The next item is a statement by the First Minister on COVID-19, one year on. I call on the First Minister to make the statement.

Thank you, Llywydd. Today, we mark a major milestone in this pandemic, a pandemic that has had such an impact on us all. A year ago to today, all four countries of the UK entered lockdown together for the first time. For a great many people, this would have been the first time they became aware of the seriousness of the public health crisis that we have lived with now for so long. 

Today, events are being held across the country. At midday, we stood in silence with people throughout the UK. Later today, we will hold our own commemorative event, as we come together to remember all those who have died and to recognise the huge commitment made by so many throughout Wales. Tonight, landmarks and buildings will be lit up across Wales. Llywydd, we will mainly be focusing today, and rightly so, on the huge loss of life the pandemic has caused. As they have been throughout the pandemic, our thoughts are with all the families who are mourning the loss of a loved one. We remember those individuals behind the figures reported on a daily basis. 

Llywydd, this is a terrible and cruel virus. It has struck indiscriminately, taking the old and the young. It has laid bare stubborn inequalities in our society, exposing divisions and affecting those communities most vulnerable, particularly disabled people, women and black, Asian and minority ethnic communities.

Over the last year, we have heard desperately sad stories of husbands and wives dying within days of each other, of brothers and sisters taken by the virus, of generations from the same family succumbing to COVID-19. They will be remembered in the hearts and minds of all those who know and loved them and, today, we remember them too. Wales will have two permanent living memorials to all those who have died, as we plant forests in north and south Wales. These will be spaces for families to come to remember their loved ones and places of reflection for others. Because this virus has taken something from each one of us here today; each one of us will know someone who has died or someone who has been ill.

The cost has been felt in ways in which we live our daily lives. It has interrupted our traditions from Christmas, Ramadan, Diwali and Hanukkah. It's cancelled weddings and changed the way we say goodbye to those whom we have lost. There has been a huge financial cost as businesses have closed, some of which will, sadly, never reopen, and jobs have been lost too. And the virus has fundamentally changed the ways we interact with each other, casting a shadow on all our lives. It's not just touching elbows instead of shaking hands, or Zoom calls replacing face-to-face meetings; the virus has taken human touch and human contact away from us. We have already seen the impact of the pandemic on our mental health and well-being in feelings of loneliness, isolation, anxiety and frustration, and, as we discussed earlier this afternoon, the full force of all of that may yet be to come.

And yet, Llywydd, as painful as the human cost has been, this extraordinary year has also shown the huge resilience of the human spirit and the phenomenal willingness of people in communities to help one another. Week after week, we have seen more people volunteering to help those who have been shielding and to support our public services; over 100 new volunteers coming forward again in just the last week. And as schools and shops have closed for prolonged periods, our homes have become classrooms and workplaces, and businesses have found innovative ways to offer services remotely. Rush-hour queues have almost disappeared, and we've learned how to deploy the 'mute' button—or at least most of us have most of the time.

Llywydd, I want to pay tribute to the remarkable way our public services have responded to the pandemic, and to the dedication and determination of the tens of thousands of people working in our NHS and care services and in all those day-to-day services we rely upon that are provided by our local authorities, and, beyond all that, I want to thank everybody who has put themselves at risk at work to serve others: in retail, bus, train and taxi drivers, teachers and school staff—the list is long and longer than I can set out this afternoon. It is your tireless work that has kept us all safe.

And the response to the pandemic in Wales has been a social partnership response, whether that's our successful test, trace protect service, which was built from scratch and which the Wales Audit Office said last week was making an important contribution to the management of COVID-19, whether it's securing supplies of personal protective equipment from Welsh businesses for the NHS and social care, or our world-leading genomic surveillance system in Wales, which is helping to identify new variants of the virus, and of course, our fantastic vaccination programme, which continues to go from strength to strength as it provides vaccines to people at incredible speed. In less than four months, Llywydd, thousands of NHS staff, supported by military personnel and volunteers, working from 600 centres, have given more than half the adult population of Wales their first dose of the vaccine, vaccination that gives us real hope for a better future and a different relationship with this virus—a future where we will be able to live with fewer restrictions.

