Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 2:44 pm on 26 January 2021.
Thank you very much for raising this issue, and it is a real concern to the Welsh Government—the loss of so many jobs and quite iconic landmark stores in some of our communities as well. Yes, the Welsh Government will work very closely with all of the local authorities affected. We'll also ensure that our support schemes, such as ReAct and so on, are in place for the affected workers. And, of course, we made this pledge to people, through the coronavirus, that we will seek to ensure that everybody has the support that they need to either retrain or to find a new job or to undertake self-employment, if that's something that they would wish to do. So, we need to ensure that those support packages are there for individuals, but also that our high streets, nonetheless, do have a healthy and vibrant future as we come out of the pandemic. The work we're doing through our town-centre loan scheme, for example, will be really important in that, and some of the allocations specifically in the budget for next year speak very much to ensuring that we have healthy high streets in the future. I think that there is a positive future for our high streets, but it certainly will require a great deal of work, both with Welsh Government but also with the partners that Laura Anne Jones has described.