Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Economy, Transport and North Wales – in the Senedd at 2:01 pm on 27 January 2021.
I'm grateful to the Minister for his answer, and I'm particularly pleased to see that he's continuing to take up the case of those excluded from support, as represented by ExcludedUK. I know the Minister is very well aware of the extent to which this COVID crisis has highlighted and thrown into sharp relief some of the underlying structural injustices and inequalities, whether that's between communities geographically in Wales—we saw Dwyfor Meirionnydd being the county where the most people signed on to receive universal credit, because they weren't able to access their employment in tourism—and we've seen the black and minority ethnic communities particularly badly affected.
I met—virtually, of course—last weekend with some young people from Kidwelly and the wider Llanelli area, and they were telling me that they're really keen to be able to build successful careers here in Wales, but also their focus was wanting to stay in their own community if they can—much more, perhaps, than might have been the case in the past. They wanted to be sure that there would be opportunities for them to do that. They were also very concerned about others, and particularly spoke to me about black people and people of colour in the context of Black Lives Matter. What can the Minister do today to set out for those young people, and young people like them, how he will plan to ensure that those opportunities are available in communities where the economies traditionally have not been strong—and west Wales and parts of the Valleys, of course, are typical of that—and how he will ensure that some of those structural inequalities that have excluded people from opportunities will be addressed in his plans to rebuild the economy after the crisis comes to an end?