Item 7 is a debate on the petition P-05-1060, 'Allow supermarkets to sell "non-essential" items during movement restrictions'. And I call on the Chair of the committee to move the motion—Janet Finch-Saunders.

Motion NDM7460 Janet Finch-Saunders

To propose that the Senedd:

Notes the petition ‘P-05-1060 Allow supermarkets to sell "non-essential" items during lockdown’ which received more than 67,000 signatures.

Motion moved.

Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. And thank you very much, on behalf of the Petitions Committee, for the opportunity to hold a debate on this petition today. I particularly want to thank the Business Committee for agreeing to schedule this debate at short notice.

This petition was submitted by Gareth Howell. It concerns the restrictions placed on the type of goods that could be sold by shops during the recent firebreak lockdown. This petition collected 67,940 signatures, making it the largest single petition that we have ever received here in the Senedd. Now, before I come to discuss the petition further, I want to briefly note the recent growth in both the numbers and size of petitions that we are now receiving. The Petitions Committee is on track to consider the same number of new petitions during 2020 than it did for the previous three and a half years of this Senedd combined. In recent months, we've also considered many of the largest petitions received since the process was established in 2007. Clearly, there are specific circumstances that have made 2020 an exceptional year in so many respects. About half of the petitions we are currently receiving relate directly or indirectly to this pandemic. However, it is also clearly the case that increasing numbers of people are engaging with the Senedd and devolved politics through the petitions process. I believe that this can only be a positive thing for our democracy.

In relation to this petition, I'm aware that questions have been asked about where some people who signed it live. So, for the record, it is important to note that 92 per cent, more than 62,000 of these signatures, were from people in Wales. The majority of signatures were also gathered over the course of a single weekend at the start of the firebreak. And, of course, because this coincided with the autumn half-term recess, it just hasn't proved possible to hold this debate during the two-week firebreak period. However, given the strength of support for the petition and the relevance of the subject matter to possible future lockdowns, we feel that it remains a worthwhile subject for discussion by the Senedd in Plenary.

The controversy over the range of goods that were able to be sold during the recent firebreak will likely be familiar to everyone watching today and, indeed, to our Members. Therefore, in the interest of time, I will leave those concerns to be outlined by other speakers. I am also not going to outline any views from the Petitions Committee on this issue as, due to the timescales involved, the merits or otherwise of the petition, and the Welsh Government's approach, have not yet been discussed in our usual committee meeting setting. The committee has simply agreed to refer the petition for a debate in this forum as the most appropriate way of airing the issues it raises. As I referred to earlier, whilst I am sure it is the hope of everyone here today that we will be able to control this terrible virus without any further lockdowns, none of us knows exactly what the future will hold. As such, we need to ensure that measures that must be taken to limit the spread of the virus are proportionate and that the reasoning behind them is trusted and, indeed, understood by the people of Wales.

I am sure that a range of views on the specific measures covered by this petition will be heard during the debate today. Indeed, that is the very purpose behind this debate. It is also the purpose behind providing the petitions process and a mechanism through which the Welsh public can raise issues here in our Senedd. I look forward, Deputy Presiding Officer, to listening to the rest of the contributions made this afternoon. Diolch yn fawr.

Thank you. Huw Irranca-Davies.

Diolch, Dirprwy Lywydd. We're in a slightly odd position here today. We're debating a petition, as we've just been told, that arose primarily on one weekend on a small but very controversial aspect of a 17-day firebreak that was designed to protect our NHS and to save lives, and which the early indications suggest has indeed had a dampening effect on the spiralling increases in the rise of coronavirus. We're debating a petition that covered a 17-day period, a 17-day period that is now over and that was pretty definitely and obviously going to be over by the time it would be debated. But here we are. So, let's debate it, as it does raise some very important issues, and let's look at this in context.

In my area, covered by the Cwm Taf Morgannwg University Health Board, I know, as does my colleague the Conservative shadow health spokesman, who has railed against the firebreak measures in their entirety in true Trumpian style, and he has sat in on the same Cwm Taf briefings and listened and heard, though never challenged what he heard from those on the front line of our health service, that in the final week of the firebreak, out of six available intensive care COVID beds in the Royal Glamorgan, six were occupied, out of 10 intensive COVID beds in Prince Charles, nine were occupied, and of four at Princess of Wales, two were occupied, or that 69 of the 84 non-intensive COVID beds in the Royal Glam were taken, 97 of the 120 in Prince Charles, 110 of the 115 in the Princess of Wales. And this is the context in which the attacks on the firebreak were being mounted by the Conservative Party and by the Brexit Party, UKIP and assorted others, as well as massive interventions online from outside of the borders of Wales—let alone the people who signed the petition, those attacks from outside. It is curious how much of this was excited and whipped up by London-centric anti-Labour media. I don't complain about that, I just note it as a fact. People complaining about this policy from outside Wales, mocking Wales, indeed, whilst Boris Johnson's Government dithered and delayed until finally compelled by unarguable science to enter a much delayed four-week lockdown that, because of the delay and the result of increasing COVID there, may well have unnecessarily cost lives in England.

