Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Economy, Transport and North Wales – in the Senedd at 1:47 pm on 11 November 2020.
I'm grateful to the Minister for his answer and for some of the private conversations he's had with me, and I know with spokespeople of other parties, in this regard. I wonder if he can take the opportunity to just lay out a little bit more for us the lessons learnt from the issues that arose with phase 3 intimated in his answers already with regard, for example, to an expression of interest process, which may help weed out applications that are not suitable.
And with regard to what that fourth phase might address, the Minister will be aware that I've got ongoing concern about businesses that ought to, or have to, as it were, hibernate—those businesses that simply cannot trade, or cannot trade with any kind of profit, until we have a vaccine and until we can get back to some kind of normal. And that's everything from—I know I've mentioned to him in the past things like clothing hire, live music venues, which may be able to open with socially distanced gigs, but won't be able to make any money, and certain sorts of holiday businesses. Obviously, the fact that we now have furlough will be of huge assistance to those businesses, but they do have some ongoing costs for some other things, like rent, maintenance of equipment and loan servicing. Will the Minister undertake to give some consideration with the fourth phase as to whether there should be some targeted specific help to businesses in those sectors, bearing in mind what he said before about any business that was viable in February this year, we want it to be viable and contributing to the economy in the spring of next year?