 Apar John, ddododd yn ni i ddod. Fe oedden nhw'n ddiddordebau cyntaf y mynd yn gwirionedd y cyfrrygol mae'r cyfrddiriau yn y gweld. Mae'n fi fydd amser gan cyfrddiriau amser yn yr ysgrifennu yng Nghymru, ond mae'r Mhrom Cymru yn ysgrifennu. F ότιol rwyf. Gdeddydiadau gyda'r gweithio yma gynnig oherwydd maes cywyddiadau a chyfodd ei parodau we have taken our working and they give us hope that we may be turning a corner. Today I want to set out our plan to return to alert level zero provided this week's positive trend continues. Now we will continue to review the data regularly and carefully because this remains a very fast moving situation and as we have seen over the last six weeks things can change very quickly. You can see that in the two slides that I'm about to show you. Here on this slide you can see that as soon as that Omicron wave struck cases rose very quickly right across Wales. Last week I showed you the modelling evidence that we have from Swansea University. It suggested that the Omicron wave would rise very quickly but then would fall back quickly too and what you can see on this slide is exactly that happening as the model predicted. We got to the top of that very steeply rising wave and over the last week or so those numbers have been coming down rapidly as well. The numbers have been falling back from their record high levels. Now I do need to just strike one note of caution with these figures because the case rates you see there are based on the number of people who have had a positive PCR test. We changed the testing rules a week ago so that most people no longer need to have a follow-up PCR test if they have had a positive lateral flow test and that inevitably reduces the number of people taking a PCR test and the number of positive tests that are recorded. But the fall in cases that you saw on that slide began to happen a few days before the change to those rules and the positivity rate which isn't so affected by changing numbers has been falling as well. To be sure that the pattern we were seeing is real we've also looked at a wider range of indicators but help us to see how the Omicron wave is behaving. The wastewater studies that we've carried out throughout the pandemic also suggest that the extremely high levels of infections in the community could now be starting to slow down and to come down and we can look as well at the ONS infection survey and that too shows a similar pattern. The results from the latest ONS survey are shown on this slide. Just as with the data I showed you earlier on the first slide you can see that very sharp rise in infections as the Omicron wave hit us in December and in to January. But the increase in Wales shown in that red line has been smaller than the rise in England represented by the green line. In fact infection levels in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland where protective measures were put in place have been lower than England right across the rest of the United Kingdom and the Welsh line the red line is the only one to show that the growth in infections is slowing down. Now the actions that we have taken were designed to protect the Welsh NHS in everything that we ask it to do for us. The number of people in hospital with COVID-19 is now over 1,100 people but here too there are those early positive signs. The total number of patients with COVID-19 in hospital has started to fall this week and the rate of admissions has been gradually falling for more than a week now and that gives us confidence that now is the right time to plan ahead and the other reason for doing so and for doing so positively has been the success of our vaccination programme over the Omicron period. Here in Wales we've now delivered more than 1.8 million booster and third doses of the vaccine. Since the start of December we have had the fastest rollout of the booster programme in the whole of the UK. Our fantastic vaccination teams have given those boosters and third doses to more than 32% of people aged over 12 in Wales in that very short period and that enormous effort has given us all that extra protection against Omicron and I repeat the message I give every time I come to this lectern it's never too late to be vaccinated in Wales. Anyone who's not yet been vaccinated whether that's a first, a second or a booster dose please come forward. It's the best way to protect yourself and then to protect others. Now faced with what we were seeing and what we knew about the Omicron wave we introduced alert level 2 measures on Boxing Day to help protect people, to keep as many businesses as possible open and to prevent the NHS in Wales from being overwhelmed. Those measures combined with the Christmas and New Year Bank holidays have acted as a mini firebreak and have helped us to flatten the curve of infections and give us more time to get more people vaccinated. Because of the crisis we moved inside the Welsh Government to a weekly review of those measures so that we could make sure that they were always proportionate to the public health risk. Now in this week's review the Cabinet has agreed to a plan to take us back step by step to alert level zero, provided and that word if is a big word here always if we continue to see the public health situation improve continue to improve over the next few weeks. We'll do it in that careful phased way as we have throughout the pandemic and this will allow us to make sure that the early signs of improvement from this week continue as we