Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Economy – in the Senedd at 2:18 pm on 7 July 2021.
Well, I've had a recent constructive engagement with the hospitality sector and others. We continue to talk, my officials are in regular conversations with representatives from the hospitality sector, and, as I've said previously, it's a matter of fact, not opinion, that hospitality businesses in Wales have a more generous package of financial support compared with hospitality businesses in England. Actually, their concerns are—they do recognise they're in a position where there is real fragility, still—challenges about staff, being able to invest in future skills, and if we're able to move forward further, what that means in terms of the ability to adapt to either the easing of restrictions or changes in the way in which their business operates. It's about how we provide as stable a footing as possible.
The challenge with looking to set out a plan over, say, a nine-month period of time is that I couldn't tell the Member or anyone else, and with absolute certainty, what trading will be like over the Christmas period, because we're not in a position to forecast that far ahead with real certainty. We're going to make choices over the coming days and weeks, over the next stage in our journey, hopefully, out of the pandemic. We'll do that with the sort of future forecasts we can give responsibly, and we'll need to continue to re-evaluate where we are in terms of the pandemic. But the choice that I made to provide emergency support up to the end of August provides some certainty for the rest of the summer about the support that will be in place, and I look forward to working on the future vision with them at a time when we're able to do so with enough certainty. Until then, I look forward to the continuing constructive conversations we have about how we support this particular sector of the Welsh economy.