Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:38 pm on 17 March 2020.
Minister, my constituency of Pontypridd—and of course much of Rhondda Cynon Taf—was devastated by the floods. Treforest retail park alone—an estimated £150 million of damage. The first thing I want is an assurance that the funding that's available to recover from the flood damage isn't going to be affected in any way, because many of those businesses are now also affected by the coronavirus pandemic as well, and that has created almost a double whammy—a double hit to those particular businesses. Just as they were beginning to recover, get back on their feet, they've been hit as well, so will need very specific help. In terms of transport, there is of course a very major transport company. We've talked about small businesses and medium businesses, but I have a transport company—as you well know—within my constituency that employs around 800 people. Transport is massively affected. It ties in with the tourism trade, it ties in with holidays, and I think what is going to be required is not really a reactive response from business, but really a proactive response from Welsh Government to go out to those businesses to engage with them on what is it specifically they need to see them through the next couple of months, because there are going to be layoffs, there are going to be redundancies, across the country. I see the estimated figure is that one fifth of the entire workforce of the UK is likely to be off work at some time as a result of coronavirus.
Can I also then also ask if perhaps you could say a little bit more about the letter from the First Minister, which I think has gone to the Government, about the issue of an universal income? Because I see all the steps and measures that have been taken about sick pay and so on, but, quite frankly, someone going from a fully-employed job on to sick pay of £94.25 per week—it is not going to enable them to live, it's going to push them into poverty, and exactly the same issue in terms of universal credit.
Now, perhaps it's a disgrace that those benefit levels are so low compared with our European partners, and maybe now is the time to really push the opportunity to give every single worker or person who loses their job or is laid off as a result of coronavirus a guaranteed minimum income. Of course, this isn't a matter that Welsh Government can do, but we should be pushing it, because this seems to me the simplest and most obvious way to ensure that what happened during austerity, when it was working people and the most vulnerable who suffered during austerity for 10 years—and we know that in disasters it always seems to be the working people and the vulnerable who lose out—that that doesn't happen again as a result of coronavirus.
Of course, we protect our businesses, because we want to keep jobs. We want those jobs to be there in the post pandemic environment. But, equally so, we've got to make sure that ordinary working people do not suffer the consequences of this disaster and that—if we are a united society, a United Kingdom, a united Wales and a part of a global structure, then we've got to ensure that working people are not pushed into poverty as a result of what happens, and that their incomes and their social well-being is as important as every other aspect of this virus we're trying to deal with.