look to make those further changes and as ever we will be monitoring the data very closely looking at cases in the community, their impact on staff absences, particularly their impact on schools where we will go on doing whatever we can to support face-to-face learning for children and students in schools. So we're making one immediate change as from tomorrow the number of people who can be present at outdoor events will rise from 50 to 500 and if the public health situation continues to improve we will make the further changes shown on the slide you're about to see. So from tomorrow the 15th of January the move from 50 to 500 people at outdoor events from the 21st of January Friday of next week all outdoor activities will move to alert level zero. There'll be no limits on the number of people who can take part in outdoor activities, crowds will return to outdoor sporting events, indoor hospitality will be, I beg your pardon, outdoor hospitality will be able to operate without additional measures and the COVID pass will continue to be required for entry to larger outdoor events. One week further on two weeks from today on the 28th of January we will move to alert level zero for all indoor activities and premises night clubs able to reopen working from home strongly advised but no longer a legal requirement and the COVID pass to be required to enter larger indoor events. Then when as we hope we have returned to alert level zero we will return to a three weekly review cycle. So by the 10th of February we will be back from a weekly review to a three week review of the regulations and as ever we'll continue to review all the protections in place. So today we are in the optimistic place of being able to take those first steps back to alert level zero and we're able to do it only because of the amazing hard work and effort of everyone in Wales who has once again followed all the rules and taken all the steps to keep ourselves and our loved ones safe and it's thanks to to the enormous efforts of all those working in our vaccination centres in our NHS in our public services in shops and in businesses who have done so much to protect us from this latest wave of that awful virus. Thank you. Thank you to everyone who has done so much to help to keep us all safe. This doesn't mean that the pandemic is over. Omicron is still here in Wales. The levels of coronavirus though falling are still too high in our communities and then could be some difficult days and weeks still ahead as we continue to respond to the coronavirus crisis. But today's evidence is that we are able to move further and faster into those brighter days that we hope lie ahead for us all. Diolch o galon fel arfer i chi gyd, and as ever our now take questions from our journalist colleagues and also as usual all answers will be broadcast live on the Welsh Government's social media channels. First today, questions from Adrian Masters at ITV Wales. Thank you First Minister. I seem to remember last week the slide showing the modelling predicted a peak in 10 days to two weeks time from last week. Was the modelling wrong and did you overreact to Omicron generally as a result of that and related to it? Do you now think that the UK Government was right to heed the experience of scientists in South Africa and keep hospitality open? In other words, what has Wales gained from a stricter lockdown? Thank you Adrian. I don't think the model was wrong in essence because the model showed what has actually happened in practice, that very sharp rise and now a rapid decline so the model has been remarkably accurate in understanding the shape of the Omicron impact. We have, we think, seen the peak a bit earlier than the model predicted but the changes that we are making are exactly two weeks on from last Friday just as the model itself would have suggested and what the actual figures show and what that ONS slide I think showed very directly is that the measures we took in Wales were both necessary and effective. That gap in the experience between Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland and that rapidly rising and continuing to rise line in England. What does that gap mean? Well that gap means thousands more people falling ill, more people being admitted to hospital, more people unable to be in work because they were ill with coronavirus. That gap is a real gap and it's a real gap making an impact in real people's lives. The actions we've taken in Wales to flatten the curve to bring it to an end more quickly I think have paid real dividends here and thoroughly justify the actions that Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have taken. Thank you and having accused you or suggested that you were being too cautious, I'm now going to argue the opposite. On your own measures particularly given what you said last week, are you now moving too quickly given that schools have only just come back? A lot of parents will have heard what you said last week and will be worried that perhaps you're moving too early to lift the restrictions. Related to that, how long do you think Wales will remain at alert level zero? In other words, how long will we be expected to wear face coverings and work from home where possible? Well thank you, Adrian. I think the point you make about schools is a really important one. There will be figures published later today I think that will show the way in which infections have travelled, our schools have returned and it is inevitable. Always has happened