HEALTH minister Vaughan Gething has suggested that alcohol qualifies as an 'essential item' when the fire break lockdown comes into place this evening – but hairdryers do not.

Yesterday the Welsh Government announced that, during the two-week fire break, supermarkets that are allowed to remain open, will only be able to sell essential items, but there had been little clarification on that.

In an interview with Kay Burley from Sky News today, Mr Gething explained the criteria in slightly more detail.

He said: “Electrical goods, hardware goods are not. We set these out in the regulations and we also had conversations with the retailers through the week.

“The challenge is do they understand the categories of items they need to take away and to close off. A supermarket selling clothes is not essential, but we do know though that food items and pharmacy items, they are essential.

“The list is clear on categories. We’re looking to have a grown-up understanding with them about what they can do so they go ahead and do that because people do need to use supermarkets and feed themselves, to use pharmacies there and on the high street but we don’t want to get into a line by line go through thousands of product items that will be unusable.”

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Ms Burley then gave an example in a question stating: “So, alcohol is essential but hairdryers are not?”

While he did not specifically state that alcohol is essential, he did not rule it out as being non-essential in his response. Mr Gething said: “Food and drink are items we’ve had through the first part of the pandemic, they’re available everywhere.”

He was then prompted for a straight answer by Ms Burley in terms of whether a hairdryer would be allowed as an essential item, to which he replied: “No it isn’t Kay.

“I don’t think the biggest issue on people’s minds in Wales is whether they can buy a new hairdryer or not for the next two weeks.”

Ms Burley ended the matter saying that what people class as essential items would differ depending on the individual.