Part of 1. 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:02 pm on 10 October 2017.
One hundred and fifty thousand jobs have either been created or preserved as a result of the money that Welsh Government has made available. We’re not going to apologise for that. The reality is that the move towards repayable finance was originally made in 2010—seven years ago. Now, circumstances have changed since then. We’ve found that businesses were not able to access finance. They didn’t see repayable finance as attractive to them. So, yes, we have provided more grants, but we have seen the results and we’ve seen many, many thousands of people who are in jobs today because of the support that their Government has provided for their families, in order for them to have an income for the future.