 Yn ymgyrch, wrth gwrs, hefyd. Yn ymgyrch, rwy'n cael ei wneud y gilydd o'r reiflu ddechrau 4 ymgyrch ar gyfer cyfnod y Llywodraeth yn yw Llywodraeth, ac rwy'n cyflym ymgyrch â'r reiflu lleol yw'r rhaid. Roeddwn i'n meddwl gynnig eich rhaid o'r ddau, wrth gwrs, yn ddod i'r ddweud ymgyrch ledd o'r ddau o wneud dros ffarswyr, ar gyfer ddau i'r cyffredinol, o'r argynwedd i'r ddweud i'r gweithio oedd yn gweithio ar y cyfnod, ac yn ei wneud o'r ffyrdd iawn i gweithio'r cyfan o'r ffyrdd iawn. Roedd dweud y ffyrdd iawn yn gweithio'r ffyrdd iawn, rwy'n gweithio'r ffyrdd iawn i gweithio'r ffyrdd iawn. Wrth gweld, o'r gweithio'r Llywodraeth yn gweithio'r ysgol, y Llywodraeth ym Mhwyllfa yn ym mhwyllfa, byddai'r ddam i chi'r rwyf yn iawn, ac mae'r ddam i chi frwn i wneud y ffarsgwrn sydd o'u hunain yng Nghymru yw'r gyrtaeth yn datblygiad yng nghymru yn defnyddio'r ddim yn y dyfrinodol. Mae'r ddiolch yn y ffigur ar hyn o'r 7 ddaeth ac yn gwelodol, a'r buddwn o'r ffigur ar nghydfynu ar bu record, sy'n ceisio nesaf mae'r 362,000 o'r ddwyll yn wneud o ffarsgwrn. Over the last week, someone has been vaccinated every five seconds in Wales. More than 400 GP practices are running clinics. We've got 34 max vaccination centres with still more to open, and 17 hospitals are providing vaccines in all parts of Wales. This is an incredible effort, and we can be rightly proud of what our health service is achieving for us in Wales. At the same time, the general public health situation is also showing sure signs of improvement. We're seeing steady falls in cases of coronavirus now right across Wales. We've fallen back from the peak of more than 600 cases per 100,000 people to 175 cases today. Now, this is really encouraging, and it is the result of your efforts and the sacrifices which people right across Wales have made over the last six weeks to turn back the tide of coronavirus. But at 175, that is still a high figure, and we know that the majority of new cases in most parts of Wales will now be the new highly contagious strain of the virus, which has swept across the country. And although the number of people with coronavirus in hospital is starting to stabilise, the NHS is still under significant pressure. There are some 1,300 people so ill with confirmed coronavirus that they need hospital treatment, and we have a similar number of people in hospital who are recovering from the disease. All this means that despite the real progress that we have made, it is too late, too early to start lifting the lockdown restrictions. We will therefore have to remain in Wales at alert level 4 for a further three weeks. The advice for people who are extremely clinically vulnerable, the shielded group, which is not to go to work or to school if they are of that age outside the home, is also being extended to the 31st of March. We will all need to stay at home and work from home for a while longer. And that will give us the time we need to reduce rates of coronavirus to even lower levels as the vaccine continues to be rolled out to even more people in the top priority groups. And when it comes to lifting the restrictions here in Wales, we will take the same approach as we adopted during the first lockdown. Careful, gradual and always with public health safety at the forefront of our decisions. Because if we move too quickly, there is a very real risk that cases will immediately begin to shoot back up again and everyone's hard work over this winter will be lost. But because we are already seeing significant improvement, we can make two very small but important changes today which I hope will lay the foundations for more to come. For the last six weeks, we've only been able to exercise with people we live with or in our support bubble. From tomorrow, two people from different households will be able to exercise outdoors together. We will also help people who need to change their support bubble because their circumstances have changed. We will publish guidance setting out how to do this safely without increasing the risk of spreading or catching COVID-19. I hope that these two very small and careful steps will be the first towards a time when we will all be able to live with fewer restrictions in our lives and without the fear of this terrible virus. I want to turn now to education and I want to say directly to children and young people in Wales that we understand the real difficulty and distress you have experienced this year being in and out of school and separated from your friends. We do not yet have the headroom to do everything we would like but getting you back into school and college for face-to-face learning is our top priority in the Welsh Government. If infections continue to fall, we want to see children able to return to school after half term from the 22nd of February, starting with the youngest children in our primary schools. I'm confirming this intention today to give as much notice as possible to parents, teachers and pupils of what we hope will lie ahead. Now we will work intensively with teachers and local authorities and the teacher unions as we keep parents up-to-date with these plans. We'll also work on proposals for those older pupils and college students who have to do vocational examinations to return to school and college in a phased and flexible way after half term. Last week when I was with you, I said we would be making a further £200 million available through our Economic Resilience Fund to help non-essential retail, hospitality, leisure and tourism businesses through this difficult time. Today I can give some further information about that package. This will be an extension of the funding package which we put in place in early December and it brings this latest phase of support to £650 million to the end of March. We will link this funding to the non-domestic rate system because this is the quickest way to get support from us directly into the hands of businesses. Firms who have previously received support will not need to apply again. It will maybe be made directly to them but the scheme will also be open to new applicants. Businesses receiving small business rate relief with a rateable value of £12,000 or less will be eligible for an additional £3,000 in payment. Businesses with a rateable value of up to £150,000 will be able to receive an additional £5,000 and supply chain businesses will also be able to apply for support if they have had a reduction in turnover of more than 40%. At the same time, we will put a further £30 million into the discretionary fund which local authorities are able to use to provide up to £2,000 in grants for businesses who are not captured by the non-domestic rates system. Now, this support is in addition to that provided by the UK Government and all the details that will be found on the Business Wales website. We continue to provide the most generous package of support for businesses in Wales of anywhere in the UK. That's our determination to help firms and their employees through this crisis. What we now need is the UK Government to provide similar certainty for businesses and individuals by ensuring that the furlough scheme will not come to an abrupt end before the economy is back on its feet again. Now, we have been living with coronavirus and all the measures we need to control its spread for almost a year