Part of 2. Questions to the Minister for International Relations and Welsh Language – in the Senedd at 2:17 pm on 18 March 2020.
Can I just begin by asking you to say thank you to the officials of the Deputy Minister on my behalf and behalf of the cross-party group on tourism because they've now put some guidance up on the website?
Just on that last point, though, I appreciate that the Chancellor only gave additional details of the finance being made available to Wales yesterday, but even before that Scotland had announced a 75 per cent rates relief for retail hospitality and leisure businesses with a rateable value of £69,000 and less from 1 April. That is a little bit more helpful for those businesses that are over the £51,000 threshold, as we would see here in Wales.
I appreciate there's a £5,000 reduction on business rates for those businesses over £51,000, but actually the 75 per cent reduction is probably better for them. If you consider that some of these are genuinely local businesses and not big national chains, and also employ more people, I'd be grateful if you or the Deputy Minister would be willing to take that argument to the table on Thursday, when the use of the £100 million you refer to is being discussed.
My question is this, though: we're right at the beginning of the main tourism season when these businesses, large or small, are considering taking on their seasonal staff. If we want to avoid an explosion of zero-hours contracts, I wonder if you could share your current thoughts on supporting seasonal payroll as well as perhaps giving an indication of how quickly tourism operators know how the rate relief that you've already referred to is going to operate in terms of speed, because that's obviously very pressing for them at the moment. Thank you.