Emergency Question: COVID-19 Restrictions

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 2:05 pm on 16 December 2020.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 2:05, 16 December 2020

Llywydd, on that final point from Helen Mary Jones, I'll make a final decision on that matter when the statement between the four nations is agreed and published. It provides the context within which that decision must be made. I think it is possible to overstate the significance of the decision. Most of our fellow citizens do not pore over the distinction between guidance and regulation. They want to know what the right thing is to do. And here is the right thing to do: in Wales, two households only should meet over Christmas. There it is. I don't think it can be plainer. I don't think it can be stated any more clearly. Whether we continue to provide that as guidance or regulation will depend on the wider context, which will become clear this afternoon, and I'll make a final decision on that at that point, but the message will be the same. The message is identical in either case, and it's the message, as I think Adam Price said, that is the key thing here, that we get that message over to people as clearly as we can, and I really don't think I could have been clearer in it. 

We are working with hotels and other sectors during the day to give them the clarity that they need. Much of what we have provided already is sufficient to allow for a hibernation period in tourism and some hospitality businesses, and there will be further help as a result of the decisions that we have made today. I'm afraid Helen Mary Jones got it right herself, really, in answering her own question about when businesses can reopen. There will be a three-week review, so we will take all the evidence into account at that point. If it is possible to offer any lightening of restrictions regionally or nationally, of course that is what we would want to do, but it will depend entirely on the extent to which these measures are by then relieving the pressure that we see on the health service today and which is unsustainable unless measures are taken to reverse that trend. If the trend is reversed sustainably within three weeks, that will create one context. If we have to go further and do more in order to make our health service available to people in Wales, not just for coronavirus but all the other things we look for, then that is what we will do.