when schools return and children are mixing. Again, then it's easier for the virus to spread. There are a couple of reasons why we can move ahead despite that likely pattern. The first is that compared to this time last year, the vaccination programme is offering enormous protection to children of that age. The figures published today show that for 16 and 17-year-olds, 79% of them have now had a first dose of the vaccine and we're moving into the 60%. Now, children of young people of that age being able to have a second dose. 60% of our 12 to 15-year-olds have been vaccinated with a first dose as well and in this month we will start to offer vaccination to vulnerable children aged between 5 and 11. In December, 93% of all teachers had completed both first and second doses and every one of them who's eligible will have had a chance to get the booster vaccine during the month of December as well. So, we go into this term in a very different position with the protection that vaccination offers and because Omicron is a milder form of coronavirus, it's milder in that part of the population as well. Now, we will watch very carefully what is happening in our schools. The Education Minister, Jeremy Miles, has asked that schools implement the maximum level of protection available within the local decision-making framework they have and we may have to keep that going a bit longer even as we are lifting some of the protections across society as large and quite certainly the Welsh Government with our colleagues in education will do everything we can to sustain face-to-face learning for as long as we can. I'll just repeat one final thing. Everything I've said today about what will happen on the 21st and the 28th is predicated on the trends of this week continuing. We'll have to confirm those decisions. So, I don't think we are moving too fast because as ever in Wales we are doing it in that careful step-by-step way which will allow us to revisit those decisions should things not turn out to be as we hope they will be. And could I get an answer on the how long? A bit. Thank you, pardon. So, we'll review the level zero protections in the middle of February. I can't give you a prediction as to what we will be able to do with them then, but as we've said all along, as soon as the public health situation allows it, we will want to remove some of those measures that will still be in place, but we won't do it until we're confident that they're no longer necessary. Thank you very much, Edwin, over to Jenny Rees at BBC Wales. Thank you again afternoon. Given self-isolation rules in England have been reduced if you like from seven to five days assuming you get a negative lateral flow test, we've got that movement of workers over the border, but also issues with numbers of staff in the NHS and other public services being affected. Do you anticipate following suit? Well, what we will be doing, Jenny, is to look at whatever evidence the UK Government has used to come to that conclusion. As I understand it, it moves the removal of self-isolation by 24 hours. I know they're saying seven days and five days, but when you look at a small print, it's actually 24 hours that the change means in practice. When we were given all the evidence earlier in December, when the move was from 10 days to seven days, the evidence showed that at day five, more than three out of 10 people are still infectious. And it did not seem sensible to us to have that number of people with infections out and about spreading them to others. We will study whatever evidence is now available, and if we think it is safe, if our chief medical officer and scientific advisers say to us that we can now move down the days in a way that doesn't cause risk to others, of course that's what we'll do, but we're yet to see that evidence or to get that advice. If I could have that in Welsh as well, please. Of course. Wel, aros i weld y testiolaeth sydd gyda'r Llywodraeth y Dynys yn edrych sy'n tiol y penderfyniadau mae nhw'n wedi wneud. Nol ym mis ragfer pan oeddwn ni'n ystyried y posibiliad o symud hynny'n yn y sydd o 10 diwrnod i 7 diwrnod, oedd y testiolaeth yn dangos ar dydd 5 mae mwy o 30 o bobl yn dal i fod gyda'r cyrwn y fairas. Os mae'r testiolaeth wedi newid, mae'r bydd cyfle i ni nawr i ystyried, y testiolaeth newid ac i cael fwy o gyngor oedd i wrth y prys oedd o'r meddagol a pobl ar ochr gwyddoniaeth sy'n am gynghori ni. Dyn ni ddim wedi weld y testiolaeth eto a dyn ni ddim wedi cael y cyngor, ond mae pobl yn gwythio ar hwnna os mae'n saf i symud fod cws ni'n fodlon i'n ei de, ond ni ddim cwet yn siwr am hynny eto. And going back to restrictions, given restrictions also have harms, we've seen that the case rate has also foreign in England. Do you think you did get that wrong? You know, in hindsight, were they necessary and also in Welsh please? Look, I am absolutely, I think the evidence is very clear that the protections we put in place were not only necessary but have been really effective as well. I think the fact that I'm able to stand here today and set out a plan over the next two weeks to move back to level zero earlier than the modelling had predicted is, you know, rooted mostly in the way that people in Wales have responded and behaved, but also because of the measures that we took and that ONS slide that I showed, I think, you know, really does demonstrate the difference between a part of the United Kingdom where protections weren't in place and those parts of the United