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Neil Hamilton, MS for Mid & West Wales, and Leader of UKIP Wales has demanded the Welsh Government scrap the five mile rule.
Mr Hamilton, a member of the Climate Change, Environment and Rural Affairs committee, is urging the First Minister to lift the restriction to allow the economy to begin to recover and hundreds of people in rural Wales to meet up with their loved ones.
He said: “Last week the First Minister announced people could meet from two households provided they were outside and did not travel more than five miles. This is complete nonsense in rural Wales. The First Minister and the Health Minister both represent urban Cardiff where a five mile radius will take you anywhere, but almost nowhere in Mid & West Wales. This Cardiff Bay Bubble mentality reveals a complete unawareness of the realities of rural life where many people have to travel more than five miles to a doctor, a chemist, and a food shop.
“My constituents, many of whom are prevented from visiting family and friends because they live too far away, are rightly furious at this ridiculous rule but the First Minister refuses to listen.
“Of course the vulnerable need to be shielded but let people make their own decisions about what is right for them. No-one wants to get this virus, let alone pass it on to a vulnerable friend or family, but we should be allowed to decide our own level of risk. The peak of the virus was two months ago. We are not children and this is not a dictatorship. The First Minister must relax this restriction at review on June 18.
“As a lifelong libertarian, I am very concerned at the grave erosion of civil liberties which is taking place, which is unprecedented in peacetime. I despair at the constant nanny-state attitude which pervades everything Welsh Government does. This Covid-19 situation is giving them carte blanche further to weaken the Welsh economy and push people further into poverty and ever more dependent on the state – the average income in Wales was already 75% of the UK average and this gets worse with every day that lockdown continues.
Wales is haemorrhaging badly but the First Minister just fiddles while Rome, in the shape of the rural Welsh economy, burns.”