now. It has been a long and difficult year for us all, but particularly for the thousands of people who have lost close friends and family members to this awful virus. As I try to say often in these sessions, for all the numbers that you see and all the numbers that you hear, it's not a number, is it? Those people were people who had lives ahead of them, who had families and friends who they were looking forward to go on meeting. And we think of them all at this incredibly difficult time. Yet despite all of that, at every turn over the last 12 months, we have seen a fantastic response from people here in Wales. It's the hard work we have done together which has repeatedly changed the course of this pandemic. And it will be through a combination of all those efforts and the sacrifices that we need to go on making over the weeks ahead which will help drive infection rates lower and lower and help us to begin the process of reopening Wales once again. Let me end as I began by saying thank you to everybody who is part of this enormous collective effort of social solidarity. Thank you for all your help in keeping Wales safe. Diolch yn fawr ac o galon i chi gyd. Time to turn to questions now and as usual, all the answers will be broadcast live on our social media channels. First today I'm going to go to Teleri Glynjons at BBC Wales. Rhawn da, brif Weinidog. Diolch yn fawr iawn. Today's announcement on schools, as you say, is dependent on case rates continuing to fall and pressure on the NHS easing. But you want to give as much notice as possible to schools and parents and pupils. How soon will parents, pupils, teachers know for sure that their children will be returning to schools? How much notice can you give them? Well, I'm very keen to give two clear weeks notice which means that next week has to be a week of intensive discussions on the practicality of what can be achieved here in Wales after the 22nd of February. I chaired a meeting of the Social Partnership Council yesterday where local authorities and teaching and non-teaching staff in schools were all represented. We have a joint commitment to doing everything we can together to begin the return of students and children to school and college after half term. There's a lot of hard work to be done on the detail of that. I want that to happen intensively next week and by the end of next week we would therefore be in a position to confirm the plans that we will have put together together. Diolch. Are you concerned that some teachers may refuse to go back to school until they've been vaccinated? Well, let me begin by saying that I understand the anxieties that all staff who work in school experience just as I understand the anxieties that those people who turn up to serve food to us in supermarkets or drive all buses or collect all rubbish or people who are in face-to-face contact with members of the public at this difficult time will have anxieties about their own health and their own future. But we will do everything we can in the week ahead to work with teacher unions and other staff who work in schools to put whatever we can in place to make sure that that workplace is as safe as it can be. It's partly why we've talked today about starting with the very youngest children, children the least likely to suffer from coronavirus or to spread it to other people. We have to work together on this agenda because we have a common aim of trying to repair the damage that has been done to the education of all young people during the 12 months that have just gone by, and I look to all of those who share that ambition to come round the table and make those plans together. Well, just either way, dwi'n ddiall pan mae bobl sy'n gweithio we neb o we neb gyda'r a'i lwda'r cyhoedd yn anysgolion neu mewn nifer o'r gydestyn eraill. A pam mae'n nhw'n bexo am dyfodol, am bexo, am angenio'n sydd anu i gyd i feddwl am diogelu nhw. Dyna pam ni'n mynd i gydweithio anestod yr wrthnotydd iddod, gydweithio gyda'r anpadneriad a'n yr ynddeibai gyda'r awdododau lleol i roi popeth i'n gallu anailau i tyni ein plant nôl i'r anysgolion ni. Mae'r plant a bobl i fank yn Cymru wedi dioddau dros y flwyddyn dweitha, a dwi'n gwybod mae'r ynddeibai ac ar awdododau lleol ac y tlwyddoedd yma yn Cymru, ni gyd yn penderfynol i treul i tyni fwy o plant a phobol i fank nôl at anysgolion a dwi'n edrych ymlaen at yr wrthnos nesa i wneud y gwaith galed ac yn fannol i paratoi am hynny. Thank you very much, Teleri, over to Adrian Masters at ITV Wales. Thank you, First Minister, and I wonder if I could pick up on that. I've heard what you've said elsewhere about vaccinations for teachers, but I would just like to clarify. You're ruling out vaccinations for teachers unless the joint committee vaccination changes its advice. So if you could clarify that. And as part of the preparations that you talk about, the precautions that you talk about, how seriously are you looking at schools opening in some form throughout the summer in order to repair the damage, as you put it? Adrian, thank you very much. Well, yes, to be clear, the Welsh Government relies on the advice of the joint committee on vaccinations and immunisation, and then the advice of our chief medical officer as to which groups should be at the front of the queue for vaccination. The JCVI tells us that it is reviewing its prioritisation lists all the time as new evidence emerges. If its advice to us were to change and it were to put professional groups, including teachers at the front of that list, we would follow that advice. But at the moment their advice remains that we should focus on the top nine priority groups because that is how we will save the maximum number of lives, not just here in Wales, but in every part of the United Kingdom. The four chief medical officers who are all independent of Government and independent of one another have all come to the same conclusion that following those priority groups is the right thing to do. If that advice changes, the Welsh Government's position will change alongside it, but until the advice changes, we will stick with what the most expert, best-equipped people we have in the country to give us that advice, what they say to us that we should do. You asked me a second bit of that question. School through the summer. Thank you. We already have invested a considerable sum of money, many millions of pounds on a catch-up programme. Our local education authorities have succeeded, I believe, in employing around a thousand extra staff beyond who normally be in the classroom to help with that. Given what we have gone through before and since Christmas, of course we are looking to see how that programme might be extended and using the summer holiday period, particularly for those young people who have lost out the most and who will need that extra boost to catch up on what they have lost out on. Of course, we are thinking about that and seeing if we can extend the investment we've already made in that area. Thank you. And if I could ask you about the supply of vaccines, Rau, with the European Union, will you criticise the EU for escalating that Rau and threatening to block exports of vaccines? And would you be comfortable with some of the UK's AstraZeneca supply going to the EU to make up any shortfall? Well, I don't think threats are ever