Questions Without Notice from the Party Leaders

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:50 pm on 23 March 2021.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 1:50, 23 March 2021

I think people are more sensible than the Member gives them credit for. They will understand that the rules that govern international travel out of Wales or into Wales are identical to those everywhere in the rest of the United Kingdom. If the Member is critical of them, he can only be equally critical of the position taken by his own Government.

I looked before we started questions this afternoon, Llywydd, at the list of flights that will be coming into Heathrow this afternoon—flights from Cairo, flights from many parts of the world where the risks are a good deal greater than any flight coming into Cardiff. If a flight comes into Cardiff, then people who arrive here will be subject to all the rules that are there. That includes a testing regime, it includes people being required to stay at home in their own homes for a period after they arrive back, being tested at the start, being tested at the eight-day point—all of that is in place here in Wales. Those are the same rules that happen elsewhere.

I've lost count of the number of times, Llywydd, that the Member has urged on me that we should follow a four-nation approach to these matters in the United Kingdom, and yet when I follow a four-nation approach identically where international travel is concerned, he seems to suggest that we should be doing something different here in Wales. We're doing it on a four-nation basis. I'm very glad we're doing it that way. Everything we are doing here in Wales is the same as in England, Scotland or Northern Ireland, other than the point that the Member hadn't grasped, which is that no red-list flights are allowed to come into Wales. They are only allowed to land in Scotland and in England.