Because, over the last 12 months, all four UK Governments have taken unprecedented decisions to protect people’s health and to control the spread of the virus. It's meant intervening in people's lives in ways not seen for generations. None of these decisions have been easy, and quite certainly none of them have been taken lightly, but they have been necessary to save lives and livelihoods.

I want to thank everyone in Wales for their support and help. Yours is the victory that has brought the virus under control time and again over the course of this year. It is only because people across our nation have followed the rules and kept ourselves and our families safe that we are now able to start relaxing those restrictions, carefully unlocking Wales sector by sector. And we will go on doing this gradually, step by step, so that we do not throw away any of the hard work and sacrifices 3 million people have made over the last three months, always mindful of how quickly this virus can return, as we have seen from the sobering experiences in Europe over the last week.

Llywydd, across Wales we have seen an enormous spirit of social solidarity and hundreds of thousands of individual small acts of kindness, even as so many lives have been disrupted and put on hold. It's because of that spirit that we start this spring and mark this anniversary with a sense of hope. Cases have fallen, the pressure on our NHS is receding; we have more and different tests available and vaccination on a mass scale. We are beginning to unlock our country and we are determined to do so in a way that keeps rates of the virus low. We will rebuild and recover, building a fairer and a greener Wales, in which no-one is held back and no-one is left behind.

Llywydd, we are living with coronavirus and are likely to be so for some time yet. But the tenacity of hope in the bad days and the audacity of hope in the better times are both part of the human condition. It's this that allows us to say that this year can be different and this year will be better than the last. Diolch yn fawr.

Thank you, First Minister, for your statement this afternoon. I agree entirely with the sentiments expressed within this statement. A year today, obviously, we first had the restrictions imposed on us, and the tragedy that has befallen 7,000 plus families of losing a much-loved member of that family is completely unimaginable, and the love and compassion that is shown by the society as a whole across Wales is a credit to that community spirit that exists in every corner of Wales.

The dedication that services have provided in supporting families, from the NHS right the way through the public sector and into the charitable sector, is an exemplar for anyone to look upon with great pride. I think it's a matter of great pride as a country that we can look at the way we've faced this virus. I might well have had my policy disagreements with the First Minister, but it is a fact that, as a country of 3 million people, everyone has played their part in facing down the virus, and, as the First Minister's pointed out, we're not out of the woods yet, but certainly we've put a lot of that dark undergrowth behind us, and the spring looks a lot brighter than it did a couple of weeks ago.

With that in mind, First Minister, if I could ask a series of questions out of the statement, I would be grateful for some answers. At the end of the statement you talk about that we are living with the coronavirus and it is likely we will be living with it for some time. You've made representations in the media recently that you believe that quite a few regulations will be still with us right the way through 2021 and into 2022. Could you give an indication of what your thinking is, from the information you have before you, of what type of restrictions we might be looking at as we carry on into 2021 and into 2022? Also, the point you make about the living memorials—I welcome that, in particular the way you've geographically spread them to north and south Wales, but I do wonder why consideration has not been given to establishing a memorial in mid Wales, so that all parts of Wales do have that garden of remembrance that could be visited in an equal spread across Wales. And so I just wonder whether you have given consideration to the thought of establishing such a woodland in mid Wales, as it was notable by its absence in the announcement that you made last week.

In another part of the statement, you touch on loneliness, isolation, anxiety and frustration, the full force of which may yet be to come. What assessment has the Government made of the demands that may well be pressed on the mental health services that are provided? A welcome move by the Government was to establish a dedicated mental health Minister back in the autumn, and I hope that the Government have been able to make assessments of the requirements that we need to build our services going forward. And I think that's a very important line in this statement, about loneliness, isolation, anxiety and frustration, because that has been acutely felt by many people across the whole of Wales.