a good way of arriving at a conclusion. What needs to happen here is simple, calm negotiation and discussion. Everybody is anxious to get a supply of the vaccine. Everybody wants to do the best by their local populations. We should start from that recognition. The companies and where governments are involved, getting round the table, having those discussions, coming to an agreement, that's always the way in which these things are resolved in the end. And it is better to do it calmly and to take the temperature out of the difficulties rather than adding to them because I don't think that gets you to where anybody would want to be in the quickest way possible. Adrian, thank you to Will Hayward and Wales Online. Thank you, First Minister. Can you talk us through what the options are for schools reopening safely given the new variant? Could it be half-year groups alternating weeks, for instance? Can you tell us what you think is the earliest that all children will go back to school? And just a subsidiary to that, given that most of the headroom in March will be for the reopening of schools, is it fair to say that hospitality, non-essential retail and indoor attractions will be unlikely to return until at least April? Thank you very much. Well, on the first question, I want everything to be on the table in the discussions with our staff and local education authorities next week. I'm grateful to those teaching unions for putting some of those ideas on the table already. We have a common aim of getting as many children as safely as possible back into the classroom. That's what our teachers want, and that's what parents and children want as well. Therefore, we shouldn't take any ideas off the table whether it is reduced groups of people, whether it is part weeks for some children, whether it is different use of the physical estate, whether it's a contribution that testing can make to it. You know, I want the longest possible list of solutions to the issues which are quite rightly there to be identified. The Children's Commissioner for Wales took part in our social partnership council yesterday. I thought she made a very powerful point in saying those discussions need to be solution-focused. And I'm grateful to all of those who will come forward with those ideas. I wish I could tell you when I thought all children would be back in school, but as you know, even three weeks is a very long time with this virus. Things that we don't know about today could emerge even before half-term. Even in this last three weeks, New variants in South Africa and Brazil have emerged, and we've had to take action together to address that. So, while I wish I could give more certainty to people, I'm afraid it would be false certainty because I'm no more able than anybody else to look ahead in such circumstances of uncertainty. So, what I can say to people is we want to get children back into school in a phased and flexible way. We will review all of that, that experience with our teacher union colleagues and others when it is safe to do so. We will bring more children back, and I'd like to see it build up. I'd like to see it build up as quickly as it is safe to do so, but you can only judge that in the circumstances at the time, rather than at many weeks' distance. And while you're quite right, of course, to say that we are focused on schools and colleges as our top priority, there's unlikely to be much headroom at the end of the next three weeks for other things to reopen. I don't think I want to predict the future as far away as April. If things were to continue in the direction they are now where things are going well, then more headroom may emerge during the month of March. But we could be blown off course by things we know nothing about today. I think it's sensible for people to look at what we can achieve in the next three weeks and the three weeks beyond, but I think it's just looking into the tea leaves to think we can predict the future beyond that. Thank you. Given you've announced very slight relaxation measures today, what is your message to those people who will see this as an inch where they can have an excuse to take a mile? Will that be travelling to beaches out of area, visiting second homes or meeting people indoors? What's your message to those people? Well, thank you. We debate inside the Welsh Government and with our chief advisers about exactly that point. Whether we should make any relaxations in the level four restrictions at this point, because there will be some people who, once they can do one thing, want to push that, want to lean on the rules, game the system. In the end, our conclusion was that where we could make very minor easements, but easements which can be very important to some people, we should do that, but my message to the people you describe is please don't do it. If you think that this is an excuse to push the rules, to do more than is allowed, all you do is delay the day when we can lift other restrictions for us all. So I've referred, I know previously here, to small acts of selfishness and it would be a small act of selfishness to try and exploit the very modest steps that we are able to provide today. And when people do that, they let themselves down and they let other people down as well. Well, thank you very much to Dan Bevan at LBC. Thank you, First Minister. Good afternoon. We've had lots of people get in touch, asking if they can go out for a walk or go out jogging with someone from outside of their household, then why can't they go and play golf or go fishing or tennis with them since they can do the same amount of exercise, but, of course, still social distancing and still take part in the sport. Or are you more concerned about people as you reference in your answer to Will, potentially using this same logic to go and hang out in someone's garden? Well, I'm afraid it is exactly those sorts of enquiries that gave people pause for thought about lifting the restrictions at all. It's always possible for a group of people to make themselves a special case and they've often got sensible arguments that they can put in favour of what they want to do. As I've explained many times over the past year, really, the problem is that those things all add up cumulatively every bit that you do creates new opportunities for people to get together and, when people get together, coronavirus thrives. So, tough as it is and frustrating as it is for many people. We're still at a point in this latest wave of a pandemic where doing the minimum to get together is the right thing to do. The two very small easements that I've announced this afternoon are the furthest we can do. And if we continue to be on the right track, then, in three weeks' time, maybe we will be able to make some response to those people who make special cases for other forms of activity. Now is not the moment to do it. The risk would be that everything we've achieved over the last six weeks could be undermined by things which, by themselves, look sensible. But when you all add them all up together, have the effect of allowing the coronavirus genie out of the bottle again. I'm actually sticking with that point of the next review in three weeks' time. If the rates of coronavirus continue to fall in the way that they have, in the way that you hope them to, will opening