Questions Without Notice from the Party Leaders

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:51 pm on 26 May 2021.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 1:51, 26 May 2021

Well, Llywydd, there's a more sensible question in that contribution, but let me put a few facts on the record first. Here in Wales we have allocated £2.3 billion in coronavirus grants and reliefs to businesses in Wales. What have we received from his Government at Westminster in order to fund that £2.3 billion? We've received £1.9 billion in business consequentials. If it is his serious proposition from his sedentary position that we should have used money given to us for the coronavirus care of patients to put—[Interruption.] Llywydd, I hear the leader of the opposition saying to me that we've had £6 billion from the UK Government, as though all of that were available for businesses. Is it his serious proposition that we should have used the money given to us for test, trace, protect purposes, for vaccination purposes, for catch-up purposes in our schools—that all of that should have been used for business support in Wales? If it is, let him say it. It was a choice he could have offered. I don't suppose, however, he is at all. We have received £1.9 billion in consequentials, and we have provided £2.3 billion—£400 million more—for businesses in Wales than they would have had had they been on the other side of the border. 

Now, his question about how we use the money that is still set aside is an important one, and my colleague Vaughan Gething is, I know, working with his officials to design the best use of that money alongside businesses who have been most affected and particularly those businesses who will most go on being affected by coronavirus restrictions. We have to move on from a period in which almost all businesses needed help to concentrating that help on those for whom conditions mean they cannot resume full operation. That is the conversation we are having. That is how we will recalibrate that funding. I want it to go where it will make the greatest difference.