Questions now from the party leaders. Leader of the Welsh Conservatives first, Andrew R.T. Davies. 

Thank you, Presiding Officer. First Minister, last week you claimed that the impact of restrictions on Welsh businesses over Christmas and the new year was not down to the actions of your Government. Can you tell me who was responsible for these restrictions, because last time I checked you were the First Minister? Or was it some extraterrestrial force that none of us are aware of?

Llywydd, the impact on Welsh businesses was caused by coronavirus. That is the point that I was making, as I'm quite sure the leader of the opposition knows. Businesses in Wales were seeing the impact of the omicron variant well before there was any change in the alert level measures in Wales. That's why the £120 million that we have made available to Welsh businesses doesn't start on 27 December when the rules changed, but dates from 13 December, because we recognised that Welsh citizens were already making choices themselves because they recognised the new risks that the omicron variant posed. That's at the root of the difficulties that Welsh businesses have faced: the fact that they were dealing with a new variant of coronavirus and the impact that that was having on people's behaviour.

Well, sadly, First Minister, it is a fact that you did have choices over the type of restrictions that you could have brought in, just like you have the choice to commission an independent inquiry here in Wales into those decisions right the way through the pandemic, which regrettably you haven't commissioned to date.

If we take a step back into the real world, reports last week showed that pubs in Wales lost on average £16,000 each due to the Government restrictions. This was because of the rules that closed some establishments and made other hospitality businesses unviable. Will you apologise for the impact of those restrictions on the businesses that proved to be unviable because of those restrictions, and will you, as a gesture of goodwill, increase the level of funding available to businesses so that they can continue going forward, creating employment opportunities and creating dynamic businesses the length and breadth of Wales?

Well, I have absolutely nothing to apologise for, Llywydd. The Conservative Party in Wales has a great deal to apologise for in the way that it has time after time after time sought to deny people in Wales and businesses in Wales the protections that are needed from a global pandemic. We put in measures that were designed to make sure that lives were saved in Wales and that businesses could go on trading, and there's absolutely nothing to apologise for in doing that because those measures were necessary and those measures have been effective. Because of the help that is available from the Welsh Government, a pub that lost £16,000 in Wales, if it can establish that that is indeed the case, could recoup all of that from the help that we have now put on the table through the non-domestic rates element and through the economic resilience fund. In England, £4,000 is the maximum that any such business would receive. And, no, I'm not going to offer a blank cheque in saying that we would go beyond that. There's public money at stake here. A pub that can show that it lost £16,000 in Wales, the potential is there for it to receive all of that back from the Welsh Government. I don't think it would be a sensible or a justifiable course of action to say that the public purse would go beyond the losses that a business had sustained.

It is a fact, First Minister, that many businesses across Wales will not be able to claw back the level of losses that they've sustained because of the restrictions that you and your Government have put in place. Yesterday, your chief medical officer, Dr Frank Atherton, said that he was cautiously optimistic that the end of the pandemic was in sight. That's great news, and thanks to the Welsh Conservatives and public pressure, we now finally have a road map to alert level 0. Over the past few weeks, I've been trying to obtain metrics from your Ministers as to when the Welsh Government will deem that restrictions such as vaccine passports or masks will no longer be required here in Wales. When do you believe, First Minister, that Wales will be free of all restrictions? An estimate will do. And can you provide some metrics or timescales as to when you believe restrictions such as vaccine passports will no longer be required here in Wales?

Well, Llywydd, I set out on Friday last week a timetable stretching to the middle of next month for decision making, provided that the public health situation in Wales would mean that it would be safe to lift further protections. That timetable is well known to people. It will result, on Friday of this week, I hope, in returning to alert level 0 for activities outdoors; on 28 January, returning to alert level 0 for activities and events indoors; and then a three-week review by 10 February of remaining measures. Now, we will take the advice of the chief medical officer, Sir Frank Atherton, and others along that pathway, and as soon as it is safe to do so, from a public health perspective, then we will make the changes to reflect an improved situation. But there are a lot of ifs in that answer, Llywydd. The biggest one of all is the extent to which we can go on seeing the improvements that we have seen in the impact of the omicron and other variants of coronavirus in Wales, in our society, in our hospitals and in our public services. I think people in Wales understand that they have a Government that makes decisions in a way that responds to evidence, not to political pressure, that makes decisions in a way that is capable of being rationally communicated to them, and the support that we have gained from people in Wales over the whole of the pandemic rests on the way in which, carefully, cautiously and in line with the science, we have helped to keep Wales safe. And that's exactly how we will continue.

