Coronavirus

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:13 pm on 17 March 2020.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 2:13, 17 March 2020

I thank the Member for those important points. He's quite right: the tourism industry is of particular significance in Wales, as part of our economy and as a sector that employs so many people. In my letter to the Chancellor earlier today, I urged him to take an approach to supporting businesses across the United Kingdom that recognised the concentration of particular sectors in particular places. As far as the point he makes about businesses that don't fit, necessarily, the normal profile of the sector, we provided local authorities with additional funds last year that they can use for discretionary rate relief purposes, because sometimes it's the local authority closest to those unusual businesses that is able to make those decisions. We will bear that in mind and the points that he has made this afternoon when we come to make decisions about the deployment of the £100 million that we are yet to determine from the sums that came to Wales from the budget last week.