5. What funding has the Welsh Government provided to businesses in South Wales Central during the COVID-19 pandemic? OQ56071

Business support for the region includes £137.6 million for over 10,000 business via the COVID-19 non-domestic business rates grant scheme and over £66 million through the first three phases of the economic resilience fund.

Thanks for that response. I’ve been contacted by various constituents who are community pharmacists and I’m asking what point the Welsh Government has reached in its negotiations with Community Pharmacy Wales—negotiations that have been going on for some months now—over compensating this sector for the financial costs that it incurred when pharmacists had to pay for their own PPE equipment at the start of the pandemic. The community pharmacists in Wales have done us proud in how they’ve responded to this pandemic and we’re now the only region in the UK where this sector hasn’t been compensated for the costs it incurred. We were promised a statement on this by the Trefnydd as soon as the outcome was known, so I’m just asking for an update on the situation.

I thank the Member for that supplementary question. He’s right that negotiations with community pharmacy have been proceeding over recent months. There was a further offer made by the Welsh Government some weeks ago. The health Minister has a meeting with Community Pharmacy Wales on Thursday of this week, when those negotiations will continue.

First Minister, the Business Wales barriers grant scheme is to prioritise those most affected by COVID-19, such as women, disabled people, people from black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds, and young people not in education or training, and it's to give some financial support to those people who will want to set up a business in the next few months. I wonder when this scheme will be evaluated, because I do think that promoting enterprise in groups that perhaps have traditionally found it difficult to access is a really worthy initiative.

I thank David Melding for the way he described the initiative, and it is exactly to do what he has described. It is to try and make sure that the talent, commitment and sense of enterprise that is absolutely to be found in those communities, and among those young people, does not become suppressed by the impact of the virus. That means we have to work harder to make sure that the help is available to them—help both in terms of the advice that they need and the mentoring that they may need, but sometimes in hard cash that they need in order to be able to move their ideas for new businesses forward.

I think it will be important to allow the scheme to have a run and to evaluate partly as we go along, but not to hold up the ambitions we have from it by trying to pause it too soon in order to assess its effectiveness. In the current, extraordinary circumstances, I wanted to see that scheme push ahead. I wanted to even take a few risks, in a way that Governments sometimes find difficult. Because if you are dealing with people who have new ideas and who want to try something that hasn't been tried before, if you are not prepared sometimes to back a young person or back somebody who has got that idea, recognising that not all those ideas will succeed, then you don't get the scheme off the ground. That's the spirit in which I would like the scheme to be taken forward.  

First Minister, businesses in my constituency are very thankful that the Welsh Government has supported them throughout the coronavirus pandemic, with the most generous package of business support anywhere in the UK, including the latest injection of £340 million to support hospitality, tourism and other businesses that have been affected by the most recent restrictions. What assessment have you made of how the business support in Wales compares to that on offer in other parts of the UK?

Llywydd, I thank Vikki Howells for that. She is right to say that our scheme of business support in Wales, we believe, is the most generous available to any business in any part of the United Kingdom. I'm pleased to report this afternoon, Llywydd, following questions on the floor over the last couple of weeks, that the help that we are offering to hospitality businesses affected by the restrictions that had to be introduced about 10 days ago—that that money has now begun to make its way into the pockets of those businesses.

Hundreds of businesses have now received that help. Millions of pounds have been paid out to them. That is at a point where 14 of our 22 local authorities have yet to make returns on the help that has been provided. So, not only is the help generous, but the help is getting to where we needed it to go. Vikki Howells pointed to the £340 million that we are making available to support those businesses, and I cannot help but contrast it with the fact that the UK Government has provided £40 million for the whole of wet pubs in England affected by the restrictions that they have had to introduce there.