2. Business Statement and Announcement

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 2:56 pm on 10 December 2019.

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Photo of Rebecca Evans Rebecca Evans Labour 2:56, 10 December 2019

I thank Nick Ramsay for raising those issues. We did have a statement from the Minister for Economy and Transport just last week in terms of disability and disabled people's employment, so perhaps it's a little too soon to have a further discussion on that. But I know that he will be keen to update Members on the progress of the work that he was discussing in his statement last week, and, obviously, I'm very interested to hear, as I know the Minister will be, about those particular local projects that you described as well.

Again, the request for a statement on incineration: I'll make sure that the Minister with responsibility for waste is aware of the interest in a statement from Members.

And I was delighted to support Small Business Saturday. So, on the Friday ahead of it, I spent quite some time in Pontarddulais talking to small-business owners in that village, and they were very keen to talk to me about business rates. Many of the businesses I spoke to benefited from Welsh Government's rate relief, to the point at which they were paying nothing at all for their business rates, which I thought was excellent. And I'm very pleased this afternoon to be moving regulations with regard to the multiplier rate for the Non-Domestic Rating (Multiplier) (Wales) Order 2019, and that will mean that we are moving this year to using the consumer prices index rather than the retail prices index, and, of course, that's a benefit, then, to Welsh businesses of around £10 million, and that's on top of the support that we already provide.