Thank you, Minister, for today's statement. Yes, we are in a very uncertain situation. The numbers of positive cases are very high. We know that—I know from the experience of my entire family and from testing positive myself on Christmas Day how much community transmission there has been. But looking forward is what's important now. I know that the Minister wanted to strike a very serious tone with the statement today—and that's understandable, of course, it's a very difficult situation in several ways—but I think I would have liked to have seen greater attention being paid to the positive signs now because it's on those that we will be able to build, hopefully, and it's those, hopefully, as they become clearer, and as the light at the end of the tunnel becomes brighter, that should be guiding the decisions in coming days.

I'm very grateful to your officials who have given me two briefings over the past 24 hours. It's good to see the encouraging signs, the clear evidence about how much less likely individuals are to become very ill as a result of this variant as compared to delta and the good news in terms of the pressure on critical care units. There are also clear signs, it's important to say, that the regulations that have been in place over the past few weeks have been effective in general. I will raise some questions on some aspects of them in a moment.

But of course, because of the high number of positive cases—far greater than in any other wave,—we know that there is still a significant impact on health services. That's true in terms of the numbers of staff who are poorly, although many of them are missing work because of other reasons too—it's important to remember that. And on that point, may I ask why not make that decision now, as the RCN and others have asked, to provide FFP3 face masks for staff to safeguard them, to make it less likely that they will be impacted by the virus?

There's pressure too in terms of how many are COVID positive in hospitals that need to be treated differently as a result of that and the pressure that emanates from that. It's important to remember that it's a minority of COVID-positive patients who are in hospital because of problems with regard to COVID; some of them are there because they've broken their arm, for example, but they happen to be COVID positive. And it's clear too that there are other problems here, and we must bear that in mind. There's the unsustainability of the NHS—winter pressures, to give it another name—which is the main reason for the challenges in the NHS at the moment, and what the difficult COVID situation has done is exacerbate that. The result is that the pressure on health and care services, because of the omicron wave, is likely to continue for a long while yet. There is a need to be cautious, but there are signs that we are coming to the peak of the wave itself in terms of case numbers. Perhaps part of what we are seeing, in terms of positive cases starting to level off, is the result of the change in testing rules and the fact that fewer people are having a PCR test now. May I ask what steps the Government are taking to ensure that more people record positive LFT results? That’s very important.

But, as things stand, there are signs that things are starting to improve. So, my central question is: how soon, once we are confident that we have come to the peak of this wave, will the Government start to adapt these latest regulations? I know that the Minister doesn’t want to give a timescale for that. I also know that she doesn’t want more regulations than are needed at any particular time. But can we expect a swift response in terms of some of the regulations? Earlier, Llyr Gruffydd made the case for enabling more people to watch sporting events. I note that Scotland, who are a little bit ahead of us in terms of the current wave and have perhaps already reached the peak, have announced today that they want to welcome crowds back to sporting events. So, can we have an assurance that it’s the Government’s intention to do that at the earliest possible opportunity? With smaller games that usually have a few hundred in the crowd, I don’t see any reason why they couldn't be allowed straight away. May I invite the Minister to take that step, to increase the number of people who can come together for open-air events like those?

The same is true of parkruns, as has been raised by other Members today. I would like to see those restarting. If the Government doesn’t believe that that is safe, then perhaps we could have an explanation from the Minister as to why. I’m not calling for a lifting of all of the regulations here—I know that the Minister realises that—but we do need to see where we can finesse the regulations in place and I think that the positive signs that we are starting to see are those that we should take action on as soon as possible.