primary schools use up all the headroom that you think will be gained then, or will there be possible scope for moving us out of level 4 and into level 3? I don't see us going out of level 4 in a wholesale way and entirely into level 3 just in three weeks' time. We'll have to make a judgement in another three weeks. A lot will depend on the extent to which it is possible to reopen schools. If we could use up all our headroom for that purpose, then that is what I would do, because I genuinely mean it when I say that getting those young people and those children back into school is our top priority. But we will do that in a careful and cautious way and if there were to be any further room for easements beyond schools, we'd look to see if we could do that as well. But our top priority is to get as many children as safely back into face-to-face teaching as possible. And if we could use all the headroom we had for that purpose, that would be the right thing to do. Dan, thank you, Diolch yn fawr, dros o'r ddweud Adam Hale at PA. Diolch yn fawr, Brif Weinidog. Nid oes dweud yn fawr i'r fawr, is it likely you'll have to wait until the majority of school-age pupils are back in school before you can consider lifting the country out of lockdown? Well, we will continue to make a judgement in the round, Adam. It is not quite as simple as being either or particularly in the uncertain circumstances of not just three weeks, but six weeks from now. I could set out for you an optimistic course in which these numbers continue to come down in which the pressure on our hospitals is lifted, in which vaccination begins to make a real difference to the most vulnerable people needing hospitalisation and there being room to do more than just return children to school. But that is being, you know, that is really being optimistic. That is everything going in the right direction. And like I said in an earlier answer, we know just how quickly things can change. I've given the example here before, but it's a striking one. In December, the Republic of Ireland, our nearest European neighbour, had the best figures in the world, the lowest rate of coronavirus in the world. Three weeks later, it was the worst in the world. The figures in three weeks had gone from right at the bottom to far in excess of what we have ever seen here in Wales. If things can change that much, that rapidly in just three weeks, it doesn't make sense to predict the future here more than a certain number of weeks ahead where we have a little bit more certainty. Thank you. Boris Johnson's trip to Scotland this week caused a bit of a sturdent argument over whether, unlike an essential journey, would you welcome the Prime Minister visiting Wales in the weeks ahead if you wanted to pop over? Well, I myself have left Cardiff, I think, twice since November. I went once to the Rhondda where a coal tip had slipped, and I went once last weekend to Skewan where major flooding had taken place. So I am only leaving my home or place of work in a genuine emergency, and that's because the rules in Wales are stay at home, work from home. We are at level four of a public health emergency, and on the whole, I think it is preferable for people who make rules that we expect other people to observe, to observe them ourselves. Adam Diolch yn fawr to Mark Hatchins at Five Live. Thanks very much indeed. You say that you will trigger a return to school for the youngest pupils if case rates continue to fall, which begs the question, how low? What is the case rate that would enable the first pupils to go back to school below 100, or what would it be? Given that there are variations across Wales that are very different from Ceredigion, for instance, would that return to school apply to the whole of Wales at the same time? Mark, I'd like us to be in a position where we have a common approach across all Wales, but I've been careful to use the terms flexible and phased this morning, and some flexibility may be necessary to allow local authorities to respond to the individual circumstances they face. That would be exactly what we did back in September, where we allowed the first two weeks of the autumn term to be a build-up, and different local authorities approached that in different ways depending on their circumstances. Having flexibility and a responsiveness to local circumstances can be part of a common approach which you are trying to achieve across the whole of Wales, and the indicators that we will rely on will not be a crude reliance on a single indicator. We will need, as our plan says, to look at indicators in the round. That includes, of course, that very important threshold of the number of people suffering from coronavirus. It will include the positivity rate. It will include figures of people being admitted to hospital. It will include the mitigation measures that we are able to put in place. In schools, we will make a judgment in the round and we'll make it in partnership with our colleagues in the local education authorities and the unions who represent all those people who work in our schools. And we've all had a few goals at this lockdown business now. What lessons have you learned from perhaps the mistakes of past lockdowns in terms of easing restrictions? What will you do different this time? Well, I think amongst the lessons we have learnt is that if you need to impose restrictions, you should do it early, and you should do it in a way that is significant. That's why I think we are seeing the reductions in infectivity levels in Wales, because we introduced our lockdown before Christmas and we did it in a way that has had to ask people in Wales to live with some very serious restrictions. I think the lesson we learnt back in the 2020 is the lesson we will apply this time, that if you are lifting restrictions, you need to do it carefully. You need to do it cautiously. You need to do it in a way that allows you to review the impact of that as you go along. You need to do things that you can reverse if it turns out that they are leading to an increase in the velocity of the circulation of the virus, and you need to do it in a way that, as much as you can, takes the community with you, because the fact that we've seen numbers fall as we have is because across Wales, people have been willing to play their part in this local lockdown, and capturing that commitment and keeping it going as you begin to ease restrictions is another lesson which I think we've learnt from the last 12 months. Thank you very much. I'll go to Dwsod i Tomos, Tomos Evans, es pedwalech. Rhyw bryd wedi'n defnyddi'r plan da chi. Chwi wedi cyhoedd i'n gynharach y bydd hawl gan y bobl sy'n gynnwys i fod mewn swigeng gyfnogeth i'n newid y swigeng honno os mae'n sefyllfa nhw'n newid. Yllwn i gael bach mwy o wybodaeth gyda chi'n lynynau sut fydd hynny'n gweithio yn ymarferol. Diolch yn fawr, Tomos fel, mae'r fach chi'n ddweud ar hyn o bryd, os edrych i mewn i'n swigend, edrych i ddim yn gallu newid y swigend o gwbl. On i'n gwbod, mae'r amgylchiadau bobl yn newid dros yr wythnosau. So ni'n mynd i rhoi hawl i bobl i'n tynnu mas o'r swigend rhaiddiol, a bydd rhaid i bobl aros, deg ddwrnod, ac ar ôl hynny bydd hawl i ddyn nhw i creu swigend newydd. Ar yr un seil, mae'n gael i wneudau nawr, un ailwyd, ble mae dim ond un person sy'n bew, a'n