At one point, the Conservative health spokesman in Wales, the former leader of the Welsh Conservatives, in the midst of a stream of diatribes against the firebreak supported by the Welsh Conservatives' social media account, actually described the measures as a 'socialist's wet dream'. Now, I assume these splenetic utterances are sanctioned by the leader of the Conservatives in Wales, Paul Davies. I politely ask Andrew R.T. Davies and Paul Davies to reflect on their approach to this and to their constructive opposition generally in times of a national public health crisis. Is this sort of language and approach from frontbench spokespersons unbecoming and undignified? Do you know, I really don't care? It's up to the individual Members. Is it wise? Not if it undermines public confidence in science-based measures to tackle coronavirus, which it definitely does. Is it hypocritical? Well, only if it is in direct contravention of the very policy supported by the Conservatives as part of a UK-wide set of measures to save lives. So, as Boris Johnson belatedly imposed the four-week lockdown in England, including a ban on the sale of non-essential goods from shops that are allowed to stay open, I ask the Conservative frontbench whether their UK leader and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom can now be described as in any way being in the midst of a 'socialist's wet dream', in the words of the former Conservative leader in Wales.

But let me be clear, as a backbench Member of this Senedd, I know that lessons will be learnt about the clarity of communication and the implementation of the detail of the firebreak by Welsh Government. Children's clothes, by the way, could be sold, urgent items could be accessed. And I look forward, by the way, to future meetings with the Wales Retail Consortium to explore their approach to this and how they and their members might work more effectively with the medical and scientific advice during a public health emergency, with guidance and legislation aimed to protect lives and control the spread of the disease.

But let me close, Deputy Presiding Officer, by reflecting on an interesting remembrance event I attended this morning. The vicar who led the service noted that whilst our soldiers in the first world war faced sniper bullets and mortar bombs whilst huddling in shell holes, we faced 17 days without shopping for non-essential consumer goods when there was a public health emergency raging. I ask Members to consider that. Thank you.

I'm grateful to contribute briefly to this today. I'm not a member of the committee, but I, like many Senedd Members, received many queries over that two-week firebreak, certainly during the first week of it, regarding the ban on supermarkets selling non-essential goods, so I speak from that point of view. I can certainly say, in response to Huw Irranca-Davies, that over that period I certainly wasn't a Member who used any sort of inflammatory language, and I certainly didn't talk about the position of the UK Government either, during that time. As a Member of this Senedd, I received more queries from constituents on this than anything else over the last several months, and I think we do need to recognise that, aside from the politics of this, which I think have been thrown around from both sides, actually, to a certain extent—I think, besides all that, there was an issue here that should be dealt with.

I'll be frank—I think that, at the start of this, this started out as a well-meaning attempt by the Welsh Government to create an even playing field and to make sure that small shops weren't suffering compared with supermarkets. Now, whether or not that happened in practice, I think a review will reveal that. I suspect that what actually happened is that the big beneficiaries of this process were the online consumers, the Amazons of this world and the like. That was my concern, and that was certainly the concern of constituents who contacted me.

Huw Irranca-Davies, you're right to say that, of course, this was a short period of time, and we're in the odd position now of discussing it in the lee, in the period following it. That said, of course, we may be looking at another lockdown, or firebreak as we call it here, in the new year; I hope that that isn't necessary, but we may be. So, I think what we need to do moving forward is to reassure our constituents that the steps that were taken during that firebreak—and many of them I support and think were going in the right direction—but to reassure our constituents that these measures are necessary. Yes, we are in an unusual position, yes, we do need to all pull together and make sure we combat the pandemic, but we also have to carry the public with us. I think the UK Government also are facing these challenges and struggles in carrying the public with them on the lockdown that they're engaged in, and, certainly in the future, if we have future lockdowns here, it's going to be difficult for us to fully reassure people that these measures are necessary. Let's all work together to make sure that that happens.

I'm glad that this has been discussed today, and I want to see a review to make sure that, in the future—. The term 'non-essential goods', for instance—I think that 'convenience goods' wasn't mentioned at all, and yet retailers understand what is meant by 'convenience goods'. I think that that was missing from the argument early on, so let's all work together to combat this pandemic.

