Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:18 pm on 26 May 2021.
I don't dismiss the views of businesses, but I do dismiss the propaganda efforts of the Welsh Conservative Party, and we've just had another effort at it again. I certainly will not—[Interruption.] I certainly will not give you an undertaking that we will match what happens elsewhere in the United Kingdom, because that would mean that thousands and thousands of pounds would no longer be available to Welsh businesses. In Wales, a 10-employee hospitality business with a rateable value of £25,000 will have been eligible for more than £52,000 since December; the equivalent business in England would have received £26,000. So, if I were to match the offer in England, as the Member asks me to, I would be taking £26,000 back from that business.
He says to me that gyms will get £18,000; what percentage of businesses in England does he think get £18,000? I don't suppose he knows. It's 2 per cent. Two per cent of businesses get £18,000, and 98 per cent of businesses get nothing like it. When we are making comparisons, there is no point in the Member cherry-picking figures and then applying them in a way that simply would not operate in the real world.
I certainly don't agree with him about criteria. We are giving out major sums of public money—major. Millions and millions of pounds of public money going to businesses, as we wanted to do. But his party would be the first to complain if we were not doing that in a way that could demonstrate that those were real business, that they were entitled to that help and that the public money was being spent in a way that was defensible. That's what the criteria are there for. They're not to make it difficult for businesses to get the help they want; they are there to make sure that, here in Wales, when businesses get money from the taxpayer, that money goes to the right place and goes in a way that is defensible.