Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:26 pm on 3 November 2020.
If I could, First Minister—I'm grateful to you for your statement this afternoon—continue the theme of business support. Many people, of course, welcome what you've said over the last few days, and welcome the sense of personal responsibility and that tone that you've introduced into the public debate on this, but I hear from a lot of small businesses and self-employed people who are very, very anxious to find the balance between maintaining their businesses, maintaining employment, maintaining the services they provide to local people, but also being able to do that in a safe way through these extremely difficult times. The chaos that we've seen in Westminster over the last few days—the Prime Minister saying that furlough was available yesterday, being told by his Ministers today that he was wrong yesterday—means that, as we speak today, we don't know what the policy of the Treasury is, and whether they've told the Prime Minister what his policy is. So, we need some coherence and some sense of seamless support for people, and the ERF support from the Welsh Government has offered that. I think many of us would be grateful to see that ERF support reopened and available to businesses as soon as possible.
The second point, First Minister, is this: you've just answered Adam Price on the issue of test and trace, and for me it's one of the great successes, if you like, of how the Government has dealt with this. I think it's fair to say that the Government has spent something like £102 million in Wales on it, which represents £32 per head, and is reaching 80 per cent and 90 per cent of the people it needs to. Across the border in England, where it's been privatised, of course, they're spending £12 billion, £1,700 per head, and not reaching the same number of people. So, that demonstrates the power of values in action. It demonstrates the power of the public sector—health boards, the Welsh Government and local government—working together. Can you perhaps explain to us, First Minister, your vision of how test and trace will provide us with an opportunity to control the transmission of the virus, to break the transmission of the virus, and to allow us to have regulations that recognise that test and trace is able, through its power, to ensure that we're able to control the spread of the virus? Thank you very much, Presiding Officer.