3. Will the First Minister outline what financial support is available from the Welsh Government to businesses in Wales? OQ55469

I thank Carwyn Jones for that question. Llywydd, our £1.7 billion business support package, which is equivalent to 2.6 per cent of our gross value added, complements other UK schemes and means that companies in Wales have access to the most generous offer of help anywhere in the United Kingdom during the coronavirus crisis.

Thank you, First Minister. Many businesses have contacted my constituency office to express their gratitude at the support that they've received from the Welsh Government and from the UK Government. There are still, however, some businesses who are concerned that they may not be able to access the support that they need, mainly microbusinesses. Would the First Minister then give an assurance that the support mechanisms will be kept under constant review to make sure that as much support as possible is available to as many businesses as possible?

Llywydd, I thank Carwyn Jones for that supplementary question. As I've said previously in the Assembly, in the Senedd, we have tried to use our funds to complement the help that has been available through the UK Government schemes, and microbusinesses are one of those areas that we have focused on as a result. My colleague Ken Skates launched phase 2 of the economic resilience fund, Llywydd, as I mentioned—£100 million further to assist Welsh businesses. I know that my colleague Carwyn Jones will be interested to know that when the fund closed for applications on Friday of last week, the micro fund had received 5,524 applications, and if you totalled those applications up, that would have resulted in £54.2 million being applied for from the micro fund. The sole trader fund received 453 applications in the sum of £4.4 million, and I was very pleased myself to be able to launch the start-up business fund as part of phase 2 of the economic resilience fund, a £5 million fund. It could help up to 2,000 businesses to the tune of £2,500 each. All of those are aimed exactly at the sorts of businesses that Carwyn Jones has mentioned this morning, Llywydd, and I think are examples of the way in which we have tried to use our money to fill those gaps and to focus on those businesses that have slipped through the net of the large schemes that the UK Government has put in place, and use our money to the best effect. 

First Minister, what would be devastating economically would be the need for either a second lockdown or a localised lockdown, and one of the key measures that you've put in place is test and tracing. Your figures for returning the results from test and tracing are getting worse. The figures for 24-hour delivery are under a 50 per cent response rate, and for 48 hours only 66 per cent of tests are returned to the people who've put themselves up for a test. How are you going to improve these figures to get closer to the 90 per cent that most experts believe provides an effective testing structure that would protect us economically, and also our health? 

Llywydd, I agree with Andrew R.T. Davies that avoiding a second wave of coronavirus later this year is very important indeed to the health of businesses, as well to the health of the population, and it's why we have taken the approach we have here in Wales. And we are seeing in other parts of the world just how easily it is possible to move from a position of relative security to one where lockdown measures do have to be reimposed. So, I agree with his point there. 

Our 'Test Trace Protect' system does need to return more tests more quickly, and we are working with the system for that to happen. We would have had better results at the end of last week if it hadn't been for the fact that one of the lighthouse labs, that we are now using in greater numbers, faced a series of difficulties last week that meant that their ability to return tests in 24 hours was compromised by the challenges that they faced. We are arranging for an enhanced courier service to make sure that tests are taken from the testing site to the laboratory more quickly and more regularly during the day. We are exploring with our Welsh laboratories ways in which they can turn those tests around more quickly. 

In the meantime, the TTP system as a whole is, I'm pleased to say, working very well; 82 per cent of positive cases identified between 28 June and 4 July were successfully contacted, and 87 per cent of over 1,150 close contacts have been successfully followed up. And those figures compare very favourably with levels of successful follow-up that are being achieved elsewhere. 

A number of rural businesses over the years have been receiving business support through the rural development programme, for example, and we saw a recent report from Audit Wales that had highlighted maladministration by the Welsh Government on certain aspects of that—£53 million-worth had been distributed in a way that didn't have measures in place to secure value for money. We received confirmation in the rural development committee last week that there would be disallowance, and that there were negotiations now between the European Commission and the Welsh Government to recoup some, if not all, of those funds. 

Would you now accept that it's time for us to have a full review of the way the RDP in Wales had been administered, and has been used, so that we can be confident that we have had the value for money that we should have had for this investment, particularly given that your Government now intends to use the RDP model, and the way that's implemented, as the basis for the plans that you're bringing forward for supporting agriculture and sustainable land management for the future? It's important that we learn lessons. 

Of course, I agree that it's important that we do learn lessons. We are doing that, and also the RDP has people to look into what we are doing on the European and local level. It's important to be clear about what the audit office said. 

What they said was that the processes didn't guarantee that value for money had been achieved, and we've improved those processes since. What they didn't say was that the schemes that were funded weren't value for money, because they never looked at the schemes at all, they simply looked at the process by which the schemes were funded. Quite a number of the schemes that they looked at have gone on to be award-winning schemes here in Wales, and beyond Wales as well. So, the report never said at all that the schemes themselves did not deliver value for money, they simply said that the process by which they were funded didn't give you a guarantee that the money had been spent in that way, and that's something we do need to attend to. Our focus, Llywydd, as well as learning lessons, is on trying to make sure that we have equivalent funding in the future to go on making those investments in the rural economy that the RDP has allowed us to make. And we're nowhere near having those guarantees from the UK Government, and it's not long now before that funding begins to run out.