Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Economy, Transport and North Wales – in the Senedd at 1:42 pm on 11 November 2020.
Minister, many tens of thousands of workers in Wales are employed on a self-employed basis, or as freelancers. Many of my constituents are in that situation, and, of course, the main source of support for them has been the self-employed income support scheme. Now, can I firstly say how important to those individual businesses the cultural resilience fund has been—the freelancers fund—and many people have benefitted from that. But the main source of support is obviously UK Government support. Now, there are five million self-employed people in the UK, which leads to about probably 250,000 to 300,000 or more within Wales, which means that, literally, 50,000, 60,000, 70,000 of them will be getting no support whatsoever. Many of them are my constituents, and I've had representations from them to this effect. What more can be done to actually support the self-employed and freelancers? What representations are being made to the UK Government in respect of the self-employed income support scheme? The Confederation of British Industry and the Institute of Directors described the fund as wasteful, misdirected and badly targeted. Do you agree with that, and do you agree that there's a need for a real new initiative to support self-employed workers within Wales?