Kingdom where those protections have been implemented. And I think the good news of today is rooted in those difficult but necessary and effective decisions that we made only a few weeks ago. Wel, i fi, mae'r testiolaeth yn dangos angli ar y wahaniaeth drwng, gwledydd yn y Dynasynedig ble mae'r level o'r cyfeidiadau wedi bod yna yn aile, i gael i weld nhw ar y slaid na Cymru ar Alban Gogledd i werthond y gilydd ac yn llwyger ble o'r cyfeidiadau ddim yn aile yn ni fyrwbobol ti wedi'n cwmpon dost yn lwt fwyaf. Mae hynny'n dangos i fi, popeth mae bobol yn Cymru wedi'u wneud dros yn y ddoleg a mewn i'r yflwyddyn newydd i wahod a'i hynna ac i edrych ar ôl bobol a eraill, ond hefyd mae'n dangos oedd pethau ni'n wedi'u wneud am yng Nghymru oedd nhw'n angen raddiol a mae'n wedi bod yn effeithiol hefyd. Diolch yn fawr, Jenny, over to Bronwyn, whether be at PA. Nawn darprif yn ei dog. One of the first moves you are taking is to remove restrictions from sports grounds. Has your decision been influenced in any way by the pressure the government's been experiencing over the Six Nations tournament and why are you leaving it until the end of the month rather than allowing crowds to return to matches immediately? Well, first of all, just to be clear that up to 500 people will be able to return as from tomorrow and it's not the end of the month, it's the 21st of January where crowds will be able to return to football matches and rugby matches on a larger scale. The pressures are absolutely real when you're making decisions of this sort, of course they are, but the pressures that my cabinet respond to are the pressures that are there in the data. When we get evidence and advice from our advisors that we need to take action in order to protect people's health, to protect the NHS and if we don't do that more people will fall ill, who need not fall ill and more pressure will be placed on our very pressurised health service that could be avoided. Those are the things that lead us to take the actions that we do and not the understandable representations that people in the individual parts of Welsh society that they occupy. It's absolutely right that people speak up, speak up for sporting events, speak up for hospitality, speak up for what is happening in our schools. That's absolutely right and proper, but the pressures that we respond to are the pressures that when you put all those things together add up to an impact on people's lives and the services that we rely on. Thank you and I wanted to ask are you aware of any parties thrown by the Welsh Government or Welsh Government employees at THOEL or elsewhere during the lockdowns and what would happen if you did find out there had been? Well, I'm not aware of any parties of any of that sort. The building I'm now in, which is the main centre of the Welsh Government, they've hardly been enough people to have a party, even if such a plan existed, because we've had a very strict working-from-home rule with very few people here in our office. If there had been such an event, then I would take a very dim view of it indeed. Time after time, I've come here to say that I believe that people who make the rules have a special obligation to make sure that they themselves are following the rules, and that's how we've tried to conduct ourselves in the Welsh Government. Thanks very much indeed. Bromain, over to Dan Bevan at LBC. Thank you, First Minister. Good afternoon to you. Following on from that, in regards to the confirmed and alleged gatherings at Downing Street that have come to light over the last few weeks, and of course the restrictions didn't permit them, do you believe the actions of the Prime Minister and others at number 10 has harmed the trust the public has in politicians across all sides of the political spectrum, particularly when it comes to COVID measures, and do you think that the Sue Gray report will be effective considering that at the end of the day answers to the Prime Minister? Well, look, Dan, we've seen right back to the Dominic Cummings events much earlier on, how when public figures who are part of making the rules appear to believe that the rules don't apply to them, of course it damages public confidence. I hope people see the Welsh Government in a different light. I hope they see that we have absolutely not been part of any culture that believes that somehow you are above and beyond the rules that apply to other people, and I think it is part of the huge effort we've seen over the last four weeks, you know, asking people in Wales yet again to exercise in their own lives those careful decisions that add up to protections for us all. It's a huge ask of people time after time, and yet we've really seen that over Christmas and New Year, and I hope that in part that is a reflection of the fact that people in Wales believe we genuinely hear are all in it together. The Sue Gray report, I know Sue Gray, I've been an admirer of her abilities when she worked in the Northern Ireland office, and we would have had contact with her as devolved Governments, but my own view has been from the very beginning that the report into activities in Downing Street should have been given to somebody entirely independent of the UK Government. It should have been a judge-led or somebody in that independent position, and I think Sue Gray has been put in a very challenging and pressurised position, and it would have been better if some other mechanism, more clear-cut, would have been put in place. Thank you, and