I can see there are no objections, and I call the Minister for Health and Social Services, Vaughan Gething.

Motion NDM7435 Rebecca Evans

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

1. Approves The Health Protection (Coronavirus Restrictions) (Functions of Local Authorities etc.) (Wales) (Amendment) Regulations 2020 laid in the Table Office on 9 October 2020.

Motion NDM7434 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. 18) (Bangor) Regulations 2020 laid in the Table Office on 12 October 2020.

Motions moved.

Thank you, acting Deputy Presiding Officer. I formally move the two sets of regulations before us today and ask Members to support them. Once again, these regulations were introduced under the Public Health (Control of Disease) Act 1984 through emergency procedures to support our ongoing action to deal with the real and continuing threat posed by coronavirus.

The Health Protection (Coronavirus Restrictions) (Functions of Local Authorities etc.) (Wales) (Amendment) Regulations 2020 were made on 9 October and came into force on 12 October. These regulations amend the Health Protection (Coronavirus Restrictions) (Functions of Local Authorities etc.) (Wales) Regulations 2020. They provide local authorities with powers to close premises, impose restrictions or requirements in respect of the use of, access to or the number of people on the premises, or to prohibit certain events or types of event from taking place, or to impose restrictions or requirements in respect of the holding of, access to, or number of people attending the events, and restrict access to or close public outdoor places by issuing public place directions.

In making these regulations, the Welsh Government has responded to concerns expressed by a range of local authorities about the powers available to them. The regulations broaden local authorities' powers to make public place directions to enable them to impose prohibitions, requirements or restrictions in relation to activities carried on in a public place, including the consumption of alcohol. This broadened public place direction power complements the restrictions on the sale of alcohol that were introduced in Wales on 24 September. It will help local authorities to stop gatherings of people consuming alcohol in designated areas as a result of the earlier closure of licensed premises. We know such behaviours increase the risk of coronavirus transmission, as the consumption of alcohol leads to decreasing observance of social distancing and makes enforcement more difficult.

Members will be aware that, when a local authority issues a direction, they are required to notify Welsh Ministers as soon as possible. This must include a copy of the direction, the reason for issuing the direction, the location or area that the direction relates to, the organisations and groups of people expected to be directly and indirectly affected by that direction, the stakeholders consulted on the decision on the direction, the date and time on which the restriction comes into effect, and the date and time on which it will end.

The Health Protection (Coronavirus Restrictions) (No. 2) (Wales) (Amendment) (No. 18) (Bangor) Regulations 2020 were made on 9 October, and came into force on 10 October. These regulations amend the principal regulations, which are now the Health Protection (Coronavirus Restrictions) (No. 2) (Wales) Regulations 2020. The principal regulations were amended with effect from 8 September 2020 to introduce restrictions in respect of a local health protection area. There are now 16 local health protection areas in Wales. These regulations extend restrictions to a further local health protection area, comprising eight electoral wards in the Bangor area of Gwynedd. The restrictions introduced are the same as those that apply in other health protection areas. In particular, the regulations provide that no household within that area may be treated as forming part of an extended household, and prohibit the formation of an extended household by such a household; they prohibit persons living in that area from leaving or remaining away from that area without reasonable excuse; they require residents of that area to work from home unless it is not reasonably practicable for them to do so; and they prohibit people from outside that area from entering the area without reasonable excuse.

The Welsh Government takes a careful and evidence-based approach to dealing with coronavirus, including our formal requirement to review the need for relevant restrictions and their proportionality every 21 days. Each of the regulations relating to local health protection areas is subject to review two weeks after their introduction, and every week thereafter if the restrictions remain in place for longer than that.

It is evident just how serious the coronavirus pandemic is that the First Minister yesterday announced our decision to introduce a two-week firebreak starting at 6 p.m. this Friday and ending on Monday 9 November. I hope we will have an opportunity to debate that in more detail later today. I do, though, ask Members, for the purpose of the regulations before us today, to do our part in helping to keep Wales safe. I believe these regulations are necessary in our continued efforts to tackle the pandemic. I now ask the Senedd to support them.

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

Thank you, acting Llywydd. In respect of item 7 and item 8 together, we considered both sets of regulations at our meeting yesterday morning, and our reports have been laid before the Senedd to assist today's debate.

If I may, I'll deal with the Health Protection (Coronavirus Restrictions) (No. 2) (Wales) (Amendment) (No. 18) (Bangor) Regulations 2020 first. Our report on these regulations contained one technical reporting point and five merits reporting points. The technical reporting point highlights a potential issue regarding the clarity of the law. Regulation 2(2) refers to the electoral division of 'Menai'. The County of Gwynedd (Electoral Changes) Order 2002 states that there are in fact two electoral divisions of Menai, Menai Bangor and Menai Caernarfon, and whilst it may appear obvious from reading the standalone amending regulations that the electoral division to be taken into account here is Menai Bangor, as the name Bangor is included in the title of the amending regulations, it may be less obvious when considering the principal regulations in isolation. There is also the potential for future confusion and duplication should the Menai Caernarfon electoral division be subject to restrictions in the future. The same issue arises in the Welsh version of the regulations. The Welsh Government has acknowledged our concerns, and the irregularity has been rectified in the Health Protection (Coronavirus Restrictions) (No. 2) (Wales) (Amendment) (No. 19) Regulations 2020, made on 16 October 2020.

