Questions Without Notice from the Party Leaders

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:01 pm on 28 September 2021.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 2:01, 28 September 2021

Llywydd, I'm absolutely happy for Members who wish to have a further briefing on this to have it. Important, just to be clear, we are not proposing vaccine certification. You can get a COVID pass without a vaccine certificate. This is a very, very difficult issue. Arguments are very closely balanced. Plaid Cymru's sister party in Scotland is insisting on vaccine certification, full certification, and that Government will not have come to that conclusion lightly and will have seen all the SAGE evidence and all the other evidence that is there. The evidence often doesn't point unambiguously in a single direction and say all the advantages are down that road, and none of the advantages are down the other. 

I've listened carefully to what Members here have said about compulsory vaccine certification, and I share many of the anxieties that people have. That doesn't mean that I could not be persuaded by the public health evidence that that might still be a necessary, if regrettable, course of action in Wales. The COVID pass is not a certificate. You can get a COVID pass without being vaccinated at all, but you do have to demonstrate that you have other evidence that your presence at an event would not be causing a risk to other people. Like all compromises, it has some strengths and it has some downsides as well, but in Wales the Government has come to the conclusion that, for now, this strikes the best balance between the arguments that Adam Price has rightly drawn attention to this afternoon, but the advantages that come, as I saw very clearly myself over the last few days, of having a system in which you have to demonstrate that you have taken the necessary action to make yourself, and therefore others, safe.