6. Welsh Conservatives Debate: COVID restrictions

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:20 pm on 19 January 2022.

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Photo of Rhun ap Iorwerth Rhun ap Iorwerth Plaid Cymru 4:20, 19 January 2022

Well, I think from my experience and from the experience of colleagues of yours, I know there has been open dialogue that you can have with advisers to Government, and we have it through health committee and so on. Plus, we were talking about a global wave and global evidence of an impending wave of a new variant that we knew nothing about, that you might think you know everything about now, Janet, but you didn't at that time. And this was a response to how to keep safe, and I'm convinced that it was the right thing to do and I think it's borne out also in the statistics on the number of hospitalisations and so on that we've seen in Wales. Nobody wants any of these regulations; let's remind ourselves of that. But at times, throughout the past two years, measures have had to be put in place, and I believe that these were reasonable measures to have been put in place in response to the threat that I certainly was clear was being communicated to us in different ways, although, absolutely, I agree that we need to be voting on them as close to the time of implementation—ideally before their implementation, of course, though, sometimes, responses from Government have to be very, very quick.