Just a few comments from me on this. It's always good to see so much engagement with the Senedd, and I congratulate the petitioner in that sense. In terms of this petition, I think the fact that so many people did sign it shows that this is an issue that did generate genuine interest. It became a national debate. It's also evidence that Welsh Government failed to do what they needed to do to ensure that (1) their policy intentions were clear, and that communication around this was effective. I said that previously, at the start of the firebreak period—I could see what the Government was trying to do in terms of this policy on essential goods only, and I understood why the Conservatives pursued the issue of protecting smaller retailers, but I thought that something had gone seriously wrong in the way that this was done. The Government did respond then with some clarity. We see the problem in the wording of the petition:

'We do not agree for example that parents should be barred from buying clothes for their children during lockdown while out shopping.'

Ministers then said, 'Listen, if somebody really needs something, of course they can buy clothes for their children'. That kind of message was needed before this, and clarity as well on how that would happen, rather than putting the pressure on shop workers. So, there are lessons, I hope, that have been learned from that. But we have to say this as well: the attitude of the Conservatives was very insulting throughout all of this. 

I think the Conservatives just forgot, as they so often do, that dealing with this pandemic is actually quite a serious matter. I've been critical of Government—very critical of Government at times— during this pandemic. I've tried to do it in a pretty constructive way. Just looking at Andrew R.T. Davies's Twitter feed, talking about the 'barmy ban', the 'ludicrous, insane lockdown', 'lockdown madness', referring to 'trolley cops', that fake news about the sale of sanitary products—I'm afraid none of that aged well, did it, for the Welsh Conservatives, given the almost identical rules on supermarkets and the lockdown, twice as long, which the Conservatives themselves introduced in England just days later. Now, I know that you are inspired by the world's most-celebrated runner up, Donald Trump, and trying to replicate him in any way you can, but it's not a good look to be seen to be scaremongering for such blatant right-wing populist reasons at a time of national crisis.   

I've got just a few things to say in this debate. Firstly, I think it is important that Government recognises the difficulties that sometimes its policies create. I met a number of people who simply did not understand and were not prepared for the reality of the policy that had been announced a week earlier and weren't ready or prepared, in the messages they'd received from Government, to understand what this meant for them and what it meant for their own community. 

Now, we know that the policy itself was actually very popular. Polling has told us that the policy of the firebreak and the policy approach, the policy framework taken by the Welsh Government, was very popular, but I think there was a feeling that people didn't understand the rationale for this particular element of it. It wasn't explained sufficiently well by Government, and the people therefore did not understand why this was happening in their local supermarket and how that then had an impact on the wider public health message. So, I think there are issues there where Government needs to learn. 

But I also think we need to be very clear about this as well, because supermarkets also have a responsibility to play their part in all of this. For too long, supermarkets have exploited a near monopoly position in the marketplace. All of us know, and know of, smaller producers and suppliers who have seen supermarkets abuse their market position. And that has been a constant theme of policy, and Huw Irranca, as a former agriculture Minister, will know how, for many, many years, smaller producers and suppliers have been abused by supermarkets. And we also know that supermarkets in some ways sought to actively undermine this policy, rather than to support it. And I think we need to be very clear with supermarkets there, because they either were unable to manage a new regulation, which raises significant questions about their management, or they didn't want to. And I suspect it's the latter, and I suspect that they also—it was a case of putting their profits before the people and the customers they serve. And I think we need to be very clear about those actions of supermarkets.

Thirdly, and finally, Deputy Presiding Officer, I also echo the words of Rhun ap Iorwerth and Huw Irranca-Davies. It was refreshing to listen to Nick Ramsay, contributing to the debate this afternoon from an intelligent and rational position that puts the people that he represents in Monmouthshire first. We did not hear enough of that, and we have not heard enough of that. Whilst Conservative leaders in Wales were being abusive on social media, whipping up a storm on social media, what they were really doing was undermining a critical public health message. A week later, their policy in England collapsed. It completely collapsed, with the humiliation of the Prime Minister being forced onto television to announce a change in policy, with the timing dictated by Strictly Come Dancing and not by the needs of the people he's supposed to represent—a humiliating climbdown from a Prime Minister out of control of the situation.

And it is important that we recognise what happened there, because people were deliberately misled, were deliberately misinformed, and were deliberately driven in a direction of undermining public health by the Conservatives and their friends on the far right, all of whom contributed towards creating a situation where people that I represent, and people that Nick represents just down the road in Monmouthshire, did not and were not able to understand what the policy actually was. And I notice that those same people are today silent on the situation in England—nothing to say. All the special interest groups that Huw Irranca-Davies described from London now have nothing to say about what is happening in their own supermarkets—nothing to say about the failure of policy in England; nothing to say about their ability to drive this policy across the border. So, we need, certainly, to ensure that we're all able to learn lessons from this, but one of them has to be for Conservative politicians, whether in the Conservative Party or just fellow travellers on the far right—it's time you got out of the gutter and put people first, put public health first, and partisan advantage second. Thank you.

