6. What steps will the First Minister take to ensure that the wellbeing of children and young people is prioritised when considering the easing of lockdown restrictions? OQ56425

Llywydd, can I thank Lynne Neagle for that question and for her persistent interest and support for this whole area? Our priority when easing restrictions is to get as many children and young people back as possible as safely as possible back into face-to-face education. As conditions improve, we will explore how supervised outdoor activities can also resume for children in Wales.

Thank you, First Minister. As you know, COVID rarely causes serious illness in children and young people, but we do know the pandemic has had a huge impact on their learning, on their mental health and on other aspects of their physical health. I very much support the cautious approach to easing lockdown restrictions, and an approach where we continue to follow scientific evidence and advice. I am however very concerned that decisions in the coming days to ease other restrictions will remove the vital headroom necessary to return children to school fully. What assurances can the First Minister give that ensuring that all children can return to school on 15 April after Easter will remain his top priority, and what assurances can he give that future decisions on lockdown easing will have at their very heart the need to to maintain the headroom necessary for children to return to school? And can I also ask whether the First Minister is planning to publish an updated child rights impact assessment in order to align with the latest review of restrictions? Thank you.

Llywydd, I thank Lynne Neagle for that question, and for all the work that she has done in chairing the children and young persons committee at the Senedd, which has made such a contribution to the way in which we have been able to approach these challenging issues. The top priority for the Welsh Government remains to get our children and young people back into face-to-face education, doing it as quickly but as safely as we can, and that is why we have developed the step-by-step approach, because that is what the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, our own technical advisory cell group and the chief medical officer have always said to us. So, we already have around 30 per cent of children back in school as a result of the return of the foundation phase. On Monday of next week, we will return all primary age children to face-to-face education, examination students in secondary school, and she will have seen and welcomed, I know, the additional flexibilities that the education Minister has proposed for local education authorities and headteachers to bring more children back into school before the Easter holidays. We will look to use the headroom we have to restore some other aspects of Welsh life, but we always do that with a close attention to not doing anything that would impede our ability to return the whole of our children and young people to school immediately after the Easter holidays, and I can give her that assurance that that is always the lens through which we regard the other aspects that we do hope to be able to make some preliminary progress on after this Friday's review is concluded. In the meantime, we will publish all the impact assessments and supporting documents that we have developed over the last 12 months, as we complete this three-week review.