Politics
New restrictions for hospitality sector will come into force from December 4

PUBS, restaurants and bars in Wales will be subject to stricter Covid-19 restrictions in the run up to Christmas, the First Minister has today confirmed (Nov 27)
The new restrictions, which have not yet been finalised, will come into force from Friday, 4 December.
They may be based on the system in some parts of Scotland where no alcohol can be served.
Cinemas, bowling alleys and indoor entertainment venues will also have to shut before the festive break.
A date for these to close has not yet been agreed.
Mark Drakeford said action was needed as case rates continued to rise in the run up to Christmas.
Pubs, bars and restaurants had only reopened on 9 November after the Wales-wide 17-day lockdown, and are currently made to close at 22:00 HRS.
Paul Davies MS, the Leader of the Opposition in the Welsh Parliament, has responded to today’s announcement, saying:
“This is going to be a real blow for countless hospitality businesses up and down the country, businesses that has suffered greatly over the last eight months.
“We now need to know the details from the Welsh Government because this will create an even more anxious and worrying time for businesses struggling to keep afloat.”
“As before, Welsh Conservatives are calling for targeted interventions, based on hyperlocal data, rather than blanket restrictions on all Wales.”
Speaking at the Welsh Government’s coronavirus briefing, Mr Drakeford said Wales had to use the “coming weeks” to reduce the spread of the virus, to “create more headroom for the Christmas period”.
Mr Drakeford said while case rates had fallen following the 17-day firebreak, as people had resumed socialising it they had risen “faster and further than we anticipated”, and action was needed.
“This does not mean a return to the firebreak arrangements, but the cabinet has agreed to take further specific and targeted action to reinforce the current national measures we have place,” he said.
Mr Drakeford said he could “not rule anything out for the future” in a bid to curb the spread of the virus.
Speaking of the new measures for pubs, bars and restaurants, Mr Drakeford added: “I know this will be a worrying time for all working in the industry.
“We will be working over the weekend with partners to finalise the details of the new arrangements and to put in place a further major package of financial support to respond to those changes.
“I will give further details about the package on Monday.”
Non-essential retail, hairdressers, gyms and leisure centres will stay open, it was confirmed.
Responding to the First Minister’s announcement CAMRA Chairman Nik Antona said: “The news of further restrictions covering the run-up to Christmas – the trade’s busiest time of the year – comes as a bitter blow and is potentially ruinous for our pubs and the local breweries that serve them.
“With speculation that pubs could face a 6 pm curfew and a ban on selling alcohol, the announcement of further details by the First Minister next week will be ‘make or break’ for thousands of community pubs.
“Our locals invested thousands to make their venues COVID-secure and have already had to cope with severely reduced trade as a result of closures, curfews, the fire-breaker and knocked consumer confidence.
“Without a decent, dedicated and sufficient financial support package from the Welsh Government to compensate them for lost trade, these further restrictions could be the final nail in the coffin for pubs and breweries.”
Politics
Call to replace the Lords

OVERHAULING Parliament’s London-dominated second chamber would help empower the UK’s nations and regions, writes Willie Sullivan a senior director at the Electoral Reform Society.
It’s been a year since Boris Johnson’s victory in the 2019 general election, an election won with a commitment to ‘level up’ those communities left behind.
Since then, our politics has been shaken by a pandemic that has put pressure on the already strained constitutional settlement that holds the nations and regions of the UK together.
We’ve seen attention turned to local and regional government as well as the devolved administrations. We’ve seen clearly how the over-centralising nature of Westminster can hamper and undermine public trust. The video of Andy Burnham first hearing news of Greater Manchester’s Covid funding settlement at a live press conference will go down as a low point in Britain’s patchwork devolution framework.
This is all set to the backdrop of declining faith in our politics. At the same time as the PM was returning to Number 10 last winter, polling for the Electoral Reform Society showed that just 16% of the public believe politics is working well in the UK – and only 2% feel they have a significant influence over decision-making.
For a government publicly committed to a levelling up agenda, this democratic malaise must serve as a warning: it will take more than economic investment or shiny new infrastructure to remedy the feeling of powerlessness that many feel outside of Westminster.
Tackling that will require some long-overdue reform. The calls for a clear framework for devolution in the UK have become impossible to ignore in recent months. Even areas of England with mayors felt sidelined this year, but the picture was even worse elsewhere – with zero guarantees that local people would be consulted on changes that would affect their lives immeasurably.
There’s a good way to start empowering the UK’s nations and regions: overhauling Parliament’s unelected second chamber.
Abolishing the outdated and unaccountable House of Lords offers a chance to rebalance politics away from Westminster – and create a representative Senate of the Nations and Regions.
Recent Electoral Reform Society analysis found that nearly a quarter of peers are based in London, compared to just 13% of the UK public. Over half – 56% of peers – live in the capital, or the east and south-east of England, while peers in the east and west Midlands make up just 6% between them – leaving many areas in which the Conservatives won seats in the so-called ‘red wall’ woefully underrepresented.
It should be said, this is only peers we know about: more than 300 refuse to state even the country they live in (some live overseas), and hundreds more do not even provide a direct email address for people to get in touch and stand up for their areas.
All this undermines the government’s stated intention to ‘level up’ the regions, when we have a chamber that is skewed towards one patch of England.
Reforming this London-dominated second chamber is a rare issue that is highly popular across all parties. 71% of the UK public back an overhaul of the House of Lords, research showed this year. The issue cuts across Britain’s divides, with an overhaul backed by a majority of those who voted Conservative or Labour in the 2019 general election, and those who voted Leave or Remain in the EU referendum.
As well as levelling up representation – with peers elected using a fair, proportional voting system – a genuinely accountable second chamber could establish a guaranteed voice for the regions of the UK, to speak as one, to scrutinise legislation and our constitutional settlement with clear communities in mind. The UK remains one of the most centralised countries in Europe – and the archaic, power-hoarding set-up in Westminster has a big role to play in why this is.
The pandemic has shown just how important it is for those outside the capital to be truly heard. There are many reasons why voters had more confidence in their governments’ Covid responses more in Wales and Scotland, but having a stake – being genuinely ‘in it together’ makes a big difference.
This is a challenge to all parties, from Boris Johnson as he tries to plot a path for recovery for the UK, to Keir Starmer as he begins to outline his own view of devolution.
One thing’s clear: the London-dominated House of Lords is undermining the voice of local communities. A Senate of the Nations and Regions could be the gamechanger we need.
Politics
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