gael i creu swigend gyda'r un ailwyd arall. Ni'n mynd i cyhoeddi a cymorth i bobl i weld ymwynylion yn sut mae hwnna'n gallu reideg, yn sut mae'n gallu reideg mewn ffordd sy'n welch o'r bobl ragofn cyrwnafais yn Cynedd i'n waith eto. Thomas just asking me about the very modest lifting of the restrictions on household bubbles being able to dissolve and reform. We're doing it because we understand that the bubbles that people will have formed originally may need to change, circumstances change, people move away, relationships alter. From now on people who are in a bubble will be able to dissolve the bubble they are in. They will need to wait 10 days, they will be able to reform a different bubble on the same basis as bubbles can be formed at the moment. A single person household can form a bubble with one other household and will be publishing guidance later to help people to make sure they do that in the safest possible way. Diolch am hynny. A ffansond dath Carinhar, na fydd yw'r eisteddf yn edrythol siwf yn ein hunol na'n stedd fel yn gollennu'n digwydd eleni. Ydych chi'n poeni am yr effaith hynny ar yr iaith cymraeg ac a fydd y Llywodraeth yn y gwneud i'r hoi cyfnogaeth yr iaannol i'r mediad yma ar mwyn iddyn nhw'n rhoi siwr cyfnod mesau? Wel, wrth gwrs, dwi'n dechso am yr effaith ar iaith cymraeg. Dwi'n gwybod a pwy sicrwyd o'r eisteddf o'r gennyd leithon y bodai ni'n fyrfawr o bobl am y anghymru, cyfle i fynd y siarad cymraeg, trwy'n oes gyda'r bobl eraill. Ond mae lot o pethau credu goll wedi digwydd dros y flwyddyn dyweddha. Mae bobl wedi symud pethau arlaen. Am bellwaith, mae ni'n fyr fwy o bobl yn gallu cymryd rhan mewn gyfiadau, pan mae nhw'n gredeg fel na. Ni'n wedi ddweud ymbarod. Ni'n mynd i'r rhoi arian i'r eisteddf o gennyd leithol ac ni'n fyrr o'r asiantethau eraill yn y flwyddyn sydd iddod. Ni'n dal i siarad â nhw. Wrth gwrs, yn yr ymgylchiadau newydd. Mae dwi'n siwr bydd fwy o bethau credu goll. A'n dod mas yn ystod y flwyddyn sydd iddod. Ar ôl pobol, feddwl am y profiadau mewn wedi gael ymbarod, a bethau ni'n gyd yn eisiau wneud i cyfnogi'r iaith cymraeg a gydwylian cymraeg yma yng Nghymru hefyd. Thomas just pointing to the number of organisations, the National Eisteddfod, the Angolian Eisteddfod, who've all now made the decision, the difficult and I'm sure painful decision not to go ahead in person this year. And the impact of that on the Welsh language and on Welsh culture is a serious one. I know how many people look forward to those opportunities to come together with others and to use the Welsh language in the fullest sense. On the positive side, an awful lot has been achieved in the last year by very creative and imaginative people finding different ways of coming together online and sometimes those are more accessible to a larger number of people than a physical journey to get together in more traditional circumstances. We've already said that we will provide the same budget to the National Eisteddfod for example next year as we normally would despite the fact that it won't be meeting in the normal way and we will continue to work with the sector because it is obviously a shared ambition to support Welsh language and Welsh culture through these very testing times. Thomas Tych yn fawr over to Rupert Evelyn at ITV News. Thank you First Minister. Clearly your announcement on primary schools today is offers some hope I think judging by what parents have told us in terms of their youngest children getting back to school but there is a distinct lack of hope at the moment for the older children both in primary schools and in secondary schools, colleges etc. Why won't you be a little bit more definitive? Just give a bit to those parents who are really struggling at the moment and explain to them when their struggle for example with homeschool, when will it end? Well I wish I was in a position to offer people that more definitive sort of message. You can imagine it would be a very nice thing indeed for me to come here and be able to do that. It's just a matter of being realistic about the circumstances that we are in. We've talked today about the very youngest children getting back to school first because learning online is least available to them but we've also talked today about those young people who are studying for qualifications whose qualifications rely on practical components to their study and trying to make early progress with getting them back in circumstances where they can learn and gain the qualifications they've worked hard to. I do hope that for all parents the fact that we are talking positively together about making a start on this journey gives them hope that once the journey begins more steps in it will follow but it wouldn't be telling them anything that they could rely on if I were to give a series of dates that I know and they would know. We can't be certain of delivering when they are so far away from where we are today. As soon as we're able to offer more certainty we will as soon as we're able to safely return more children to face-to-face learning that is exactly what we will want to do. You've always been very clear haven't you that schools are safe, I've heard you say it repeatedly and yet you want to explain what the phased approach is. What is the phased approach First Minister? Well the phased approach is the approach we will negotiate with our teaching unions and other school staff and with all local education authorities. Starting with those children who are least able to take advantage of online learning who are least likely to suffer from coronavirus or pass it to others. That will build up confidence in the system that we are able to do that and that will allow us to bring more children back into face-to-face learning. It's absolutely right that we attend to the anxieties of school staff. There is a new and more infective virus in circulation than when schools were last together before Christmas. We've seen other variants emerge in other parts of the world. We will want to be sure that we put all the safeguards we can in place then bring more children back into school. I think primary school is still where we are most likely to be able to bring most children back most quickly but that doesn't rule out further opportunities for children in the secondary age range to begin to have some face-to-face experiences as well. Can I say now we will be quickly back to all children being back in every classroom. That's not the nature of the world we are in or the virus that we are facing but the ambition to do so is one I know our teachers and other staff share and we'll be working positively with them to do as much as we can as quickly as we can but as safely as we can as well. Rŵpa, thank you very much to Howell Griffith at BBC News. Given the volatility of the virus you've just spoken about how can you reassure parents and staff and pupils that it is safe and will attendance be mandatory? The way to do that is to work together and to get round the table together and to share any ideas we have about how safety can be improved. We talked earlier about new risk assessments taking into account the new variant, the use of physical space, the possibility of lateral flow tests being deployed in some way to reassure people of safety. There are a range of practical things that we can do but the way