And finally, you highlight the success of the vaccination roll-out, something we can all celebrate in all parts of the United Kingdom, where over 50 per cent of the adult population has been vaccinated. Regrettably, there has been dialogue between the European Union and the UK and other parts of the world, and in particular the European Union, about withholding supplies. I very much hope that's not the case. I realise the difficulties the European Union finds itself in with its own roll-out and, indeed, dealing with the third wave now that is engulfing the continent is something that none of wish to see, but I'd invite you to make a comment on what you would personally send as a message to the European Union President not to go down this route of sanction and reneging on contracts, to allow vaccines to flow freely where they are contracted. No-one is looking to walk outside of the contract parameters, but I do think it's important that you're on record, First Minister, because this is such a topic of great concern and, ultimately, those contracts are in place and we do not want to see anything that hinders the vaccine roll-out which, as your statement this afternoon alludes to has (a) been such a success and (b) offers some bright sunshine into the spring that we're walking into. Thank you, First Minister. 

Llywydd, I thank the leader of the opposition for what he said in responding to the statement and for the questions that he has raised. He will have seen what the Prime Minister said yesterday about the risk of a third wave of the virus here in the United Kingdom. He will have seen the new variants that are emerging in different parts of the world. That's why the advice that I have received from our chief medical officer and others tells me that we're not done, unfortunately, with this virus yet. I think, if things all go well, then by the end of this year we may we be living with the simple restrictions—the social distancing, the hand washing, the mask wearing in crowded places—the things we've become very used to doing to keep one another safe. But we simply cannot, I think, say to people with the certainty we would like that all the risks of coronavirus are already passed. There may be more twists and turns in the story yet. Of course, our aim is to lift restrictions as fast as it is safe to do so, but that's what I meant when I said that I thought that we will be living with this virus for some time to come. 

Thanks to Andrew R.T. Davies for what he said about the living memorials. I've seen correspondence from mid Wales and would be very happy indeed to consider that. He will know of our plans for a national forest and I can see ways in which commemorative woodland could be part of that wider plan for afforestation that would link north, south and mid Wales together.

The plan that was published yesterday for the recovery of the NHS was jointly signed by the Minister for mental health, the Deputy Minister for Social Services and Vaughan Gething. That is a sign of our determination that the mental health needs and the well-being needs of the population will have every bit as great a significance in the work that the health service will do as we recover from the pandemic as any other aspect of its work. Thank you to the leader of the opposition for drawing attention to the importance of third sector organisations, because that part of the document published yesterday particularly draws attention to the way in which those recovery services for people with loneliness, anxiety, whose mental well-being has been affected by the pandemic—. That it's not a job for the health service alone. It's very much a job for the health service to do in partnership with those voluntary organisations who play such an important part in mental health and well-being in Wales.

And finally, to the issue of vaccine supply, well, I simply echo what the Prime Minister was saying yesterday, that we need our friends in Europe to come to an agreement with us on this matter. We all face the challenge of coronavirus. It has no respect for any national boundaries. We all face, therefore, the challenge of vaccination together, and we need an agreement between us all as to the best way in which that can be secured for the benefit of all. The Prime Minister will be in further discussions with European leaders today and tomorrow. I will have a meeting later today with Michael Gove, as head of the Cabinet Office; the First Minister of Scotland; and the First Minister and deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland, where we will be discussing this matter again. That's my message to friends and colleagues elsewhere. We resolve this matter by discussion and agreement. That is the way to make sure we go on working for the benefit of us all.

May I take this opportunity to extend my sincerest sympathies to those who have lost loved ones as a result of the terrible cruelty that we have suffered during the last 12 months, and those still suffering today? Our thoughts are with them all. As you said in your statement, First Minister, it will be some time before the impact of the pandemic can be fully understood, and I do fear that the scars on our society will last well into the future.

In hopelessness there is hope, and even in the darkest hours there is light, and our key workers have been a source of light and have supported us all through these dark days. I would like to thank them all from the bottom of my heart, to all the workers in the health service; the care workers; unpaid carers; teachers, who have maintained education remotely; the police force, who have put themselves at risk to ensure that the regulations are maintained for the benefit of all of us; our transport workers; those working in shops and supermarkets; our food producers, who have safeguarded our food supply chains; and to the undertakers, who do very difficult work at the best of times but who have had to do that under circumstances that have been so much more difficult. I would also like to thank everyone in Wales who has played their part in keeping everyone safe by making those sacrifices in following the unprecedented rules and regulations placed on all aspects of our lives. May I particularly give thanks to our young people, who have sacrificed more than anyone?

