5. What action is the Welsh Government taking to formulate a strategy to ease lockdown restrictions? OQ56292

I thank the Member for that question. Our approach to easing restrictions will continue to be based on the latest scientific evidence and medical advice. We will ease lockdown in a gradual way and update our coronavirus control plan to take account of new variants and the vaccination roll-out.

Thank you, First Minister. Obviously, public safety is of paramount importance, and we need to do everything we need to at the right time, but our businesses need as much warning as possible about when they can start preparing to get back to business. The Confederation of British Industry Wales has called on the Welsh Government to work on a road map out of lockdown so businesses can be ready when the time is right. In particular, they want you to confirm what will be considered low, medium and high-risk economic activity so that businesses can understand what will be open sooner and later. Businesses I've been in contact with are crying out for more clarity so they can invest and plan for reopening. Do you have an exit strategy in place that can be provided, in part, to provide that clarity and much-needed information for our businesses? Thank you.

Well, it's called the coronavirus control plan. It was published on 14 December. It sets out our alert level framework. It tells people in Wales what the indicators are that we will use to decide whether Wales is at a level 4 set of restrictions, level 3, level 2, and it explains what will be possible in terms of reopening the economy, personal life, sporting and cultural activity at each of those levels. The plan was published in that way precisely in order to offer the sort of certainty that the Member has asked for. I think it's all there. I said in my original answer that we will update that plan, because it was drawn up before the Kent variant was widely understood and before the vaccination programme had got under way. I'm keen that we should update the plan to take account of those positive developments on the one hand and challenging developments on the other. But when we update it, it will continue to do what it set out to do, and that is to give people as much certainty as we can, in the highly uncertain circumstances of the pandemic, by giving people a clear sense of the indicators we will use to move between levels and the sort of activity that could be resumed when we are in a position to move out of level 4, as we are today, and to move down the levels, restoring freedoms as we do so.

First Minister, there's a great deal of concern in Wales about the effect on children and young people of the pandemic and the restrictions, which I know you very much share. I very much agree with you in terms of the priority of getting our children back to school as quickly as possible, possibly starting with foundation phase children. Would you also agree that we need to get our young people, our children, able to take part in sport and the many activities that they enjoy for the mental and physical health advantages as well as the social interaction that involves? When there is some leeway to do so, First Minister, would restoring those activities be amongst, perhaps, the first thoughts that you have as to how we can ease restrictions?

I thank John Griffiths for those points. Indeed, they are points that Laura Anne Jones herself has put to me in the past. The coronavirus control plan that I referred to does very specifically say that supervised children's activities can resume when we're in a position to move towards alert level 3. I very much agree with the points the Member made about the impact that the whole of the last 12 months has had on children and young people. That is why our top priority is to get those young people back into the classroom. As more headroom appears, provided it does, then offering those young people opportunities outside school, particularly in the open air, will be very much part of the thinking of this Government.