you've said that COVID passes are going to be part of the measures that will be in place beyond January 28, but of course they didn't stop events and nightclubs being stopped when there was a new variant emerging and making its way to Wales. What makes you think that they're going to be effective this time around on the other side of this peak? Well, COVID passes are no magic bullet. They don't by themselves guarantee that everything is entirely safe, but they are an important brick in a wall of protection that you are trying to build up to make people feel confident in returning to venues. That was my own main personal experience of going back to sporting or to cultural venues is the number of people who would come up to say, oh now that we know that the person I'm sitting next to or in front of or behind me is vaccinated, I just feel more confident in coming back here. We do know that vaccination definitely does make you safer from catching the most serious end of infection. It's part of confidence building measures. It's part of a pathway back to alert level zero and, as I say, it doesn't wipe away all the risks that are there with coronavirus, but it's alongside other measures. It's part of reopening those aspects of Welsh society in a way that is safer and makes people more confident to take part. Dan, thank you very much. Over to Mark Smith today from Wales Online. Thank you very much indeed, First Minister. As you've already mentioned, there is evidence England's Omicron infection rating peak has been significantly higher than that in Wales, and you added this morning that the restrictions here had succeeded in reducing the pressure of staff absences on public services in Wales, but is there arguably a risk that the true peak may just have been delayed in Wales and will now play out perhaps over a longer period of time? Might we even see a sudden spike in cases as restrictions are eased here? Look, Mark, I think all those are risks are real. There's so much that we don't know with coronavirus and with each new wave, new forms of virus behaviour emerge as well. It is why the pathway that I've set out today is dependent week by week on the trends that we have seen in recent days continuing, and I want to be clear with people while the evidence we have is good evidence, and while it leads us to believe that these trends can continue, there isn't any guarantee. That is why the decisions about moving back to alert level zero for outdoor activity completely will not be confirmed until Friday of next week, and why the decisions about indoor activity will not be confirmed until 28 January, because despite the fact that things have improved and improved more quickly and earlier than we had expected, we just have to keep following the evidence and the data week by week in order to confirm the decisions that we've made. Thank you very much. Secondly, the number of people catching COVID in hospital is the highest it's been in around 12 months. What can the Welsh Government and indeed health boards do to avoid a repeat of previous waves where some hospitals saw scores of hospital-acquired COVID deaths, or is it simply an inevitability now that once community infection rates rise, that hospital infection rates will follow suit? Well, I'm afraid it is an inevitability, but you still have to do everything you can to mitigate that inevitability. Once there is coronavirus on the huge scale that we have seen with the Omicron variant, it's unavoidable that it gets into places like care homes and hospitals, and because it is so much more transmissible, it remains that much more transmissible virus in those settings as it is out in the community. There is some management information. It's not sort of, you know, ONS quality data, but that has been collected within the Welsh NHS this week that shows that about 43% of people with coronavirus are in hospital because of coronavirus, and about 58% of people with coronavirus are there, but they'd have been there anyway because of some other illness. When you've got people who have to be treated because they have other conditions, they've suffered a heart attack, a stroke, they've broken a leg, they've had a car accident, whatever it is, and they've already got coronavirus before they arrive, that virus is in the hospital. Now, the Welsh NHS, I think, works enormously hard to try to contain, to mitigate, to bear down on the spread of the virus inside the hospital environment, but once it's in there, it's every bit as keen to spread as it would be in any other setting. Mark, thank you very much. Drow Eagwyn Loda Nwadheon. Fandad, rwyf yn ni dog. Fi yn awb i'r canon heddi, i'r ardal gyda'r gyfradd hintio i chad drwy'r lad dros 2000 a hanner o achosion i bob kan mil o'r boblogeth. Fos ewn ni'n ôl i hedref 2021, o chi'n rhoi awdurdodau lleol danglo os oedd y gyfradd yn codi dros 50 i bob kan mil o'r boblogeth. A allan i gymryd felly bod y cyhoeddiad me heddi yn dangos i'n bod ni erbyn hyn yn gallu byw gyda'r virus me, hyd yn oed pan mae'r gyfradd hintio ni'n cefnod? Na, dwi'n rym yn tan i peddau fel na maes o beth ni wedi ddweud a heddi. A'r reswm pan ni'n gallu neud peddau anwahanol nawn ac oeddwn ni'n gallu neud ar golffennol. I'w mae'r cydestin a wedi newid. Mae'r cydestin gyda'r arraglenn y brechu a wedi newid mae'r ar amrywiol yn omeicron, anwahanol i'r ar amrywiol yn oeddwn ni wedi weld cyn hani. So, mae ddim jyst yn cwedd yn syml i ddweud ond ni'n jyst yn mynd i byw gyda'r coronavirus nawr a