8. Statement by the First Minister: Coronavirus — December Restrictions

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 5:46 pm on 1 December 2020.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 5:46, 1 December 2020

Well, in answer to Suzy Davies's first point, I hope that she will recognise that I used the word 'frustration' because that is the word that David Rowlands put to me in the question that he asked me. So, I was simply responding to the point that was directly put to me; it was certainly not to trivialise anything.

On her second point, I just come back to what I've said to other people. In this pandemic, all Governments are faced with impossibly difficult decisions, impossibly difficult balancing acts between lives and livelihoods, about the four harms that come from coronavirus and how we balance them all. All I can do and all members of my Cabinet can do is to hear the advice that we get, to weigh it up in the best way we can and to make a decision that allows you to look at yourself in the mirror on the following day. Now, that might be a different decision to the one that the Member would have come to, of course it can be, but that's the only way that I can proceed—I make the decisions that I think are most likely to be to the benefit of people in Wales. Whether, in the immediate aftermath of that, people feel aggrieved at it and say that they will vote in different ways, well, that's for them to decide. But what I have to do is to act in ways that I think most defend the things that matter most to people in Wales, and, if I wasn't making decisions on that basis, I wouldn't be able to carry on doing the job that I do, even when Suzy Davies and people she meets elsewhere take a different view to me.