6. Will the First Minister provide an update on the development of a Wales brand? OAQ53672

Llywydd, since its introduction in 2016, the award-winning Wales brand has achieved significant success, delivering strong results through tourism, business, food and drink and health campaigns, and providing a consistent platform for promoting Wales.

First Minister, thank you. I must admit to being a bit confused about the Wales brand. Tourism, food, transport, meat, business—all of them seen as part of the brand. I make no apology for returning to the magnificent six nations victory by Wales and the wonderful event that took place at the Senedd last Monday. During your speech you mentioned Team Cymru and how Wales excels at team events. This is simple and effective. From food producers, enterprise, education to tourists, they, and we, are all part of Team Cymru. Is there any way Team Cymru could be incorporated into the marketing of Wales and all it has to offer? 

Well, I think the Member is absolutely right when she says that the things that draw the eyes of the world to Wales are often things like sporting events. And our aim, as she knows, in the post-Brexit period is to make sure that Wales continues to have an open door to the world, and the brand of Wales is recognised in places as somewhere that remains engaged, open and committed to welcoming the world to Wales. Sporting events are often an excellent way to showcase that and we have, in recent years, taken many opportunities to promote such chances here, and I'm sure that we will want to go on doing that in the future. 

First Minister, while the welcome host programme provides some customer services training, Welsh tourism businesses are now telling me that Wales needs something more than that, which encapsulates what Wales has to offer and is recognised and accepted by the tourism industry itself, improving not just the quality of our offer, but promoting the visitor economy as an arena where young people in particular can have a long-lived satisfying career. I wonder if the Government would commit to acting swiftly to developing a Welsh hospitality and tourism training quality mark, so that visitors who come to Wales can be confident in the warmest and best of welcomes as well as superlative service, of course, which complement our marvellous sporting record. 

I thank the Member for that, and it is an issue that has been raised with me on a number of occasions by the hospitality industry. They face, as you know, real anxieties about their future the other side of the European Union if their ability to recruit people from outside Wales is compromised by the migration policies of the UK Government. That means they know that in the longer run they have to do more to attract young people into that business and for that business to be seen as somewhere where you can have a career that takes you from your entry point to a future that you would think of as one that would enhance your own prospects in that future.

We want to work alongside the industry to do just that, and making sure that there are properly recognised qualifications and training programmes that people can take will undoubtedly be part of the conversation that we will want to go on having with the sector, building on the recognition that they themselves have about the efforts they need to make to make their product more attractive to young people, and to design the workplace in a way that will allow them to retain the talents of those young people and to make them long-term members of the workforce. 

Thank you, First Minister.