dyna pam ni wedi neud y penderfyn ni addai. Mae'r cydestin yn wahanol ni'n gallu amdopi gyda'r omeicron a mewn ffordd wahanol ond oes neb yn gwybod ble bydd yr amrywiol yn newydd yn mynd i godi dros y byd ac os bydd hwnna yn dod i'r ydenys yn edig bydd rhywbeth arall dany i delio gyda. Diolch. A nes i gwych chi'n dweud yn genharach bod omeicron yn amrywiol yn gwanach mae'r ydy na rhaid i ni wedi gweld yn y gorffennol, mae hynny'n sicrhau yn fyr erbyn hyn yn eich barthu'n ein o'r cyngor eich unig ar yndi? Nid fwy hyderus na'n ni wedi bod dros yr cafnod o omeicron i gyd a mae'r effaith omeicron yn wahanach na delta neu alfa. A mae hwnna yn wahaniaeth, mae'n wahaniaeth ar yn nifer o bobl, ti'n cwbod mordos maen nhw'n anysbytau a ni ac yn ynwedig mae'n wahaniaeth i'r nifer o bobl sy'n mordos, mae'r rhaid iddyn nhw'n cael tryniaeth mewn a ICU. So mae hwnna yn tiol y penderfyniadau byddai'n ei gwneud hefyd. Gwyn iawn i'n cwestiynau i weld y ffordd o omeicron o'r ymddangos y ffordd o'r ymddangos eich unig yn ffordd. Felly mae'n rhai gyrfa i ddweud oherwydd yn y ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ymddangos i ddechrau a yn ei ddweud o ffordd o'r yrthau oherwydd yn 4 ysgol. Felly oedd yma ymddangos o delta neu alfa, omeicron yn y ffordd o'r gyda'i gwych o hynny, mae hynny yn cael ymgyrch ar gyfer rhai. Ond y gallai'r byw'r llwydoach yn olygu mewn o omychion. Mae'n mitm yw yn y gwirionedd o bobl i roi'n ei gweithio yn ymgyrch, mae'n mynd i'r bobl i roi'n kontos bobl sydd gynghwyl yn fwy o bobl yng Nghymhau Nidol Llywodraeth. Dwi'w wrgylch am ymgyrch ar ddeddol ymgyrch ar gyfer'r byw yn ceisio'n gwirionedd, yw'r cyfnod, mae'n 40 gyfnod o'r cyfnod ymwyllgor yn ymdweud yma, a'r cyfnod yma yn 30. Felly mae'r ffordd o'r cyfnod o'r cyfnod, os ydych yn ymgyrch, a'r cyfnod o'r cyfnod o'r cyfnod. Gwyn Dyrfawr, oedd yma'r Lillid Llywodraeth i'r GB. Y Llywyddyn llyfr yw'r llwyffydd. Mae'n gweithio'r llwyffydd, dwi'n gweithio'n gweithio'r llyfr o'r ffasilydd, ymgyrch, a'r ffasilydd, y dyfodol y Llyfr Ynryd Cymru yn oed i'r rhaglen, yw'r Llyfr Ynryd Cymru yn y Llyfr Ynryd Cymru? Yn. Llyfr Ynryd Cymru, mae'r llyfr ynryd gyda'r Llyfr Ynryd Cymru yn y Llyfr Ynryd Cymru. Hadn't we not seen numbers improving as they have, if the advice to the Welsh Government from the chief medical officer and our scientists was that here in Wales we needed to keep those protections in place longer, then that is what we would have done because at every step in the pandemic we have done our best to follow the science and to take the advice of the people who are experts in this field. And as I said in an earlier question, people who speak up on behalf of other parts of Welsh society, that's absolutely right, that's what they should do, but when it comes down to making the difficult decisions, the pressures that make a difference in our decision making are pressures to do with stopping people who otherwise would fall ill from falling ill, reducing the number of people who end up in hospital and ultimately fewer people dying from this awful virus than would otherwise be the case. Thank you and you've been quite adamant about the UK Government taking charge of the COVID inquiry here in Wales and you said you're confident that Wales won't just be a footnote, but given the recent revelations and allegations about parties taking place at number 10 during the height of lockdown, can the people of Wales who have lost loved ones still trust the UK Government to give them answers or is it time now for a Wales-specific inquiry? Well look, I think the good news is that back in December the judge who is to lead the inquiry was named and in many ways the key decisions have now passed from the hands of the UK Government and into that judge-led inquiry. The consultation on the terms of reference will involve that person, they will involve the Welsh Government as well. I completely understand that people looking at what has gone on inside the UK Government and in particular what has gone on inside Downing Street must be asking themselves whether you could ever trust such people to carry out an inquiry that would give them the answers they're looking for. But as I said you know on the positive side most of the key decisions have now moved out of those people's hands, the judges in place, the independence of the inquiry has been guaranteed and I will continue to work to make sure that that inquiry delivers the answers that people in Wales are looking for and that we're never a footnote to somebody else's inquiry but that the Welsh experience is right at the centre of what the inquiry will consider and be able to do it in the wider context of the decisions that were being made elsewhere and which created a space within which you can only understand the decisions that were made here in Wales. Dili, diolch yn fawr tan chi'r fawr i much over to Alan Evans at Llanelli online. Yr First Minister, your steadfast stance of caution has not been welcomed by some, including the opposition who have pointed out the impact of COVID-19 on the people of Wales, rising fuel prices, job losses, the universal credit cut here in Llanelli, another blow as Wilco closes their doors. The economic crisis now and possibly running into the next term of the Senate is going to impact on children more than anyone else. Adam Price has called it a cost of living catastrophe. Your stacked reports on COVID have been impressive but has the Welsh Government produced or been presented with any form of stats or