1. 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd on 14 February 2017.
4. Will the First Minister make a statement on how the Welsh Government is promoting job creation in Newport? OAQ(5)0458(FM)
We are taking forward a range of actions to support the creation and safeguarding of high-quality jobs in Newport and, indeed, across the whole of Wales.
Thank you, Frist Minister. The Office for National Statistics, based in Duffryn in Newport, is opening a data science campus in March. The campus will act as a hub for analysis of big data, which will allow collaborative work between academics, Government, the public sector, industry and third-sector partners that wish to push the boundaries of delivering their services. Providing rich, informed measurement and analysis on the economy, the global environment and wider society, the campus will become a world-class facility. The aspiration to create a Silicon Valley for Wales is the intention, and that it will be a hub for innovative data science research, helping to create jobs and attract investment. Will the Welsh Government work with its partners and the ONS to promote this endeavour to create a ‘dyffryn silicon’ for Wales?
Yes, we will. It is hugely important, we know, that where there is an existing level of expertise, clustering new businesses and new innovations in that area helps everybody. Newport is acquiring for itself, very rapidly, a good reputation for software and for ICT more generally, and that’s something, of course, we're very keen to encourage in the future.
First Minister, Newport is one of the worst-performing towns or cities in the United Kingdom when it comes to empty shops. More than a quarter of shops in the city were empty in the first half of 2016, according to the Local Data Company. What scheme does the Welsh Government offer to provide incentives, such as tax breaks, to people to open new businesses in areas where there are large numbers of empty shops, such as Newport, to create jobs and regeneration of our city centres?
Well, I think that councils do a good job of encouraging businesses, but landlords also have to play their part. Landlords have to understand that the days of being able to charge an unrealistic rent for a long-term lease are gone. They're not there anymore. It's hugely important that landlords are flexible and they look to encourage pop-ups for those businesses that want to test the market for three months but don't want to get involved in a lease that's five to 10 years long. Landlords will find that, by doing that, they will potentially fill their shops, because some of those businesses will not succeed, some of them will succeed, and if they do, of course, the landlord then has a longer-term tenant. So, it's not just down to councils, in fairness; it's also important that landlords are able to work flexibly to provide opportunities for businesses for the twenty-first century.