area where you've got four together, why is it so dangerous to go from one of those four counties to the others when they have similar levels of infections? Why is it safe to go within your council area, or in the case of Ministers, to go from their home to Cathays Park but not here, yet going beyond them is suddenly dangerous? How can you demand that the UK Government does for England what even your general supporters in Plaid here refuse to do for Wales?

You added to this, or the First Minister did, to the letter to the Prime Minister, apparently a scientific study, or so it was described. I think it's been ably described, at least as much as possible on the limited information, by Andrew R.T. Davies, but if even the authors don't consider that it demonstrates anything, and if it's not peer reviewed, of what value is this, and how on earth is it going to persuade the Prime Minister to do to England what you have done to Wales? Now, the First Minister, in questions earlier, I think made a number of comments about this paper, and I'm not wholly sure whether I understood him or not, but I think there was a reference to having them investigate the sewers and test various human waste in different concentrations and how much coronavirus there was, and then somehow that was mapped onto the human genome and it was determined that an increasing amount of it was from people with genomes who must be from England rather than from Wales. Now, I'm hoping I misunderstood what the First Minister said, but can you confirm that and can you publish this study so that Members of the Senedd as well as the Prime Minister can see the validity or otherwise of something that, from what we've seen, sounds pretty unpersuasive?

We'll be voting against these regulations, No. 16, for the further lockdown. Regulations No. 17, on balance we've decided to support. I think they reopen ice rinks, and we do think it's a good idea to at least allow single-person households to mix with another household. Could you, though, Minister, clear up ambiguity in what you said earlier, because you said that the maximum number must be two, but you didn't specify whether it was two individuals or two households? So, one of the households has to be a single individual; can they mix with another household with more than one individual in it, or only with another single-member household? Thank you. 

It would be grossly irresponsible of any Member of this Senedd to support the imposition of significant restrictions on our constituents when we have not been provided with sufficient evidence to be able to justify them. The Welsh Government has a legal duty, as we heard earlier, to demonstrate that any restrictions that it imposes on the people of Wales are proportionate and necessary, and yet they have failed to provide the data to support their position. 

Now, as a person representing a constituency that straddles two local authority areas, Conwy and Denbighshire, I regret that in spite of asking repeatedly for this information and this data from Ministers and, indeed, from Public Health Wales and, indeed, from my own local health board, the Welsh Government and all of those other bodies have failed to provide it. The publicly available data does not show me the coronavirus case rates on a community-by-community basis. It may actually put communities in very low-risk parts of Conwy and Denbighshire at higher risk because we're encouraging people from high-risk parts of the counties to travel to those lower risk parts of the counties, if the Welsh Government's line on travel is to be believed. So, on that basis, it's absolutely impossible for me to be able to justify a county-wide approach to these local restrictions. There's no data being published on the likely place of transmission or the activity to which transmission is likely to have been associated, so how on earth can we determine whether the restrictions on matters such as travel can be justified?

Now, I will say this sort of data is available in other parts of the UK, so why is the Welsh Government choosing not to publish it or share it with Members of this Senedd? We can only draw the conclusion that it's because the data doesn't support your position, it doesn't support your policy and it doesn't support the restrictions that you are seeking and already have imposed. And it's these travel restrictions in particular that are hitting people hard in the Conwy and Denbighshire areas.

In fact, First Minister, I heard what you had to say during the debate, or the exchange in FMQs earlier on, yet it's completely at odds with what you've previously told this Chamber. You said in response to a question from me on 23 September, on the issue of tourism, which I presume we can use as a proxy for travel, that the good news is, and I quote:

'The good news is that we've had tourists coming to Wales from other parts of the United Kingdom since the first part of July now, and there isn't evidence that that has led to spikes of infection in those parts of Wales that people most often visit. Indeed, the coronavirus continues to be at its lowest ebb in those places that tourists most often visit.'

That sort of undermines completely the argument that you're making on introducing these draconian travel restrictions on my constituents and other people across Wales. You know, it was absolutely heartbreaking to watch the tv over this weekend to see people being interviewed in the tourism queen of resorts, Llandudno, on the north Wales coast. We had a shopkeeper there telling reporters that, on one day last week, they took just £6.50 over the counter in takings. A local restaurateur said that usually on a Saturday, the previous week before the restrictions, they had 184 diners; that was down to 18 on the Saturday following the restrictions being introduced. And unless you act quickly, I can tell you that these businesses will be going down the pan. And when they go down the pan, all of those people who rely on their livelihoods from those businesses will see a significant impact on their quality of life, because it's not just those businesses, it's every single person they employ, every single family that relies on the pay packets that come in through that employment, and every single supplier that these businesses buy their goods from. The ripple effects will be absolutely huge.

And, of course, these travel restrictions pay absolutely no regard to the regular patterns of travel that people enjoy, particularly for those living in those border parts of these local authority areas. My constituents, for example, in Kinmel Bay can't nip a few hundred yards into Rhyl to their local supermarket. Instead, they can, of course, travel an hour in the opposite direction all the way down into the Snowdonia national park where, no doubt, there are very low levels of coronavirus infection, yet they can't go a few hundred yards to their nearest supermarket. It's absolutely bonkers.

The evidence is lacking. I will not be voting for the restrictions in terms of regulations No. 16 on coronavirus. There's very little evidence as well to suggest that these restrictions are actually working. Where they have been imposed, the reality is that the rates have actually been going up in some cases. So, Rhondda Cynon Taf went into lockdown a month ago. Now, remember the incubation period is 14 days, okay? So, they should have had an impact by now. It went into lockdown a month ago when it had 82.1 cases per 100,000 over seven days. Today, that figure is 178.2, almost double what it was. Caerphilly's been in lockdown since 8 September. On 26 September, it had 36.4 cases—it had been travelling in the right direction—per 100,000, but as of today that figure is 92.2. So, if the evidence suggests that these may not be working, if there's no information on a community-by-community basis, if there's insufficient data and evidence to demonstrate that the travel restrictions work, why on earth should anybody in this Chamber vote for this particular set of restrictions? I urge everybody to vote against them.