report on the present situation for those in greatest poverty in Wales and if so would it not be prudent to look at trialling a universal basic income or some kind of other model of funding boost for say small numbers of families which would provide benefits for families but also support the UK wide call for some form of trial. Alan, thank you very much. Look, you point to what will be a very serious set of circumstances for many, many Welsh families as we go into 2022. The cost of living catastrophe, a phrase used by the Resolution Foundation, will be very real for those families in April of this year who will see their fuel bills go up, who will see their national insurance contributions go up. For thousands of Welsh families, as you said, the cruel decision of the UK Government to cut £20 a week out of universal credit for so many families is the difference between being able to put food on the table and to keep rooms warm. Here in the Welsh Government, we have doubled the amount of money that we came to us from the UK Government to help households. This winter, £51 million, we've put on the table including £100 for families needing help with their fuel bills. Your point about universal basic income though, we are having a universal basic income pilot here in Wales. We're committed to it. It will begin this year. It will be aimed at cohorts of young people coming out of a care system. Children and young people who we know don't get the same start in life as children who are able to rely on the help that they get from their own families. That will be the biggest basic income experiment in the United Kingdom. I think there will be lessons that will be extracted from it, that will be relevant to the whole of the United Kingdom. We're trying to do it in a way that combats poverty amongst a group of young people, as you highlighted, who are particularly disadvantaged as they try to set off in making a success of their lives. The Welsh Government has handed over a considerable amount of money to local authorities across Wales and increased their budgets for the next year. One could argue that they're not scrapped for cash and in fact Covid has been kinder to them than most businesses. There is evidence that they have made savings. Would it not be reasonable now for those local authorities to identify the poorest families within their area ward by ward say and ensure that they, especially the children, the old age and the disabled, are not falling through the net and provide some form of emergency funding, if only for the basic essentials? I could give examples of people who have written to us at their wit's end unable to get something as basic as a commode or grab rails to be able to get in and out of their homes. As the First Minister may be aware, poverty does not jump out of homes and introduce itself. Like Willie Wonker, in that famous story, do you have a golden ticket for the children and those people in Wales? Well, I completely agree with the final point you made, poverty doesn't introduce itself and we know that many people who live in difficult circumstances themselves go to great lengths to try to avoid that being known to other people for all the reasons that we can easily imagine. Actually, to be fair to our local authorities, I think a great deal of the money that has gone to them has been money that they have simply handed on then to businesses. This week businesses in Wales will have been receiving the latest set of grants that we've made available because of the latest protections, £2,000, £4,000, £6,000 in help for businesses through the non-domestic rate system and its local authorities that we've relied on to get that money very quickly out of the door and to those businesses. By and large, I think our local authorities have responded remarkably to the challenges of coronavirus because this affects their staff as much as anybody else. If there's more that they can do to help those people falling through the net as you put it, I know that they will want to do that. We have been able to provide a better settlement for local government in the next financial year than for many years past and budgets have not been easy for local authorities over the last decade. So, where they can do more, I'm sure they will want to. In a small piece of additional good news this week, my colleague Leonard Morgan has announced further funding for the fantastic care and repair services that we have in every part of Wales. When you've talked about people needing grab rails and those small adaptions that can make life so much easier for people inside their own homes, there'll be more funding for those services in Wales from now on. Alan Dygfawd, over to Harry Hansen at That's TV South Wales. Thank you. Good afternoon, Minister. A recent study carried out by Swansea University has suggested that the new to online learning back in 2020 has had a huge and lasting impact on the confidence of children in rails. Are the government prepared to offer schools more support to help tackle this issue? Yes, look, I think, Harry, that's not a surprise, that finding. And we know that the move to online learning had a different impact on different parts of Welsh society, thinking of Alan's last question. Children who were lucky enough to live in well resourced households where there was space and computers and other resources managed better during the online learning experience, and children who didn't have those advantages managed not as well. So, the