We're debating this afternoon a control plan. Well, it's certainly a plan, but what is uncertain is whether we will actually control anything very much. We saw with the firebreak, as indeed I predicted when it was debated, that the numbers might come down for a short period but, as soon as the restrictions were lifted, that they would start to rise again. So, unless we're prepared, as the former First Minister appeared to be saying a moment ago, that we should have a lockdown that is indefinite and will stretch well into next year, I think that what we're doing today is not proportionate to the circumstances in which we find ourselves. The one word that has been markedly missing from the debate this afternoon is the word 'winter', and it was predicted right at the start of this pandemic that, when we got to the winter, cases were bound to rise, as all respiratory cases rise in the winter, although what is interesting about the figures for this year—and I've got a chart in front of me that compares 2020 with the previous five years—is how the death figures for all respiratory diseases are very much lower this year than any of the previous four years. That's not to minimise, of course, the importance of any death that is avoidable. But the question is whether these measures, which are going to do such tremendous damage to the economy, as everybody accepts, are going to be matched by some countervailing benefit in terms of the number of people who are hospitalised and ultimately die.

And, on that, I think that what is lacking also from this debate is the question of humility on the part of the Government. Sometimes it's hard—always hard, perhaps—to admit that you don't have supreme power to control events, and governments often find themselves in these circumstances. What is marked about the international experience, which has been referred to by both the First Minister and his predecessor this afternoon, is that, despite the very, very wide variations in the way in which governments have reacted to the pandemic, the disease has not been stopped in its tracks anywhere, in fact, quite the opposite. Now, the First Minister issued a challenge in his speech, saying that those who used to look up to Sweden no longer mention it. Well, I'm going to mention it this afternoon, because Sweden's experience is actually very interesting. The death rate per million is Sweden is 757. In the United Kingdom, it is 946. So, Sweden has a very much lower death rate than we have, and Sweden's figures are very much front-loaded because they failed to protect people in their care homes in the spring, and so the bulk of the deaths in Sweden relate to that failure of policy on the part of the Swedish Government then. If we look at the figures more recently, the death figures for Sweden for COVID were three on 21 October. They rose to 69 on 25 November, and they've consistently come down from that date of 25 November, until yesterday, 14 December, they had been reduced to as low as 17. Sweden has introduced one new measure in the last couple of months to restrict movements in Sweden, and that is to impose a maximum of eight on public gatherings, although if you are 16 people and go out to a restaurant together, you can have two tables of eight next to each other so long as you socially distance and keep your 1m or 2m apart. And so, the Swedish death rate is no worse, and often is consistently better, than other countries in the northern hemisphere who are advanced. 

So, the problem we've got here is that we have a fate that is most unwelcome about which governments don't seem to be able to do anything very much apart from make temporary actions that affect the disease, which otherwise has a remorseless progress. Maybe the vaccines will free us from this terrible world in which we now live. But the performance of the economy is going to have long, long-term effects upon people, and they're not just economic effects, they're also in terms of health and well-being. These are points that have all been well made by even those who support the Government in what it's trying to do. I've every sympathy with the First Minister and his colleagues in the predicament in which they find themselves, but I do believe that these measures are disproportionate, and that it's obvious that, where infection rates are low in some parts of Wales, the restrictions are going to impose an unnecessary cost. It's true also that, in other parts of Wales—urbanised areas in particular—we've not made the restrictions tough enough. So, I say to the Government just one thing, 'Please, make your regulations proportionate.'