Part of Questions to the Deputy Minister and Chief Whip – in the Senedd at 2:37 pm on 15 September 2020.
As the Chamber will know, I have raised these issues a number of times since being elected to the Senedd. Yet despite the many calls from across the Chamber to investigate the practices employed in particular in car washes, there appears to be absolutely no action taken with regard to these establishments. This is particularly disappointing given that a number of issues are present with regard to their operation—the long hours served by attendants, often 10 hours a day, seven days a week; the low pay, said to be around £3 per hour; the sub-standard accommodation for these workers; the propensity for money laundering, given that all transactions appear to be cash, often to many thousands of pounds per week; the low pay, said to be around—sorry, to the environmental issues, with the considerable volumes of effluent generated at these sites going directly into water drainage systems and hence the rivers; but, of course, worst of all, the clear exploitation of people working on these sites. One has to ask, Deputy Minister, why nothing has been done to investigate or even close these operations, although they have been in existence for over a decade.