Part of 2. Questions to the Minister for Housing and Local Government – in the Senedd at 2:43 pm on 4 March 2020.
I totally understand the point you're making. There are various categories of workers. So, certainly people employed by the local authority will be covered straight away. The Prime Minister, you will know, made some announcements about the first three days sick—some workers don't get paid for the first three days sick. That's not the case in most public services in Wales, I'm pleased to say.
But we did have a long conversation in the Cabinet this morning about some of the economic issues that arose, which my colleagues Ken Skates and Lee Waters will be looking at. But if I could just make the analogy—a poor one, I know—to the flooding that's just gone on. We have, of course, been anxious to put in place schemes for self-employed and businesspeople affected by the flooding. So, we will be ensuring that those types of schemes also exist for people who are in those circumstances, and, probably by way of assisting the businesses, hoping to help the people in the gig economy, as it's very difficult to get individual help in that way, so helping with cashflow and so on to keep that going. But we will be very much reliant, if the thing goes on a very long time, on the UK Government stepping up to the plate and making sure that it pays for issues in England in such a way that we get the consequential moneys that we so very much need in Wales to be able to protect our workforce.