1. Will the First Minister make a statement on what the Welsh Government is doing to support small businesses in west Wales? OAQ(5)0511(FM)

Business support is available for entrepreneurs and micro, small and medium-sized businesses across Wales through our Business Wales service. Our focus remains on supporting innovation-driven entrepreneurs, jobs and the economy.

First Minister, I continue to receive comments from constituents and businesses in west Wales complaining about business rates. Although your Government announced additional funding for high-street businesses, there is a great deal of confusion and many businesses don’t know who’s qualified to receive that assistance. So, can you confirm that the Government will be far clearer as to who qualifies? Also, can you tell us why the Government wanted to target high-street businesses without including other businesses?

What we’ve been trying to do is helping those who’ve lost out temporarily because of the renewal of the business rates. Many people have benefited from that, and of course those businesses who are keeping quiet, perhaps, have seen a drop in the business rates. But we hope that we’ll be able to help small businesses, particularly those who have seen an increase in their rates.

Figures from Lloyds Bank have shown that 40 per cent fewer businesses were established in the last five years in Pembrokeshire, Gwynedd, Ceredigion and Anglesey, as compared with a fall of 26 per cent across Wales and 20 per cent in England. Is the First Minister willing to look into why the figures are so very different in the westerly counties as compared with places such as Blaenau Gwent, where there’s been a decline of only 8 per cent? The award goes to Merthyr, where a decline of less than 0.5 per cent was seen. Will the First Minister ask his Ministers to look at this issue on what’s happening in west Wales on this particular topic?

I believe you’re talking about the Lloyds Bank figures. We don’t know what methodology they used and we don’t know exactly what the nature of the data set is. Having said that, the number of business births has increased from 8,225 in 2011 to 11,525 in 2015. But of course, we will consider the figures that have been issued by Lloyds Bank to see whether there’s any kind of problem here that we need to address in one part of Wales.

Last week, the Welsh Government announced two new business investment funds of £7 million each. The application deadline is in just five weeks’ time. The same thing happened with the growth and prosperity fund last year. It was announced on 17 September last year and the deadline for the large applications was just four weeks later. The Scottish Government has created a £500 million fund with an open window for applications over three years. We seem to run the show with: every time the Welsh Government finds a bit of money down the back of the Welsh European Funding Office’s sofa, they announce a new fund, and it’s closed before most businesses have had the opportunity to hear about it. It’s the opposite of strategic, and I would say to the First Minister, gently, that it makes Wales look amateurish.

Well, our unemployment rate is better than Scotland, actually. Our economic growth is better than Scotland. We have done far better than the Scottish Government in that regard. Can I also say that the schemes that he has referred to were oversubscribed? It may be that the window is short, but nevertheless, the schemes are popular, they deliver and their economic statistics show that.