Questions Without Notice from the Party Leaders

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:58 pm on 24 November 2020.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 1:58, 24 November 2020

Well, Llywydd, I'm very conscious of the impact of the decisions that we make on businesses in Wales and on people's livelihoods. The Welsh Government has put together a very considerable sum of money that we have invested in trying to protect businesses in Wales from the impact of coronavirus—that is over and above any help that has come from the UK Government. And the UK Government, with the comprehensive spending review tomorrow, needs to make sure that it is doing everything it can to make sure that businesses in Wales and across the United Kingdom are in a position to withstand the ongoing impact of coronavirus, and it needs to do it in a more wholehearted way. The repeated re-announcements by the Chancellor of the Exchequer of the package of assistance that comes from the UK Government has not been helpful, I think. We are doing the most we can in Wales to help businesses; I think the Chancellor's approach is to do the least he can get away with, and that is the real contrast between us.

Discussions with local authorities, of course, go on all the time. There'll be meetings today involving the health Minister, the local government Minister, the education Minister, the Welsh Local Government Association and other leaders of local authorities in Wales, and that partnership approach is the one that we think has managed to sustain us through the crisis to date, and we will be certain that, in Wales, we will go on being committed to it.