The answer is what I've already given. The TAC advice and the SAGE advice were available at the time that we made those decisions. As I said, the public health consensus, not just in Wales but across the UK, was that it was unlikely that the booster programme alone would prevent a significant burden of direct COVID-related harm in the period immediately after Christmas and we needed to do more as we ramped up the vaccination and booster programme. In fact, the evidence that we had at that time was telling us that the restrictions that we should introduce should go further than the alert level 2 that we introduced. It was suggesting to us—in fact, recommending to us—that we should consider alert level 4. The reason we couldn't go to alert level 4 was because the UK Government wouldn't allow the funding of a furlough scheme required for us to be able to implement alert level 4, because, as we know, the UK Government only offer levels of support when it's needed in England and not when it's needed in other, devolved nations.

The introduction of protective measures at alert level 2 in December helped us to do just that. It helped flatten the curve of infections and it gave us more time to vaccinate people, while at the same time keeping as many businesses as possible open and preventing the NHS from becoming overwhelmed.