Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:19 pm on 20 October 2020.
Llywydd, I want to thank Alun Davies for that question. He repeated the word 'seamless' in his supplementary, and that's the word I want to focus on in this reply. So, in the help that we will provide through our £294 million, a great part of that will be provided automatically to businesses in Wales. So, they will not need to apply for it; it will come through the mechanisms we developed with our local government colleagues earlier in the pandemic: £1,000 for all businesses with a rateable value of under £12,000; £5,000 for businesses with a rateable value above £12,000 and they'll get that automatically—seamlessly, to use the term that Alun Davies used.
My problem with the Chancellor's reply to my letter is that I was asking for something similar in relation to the help that the UK Government provides, and I've tried, whenever I've had the opportunity, to recognise the value of the help that the UK Government has provided to workers affected by coronavirus. All I wanted was to have one scheme of help in Wales, rather than businesses having to apply twice for help: once up until 30 October, and a different scheme beyond that. And as I say, I offered—I thought—the Chancellor a very straightforward way of helping businesses in Wales so that the help they got from the UK Government was as seamless as the help we want to offer them through the Welsh Government. It is disappointing that the Chancellor couldn't find a way simply of allowing the scheme that he will introduce on 1 November to apply here in Wales a week earlier than that. I've offered him today a different solution—not as good as that—but it would help to iron out some of the difficulties otherwise that businesses will face and it would go some way at least to answering the call that Alun Davies has made with for the seamless support that businesses in Wales need.