Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 2:31 pm on 2 November 2021.
Thank you for those two requests. In relation to local procurement, Welsh public sector procurement expenditure accounts for £6.7 billion, of which around 52 per cent is spent directly with businesses based in Wales. And while we've seen an increase in the past eight, nine years or so—a significant increase—I think we can do better, and certainly across Government we are looking at what we can do to support Welsh businesses in relation to procurement. We have a Wales procurement policy statement, which we published in March 2021, and we have a ministerial group that's looking at what we can do to increase that.
In relation to the Welsh economic strategy to encourage start-ups, you'll be aware that the Welsh Government does provide extensive support to start-up businesses. We have Business Wales, which is our bilingual business support service, both for microbusinesses and SMEs, and that of course includes social enterprises. We are seeing a really positive number of new start-ups, even in this tough time at the moment. You'll be aware that last week I held Blas Cymru, Taste Wales, in the Celtic Manor, and it was a real pleasure to be able to launch over 200 new products, food and drink products from across Wales, over the past year, and many of them were from companies that were new start-ups. So, there is a lot of support out there already, and I would encourage any business or entrepreneur to ensure that they do contact Business Wales in the first instance.