However, as Sir Mansel Aylward said recently, there are lessons to be learned from the past 12 months. We believe that we need an independent Welsh inquiry, as there will be lessons that are unique to Wales that need to be learned, and they perhaps wouldn't be given due focus in a UK-wide umbrella inquiry. But how can we recognise and learn lessons even now? I refer to the report of the Welsh NHS Confederation, along with other partners, which looked at the innovation that has happened during this period in responding to the appalling challenges that we have faced over the past 12 months, but through doing that, they've found new strengths: Wales at its best coming together, working across sectors; local government working with the health service on the ground in terms of the test and trace system and the vaccination regime; the use of new technology and digitisation working at a rate that nobody could have anticipated; the ability to put aside bureaucracy and to empower workers in our services to make decisions swiftly. How can we harness this experience, First Minister, in the new period facing us, which, of course, will pose ongoing challenges? Are there more general lessons too in the fact that we have benefited from ploughing our own furrow as a nation during the past 12 months?

And finally, as the British Academy report published today has outlined, the pandemic has highlighted and exacerbated the inequalities that already existed within our society. That's true of income and wealth, geography, gender and race. Is the pandemic a moment for us to decide to tackle these long-term and grave problems that have cast a shadow over our nation and our society for too long? Isn't this the greatest commitment that we can make in memory of the sacrifices and loss suffered by so many during this difficult year?

Llywydd, thank you very much to Adam Price for those general comments that he made at the beginning of his contribution this afternoon. I share his sentiments and we are concerned about the long-term impact on people here in Wales. Nobody knows, of course, and people can come together, as we've seen during this pandemic, and draw strength from each other. But the impact of coronavirus on our communities and on the lives of those who have lost loved ones and have suffered from coronavirus, that isn't going to disappear quickly, I'm sure. I also agree with what Adam Price said about hope: hope is what sustains us, hope for the future.

I'd like to thank the leader of Plaid Cymru too for what he said about the police force, who have worked so very hard to keep us safe in very, very difficult circumstances, and about the impact on young people too. That's why our first priority as a Government was to bring young people back to schools and colleges to try and give them some things back and make them as normal as possible, so that they could meet with other young people, and so on and so forth. That's why we as a Government have said that if we have that opportunity after May, we want to invest millions of pounds in services to help young people to continue to learn lessons and to catch up on those things that they've lost out on over the past year.

And learning lessons is important, of course, as Mr Price said. I don't want to wait for an independent inquiry before we start to learn those lessons. It's important, as Adam Price said, that we learn those lessons now about the strength that people have shown, and about the things that we've been able to do so very quickly during the past 12 months. I had the privilege of being Minister for health here in the Senedd and I recall how difficult it was to persuade people to work digitally, but now, of course, it's a matter of course. We shouldn't forget those lessons; we should harness those things that we have learnt and take them forward in a positive manner. There have been very many difficult things that we've dealt with over the past year, but there are positives too and it's important that we learn those lessons and not wait for an independent inquiry at some point in the future before we do that.

And I agree also with what Adam Price said, and I said it myself in the original statement, that inequalities that had been ingrained, well, coronavirus has drawn them to the surface within our society. And the future won't be better unless the future is fairer. And that's the spirit in which I want to help Wales, if I'm able to, to come out of this pandemic in a way that is better for us all, of course, but is also fairer, so that we can learn those lessons that we've seen with people living with the inequalities within our communities.

John Griffiths.

I hadn't actually submitted my name for this item, Llywydd.

Oh. Right. That's perfectly fine. Rhianon Passmore.

Diolch, Llywydd. First Minister, today marks a year of the national lockdown, yet on 8 March 2020 Scott Howell, then 48, from Blackwood in Islwyn, became the first person from Gwent to go into intensive care due to complications caused by what turned out to be COVID-19. Scott Howell epitomises the communities of Islwyn and he thanks the Welsh national health service for saving his life. But it is very right that we also reflect and remember all of those who have very sadly succumbed to this cruel virus.