to give people confidence in the way that you asked Howell is by doing it together and in partnership. That's what we will be aiming to do. Sorry, there was another point to your... Well, I just asked whether attendance will be mandatory. Oh, I'm begging your pardon. No, we've not moved down that road in Wales. We want to encourage as many people back into school as possible. Back in the autumn, the Education Minister did agree that where they were obvious examples of children who could and should be in school, being deliberately kept away from school, that some more enforcement action should be taken. But the general approach in Wales is not to mandate people going back for all the reasons we just explored with Rupert Evelyn about concerns and so on, but to encourage, persuade and build up trust. Keir Starmer says all teachers should be vaccinated and don't have to. Do you disagree with your Labour Party leader? Well, I take a different view here in Wales as when you're in government, you have to rely on the advice of those people who are appointed to give you that advice. The advice from the JCVI and the Chief Medical Officer continues to be that we should prioritise those people who are on those nine groups that the JCVI set out. If the JCVI changes its advice, we will follow the new advice, but until that advice changes, we will stick with what we are advised to do by that committee, by our own Chief Medical Officer, vaccinate those top nine groups and we're making remarkable progress in doing that here in Wales. Thanks very much. Over to Steve Bagnell, I think, at the Daily Post. Thank you, First Minister. Following the suspicious package incident at the Vokhar plant on Wrexham's industrial estate this week, how confident are you in security measures to protect the plant and what could the effect be on vaccine supply if there was a serious incident? Are there other measures in place if this did happen? Well, I received regular reports during the day from the security and police services about the incident. I thought they responded to it fantastically well. There was a plan already in place. The plan was executed. There was a commanding officer on the spot to make sure that he was dealt with in the best possible way. On the whole, I think we should take confidence from the way in which that incident was responded to because it demonstrated that all the work that has gone on between those services to plan ahead was of real benefit in the practical circumstances that they faced. Your point about the fragility of the system to setbacks is a real one, though, isn't it? We absolutely rely on vaccine being produced as fast as possible, and there are many ways in which that process could be vulnerable. People are working very hard, indeed, to make sure that it's not, but we are using every drop of vaccine we have as fast as we get it to vaccinate as many people as possible, and we are relying on those factories being able to keep up the production of the vaccine to the maximum possible extent. You can be sure that those who were involved in the incident earlier this week will be learning the lessons of it and seeing if there are ways in which those protections can be even further strengthened. Thank you, First Minister. And with concerns about new strains coming into the UK from outside, do you think there is an argument for the UK to close its borders completely for, say, six months or the rest of the year to get coronavirus under control? Is that something you could envisage? I can envisage that myself, and I think those protections would be greater than the ones the UK Government has decided on this week. I did say in a meeting with the UK Government that this smacked me again of the UK Government doing the least they thought they could get away with, rather than the most that needed to be done. But as a Welsh Government, we are not particularly privy to all the information that the UK Government has through its foreign and Commonwealth responsibilities and its border security responsibilities. I think they've done the minimum that was necessary this week, and we have supported them in doing that. I think the case for doing more is a significant one. We don't know, none of us know, where a new variant may crop up. It may crop up in a country where we've got no concerns at all at the moment, and the current arrangements, people could be here with that new virus before we knew anything about it. Building the walls higher, keeping the defences stronger, I certainly think there is a case for keeping that argument alive with the UK Government. Steve, thank you to Tom Moody of the South Wales Argus. Good afternoon, First Minister. I was just hoping to get some clarification on the changes to the exercising outdoors regulations. You said that two people from different households are able to exercise outdoors together. How does this apply to families? Is it to households, to adults from different, a maximum of two adults from different households to meet up with children, or simply two people? Thank you, Tom. It is two adults from two different households. They will need to be local, because the rule about starting and finishing exercise at your own front door has not gone away. Children under the age of 11 are not included in that, so it would be possible for an adult from a household to meet somebody from another household and for a child to be present as well. As ever, what I always ask people to do is not to ask yourself what can I do, but to ask yourself what should I do. The fewer people who meet, the safer we all are, but children under the age of 11, as with the rest of our regulations, would be allowed to be part of such exercise. Thank you. We've heard from business owners here in Gwent, who, although they have received support at the beginning of this month, said this barely covered, if it were, if it covered us all, their bills for January, and that not knowing the length of how long they'd be closed for made it almost impossible for them to plan or negotiate payment of these bills. Obviously, it's not possible to predict how long this lockdown would be for, but could the Welsh Government have been clearer with businesses about how long this support would have had to be to sort of tide them over, and is this process under constant review to make things clear as possible? Tom, thank you very much. I think we were clear with people that the help we provided up until now was meant to last until the end of January, and the additional help that I was able to announce last Friday. My colleague Ken Skates is publishing a lot more detail now about that help today. That will be designed to tide businesses over to the end of March. So businesses in Wales now know that that help is there for them to the end of this financial year. I've got absolute sympathy with the sort of businesses who you've been talking to. The amount of help we are able to offer them, of course, would not be what they would have hoped to have raised themselves, and they'd much rather be working than waiting for help from the Welsh Government, I know. As soon as it is safe to do so, we will want those businesses to be back in operation. Our help is designed to tide them over through these difficult months so that they are still there able to resume trading when