12. The Health Protection (Coronavirus Restrictions) (No. 3) (Wales) Regulations 2020

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 6:14 pm on 3 November 2020.

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Photo of Mark Reckless Mark Reckless Conservative 6:14, 3 November 2020

Thanks for bringing forward the debate today, Minister. I would have preferred if we'd been able to vote on these regulations before they came into force, as the Westminster Parliament is having the opportunity to do for England tomorrow. We are at least voting on them before the lockdown firebreak finishes, which is at least an improvement on some of the timings we've had before. 

I wonder if the Minister will say anything in terms of the level of compliance with these regulations. Any political consensus behind them has clearly broken down and I just wonder what the impact of that has been with the public. There's been some quite divisive rhetoric, not quite as bad as Nicola Sturgeon in Scotland, who seemed to suggest that Scotland would have eradicated the virus, like in New Zealand, if only it hadn't been reseeded from England. There were, though, comments that didn't fall that far short of that from the First Minister, who referenced people from north-west England coming to Tenby and how unwelcoming locals should be in that circumstance. I spent some of August supporting the tourism industry in Tenby, and there was certainly a large number of people from England, including the north-west of England, there. But, in Pembrokeshire, the prevalence of the virus remained low after that, and I just wonder how that's consistent with the scapegoating of visitors from England that we've seen from the Minister's Government.

Could I also just ask for an update on what's been happening with these inspections of the drains and the testing of sewage? The Minister previously made great play of a study that supposedly showed an English variant of the virus that had come into north Wales from high-prevalence areas in north-west England. Have there been similar inspections of the sewers in reference to south Wales and Bristol and south Gloucestershire, where previously the prevalence was rather low, but since we've had higher areas in the Valleys and Newport and Cardiff, is there evidence of a Welsh variant of the COVID virus moving into the south-west of England? Or do we only test for these things or take an interest in such research when there's a possibility of scapegoating England for the failures of our own Government here in Wales?