3. What consideration has the Minister given to providing additional funding to the economy portfolio to support tourism? OQ57195

The support we've given the tourism industry in Wales throughout the pandemic is the most generous in the UK, with related businesses benefiting from £50 million from the Wales investment tourism fund and £56 million from the economic resilience fund.

Diolch. For constituencies such as Bridgend, tourism has played an integral part in our local economy and history—visitors from constituencies beyond our boundaries come all year round to enjoy our beaches, hospitality and tourism attractions, and European Union investment has been crucial to much of that success, something that is now under threat, with the UK Government refusing to replace that vital funding. With the UK Government trampling over devolution and seeking to make decisions in Whitehall rather than Wales, moving further away from the people who understand the wants and needs of the communities who live there, can the Minister confirm that she is working to stand up for communities such as Bridgend and parts of Porthcawl, rather than only see Tory strongholds benefit from any future investments?

Absolutely. Thank you very much for raising that and setting on record the way in which the UK Government has sought to sprinkle very little amounts of funding, actually, across their own constituency areas, and it does mean that Bridgend, actually, has fared particularly badly from the UK Government's approach. It was de-prioritised for funding by the Conservatives in Westminster, despite previously benefiting from the maximum level of EU support. And this has been demonstrated by the county receiving just £785,000 from the £47 million community renewal funding awarded to Welsh local authorities. And let's remember, that is just £47 million instead of £375 million, which we would have had had the UK Government committed and kept its promise that we would receive not a penny less by leaving the European Union. 

And looking further ahead as well, the long-term spending profiles of the shared prosperity fund amount to a UK-wide £400 million in 2022-23, £700 million in 2023-24, and £1.5 billion in 2024-25. And that's UK-wide. So, clearly, the UK Government has no intention whatsoever to match the annual £375 million Wales would have benefited from in EU funding had we remained members of the EU, despite the Conservative promises that we wouldn't be a penny worse off. 

As the Minister knows, a number of organisations in the cultural sector, such as theatres and local music venues, still haven't been able to operate at full capacity because of the safety measures that they've put in place to safeguard people from COVID. And although the number of attendees is lower, they need more staff in order to implement those safety measures, including implementing the COVID pass. Does the Government have any intention to enhance the financial support to these sectors as part of their COVID recovery in order to safeguard the future of a sector that is so important to the Welsh economy? 

Well, we have been engaging throughout the pandemic with the visitor economy forum and the hospitality stakeholder group, and some of the businesses that you've described will be represented by those groups. Obviously, things are continuing to be challenging for that sector. We've tried to make the COVID pass as simple as possible, but I do recognise that it is an additional job that we are requiring of businesses. But let's be really clear that the purpose of the COVID pass is to keep businesses open, and that's the best thing that we can do to support businesses of all types, just to keep them open. And that's one of the things that we've been seeking to do through the introduction of the COVID pass. 

We're also looking through our lens to the future in terms of recovery for the sector, and we've been working on the plan, which was announced by my colleague the Deputy Minister very recently in terms of the tourism and hospitality recovery plan. And that, of course, focused on reconstruction and resilience for the sector. There have been some innovative new funding opportunities for the sector as well, such as the Brilliant Basics capital fund. That's recently been relaunched with a capital fund of £2.4 million to deliver some of those small-scale tourism infrastructure improvements across Wales. And we've also funded projects through our tourism attractor destination scheme. So, there are several sources of funding that we are able to deploy to support the sector.