First Minister, on behalf of all the people of Islwyn, may I place on record, as their representative, my thanks again to all those women and men who serve in our Welsh NHS and social care, who have fought this fight alongside, often, our own loved ones? The people of Islwyn are made of strong stuff and we've endured this pandemic and only now can we all see light at the end of the tunnel. Llywydd, with every Islwyn resident to be offered the vaccine by 31 July, we know in Wales that the Welsh national health service remains true to Labour Nye Bevan's vision, and that of our Labour Government has ensured that Wales is one of the most successful nations in vaccinating its populace. First Minister, what has the pandemic taught us about the value of our living Labour vision of free healthcare for all, for Islwyn and for Wales, in the twenty-first century?

Llywydd, can I thank Rhianon Passmore and thank her for drawing attention to Scott Howell’s experience? It’s very important, I think, this afternoon that we do remember, of course, people who have died and the suffering and the grief of families, but those many people who did not lose their lives, but whose lives have been profoundly affected by the experience of coronavirus. It is a cruel illness. And those people who end up in intensive care, fighting for their lives, have been very much part of the thinking behind today. Those days back at the start of this pandemic when we worried that we might run out of beds, that we would run out of ventilators, that there wouldn't be intensive care available for people who needed it, and it is thanks to not just the commitment and hard work, but the sheer inventiveness of firms and of clinicians across Wales that created conditions in which we didn’t face those most worrying eventualities.

You would expect me to say, Llywydd, that the lesson I draw from this experience is of the power of practical socialism. When I see people going for vaccination, I think to myself, 'There you see a service that depends not at all on who you are or where you live or who you know or whether you can pay; the only thing it depends upon is the fact that your need comes first.' And we have provided vaccination to those people in order of their clinical vulnerability—each according to his need, each according to his ability. It is the ability of those people who turn up to carry out vaccination that provides that hope in the lives of those individuals. I see that sense of public service in everything that they do, and I see in the Welsh public's reaction to it that powerful sense of fairness—that if somebody needs it more than you, you are prepared to wait your turn. That's what I see in those queues of people waiting for vaccination. I think it lifts our spirits, because it tells us something fundamentally important about who we are and what we are as a nation. 

We remember today all those who have died of COVID and their families. We also, I think, should think of those who have long COVID, think of those who are going to have other health treatments delayed, and think of the impact for so many on their mental health, and those who've suffered worst economically from this. 

First Minister, I'd like to say that anything I say from an Abolish the Welsh Assembly perspective I'd like to preface with two remarks, one about you personally. I appreciate the huge work rate and effort that you have put into this crisis, and how it must have changed you as a leader. You've had to deal with our questions from different perspectives over the past year, and you've generally done so with great conscientiousness and good humour, so I would like to thank you for that. 

I'd also like to say that, whatever our perspectives on what Government should do or shouldn't do, or how it's different from what a Government somewhere else does, whether that's within the United Kingdom or wider afield, I'm struck by how common the experience has been. Even in countries that appeared to be doing well or badly, there seems perhaps to be a reversion to the mean. Sometimes, policies don't have the impact we expect, and overall, perhaps we as politicians are less determinative of the outcomes than we might expect. 

I wonder though, First Minister, could I ask you about one particular decision that was taken before—[Inaudible.]

I think we may have lost Mark Reckless. I'll come back to Mark Reckless later if he's able to rejoin us. Laura Anne Jones, are you able to ask your question now?

Thank you. First Minister, a year on, may I just firstly take this opportunity, on this day of reflection, to remember all those who have devastatingly lost their lives to COVID, and also take this opportunity to thank all those on the front line that have gone above and beyond, and have witnessed sights that none of us would have wanted to witness, or hoped for them to witness? They have put in an incredible amount of effort into saving lives across Wales. It is recognised that it is a great achievement that, along with the volunteers and army, we have now vaccinated half of the Welsh adult population. So, thank you to the First Minister and the Government for that, and the part that they played alongside the UK Government in delivering that. Also, let me please just thank teachers and all those that have enabled us to be safe and to carry on. 

