Okay, thank you very much. Diolch, Llywydd. Can I preface this debate by saying it is not designed to encourage people to break lockdown restrictions? On the contrary, I urge people to obey the restrictions, both for the firebreak period and those in place after next Monday. The overarching objective of this debate is to question whether the strategies employed by the Welsh Government, and indeed by the UK Government, are proportional to the threat posed by COVID-19. I should point out here there that, to a very large extent, the Welsh Government's hands are tied by the interventions of the UK Government, notwithstanding the different regimes implemented by each Government over the last few months. It would have been a very brave Welsh Government to have reacted to the COVID crisis as did the Swedish Government.

My opening remarks in this debate are to point out that COVID-19 has been reclassified as no longer being a high-consequence infectious disease, or HCID, by the four nations public health HCID group. In addition, the Advisory Committee on Dangerous Pathogens is also of the opinion that COVID-19 should no longer be classified as a HCID.

The Welsh Government has stressed on many occasions that they are reacting to advice given to them by experts, and that the experts' advice is based on statistics and projected models with regard to the COVID pandemic. Perhaps we should remind ourselves that here 'pandemic' is a misnomer, because the World Health Organization have now redefined the COVID crisis as a 'serious health threat', and has stated clearly that it's not a pandemic, and the WHO now contend that lockdowns should not be used to combat COVID-19. If, then, the Government and their advisors are depending on COVID statistics, it is crucial that these statistics are a true and accurate reflection on how COVID-19 is impacting on the population, and not echoing the ludicrous figures put out by the so-called Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies' experts.

First among these statistics is the rise in the number infected and the projected rise in infections. However, these statistics are totally dependent on the number of tests carried out. Given that the number of tests carried out, even allowing for the inadequacies in the testing regimes, has risen and is still rising dramatically, this correlation between infections and testing will inevitably show substantial increases in the numbers detected as having had coronavirus as well as those with coronavirus, and herein lies a considerable flaw in the assumed threat that COVID-19 represents. Those who have had the virus, presumably with little or no symptoms, pose no threat to those with whom they are in contact—they are said to be asymptomatic—and yet they are included in the figures for new infections. Given that the number of those presenting this way are said to be considerable, should they be included in the test statistics at all, in that their infections could be said to be historical and they pose no threat to others? I should also point out here that many studies have shown the testing regime to be substantially flawed, with a great number of prominent scientific personnel in organisations saying it is a totally inadequate system of testing, with considerable margin for cross-contamination and completely flawed results, yet the statistics yielded by the present testing regimes are the very ones on which the Welsh Government and its advisers rely.