Questions Without Notice from the Party Leaders

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:06 pm on 19 January 2021.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 2:06, 19 January 2021

Well, Llywydd, the health spokesperson of the Conservative Party said earlier this afternoon that he wanted to see the vaccine programme succeed. It does not help to make it succeed when the leader of the opposition deliberately and knowingly runs down the efforts of those people who are working so hard to accelerate vaccine here in Wales by describing it all the time as a go-slow policy.

Let me just say again, because he said he might be confused; he needn't be confused if he'd listened to the first two answers I've given him. Let me give him the answer again and then he need not be confused again in the future: the policy of the Welsh Government is to vaccinate as many people in Wales as quickly and as safely as possible. That is how we have had 162,000 people vaccinated already here in Wales. That is why the pace of vaccination will accelerate again this week. The rate-limiting factor in Welsh vaccination is the one that the health Minister explained, in answering the emergency question. It is the rate of supply of the vaccine. We've had 25,000 doses of the Oxford vaccine available to us over each of the last two weeks. We expect to have 80,000 doses available to us this week, and we will use all of them. And we will use every drop of the Pfizer vaccine as well before the next delivery of that vaccine arrives here in Wales. That is our determination, that is what people in the NHS are working so hard to achieve, and I know that they would like to have the support of the leader of the opposition rather than his continual criticism of them.