Welsh Government has put in the last couple of months very significant sums of money to help those young people who have been most affected, £24 million, most of it aimed at children in examination years because, for them, the impact of not having face to face learning is compounded by the anxiety of what that will mean when they come to sit for qualifications. And then in December, £100 million to help schools with the physical resources that they need, but also with people. So, we've employed 400 extra teachers in the autumn term, and we've been able now to find the money to continue their contracts right through this coming term as well. And those extra resources are aimed at trying to make up for some of the losses there have been for children and young people during those online experiences. Definitely, and I'm talking about exams as well. Obviously, schools have been told to prepare to carry out teacher assessed grades again this year, even though the hope is that exams will take place. How confident can children and parents be in Wales, but there won't be any disruption to exams during the spring term? Well, look, our aim is that examinations will happen in Wales this year. Mostly, they will be part of a wider set of assessments that will include teacher assessments and continuous assessment. It's not all or nothing exams that we're talking about here. Where there are exams, the WJEC has moved to adapt them to current conditions, slimming down the syllabus, giving advance notice of the topics that will be covered in exams. Exams are important because centre assessed grades have unconscious biases built into them like any system, and working class young men in particular do less well when there's not an examination as part of the system than they do when exams are there. That's why we are still working as hard as we can with our teacher colleagues to maintain examinations as part of the assessment landscape here in Wales. It's the same approach being taken elsewhere in the United Kingdom, and that's important as well. When you get your qualification in Wales, you want it to be regarded by other parts of the United Kingdom as equally valid as qualifications offered elsewhere, and having examinations as part of that mix helps with that as well. Harry, thank you very much indeed, and finally for today to Tom Magner at Carersworld Live. Good afternoon and thank you First Minister. Progress on a September 2021 petition for a national unpaid carers register appears to have stalled in your ministerial advisory group for unpaid carers. As your colleague the health minister was unable on Tuesday's briefing to give me any figures at all for the number of unpaid carers taken ill and therefore out of action because of COVID, a national register seems even more urgent now, and the most effective way presumably to do that will be to talk to unpaid carers direct and not just go through carers organisations. So do you accept this COVID driven urgency for a register and will you engage proactively with unpaid carers directly about this? If not, why not? I'm certainly happy to take a direct interest in where the petition has got to and what the latest state of play about it is. Tom, I think you'll recognise that as a government dealing with many, many different groups and important topics that the normal way in which you are able to engage with people is through organisations that represent their interests and we do work very closely with carers organisations here in Wales. That doesn't mean that we don't hear direct from carers. I would say this, one of the great strengths I think of our democratic system is that all Senedd members of all political parties will be hearing direct from people in their own constituencies. I certainly do myself, including from unpaid carers. So the fact that we work through representative organisations doesn't mean that we don't get to hear the direct experience of individuals in the circumstances that you described as well. One of the suggestions that's come up, thank you by the way for the offer of finding out what's happened to the register, we'll certainly follow that up with you on another occasion. But there seems to be perhaps a simple way to set up a register that doesn't rely on having to go and talk through organisations or even talk to unpaid carers directly. You could, for example, I imagine, use the same contact mechanism by NHS and GP records that was used for the boost of vaccination rollout invitations. So are those viewers doubting Welsh Government's intent right to be concerned that there's a dragging of heels over setting up this register, a register which the Senate Petitions Committee actively supports? Thank you. Well, thank you. I'm very happy to look at that idea as well. There are, as you can imagine, and for very good reasons, very strict rules as to what you can use information provided for one purpose if it's to be used for another purpose. And we all of us give over very personal information about ourselves into health records. And if you're to use them for not strictly health purposes, then the rules around that are quite rightly pretty strict. But if it were possible, and if that were a shortcut way to achieving a register, then, of course, I've said I will look into where the petition has got to, and I'll make sure that I raise that possibility as part of that inquiry. And thank you for making that suggestion this afternoon. Diolch yn fawr. Thank you all very much indeed.