Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:26 pm on 26 May 2021.
Congratulations on your new role as shadow health Minister. I understand that we will be speaking to each other often in future, so I look forward to that. On business support, certainly I think that we should be very proud of the fact that we have managed to get over £1.9 billion into business accounts over the past 12 months. So, a lot of this has been delivered by local authorities—about £1 billion of that money.
We are very aware that the restrictions are still impacting on many businesses. So, despite the fact that, for example, hospitality is open, of course they still have to adhere to the rules that we have set out very clearly in guidance. Of course, we have been working with businesses to look at what that package of measures should look like. So, even though they are open, there should still be a degree of support for them. So, that is an ongoing dialogue, and you heard the First Minister say today that the first thing that he did on being re-elected was to release that additional funding, £200 million of which has been earmarked specifically for business support, and £16 million of that has already now started to be released.
On swimming pools, of course they have been able to reopen already. I think that this is really important in terms of health and mental health. But, of course, different local authorities are dealing with these things in different ways. So, we have given them the power to reopen and, of course, we will be encouraging them to make sure that people can use that facility.
There is, of course, a reason why we are taking things slowly in terms of indoor mixing. We know that the virus spreads more easily inside. It may sound odd that you can mix in a pub easier than you can mix in a home, but they are very different, because one is a controlled environment and the other isn't. We all know that we let our guard down once we are in somebody else's home. So, there's a reason for that. But, of course, we will be looking at this in the next review.
Then, on the vaccination passport, of course we've been working with the UK Government to see if we can use the app that they are developing. There are some technical issues that we are still trying to smooth out, as are Scotland and Northern Ireland. We're hoping that this will be smoothed out by the end of June. In the meantime, of course, we've made it absolutely clear that we don't want people to travel, if possible—certainly abroad. That is our position as a Welsh Government. But, we do recognise that it may be essential for some people to travel. That's why, on Monday, I issued a statement that included a phone number that people can phone to get a temporary paper passport, effectively, to demonstrate that they have had the vaccine.