The virus has been incredibly cruel and nasty, and taken many amongst us far too soon. Our thoughts are with them and their families today and always. Personally, I didn't think this time last year, as we entered lockdown, that this pandemic would last more than a few weeks, and yet, here we are, a year on. It is important that we learn from mistakes made. It's important that we reflect. It's important that we mourn. But we must learn from those mistakes during the pandemic on how we've governed, and how we've looked to control the virus, and the effects it's had on livelihoods, and also recognise the impact that it's had not only on livelihoods, on businesses, on education, but also on mental and physical health, both young and old.

In the early stage of this pandemic, tough decisions had to be made, and at no point were they going to be decisions that we all agreed on or thought were perfect. We were in unchartered waters. We all recognise that, and as long as those in power admit that mistakes were made, it is then, and only then, that we can learn from the mistakes that have been made. There have been a lot of great decisions in the UK, and by the Welsh Government, and I hope we've given credit where credit is due. But it's also true that the right balance hasn't always been struck. Our economy has often missed out, resulting in the recovery part of this pandemic, which will be faced after the coming election, being of paramount importance, to ensure that we leave things in the right place for future generations. And also, it's vitally important that we look to address those vast inequalities that have been highlighted by this pandemic, and really take this as an opportunity to right those wrongs.

Our children have silently suffered. They've given up a year of their childhood, which has affected development and their education, and they've also given up physical exercise, for the sake of the vulnerable in our society. We owe them a great debt. But we must ask questions. Was it entirely necessary, when we look at the figures of the rate of the spread of infection in outdoor spaces, for example, to shut down organised outdoor activities for as long as we have done, as many were deemed COVID safe, and hundreds was spent on them to make sure they were safe? Was it entirely necessary not to let all our children go back into school, educational settings until they did? Some, of course, are still not back in school. The impact on our children—

You'll need to bring your contribution to a close and to ask questions of the First Minister now, please.

The impact, of course, has been massive. First Minister, in the next Parliament, I really hope that whoever's in Government, and all MSs, play their part, and are brutally honest in their scrutiny and appraisal of the next Welsh Government, and this Welsh Government, in the handling of the crisis. I hope that, from that, we learn and can be more holistic and ensure that we have a more effective response in the future. Do you share my views that it is now time to really reflect on what has been done in this Government, and be honest with ourselves? Many thanks.

I'll ask the First Minister to respond, and then I'll go back to Mark Reckless, for him to complete his question as well.

Diolch, Llywydd. Thanks to Laura Anne Jones for what she said in opening her remarks; this is indeed a day of reflection, and we ought to do exactly that. I don't think I've ever claimed that the decisions made by the Welsh Government are perfect. Sometimes, I feel like I've spent 12 months walking along a tightrope with an enormous chasm underneath—always balancing, always trying to find the right centre of gravity between so many competing harms and so many competing needs. And of course, reasonable people can disagree about whether that balance has been properly struck, or optimally struck.

I think it has been one of the strengths of Welsh democracy that the Senedd has sat throughout the pandemic. We haven't had long periods in which Members of the Senedd have not been able to ask searching questions of the Government, to put different points. We met right through the summer, in extraordinary ways. And while, when you are in the position of trying to make decisions, and with all the demands that that brings, answering for what you do isn't always the most comfortable part of the job, I think it has been absolutely a necessary one. The Senedd has shown the strength of Welsh devolution in the way that those questions have been put and in the way that answers have been attempted to them. I hope that sense of scrutiny to which Laura Anne Jones refers certainly does go on into the next term, because there will be many other difficult and closely balanced decisions that we will want to debate and make better as a result of the conversations and the challenges that we have here.

Mark Reckless to, hopefully, complete your questions to the First Minister.

Diolch, Llywydd, I appreciate that. After my positive comments in my initial contribution to the First Minister, I wanted to ask him whether he regretted the decision at the end of the firebreak period to focus on enforcing a border with England, while restoring complete freedom of movement, pretty much, within Wales, compared to the strict travel restrictions we had before. I asked him at the time why constituents from Merthyr Tydfil were allowed to travel to Monmouth, from a very high infection area to a low infection one, yet he had this border enforced between Monmouth and Ross-on-Wye. Did that make any sense? We had some of the highest infection rates in the world a few weeks after that.

