Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:59 pm on 16 March 2021.
Thank you, First Minister. And I do welcome those positive comments, despite the negativity that is coming from other countries, and I hope that we can get back, in those countries, to a normal process of vaccination, because, as I said, unless we all adhere to the vaccination programme, we will all suffer lockdown measures going forward, as we're seeing in countries across Europe at the moment.
But I do want to bring you back to your own control plan, the coronavirus control plan, which you brought forward in December, and in particular that plan was predicated on the Kent variant being the dominant virus, which you identified on 21 December. The health Minister repeated this to me in January, when I was asking for a road map out of lockdown and, in particular, gateways of opportunity to open up the economy and open up society. You also repeated the importance of the coronavirus control plan to my colleague Laura Anne Jones in February, yet it is my understanding that the coronavirus control plan has now been put to one side and is awaiting an update. Why is it taking so long to update the coronavirus control plan, as it's been central to your thinking up until a few weeks ago? And can you, in the interest of transparency, publish all the updated guidelines that you're using when you're considering measures to unlock society as we go further into the spring and early summer?