Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 5:56 pm on 6 May 2020.
Thank you for that question. I think the challenge that Governments everywhere will have is the sort of paradigm shift that this crisis is bringing to bear in terms of some of the points that she's raised in her question about business resilience and so on, and what the role is of Government in supporting businesses in the future; it might need to look a little different from the perspective that she's described.
I think, obviously, this is one of those areas where Governments, certainly in the UK, haven't historically done very much of this in terms of investing themselves directly in companies. We haven't done a huge amount of that in Wales, but there are examples of that. The conference centre in Newport is an example where it's a sort of joint venture-type arrangement, so it has happened, and obviously—. Actually, this came up in one of the discussions about how one deals with companies that, with the best will in the world—they're well-run companies and good employers, but are going to be saddled with huge amounts of debt coming out of this crisis for no fault of their own, and how one deals with the resilience issues that that inevitably brings and the consequences of that. I think that sort of big thinking about the future is one of the dimensions that we absolutely need to grasp in this piece of work.
On a kind of more immediate basis, she will know that the economic resilience fund applications have been paused and I know that the economy Minister is looking through a number of options about what the next stage of that might look like. The economic contract remains a really important part of this mix. Obviously, in a very fast-moving world where companies are having to make applications quickly and those judgments don't operate in quite the same way—. But at its heart, you've got questions to do with fair work and the importance of decarbonisation, and I think she will recognise that the kinds of areas we have explained have been the focus of those round-tables are exactly in that space. So, those values and those priorities remain absolutely central.