Questions Without Notice from Party Spokespeople

Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Economy – in the Senedd at 1:46 pm on 3 November 2021.

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Photo of Tom Giffard Tom Giffard Conservative 1:46, 3 November 2021

Thank you, Deputy Minister, for that answer. I just wanted to turn to sport and major events. During our previous exchange in the Chamber some four months ago, I raised concerns about the confusion surrounding the legislation on some of the pilot schemes on sport and major events at the time, where there were different rules for different settings. And you in your answer claimed the guidance was clear and the confusion surrounding the regulations was down to the individual venues and businesses.

Since that time, the Welsh Government report 'Pilot Events: Report on Findings' has been released, and it highlighted that there were major problems around confusion about rules, about whether there had been different rules for different venues around social distancing adherence and mask compliance. But even now these restrictions have been eased, it's clear a lot of these issues still remain. So, recent sporting events, such as last week's Wales versus New Zealand game, showed that mask adherence by spectators was patchy at best, and many constituents that have contacted me said there was very little enforcement of that either.

So, enforcement of the rules has also been at best problematic. COVID passes were enforced for this fixture, but many who attended told me they were never asked for theirs. Now, I understand that they would be carried out by spot checks, but what percentage of spectators did you expect would be asked for one, and did last weekend's game meet those targets? The continued poor enforcement of your own rules leads me to also ask: what lessons were actually learnt from that initial pilot, and why do these issues remain today? Surely, don't you agree, Minister, that instead of introducing a slew of new rules at the next review, we just need to better enforce the existing ones?