Our first merits point relates to the Welsh Government's justification for any potential interference with human rights. We've reported an error in the description of article 11 of the European convention on human rights in the explanatory memorandum. The Welsh Government response to our report indicates that the error will be corrected. As with a number of regulations the Senedd has considered in recent months, our second merits point notes that there's been no formal consultation on these regulations. Furthermore, our third merits point noted that there is no equality impact assessment for these regulations. We asked the Welsh Government to explain what arrangements it has made to publish reports of equality impact assessments in accordance with regulation 8(1)(d) of the Equality Act 2010 (Statutory Duties) (Wales) Regulations 2011. We note that the Welsh Government intends to publish an integrated impact assessment of social gathering restrictions in due course. In our fourth merits point we reiterated our view that, where coronavirus restrictions are being tightened in any significant way, explanatory memoranda should set out the evidence on which the Welsh Government relies in deciding that such tightening is necessary and proportionate. 

The Welsh Government's response to our report does set out more evidence, and we welcome that. It states that, when the Bangor area local health protection area was established, there was a rising trend in rolling seven-day incidence rates of COVID-19 in Gwynedd; Gwynedd was continuing to exceed 50 cases per 100,000; however, Public Health Wales figures indicated that the incidence rate in Bangor was much higher, at 318 cases per 100,000 of the population. The Welsh Government highlight the incident management team's biggest concern that, in student communities in Bangor, there was an incidence rate of around 390 cases per 100,000. The clear recommendation from the IMT was to establish a local health protection zone for Bangor only. We believe that providing this evidence will aid transparency and assist the Senedd's scrutiny of coronavirus regulations. 

Our final merits point highlights to the Senedd that these regulations came into effect before they were laid before the Senedd. We have noted, as per the requirements of the Statutory Instruments Act 1946, the First Minister's letter to the Llywydd, dated 9 October 2020, confirmed this fact and included an explanation that this was considered necessary and justifiable in view of the changing evidence on risk in relation to coronavirus. We asked the Welsh Government to provide further details of this evidence in its response to our report. The Welsh Government has said that it considers that the increase in cases described in its response to our fourth reporting point demonstrates and justifies the need for the regulations to come into force as quickly as possible. 

Turning now to the Health Protection (Coronavirus Restrictions) (Functions of Local Authorities etc.) (Wales) (Amendment) Regulations 2020, our report on these regulations contains two merits points. The first point noted the Welsh Government's justification for any potential interference with human rights and draws attention to relevant paragraphs within the accompanying explanatory memorandum. Our second reporting point again highlights that there has been no formal consultation on these regulations. Diolch, acting Llywydd. 

The Welsh Conservatives will be supporting both sets of regulations this afternoon. Agenda item No. 7 seems a sensible course of action, if you're giving this authority to local authorities to shut places down but also offer people who come under these regulations the ability to appeal to a magistrates' court, as I understand it, and also if the rules and regulations need to lapse after seven days, then the provision for those regulations to be taken away seems a sensible course of action. 

The second point about Bangor, the second regulations we'll be voting on this afternoon, is something we've been calling on the Welsh Government to do. They've deployed it in Llanelli and we believe it's a sensible course of action in relation to Bangor, given the incidence of infection in Bangor. And so, therefore, the Welsh Conservatives will be supporting both sets of regulations that are before the Assembly this afternoon. 

Plaid Cymru will be abstaining on the regulations relating to Bangor in my constituency. We didn't oppose their introduction, but we were dissatisfied with communication issues and the lack of local communication around the process of introducing the regulations. We need far clearer communication with local communities, such as those in Bangor, if local lockdowns will be required again in future. Circumstances have now changed, but there are important lessons to be learned, I believe. 

I would like to draw attention to point 5 in the explanatory memorandum, which mentions consultation and says that there was no formal consultation on the regulations for the eight Bangor wards. Now, I accept that there isn't time for formal consultation in a time of crisis, but I do think that there are lessons to be learned from the way in which these restrictions and the need for these restrictions were communicated to the local population. And I do believe that we need to introduce new protocols in order to ensure improved communications with community leaders at a local level.

In the case of Bangor, there was no communication between the Welsh Government and county councillors in the eight wards, or the city councillors, and the only thing I received as a Member of the Senedd—and the same was true for the Member of Parliament—was a phone call a quarter of an hour before a Government Minister stated on television that those restrictions were to come into place in less than 24 hours’ time. That led to all sorts of problems for constituents who were naturally turning to their community leaders for information, but that information wasn’t available to us. Had we been briefed beforehand, even eight hours beforehand, we could have helped to avoid much of the confusion that arose.

