2. What consideration has the Minister given to supporting people affected by the coronavirus in South Wales East when formulating the Welsh Government's budget for 2021-22? OQ56117

In recognition that the most vulnerable have been hit hardest by the pandemic, we are investing an extra £40 million for the housing support grant and providing an extra £176 million for local government so that they can continue to support people and communities affected by the coronavirus across Wales. 

Thank you, Minister. You told the Finance Committee last week that there's around £800 million in reserves that will need to be spent in the current financial year if the UK Government continues to refuse to allow you flexibility to carry it forward. You mentioned then that you expect to use some of this to give further support to business, and that you are also considering giving more towards the council tax reduction scheme and the discretionary assistance fund. I thought I'd just take this opportunity to throw a few more ideas into the mix. For example, the Bevan Foundation has put forward five proposals, including extending the self-isolation payment for low-income workers, providing laptops to digitally excluded children, and writing off loans under the tenancy saver loan scheme. The campaign group Undod has also proposed offering a council tax holiday to people living in the bottom two bands as a way of providing much-needed assistance to those who need it most. And finally, Minister, a further idea could be to offer councils funding to replace their proposed council tax increases. I know many residents, including people in Caerphilly, for example, are dreading the 4 per cent increase they're facing. So, Minister, will you give consideration to some of these ideas if you are in the position of needing to allocate additional funds in this financial year?

Thank you to Delyth for raising these really important issues, and it is the case that, at Finance Committee last Friday I was able to set out our current in-year financial position and some of the allocations I expect to make. So, Delyth mentioned the potential allocations for further support for business, a council tax reduction scheme, and other support potentially for and through the councils, and also the discretionary assistance fund, which has been instrumental in supporting people who have been really, really hard hit by the pandemic. 

So, I will be making a series of allocations between now and the third supplementary budget, which is in February. I'm having some discussions in some of the areas that have been raised, for example the issue of meeting the needs of children who are still digitally excluded. We have provided significant funding thus far and enabled lots of children to have MiFi devices and other kit that they require to get online to access their classes, but we are really aware that there's more to be done in that area. So, that's one of the areas where I'm having particular discussions with the education Minister with a view to seeing what more we can do in that area. But, as I say, between now and the third supplementary budget, I intend to make some really significant allocations. 

Information, reassurance and continued funding will be absolutely key to keeping our Welsh businesses alive this year and in years to come. It is clear, Minister, that Welsh businesses will require Government support, financial support for some time after this pandemic has ended, but can you reassure them that providing that financial support that they really do need, and will need, will be at the forefront of your decision making when formulating future budgets? And what have you done in order to reach out to those businesses that have fallen through the gaps in terms of being able to get funding this time around, because we do not want to lose those vital businesses? Thank you. 

Thank you very much for raising the support for business, because protecting both lives and livelihoods have been our priorities during our response to the pandemic. And you'll see some significant allocations in terms of our approach to the economy and supporting jobs and creating jobs in our draft budget, which has been published and which we had the opportunity to debate yesterday. But I'm really aware that there are still individuals and businesses that have not yet been reached by support for a variety of reasons, and that's one of the reasons why my colleague the Deputy Minister and Chief Whip recently met with ExcludedUK to better understand the challenges that the people they represent are facing. And, of course, we'll continue to press the UK Government for further support as well, in terms of meeting the needs of businesses, because we see this very much as a joint effort. There's a specific role very much for the UK Government, in terms of furlough and so on, and we always aim to augment and enhance what's available, which is why we're able to provide the best possible support package anywhere in the UK. 

We have sought, on a number of occasions, to meet the gaps that we understood were already there. So, you'll recall that we introduced the £5 million start-up grant to support businesses that had started up in 2019 with a grant of £2,500 each. And we've also introduced a £10.5 million fund for the freelance community, which, again, we knew had been falling through some of the gaps. And, further to that, we have confirmed that discretionary support will continue to be available through local authorities so that they're able to support businesses who aren't on the non-domestic rates system and who have been materially impacted by the pandemic, and, there, those discretionary grants of up to £2,000 are available. But, of course, we're always looking to see what more we can do to support people who have not managed to access any support thus far. 

Minister, in south-east Wales we have on average suffered a higher level of coronavirus than the average across Wales, and I just wondered to what degree you consider that the extra costs of dealing with that on a regional level, where incidence has been higher, are met by the allocations in the budget.

Well, the local authority hardship fund has enabled local authorities to provide their own applications for funding. So, the funding that goes to the individual local authorities in Wales through that is on the basis of local need and local cost, rather than a per-head factor, for example. So, I think that has been a way in which we've been able to respond to those differential impacts that we've seen across Wales thus far. And, of course, the pandemic does take different shapes. It was only a few weeks ago that we were looking from the south very enviously up at north Wales in terms of the figures for the pandemic there. So, I think that we always need to be aware that things might change very quickly and be able to have the agile support, which I do think we have, available for local authorities and for others.