Questions Without Notice from the Party Leaders

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:52 pm on 24 November 2020.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 1:52, 24 November 2020

Well, Llywydd, the basis for what the health Minister said yesterday is to be found in the figures, and I'm sure that the leader of the opposition has been following them, as I do every day. Following two weeks and more of figures falling on a Wales-wide basis, we've now had three days in a row where the Wales-wide figure has risen, and in today's figures, 17 of the 22 local authorities are reporting rises in the under 25-year-old age range. Now, numbers continue to fall in the over 60 age range, and that's good news, because in terms of impact on the health service we know that that is where people are most likely to be most badly affected by the virus. But we also know, from earlier in the autumn, that the rapid rise we saw in the month of September and into October started with a rise in the younger population. So, it's that background that was there when the health Minister said what he said yesterday, and it's part of what I said to Adam Price, that I have been making the case in the meetings we've had with the other nations of the United Kingdom for a broadly aligned approach not just for the narrow period of Christmas but in the run-up to Christmas and in the post-Christmas period.

So, we have followed carefully what the UK Government has said so far this week about a return to a recalibrated tier system in England. We will wait to have further information on that, possibly this afternoon, and again on Thursday, and then, this week, the Cabinet will meet pretty regularly. We met yesterday. We met this morning. We'll meet again before the end of the week to see whether there are further measures that we need to introduce in Wales, to focus on the nature of the rise we are seeing and which would provide us with that broad alignment with the approach being taken by other parts of the United Kingdom as part of creating that headroom we all need to allow a relaxation over the Christmas period.