4. Statement by the Minister for Economy, Transport and North Wales: Response to Coronavirus (COVID-19)

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 2:16 pm on 10 June 2020.

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Photo of Ken Skates Ken Skates Labour 2:16, 10 June 2020

Well, can I thank Mandy Jones not just for her questions, but also for her helpful comments and a request for a Zoom meeting with a constituent? I'll clearly engage with my colleague the Deputy Minister for Culture, Sport and Tourism over who may be the most appropriate to have that meeting, but we are keen to engage with as many businesses in the tourism and hospitality sector as we possibly can, as we go about planning the recovery period and the safe reopening of businesses.

As I've said to others, there are regular review periods that we have and, at the last review period, the First Minister indicated that non-essential retail should take advantage of three weeks of planning for reopening. The next review period will be next Thursday, and then, following that, there will be a review period that will last until 9 July.

Elsewhere in the UK, we've yet to have a date for when tourism and hospitality may resume. Scotland and Northern Ireland—currently they're looking at 20 July, and in England it may be, at the earliest—and the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy yesterday I felt was at pains to stress 'at the earliest'—4 July, and there was also the very strong caveat that it's dependent on infection rates being sufficiently low.

What I don't want to do—what none of my colleagues want to do—is to raise false hope, to say that, 'On this specific date you can prepare to reopen'. Instead, when we make announcements, we want to be able to deliver on them. We want businesses to have the surety of knowing that they're going to be able to reopen. I think the last thing that businesses in any sector want is to be told that they should plan for a certain date and then, just before that date, be told, 'Actually, we're going to u-turn on it and we're not going to allow you to reopen'. Because, once you've started the process of pulling your workers out of furlough, it's incredibly difficult to reverse that. You can't put your workforce back into furlough. Those fixed costs that come with reopening, they have to be paid for by that business, and so we have to have the certainty that we can carry through announcements. And that's why we have the three-week review periods, that's why we have review points every three weeks, and I can say, again, that the next review points are coming up on 18 June and 9 July.

We, across Government, are having extensive talks regarding caravan parks and other parts of the tourism and hospitality sector with regard to how they could reopen safely. And the latest of those discussions took place just two days ago. It involved the Deputy Minister for Culture, Sport and Tourism, it involved Eluned Morgan, the Minister for International Relations and the Welsh Language, it involved myself, and it also involved the First Minister. I think that demonstrates how seriously we’re taking this matter, how keen we are to make sure that businesses can reopen as soon as possible, but we want to ensure that we can stick to any date that we announce, because we've seen too many examples elsewhere where dates have been announced, but they haven't actually been delivered.