Extract from Wales Questions: Pub Closures: Covid-19 Tim Loughton
(East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con) What discussions he has had with
Welsh Government Ministers on the effect of the covid-19 outbreak
on pub closures in Wales. The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of
State for Wales (David T. C. Davies) My right hon. Friend the
Secretary of State wrote to the First Minister before he announced
the closure of pubs in Wales and asked him to consider a tiered
structure for covid restrictions, which...Request free trial
Extract from Wales
Questions: Pub Closures: Covid-19
(East
Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)
What discussions he has had with Welsh Government Ministers
on the effect of the covid-19 outbreak on pub closures in
Wales.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Wales
()
My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State wrote to the
First Minister before he announced the closure of pubs in Wales and asked him to consider a
tiered structure for covid restrictions, which would have better
targeted areas with a high incidence of the virus. Regrettably, at
that time the First Minister chose not to do so. I believe he may
now be about to follow my right hon. Friend’s advice.
Before the Welsh Labour Government had the bright idea of
bringing in a circuit breaker, the infection rate in Wales was 33
per 100,000 head of population. Since then, Wales has had one of
the toughest lockdowns. pubs have to close at six o’clock and they
cannot serve alcohol. Infection rates in Wales are now 423 per
100,000. Have Welsh Government Ministers confided in my hon. Friend
the reasons for this raging success, and is it perhaps that people
in Wales have been so driven to drink with despair that they have
to do it at home without social distancing, rather than in
pubs
It is a sad fact that at the moment Wales has the highest
number of cases per 100,000 in the UK, the highest number of deaths
per 100,000, and the lowest amount of testing, but I do not think
my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and I wish to make any
political point out of that. All of the United Kingdom has
suffered. What I think we would welcome is a recognition that the
Welsh Labour Government do not have some sort of magical answer to
this situation which has eluded everybody else. We would welcome
Welsh Ministers sitting down and working with the Secretary of
State for Health and Social Care and the UK Government, so we can
tackle this pandemic together as one nation.
(Clwyd West)
(Con)
As we have heard, pubs in north Wales have been closed down
by the Welsh Government and their trade is being destroyed, despite
the fact that infection rates in north Wales are significantly less
than in much of south Wales. When my hon. Friend does speak to
Welsh Ministers, can he urge them to adopt a more intelligent and
nuanced approach to covid restrictions? Otherwise, many of
those pubs will never reopen.
As I have just said to my hon. Friend the Member for
East Worthing and Shoreham (), we would
welcome the Welsh Government working in tandem with the UK
Government to bring in a tiered system, so that in areas with a low
incidence of the virus fewer restrictions are put in place. I
believe that is an approach the Welsh Government are finally going
to adopt. We look forward to sitting down and working with
them.
Extract from
PMQs
Liz Twist (Blaydon) (Lab)
The hospitality sector, and in particular pubs in my constituency such as the Black
Bull in Blaydon, a wet pub with a fine live local music tradition,
has been devastated by the restrictions placed on it, in our case
since September. pubs such as the Black Bull are at the
heart of our communities. The various compensation schemes do not
offer enough support to allow those pubs to survive. Will the Prime Minister
commit to bringing forward a financial support scheme that will
allow our pubs and hospitality sector to
survive?
The Prime Minister
The hon. Member is quite right to raise the problem in the
hospitality sector. We are committed to doing everything we can.
She knows about the £3,000 grant, the additional £2,100, plus the
£1,000 for wet pubs But the best thing of all—in addition
to the cuts in business rates and VAT that I have already
mentioned—is for areas in the west midlands to work
together—
North-east.
The Prime Minister
Sorry; forgive me. The best thing is for areas in the
north-east to work together to reduce the virus through community
testing in the way that Liverpool has succeeded in doing. I
appreciate that the hon. Member’s constituency is in in tier 3 and
things are very, very tough, but if we all work together, we can
get the virus down and get our pubs open again.
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