Questions Without Notice from Party Spokespeople

Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Economy – in the Senedd at 1:47 pm on 9 June 2021.

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Photo of Vaughan Gething Vaughan Gething Labour 1:47, 9 June 2021

There are two particular parts to that question. The first is the publication of business support already provided. We've already published some of that information on previous support we provided earlier in the pandemic. I won't give an indication now, because I need to check, but I'm happy to make sure that all Members are aware when we will, not if we will, publish that. So, there is entire openness and transparency, because there is certainly no attempt to hide the amounts that have been provided. That's part of the conditions upon which the support has been provided. Every business receiving support knows that we will publish the amounts that have been provided.

On your latter point about how we'll support businesses going forward, I expect to come back to this place to outline the next stages of business support. And in recalibrating what we're doing, that has to take account of the position we find ourselves in, both with the path of easements that are being unlocked—and we're in a good position, having announced the phased move to go fully into alert level 1 over the next few weeks. That still means there will be some restrictions in place. We then need to think about the next stage of support for businesses, as I indicated in my first answer, because we're still in an emergency situation—we're not back to the old normal. Social distancing, hand-washing, mask-wearing and those base measures are still with us, as well as restrictions on the numbers of people that can attend a variety of businesses. Alongside that, I want to look at investing in the future—to invest in the further recovery—and I think we'll be able to do that over the next few months, but crucially when the UK Government provide a future comprehensive spending review and we have more certainty on our ability to invest on a multi-year basis.