I just ask, as we come out of the restriction period, whether he'll do what he can to welcome back domestic tourism, by which I mean from elsewhere in the UK, to Wales, and clarify what the situation will be post 12 April. I think, earlier, he made some sensible comments in response to Andrew R.T. Davies around international tourism, but the other side of that is if people aren't going to be able to travel abroad, will we work to welcome them to Wales in a COVID-compliant and sensible way. 

Could I finally ask him to reflect, perhaps, on what the Prime Minister is reported as having said yesterday—that he regrets having allowed, as he put it, the devolved administrations to go their own way on the COVID response? This could have been done a different way through the Civil Contingencies Act 2004, rather than through the separate Coronavirus Act 2020 and the Public Health (Control of Disease) Act 1984. What difference would it have made if that had happened?

Has COVID not put us on a different path in terms of devolution? Many people who were previously not aware or didn't engage in it see the hugely exorbitant powers that the First Minister and Welsh Government can exercise over their lives for good or for ill, and many people who feel at least as British as Welsh, or in some cases even English, do not like it that the First Minister and the Welsh Government have those huge powers over them. At the times when he's done things just in a very different way than the UK Government has in England, may that not have reduced compliance and made it harder for people to come together? Has he any reflections on that? 

Thank you for the very positive remarks with which you, Mr Reckless, opened your contribution, and for drawing attention quite rightly to the four harms of coronavirus. We should be reflecting on them all today. I thought he made some very interesting points about the way in which different countries across the globe, at different points, have had successful periods in their management of the virus, and yet the virus comes back in ways that manage to subvert the different defences that different governments have built. That has been a common experience, and it probably is a salutary thing to reflect on the limitations that any one—any one—government has had in being able to find a full set of successful measures. 

In relation to the points we came back to when we heard from Mr Reckless again, when I look back over the firebreak period, the thing that strikes me the most is that we were reopening society here in Wales at a time when we were unaware of the fact that the Kent variant was already making its way across the country to us. The additional transmissibility of that variant made a difference to the rate at which the flow of coronavirus happened in the post-firebreak period. The firebreak period itself, according to The Lancet, was the most successful in Wales of any part of the United Kingdom, because we embarked on that earlier than anywhere else and we went deeper than anywhere else, but we were facing a set of circumstances, as we came out of it, that we simply hadn't anticipated and didn't know about either. 

The Member's obsession with the border is absolutely not one that I share. I've tried to make the point all the way through that, for me, this is never a matter of the border; it's a matter of trying to make sure that we protect lower incidence areas from higher incidence areas wherever they may be, and that's how I will go on approaching this. It's never been for me a matter of England and Wales; it's a matter of trying to make sure that we don't reimport the virus into parts of Wales that have worked so hard and sacrificed so much to get those numbers under control.

I absolutely want to welcome visitors from other parts of the United Kingdom back to Wales when it is safe to do so. At the moment, both the UK Government for England and the Scottish Government for Scotland, as well as the Northern Ireland Executive, don't regard it as safe for their citizens to travel. Now, when those things improve, then I very much look forward to welcoming people back to Wales, because then it will be safe to do so. And, as the Member will know, we have to take into account the sensibilities of those parts of Wales that haven't seen visitors for a long time, where the indigenous population is relatively low in numbers but swells greatly during the tourist season. So, we've got to think of all of that as well. 

I'm afraid the Member betrayed his own way of thinking, certainly, and, if he was accurately quoting the Prime Minister, then I'm afraid the Prime Minister's way of thinking as well. It is not for the Prime Minister to allow the directly elected Senedd here in Wales or the Parliament in Scotland to exercise the powers that are devolved to us. It is such a cast of mind that believes that we are somehow some sort of subsidiary body where the Prime Minister allows us to do certain things or not. I'm sure there were other ways in which the coronavirus crisis could have been approached, and the huge powers that were exercised would have had to have been exercised by somebody here in Wales. I believe it has been better for the decisions that affect people in Wales to be made by people in Wales elected by the people of Wales to make those decisions on their behalf. We are grown up enough to do it, and we don't need anybody else to tell us what we are allowed and not allowed to do.

I thank the First Minister.