Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:48 pm on 9 March 2021.
I'm afraid the leader of the opposition will have to wait until Friday. That is when the three-week cycle ends. The Cabinet will continue to discuss the package of measures that we will be able to propose then during the remainder of this week. But he's right to say that at the end of the last three-week review, I said that I hoped that this will be the last three weeks in which we have to ask people in Wales to stay at home and that we would be able to move beyond that. I said then as well that we would continue to make the return to education as quickly and as safely as possible for our children our top priority, and that, alongside that, we would look to find ways of allowing people to do more in their personal lives and to begin the reopening of new aspects of the Welsh economy. That continues to be the list of issues that we discuss as a Cabinet and I'm looking forward to being able to make announcements on that on Friday.
The fact that numbers in Wales of people suffering from coronavirus continue to go down, the fact that the stress and strain on our health service is reducing in the way that it is—that is undoubtedly the achievement that belongs to people here in Wales, for everything that they have done to abide by the difficult ask that we have made of them during recent weeks, in order to bring this latest wave of the pandemic under control. As we lift restrictions, I will once again be appealing to people in Wales not to approach this by asking themselves, 'How far can the rules be stretched, what is the most that I can get away with as restrictions are lifted?' We continue to face a public health emergency. Nobody knows how the Kent variant will react as we begin to restore aspects of our daily lives. I will be appealing once again to people in Wales to ask themselves the question not, 'What can I do?' but, 'What should I do in order to go on making my contribution to keeping myself, others and the whole of Wales safe?'