Drakeford: I will not lightly put aside relaxed Xmas rules
WALES’ First Minister Mark Drakeford has said he will “not lightly put aside” the “hard-won” four-nations agreement over household mixing at Christmas.
The Welsh Labour leader was due to meet with the leaders of Scotland, Northern Ireland and UK Cabinet Office Minister Michael Gove on Tuesday to discuss the measures amid a surge in coronavirus infections across Wales.
At Tuesday’s Welsh Parliament plenary, Mr Drakeford was asked by the Welsh Conservatives’ Shadow Health Minister Andrew RT Davies what he thought the public’s perception was to the planned five days of relaxed rules.
Mr Drakeford said: “The four-nation agreement over Christmas was hammered out in detail over four different meetings between the four nations. It was a hardwon agreement. I will not lightly put it aside.
“I have a meeting later today with the first minister of Scotland, the first and deputy first minister of Northern Ireland and Michael Gove as the minister in charge of the Cabinet Office, no doubt this issue will be discussed.
“The choice is a grim one, isn’t it? I have read in my own email account over the last couple of days heart-rending pleas from people not to reverse what we have agreed for Christmas.
“People who live entirely alone, who have made arrangements to be with people for the first time, they say to me that this is the only thing that they have been able to look forward to in recent weeks.
“Yet we know, if people do not use the modest amount of additional freedom available responsibly, then we will see an impact of that on our already hard-pressed health service.
“I think the choice is an incredibly difficult one. At the moment we have a four-nation agreement. I will discuss that later today, we will look at the figures again together.”
Mr Drakeford said that having a “rule-based approach to Christmas” with modestly increased amounts of freedom for people is “preferable than a free-for-all”.
He said he would discuss with Mr Gove whether the agreement “continued to have marginally more advantages than disadvantages”, but warned that whatever the outcome, “harm is done”.
“If we seek to prevent people from meeting over Christmas, a different sort of harm will be done to people’s sense of mental health, to people’s sense of how they can survive through this incredibly difficult year together,” he said.
Debate on whether to reconsider the relaxed rules comes as Wales recorded more than 14,000 confirmed cases of Covid-19 in the last week alone.
Doctors belonging to the Welsh Intensive Care Society have also called for Wales to be put into an “urgent” lockdown before Christmas in response to the demands currently being put on hospitals.
On Monday, Health Minister Vaughan Gething said it was not the Welsh Government’s preference to change the easing of restrictions between December 23 and 27, but said it would “need to make choices to keep people safe” if cases continued to grow.