2. Does the Welsh Government have any plans to review the advice it has received in relation to tackling the coronavirus pandemic? OQ56051

I thank the Member for the question, Llywydd. The technical advisory cell provides co-ordination of the latest scientific and technical advice to support the Welsh Government decision making. This includes regular reviews of the evidence, analysis and advice from the UK’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies and a wide range of other national and international sources.

Thank you, First Minister. Throughout the pandemic, you have followed the advice provided to you by the technical advisory cell, yet the pandemic is raging out of control in Wales. Therefore, many people are concluding that there is a problem either with the advice or with its implementation. And as we cannot see the advice given to Ministers, just summaries, we can only conclude that the advice given could be suspect. First Minister, science doesn't operate in secret, it relies on rigorous peer review. So, will you commit to fully publishing all scientific advice given to Ministers, and establish a scientific review board to red-team all COVID-19 control measures before they're introduced? Thank you. Diolch.

Well, Llywydd, the problem is not with the advice or with its implementation. The problem is the virus. If the advice was wrong uniquely here in Wales, then how is it that, as we heard in the last question, Governments in other parts of the world are facing exactly the same dilemmas? We are dealing with a virus that doesn't behave in the way that models always predict, doesn't respond to some of the measures that were expected to be efficacious, where we saw yesterday evidence of a new variant emerging, which will potentially pose new challenges to us. The problem is not the advice; the advice is as good advice as you can get. The problem is dealing with a virus that is full of unexpected and difficult surprises, and where there is no single, simple approach to be found anywhere in the world that can be picked up from one part of the globe and dropped down in another with a guarantee of success. 

First Minister, recent correspondence from my constituents shows that this period has, understandably, taken a negative toll on the mental health of the population's most vulnerable. This correspondence, of course, is indicative of a larger scale and immediate problem that is facing the Welsh public as a whole. In fact, the results of a recent survey by Swansea and Cardiff universities revealed that approximately half of its 13,000 participants reported clinically significant psychological distress, with about 20 per cent saying they were suffering severe effects. However, there is very little mention or acknowledgement noted in the technical advisory cell briefings. So, I believe that it's crucial now, as we're moving towards more stringent measures, that this Welsh Government does all it can to ensure that access to loneliness support groups and mental health support services is ensured. So, is it possible that, when you are working with your scientific advisers and you are publishing the TACs, you could possibly give acknowledgement to those suffering with the mental health impacts to ensure that these briefings consider the impact—and the severe impact, I should say—of restrictions on loneliness, social isolation and mental health issues? Thank you.   

Llywydd, well, I do think that the technical advisory group does, very regularly, provide advice to us on the wider harms. Our chief medical officer has from the very beginning pointed to the four different sort of harms that come from coronavirus, and the impact on people's sense of mental health and mental well-being is absolutely part of what we always weigh up. I was trying to do it in my answer to Andrew R.T. Davies's question—the advice we are seeing today from people about taking more stringent measures over Christmas to reduce the ability of people to get together. But that will have an impact on all the issues that Janet Finch-Saunders has just raised with me. Those were the e-mails that I was referring to , from people pleading that we should allow them to be able to get together over Christmas because of the impact on their mental health and well-being.

I took part myself, yesterday, Llywydd, in an initiative that is simply asking people to phone somebody else over Christmas who lives alone, and I had a very striking conversation with somebody living in the Rhondda Cynon Taf area, who has been three months without being able to see anybody else because of his own health and the impact that has on other people. And the Christmas period matters a lot to people, doesn't it? So, I just want to say to the Member that, of course, we weigh those things up, and, of course, we try and make judgments that attend to the impact on people's physical health and on our services, on the current state of coronavirus, while never losing sight of the fact that, when restrictions are placed on people's ability to meet others, which may be entirely necessary to control the virus, there are other effects that we must weigh up and try and mitigate. 

First Minister, could I ask what efforts you have made to reach out to the main party leaders in order to keep them informed of the medical and scientific advice and the data and the difficult choices to be made? At this time of a continuing national crisis, facing a continuing pandemic, the people of Wales would hope that all political leaders and spokespeople would seek every opportunity to be well informed and would also expect the First Minister to make those opportunities available to the opposition. So, can I ask, have you had that good and timely engagement with the main opposition party leaders so that they can themselves engage as fully as possible in the challenges we face in Wales, and so that their public pronouncements can be well informed and promote this message of saving lives, protecting our precious NHS and the people who at this very moment are working on the front line in dangerous and difficult circumstances? 

Llywydd, I thank Huw Irranca-Davies for that. For many months now, we have had a pattern on a Wednesday morning of a meeting involving both the leader of the opposition and the leader of Plaid Cymru to make sure that we are able to share with them, sometimes on a reasonably confidential—necessarily confidential—basis the advice that comes to Welsh Government, and I'm very grateful to both of them for the time that they've taken and the efforts they've made to be available and to participate in those meetings. I don't think the leader of Plaid Cymru has missed a single one of them. And I have done my best, when we are coming to major decisions and major announcements, to make a telephone call to the leaders of the Conservative Party and Plaid Cymru in advance of that, so that they are at least sighted on what it is that we are trying to achieve. And I agree with what Huw Irranca-Davies said, that the more those opportunities are taken, the better able we are to try and, where we are able to do so, send common messages out to people in Wales about the nature of the public health emergency we continue to be gripped by and the actions that we can take in our own lives as well as the action that the Government can take to make a difference to it.