The Minister for health to reply to the debate—Vaughan Gething. 

You need to be unmuted, Minister. We can't hear you.

Thank you, Llywydd. I'll deal at the start with the one point of clarification that Mark Reckless raised about the No. 17 amendment regulations, where we've introduced a general exemption to the restrictions that apply. This means that a single person or a single-parent household can visit one other household within the same county. The point I was making was that it can't be any more than two households in an exclusive bubble. It can't be that people can move between one household and another.

I'll deal with the points that Rhun ap Iorwerth makes about data and the approach that we're taking with local authorities. It's important to recognise that on each of the choices that we have made, we have taken evidence from local stakeholders, the incident management teams that involve people from a variety of local organisations, including the health service, Public Health Wales, consultants in communicable disease and the local authority. They are a partner around each of those incident management team tables. So, the local authority is involved at an early stage in providing evidence, information and recommendations to Ministers.

We receive recommendations from each of those teams about the possible choices and about whether they recommend that Ministers should act, and we receive those recommendations before coming to each of the decisions points, including in the No. 16 regulations that we are debating today. Before making any decision, Ministers meet directly with local authority leaders and their chief executives. And so, we do discuss the data that's available to them. We discuss the TTP data as well, the patterns of infection as they are, and that has been the case with every and any local authority where we have considered these additional local restrictions. 

It's also fair to note some of the crossover with Andrew R.T. Davies's comments, where the IMT advice was for a county-wide set of restrictions in each instance, and in each of those areas, whilst the leader of Conwy did argue for not having the travel restrictions, that wasn't the position supported by the great majority of other north Wales leaders. It's also the case that no local authority leader in that meeting argued for a sub-regional approach within the four counties for which we're debating the No. 16 regulations.

The reason why, turning to comments made by Andrew R.T. Davies, we were able to take a different approach within Bangor within the county of Gwynedd is because the data was there, as it was in Llanelli, to allow us to take a more targeted approach. We are though now seeing a rise within rural Gwynedd that we need to consider as well. But, at the decision point, the case was made out to have restrictions in place in Bangor, not solely driven by the student community, it's important to recognise. The challenge in the four authorities we're debating today in the No. 16 regulations is that we didn't have a distinctive area to carve out of each of the counties, and as I say, the recommendation from the local incident management team was to introduce these local restrictions on a whole-county basis. 

I'm also happy to confirm to Mark Reckless that, yes, we do take account of wastewater monitoring, and I'm sure we can publish the paper that Members may not have had access to today. That does set out the current evidence, as it's developing, on the reality that travel is part of the spread of coronavirus within the United Kingdom, just as it has been between countries in the world. That's the whole rationale that underpins our quarantine regulations. They are public health measures to protect lower-incidence areas from the importation of coronavirus. I don't think this is particularly difficult or novel in terms of argument. It's consistent with that approach that is being taken. And with respect, the demand for a peer-reviewed paper at this point in time is not one I think should be taken seriously. With the developing evidence we're getting, to get to the point of having a peer-reviewed paper, we would have to wait a very long period of time before taking any action on the evidence that we do have before us.

And that takes us to the point about speed. We know that we have to make choices within a limited period of time. You will have heard directly from the chief medical officer in public, from myself, and the First Minister, about the reality that the rates we see are rising, just as they have done within the four counties that we're discussing today. Conwy now has a rate of 122.9 per 100,000, Denbigh 113.9, Flintshire 168.5, and Wrexham 181.7. The positivity rates in counties in north Wales that we're discussing today range from 6.6 per cent to 11.5 per cent. These are increasing rates of coronavirus, and we can be confident that without the restrictions we have introduced, then the pattern of infection would have risen even further, and even faster. 

The challenge before us is whether we're prepared to act on that evidence, and to act to prevent further harm from taking place, or whether this Senedd does take the view that we should not act, and we should allow the restrictions to fall, and for further transmission to inevitably take place at a faster rate, with more harm to our constituents. I do not believe that is the right approach to take. In terms of what Darren Millar has said, I do believe it would be grossly irresponsible for any legislator within this place to act to refuse to provide protections for the communities that we serve. 

I ask people in terms of the choices ahead of us, with the circuit break or otherwise, to again be guided by the evidence that we provide, the evidence that our scientific community provide. We'll continue to openly and transparently publish a summary of the advice received from our own technical advisory group. That, together with the chief medical officer's advice, guides the choices that we make—the evidence from within Wales, and the wider UK. And, as I set out, I believe this is specific and proportionate action to be taken in response to the rising tide that we see within the four relevant authorities. But the measures around the easing for single-adult households and single-parent households—I do welcome the fact that people from across the Chamber have been prepared to support those measures. We all have a responsibility, we all need to make choices, and I commend these regulations to the Senedd and ask Members to support them. 

The proposal is to agree the motion under item 7. Does any Member object? [Objection.] I will defer voting on item 7 until voting time. 

Voting deferred until voting time.

The proposal is to agree the motion under item 8. Does any Member object? No. Therefore, the motion under item 8 is agreed in accordance with Standing Order 12.36.

Motion agreed in accordance with Standing Order 12.36.

The next items are items 9 and 10. In accordance with Standing Order 12.24, unless a Member objects, the two motions under these items will be grouped for debate, but with votes taken separately.