Leader of Plaid Cymru, Adam Price.

Diolch, Llywydd. First Minister, is the proposal to defund the BBC anything other than a politically motivated skewering designed to throw red meat to the Prime Minister's dwindling band of supporters, and punish a public service broadcaster for doing too good a job of exposing Boris Johnson to be the liar that he is?

Well, Llywydd, I think that the rushed announcement by Twitter of the fate of the BBC is exactly motivated in the way that the leader of Plaid Cymru has said. It is part of a 'dead meat' strategy that this Government has embarked upon. If anybody thinks that there is serious thinking that lies behind what has been announced, then I'm afraid they're going to be very badly disappointed. What we do now know for sure is that, at a time when inflation, due to the mismanagement of the economy by the UK Government, is likely to be at 6 or 7 per cent in April, the BBC are going to see their budget cut significantly in real terms, and the most urgent need, I think, is for a coalition of support to defend public funding for public service broadcasting in the United Kingdom.

Wouldn't turning the BBC into some British version of NPR or PBS in the United States, where expenditure per capita on public service broadcasting is only 4 per cent of what we spend here, wouldn't that have particularly grim impacts for us here in Wales, in terms of our democracy, our culture, our nation and our language? And not only in terms of S4C, but also Radio Cymru. Nadine Dorries didn't seem to be aware of the existence of Radio Cymru until yesterday, but what surprise is there when the Conservatives didn't even know who the leader of their own party in Wales was? So, that's the contempt that we're dealing with. Doesn't this reinforce the case, if that were needed, for devolving broadcasting to Wales? And isn't now the time that we insist on our own voice, in our own nation, in broadcasting as in our democracy?

Well, the absence of respect for Wales is clear within the UK Government. I'm sure, as Adam Price said, that Nadine Dorries hadn't given a moment's thought to the impact of her announcement on the Welsh language here in Wales. I saw what Professor Richard Wyn Jones said this morning about the future of the language in broadcasting and the importance of S4C, yes, of course, but also Radio Cymru, which is central to the use of the Welsh language here in Wales, and is so important to the future of the language too. In the co-operation agreement between ourselves and Plaid Cymru, we've already agreed that we should strengthen the case for devolving broadcasting, and establish an authority to help us, with others, along that journey. When we see the UK Government doing things such as what they've done, in haste and for solely political reasons, it does strengthen the case that we've set out already.

First Minister, is there a much deeper and darker context here, with the legislation to curb the right to peaceful protest last night defeated in the House of Lords, the proposals to weaken the Human Rights Act, the attacks on an independent judiciary, the changes to voter ID, pork-barrelling in the awarding of grants and cronyism in the awarding of contracts, the illegal prorogation of Parliament, and last, but certainly not least, a Prime Minister that lies with impunity? Is not the attack on a fair, independent and balanced media—which is in essence what public service broadcasting guarantees—not the latest element in a conscious effort to erode the basic foundations of our democracy? If you're not worried, you're not paying attention, as the saying goes. Would the First Minister agree that the battle over the future of broadcasting is actually a battle over the future of democracy itself?

It's a very powerful charge list that the leader of Plaid Cymru sets out there, and anybody seeing them put together in that way will certainly see that what lies behind it is a Government that is utterly reckless about a rules-based approach to public services, but also to the future of our democracy. And nobody should be surprised at that, Llywydd, with the disgraceful revelations of the way in which, at a time when the whole country was being urged to abide to some of the most significant reductions in their ability to make choices in their own lives, at the very heart of the UK Government, there was an utter disregard for that in their own lives. In some ways, I think that lies at the heart of that long list that Adam Price put together—that sense that there is one rule for the rest of us, and a different rule for those who regard themselves as above and beyond the rules that other people are expected to observe. And I think you can see that running through that long list of things that Adam Price put together. If you don't like the way that judges operate, then you attack judges. If you don't like the way that democracy operates, you try and change the rules for voting. If you don't like the way that human rights are observed in this country, you try and undermine the basis of that, too. Broadcasting is this week's example in a far longer list, a deliberate culture war that this Government has embarked upon. They think it plays well with a minority of people in this country, that shrinking minority who support them, and they're prepared to sacrifice things that have been built up over, in some cases, centuries, and in public broadcasting, for 100 years this year.

Question 3 [OQ57486] has been withdrawn.