In the case of Bangor, many were questioning why one whole ward, which includes a large part of the city, was left out from the local health protection zone. I assume that there is a rationale behind that, but I received no explanation as to what that was and, to this day, I’ve received no explanation on that point. Including the Pentir ward would have made sense, because it would have included the whole city within the local health protection zone and would have also included a rural part, which includes a section of the coastal path as well as other rural areas, which would then have been available to constituents within the city who have had to be restricted to an urban geographical area with very few green spaces. I assume that there is a scientific explanation why the Pentir ward wasn’t included, but without knowing that, how can local leaders convey that information to local people? Without that information you get confusion and doubt, and ultimately that leads to less compliance, and compliance is what we are looking for of course.

So, I would draw the Government’s attention to this issue in the Senedd today so that you can take action to secure better communication and clear communication as we move forward. I hope that you will listen to these comments. My purpose is to assist Government to improve communications protocols as we move to the next phase, in order to secure better compliance ultimately.

And the Minister to reply.

Thank you, acting Deputy Presiding Officer, and thank you to Members for their comments. I'm pleased to note the comments from the Chair of the scrutiny committee about improvements in the provision of information and data that underpin the choices that Ministers are making.

I'm pleased to see that the Welsh Conservatives will be supporting both sets of regulations. And in an entirely constructive way to answer the points raised by Siân Gwenllian, and in particular the point about local communication, because we do always look for ways to improve the way that we not just make decisions, but then communicate them as well. In coming to these decisions, in every single choice we've made, we've spoken with the local authority leader and their chief executive. We did the same in all of the areas in south Wales, we did the same in all those in north Wales, and indeed in Carmarthenshire as well. So, Ministers have direct engagement with the leader of the local authority, and it's fair to say that every local authority, including Gwynedd, have a senior officer—in the case of Gwynedd, the corporate director, I understand—who participates in the incident management team, and they make recommendations over whether to take action and the spread and the nature of that action as well. So, the council, actually, were part of that pre-decision-making process.

Now, I don't think it's actually for Welsh Ministers to then to try to direct the engagement with either the town council or individual members of the council, but it's how we work with each of our local authorities in understanding how that communication needs to take place, and how information is drawn and then disseminated. We've taken it upon ourselves to try to make sure that Ministers and officials do then speak with constituency representatives before decisions are made so that people don't find out directly from the media about the choices that are being made.

I take on board why it would be useful for the local Member to have received a briefing—I think that eight hours in advance was the suggestion—but I'm afraid it doesn't reflect the reality of the speed of either the recommendation or the need to make decisions. And it's also the case that we have to test each of the recommendations, then understand whether Ministers will go ahead and act on recommendations or not, or whether we feel we need to test them and send them back. That includes both the size and the area of where to introduce restrictions or not. So, I'm afraid, in all of the uncertainty we're living with, I don't think we're going to be able to provide the sort of advanced briefing that the Member's requesting with the timescale that's available. If we were able to make decisions earlier in each day, it would give us more time to speak with local representatives, because, as I say, we do want to find ways to improve the way we make decisions and the way we then communicate them.

We're going into a period now where we're going to have a different set of national regulations with the firebreak. It is, of course, entirely possible that in the future, though, in the world beyond a firebreak, that we will need to have particular local restrictions. It's entirely possible; there could be a hyperlocal outbreak that would require that particular local action. So, it is certainly something that we will need to return to and I do recognise that her comments are provided in a constructive spirit and my response is meant to be so as well.

As ever, our approach continues to be guided by the advice of the chief medical officer, our scientific officers, our technical advisory cell, the technical advisory group, and the study they make of evidence within Wales, across the UK and the rest of the world. We again believe that these regulations are specific and proportionate actions to be taken in response to the rise in the number of cases that we see within specific parts of our country.

Each one of us has a responsibility to make choices, to follow the measures, the law and the guidance to help keep us, our loved ones and our communities safe from this infectious and harmful virus. A final reminder to keep our distance from each other when we're out and about and certainly to avoid contact within our own homes, to follow the rules about who isn't allowed in your own home, to wash our hands often, to work from home if we can, to wear a face covering in indoor public places, and we need to stay at home if we've got symptoms and wait for a result, and, as I say, to follow the restrictions in place locally. I ask the Senedd to support the regulations before us this afternoon.

Thank you, Minister. The proposal is to agree the motion under item 7. Does any Member object? [Objection.] I do see a Member objecting, and I will therefore defer voting under this item until voting time.

Voting deferred until voting time.

The proposal is to agree the motion under item 8. Does any Member object? [Objection.] Again, I see Members objecting, and I defer voting under this item also until voting time.

Voting deferred until voting time.