Can I call on the Minister for Environment, Energy and Rural Affairs, Lesley Griffiths?

Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. Last month, with coronavirus rising and spreading rapidly in every part of Wales, and acting on the clear advice of our medical and scientific advisers, the Welsh Government introduced a 17-day firebreak to help bring coronavirus under control, prevent the NHS from being overwhelmed and, ultimately, save lives.

The consensus was, in order to regain control of the virus, the best way for this to be achieved was by people staying home as much as possible. The aim of the restrictions was to reduce the numbers of people going out, the amount of unnecessary travel, and the time that people spent when they were shopping. It was necessary to close all leisure and non-essential retail, and Members will be aware that similar policies have been pursued in other parts of the UK and other countries, as we've just heard from several contributions. Because the Welsh Government acted quickly and decisively, we've been able to limit the firebreak to 17 days, which is considerably shorter than that of our neighbour.

Shops were allowed to remain open—that included supermarkets and other food retailers, pharmacies, banks and post offices—and the approach required large multiple retailers to stop selling non-essential items. The regulations and guidance enabled items essential for a person's welfare or the welfare of a vulnerable person—and that did include children—to be sold, including necessities such as children's clothing.

It is a matter of regret that there was some initial confusion, and Members have referred to the fact that we do need to learn lessons, and I absolutely agree with that, and the feedback I've had from the retail sector was that it's really important to engage earlier around these regulations. But protecting public health has to be done quickly at times, and we don't always have the luxury of time to do that.

I also think matters weren't helped by images that were circulated on social media that caused distress when it appeared that certain products were not available. So, I really want to be clear that many of these problems occurred due to uncontrollable factors. One of them was that there had been a robbery that forced closure of a supermarket aisle, and then people maliciously were moving in-shop signage to deliberately cause confusion, and I think it's a real shame that a thoughtless minority sought entertainment through causing alarm and distress to others. But I am grateful that the overwhelming majority of the public were calm, they were understanding, and they continued to show concern for others.

In the days immediately before the firebreak, and throughout it, the Welsh Government engaged extensively with trade organisations and with a wide range of individual retailers to explain the regulations and the action that they were required to take. We published guidance for retailers and we answered queries from them. This enabled them to take a pragmatic approach to managing their shops, and I was very pleased to be able to agree a joint statement with them that stressed the critical issue of staff safety. One of the worst features, I think, of COVID-19 has been an increase in anti-social behaviour by retail customers towards each other and, especially, towards retail staff. I have previously written to the Home Office about this subject, and I've also written to all Wales's police forces, seeking their strong support for retailers in addressing this problem. I'd like to put again on record the Welsh Government's thanks to the retail sector and their many employees across Wales for managing a difficult situation very well. They faced significant challenges, and they worked hard to make those changes quickly.

Now the firebreak is over, it's really important that we sustain the gains that we've made in fighting COVID-19. The public are being urged to continue to avoid unnecessary travel and crowded spaces, and in most circumstances, the absolute maximum number of people who can gather together is four. That is a maximum, it's not a target, and the smaller the number of people who gather, obviously, the lower the risk. Through taking these commonsense steps, everyone can help keep Wales safe, protect our NHS, and, of course, protect ourselves and our loved ones. The firebreak has been a tough experience for many, many people, and we do have to learn lessons. I also accept that this petition was the biggest one ever accepted, but I think that's because COVID-19 is the biggest challenge that we've faced for many, many years. Thank you.

Thank you. I have no indication that Members requested to make any interventions, therefore I'll call on Janet Finch-Saunders to reply to the debate.

Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer, and thank you to the Minister for responding to this debate and to Members for their contributions. Sadly, the time remaining does not allow me to refer back to your contributions individually, however, in concluding today's debate, I wish once again to thank the petitioner and all the others who have contacted our committee about this matter. This debate has enabled some important issues to be raised and I hope the points raised today will be able to contribute in some form to future decision making. We will return to consider this petition at a future meeting of our committee, when we seek the reflections of the petitioner on the points that have been made. Thank you very much. Diolch yn fawr iawn.

Thank you. The proposal is to note the petition. Does any Member object? I don't see any objections, therefore the petition is noted in accordance with Standing Order 12.36.

Motion agreed in accordance with Standing Order 12.36.