conditions are safe for that to happen. Tom, thank you. Over to Rob Taylor at rexham.com. Good afternoon, First Minister. When case rates, admissions and death dates were lower in North Wales, we entered the lockdown at the same time as everywhere else with people questioning the fairness of that. You've just indicated when asked about rexham's case rates that some local authorities could take different action on school reopening. Why isn't all Wales approach appropriate in one direction, but not the other? No, I want an all Wales approach, Rob. That's what I said in answering the question. I wanted an all Wales approach with some flexibility for local authorities in any part of Wales who needed to take into account their local circumstances to be able to do that. But just as we all went into level four together, and I am more certain than ever that it was the right decision for North Wales, because if we hadn't done it with the rate of the new variant that was already circulating in North Wales, we would have seen the figures in North Wales even more seriously elevated and even more lives put at risk if we hadn't moved on an all Wales basis. So, at the moment I'm still committed to all Wales approaches in the examples that we've announced today and all Wales approach on education. But just as there was flexibility for local education authorities at the start of the autumn term, I think it's right to offer some flexibility for local circumstances to be taken into consideration as we hope to resume face-to-face education after half term. Thank you. Can you give clarification if the new business support is limited to just those in the non-essential retail hospitality, leisure and tourism sectors and the related supply chains? Or will there be further broader support to help other business sectors and freelancers who are also impacted by the pandemic during this extended lockdown? Active further consideration going on inside the Welsh Government to see whether there is further help that we can offer to freelancers. It's not a concluded conversation, but I've been involved in it myself a couple of times. This week, the specific help that we have announced recently is focused on those sectors because those are the sectors that have seen the worst impact from the most recent lockdown measures. But there are broader forms of support that are available through the packages that the Welsh Government has deployed well over £2 billion worth of support for businesses in Wales now. 1.7 billion pounds of that already in the hands of those businesses. And the help that is available for all sectors is advertised through our Business Wales website. Rob, thank you to Tom Magner at Carers World. Good afternoon, First Minister. We hear people who don't know refer to unpaid carers as informal carers, even unskilled carers, or that unpaid carers simply comfort another person. All of this belies the reality that unpaid carers are, as one viewer describes it, 24-7 care workers with added nursing roles who happen not to be employed. We don't have fixed hours, and we can't call in sick. So would you accept that unpaid carers feel invisible? Not because of the pandemic science advice on which your government relies, but on the fact simply that unpaid carers don't have a wage, and that this, for example, stops their vaccinations being paid for the person for whom they care for, and being vaccinated alongside paid care workers? Well, Tom, I know that I said to you last week that we would change the advice on the Welsh Government website, and I hope that that has been done to make sure that unpaid carers know that when we get to the next phase of vaccination, they will be included in that priority six group. The idea that you would refer to an informal carer as an unskilled carer is baffling to me when I see the jobs that people do voluntarily in that way. I probably agree with you that what the pandemic has done is just to bring to the surface a set of arrangements that were always there. And shine a spotlight on them in a way that many people will not have known about or realised previously. Our viewers may differ, but we probably haven't got time to go into it now. So I could just move on to another part of our audience, people with learning disabilities and autism. It's unclear how your government views people in this situation. So perhaps you could explain where learning disabilities and autism come within your government's policy priorities, and specifically, where do they appear in the vaccine priority bands because they don't seem to be there? Well, I think that our record during the pandemic will demonstrate that we have listened carefully to and attended to the views that we have heard from families with people with a learning disability or people with autism. I remember a very specific decision very early on in the pandemic when we heard what we were being told about the impact of that very first lockdown on people who need to be able to exercise more than other people where predictability is so very important and we changed the rules then having heard of those experiences. We have kept all special schools open in Wales for the fourth lockdown, and that again is because we know that many young people depend upon the school routine and their families depend upon it as well. So in a straightforwardly practical way, if you think that actions speak louder than words, then our record during the pandemic has been to try to listen to the lived experience of people in the circumstances you've described that we can then to respond with practical ways of helping them. I won't try without everything properly in front of me to remember where people come in the nine priority groups, but I will make sure afterwards that I've got a proper answer to that part of your question. Thank you very much. Over to Alan Evans at Llanelli Online. Thank you First Minister. One of our readers, Bill Thomas, a former Mayor of Llanelli, has highlighted a company based in Canunvali in specs diagnostics limited who have developed the breath spec instrument to detect COVID-19. A paper published in the Lancet in December 2020 of the two studies suggests that patients with COVID-19 could be rapidly distinguished from patients with other conditions. The breathalyzer test is actively being pursued in the USA, India and other parts of the world. Mr Thomas asked if Welsh Government will be supporting investment in the breath spec instrument and if you are worried that such a test could reveal a greater scale of infections. Well, the first part of your question, as I remember it, we have already helped with investment for this company. Just trying to recall it properly, but I think it was a spin-off company from the University of South Wales and the SMART programme, which is an investment stream that we have to support businesses that are coming out of universities and developing new ideas and intellectual property and so on. I think the company has already had help from that Welsh Government fund. On the second point of the question, I think I could hear the question in one of two ways. Would we be worried in the sense that would we not want to know if there were more people with infection? Well, obviously not that at all. The more we know, the better able we will be to deal with this