COVID-19: Cases in the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency

Part of 3. Topical Questions – in the Senedd at 3:30 pm on 27 January 2021.

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Photo of Mike Hedges Mike Hedges Labour 3:30, 27 January 2021

As the First Minister is aware, I've been talking about the DVLA for a very long time, and I also spoke about it in a Senedd debate last month. I've also raised it with the health board regularly, as Suzy Davies pointed out. In the first lockdown, after the initial problems, most people at the DVLA worked from home. If you access the distributed system or main network, location is not important. Here are some extracts from three of the many e-mails I've received:

'DVLA are aware of health problems and also that I care for family with health problems.'

'I'm struggling being in the workplace, and I'm hyper-aware of the conditions and the volume of people surrounding me in the office.'

'I have asked to work from home, but unfortunately the DVLA have required me to attend the office.'

I thank the First Minister for the letters he's sent. And I think that, really, I find difficulty asking the First Minister to do any more, because I can't think of much more that he can do. But I think what I would say is that, in the first pandemic, working from home was the norm amongst people in the DVLA; since the second shutdown, it has not been the norm. And I would ask him again to write to Baroness Vere, telling her that you expect that, where people can work from home, they do—it's the law in Wales.