infection. Coronavirus is going to be with us for months and months to come. Any diagnostic tool that gives us a better insight into it is to be welcomed. Would we be worried in the sense that it would show more coronavirus in the community than we have suspected? Well, of course, that would be a cause for concern, but it would be a positive concern in the sense that once you know about it, you can do something about it. I asked the First Minister a while ago about the vast sums of money going through the courts and out of Wales. You gave me a very definitive answer on that. With the Labour Commission looking at the constitution, the options for Wales as part of the Union and the First Minister stating that where the component nations of the United Kingdom choose to come together to pool resources and to share rewards, then I also believe that that should be a powerful part of the overall deal. Given you said that, will policing and courts be part of that deal if there were to be one given the obvious financial benefits to Wales? Well, the Thomas Commission, and you will remember, the Thomas Commission's report was launched, unfortunately, just as the twin issues of Brexit and coronavirus were forcing their way onto the agenda. As a result, we've never been able to make the progress with the Thomas Commission's report into the devolution of criminal justice that we would in normal times. But if you go back to that report, as we will with Labour's new commission, then it does make a powerful case for the devolution of a range of aspects of the criminal justice system, certainly including policing, administration of justice and a series of other components of the justice system as well. Once that commission gets properly underway and I've had an opportunity to discuss it with both Keir Starmer and with Gordon Brown, then we will make sure that the evidence of the Thomas Commission is made available to it because part of the future design of the United Kingdom, I think, based on the powerful arguments of the Thomas Commission's report, do need to include devolution of aspects of the justice system. Alan, thank you very much. Over to Andrew Nuttall at the leader. Thank you, Minister. So, living on the Welsh border up here in North Wales, things can be a bit confusing, especially with the school announcements for yourself and for England as well. For people to sort of live in the fledger and racksam area that may go to school over the border in England or vice versa, children in England that may come to school in Wales. What will the rules be for sort of the difference in approaches there? Will that be something that you've considered or... Yeah, thank you. I think the rules will be the rules of the school in the country that the school is in. So I'm afraid if there are young people who live in Wales, something that will not be open, we know, until at least the 8th of March, so they will not be able to attend. If there are pupils who come into Wales for their education, we know that there are many of them, including some people who come across the border to have Welsh media education, then if the school is open and those groups of pupils are returning to school, then they will be able to do so alongside everybody else. Thank you. For those who cannot exercise locally for reasons such as disability or just general issues in the area that prevent them from doing it safely or with ease, and they would need to travel somewhere else to be able to do this, which they can do already, can people take advantage of this alongside this new relaxation or will that still be against the rules? Well, it's a very good question, Andrew. We do allow, as you say, people who, for reasons of disability, are unable to exercise from their own front door to drive somewhere where they could exercise. At the moment, I think that they will not be able to encourage somebody else to drive to exercise with them. This is a very modest first step. It's designed for people who exercise from their own front door. We've had a bit of a theme this afternoon of, you know, not approaching these very modest changes in a way of trying to push the boundaries of them, make more of them than is intended and I think doing my best to make sure I'm remembering this accurately, I think the position I've just outlined would be the accurate one. It's for people who can go from their own front door with somebody else living locally who can do the same. Andrew, thank you and finally today to Gareth at the Caerphilly Observer. Diolch yn fawr, Prif Weinidog. We talk about the number of people vaccinated, obviously we're making gains on the number on almost a daily basis, but obviously that's the first of two doses in terms of vaccinations. When do you expect the top four priority groups to have received both doses of the vaccine? As I remember, Gareth people who have been vaccinated already will start to get the second dose from the 22nd of February. I was very encouraged getting a message from somebody in my own constituency this week who'd been to a mass vaccination centre and had been given the date for her next vaccine while she was there and she sent me a note just to say how well it had all gone, how smoothly it had operated, how pleased she was that the plan for her next vaccine was part of the service that she received. Starting from the 22nd of February and then it'll be a rolling programme, those who've been vaccinated first will get their second vaccine first and so on. On the vaccination of unpaid carers, just to touch upon some that's already been covered slightly, the guidance from the JCVI and yourselves at the moment is that those receiving the carers allowance will be invited for a vaccine in line with priority group 6. What's the advice for unpaid carers who aren't in receipt of a carers allowance? How will they be contacted? Or should they be making this situation known to any relevant people like GPs or their local health board? Well, many of them we know will be covered by the other categories in those top 9 priority groups. A large number of people who provide informal care in Wales are already in those groups already. If you fall outside those groups and you're not covered by the carers allowance aspect, then we will look to find some other way in which you can validate the fact that you are a carer of that sort. As I've explained, I know in further in earlier conversations with Tom Magner, you have to find some way of being able to demonstrate that you are an unpaid carer. Otherwise, anybody could walk through that priority group and put themselves at the front of the queue. So, we've tried to find ways in which people who are in those circumstances and we want them to get vaccination as part of the next priority groups can get it. If we need to work further to refine the system, then I'm sure both the GCVI and we will do it as well. And Gareth, as this is the last question of this session, maybe you will allow me to say, I think I've been on my feet for over an hour by now and in the time that I've been talking over a thousand people in Wales will have been vaccinated. That is how fast the system is working and that is how fast people in that informal care group will find themselves being drawn into the system as well. Diolch yn fawr. Thank you all very much indeed.