3. What is the Welsh Government doing to help small businesses to grow in Ogmore? OQ57300

Llywydd, as the cornerstone of communities across Wales, we remain wholly committed to supporting small businesses in Ogmore and all parts of Wales to prosper, sustain and grow through key services, including Business Wales and the Development Bank of Wales.

Diolch yn fawr iawn, Prif Weinidog. Over the whole of this month, in the lead up to Small Business Saturday, I and my good colleague Chris Elmore MP have been showcasing dozens upon dozens upon dozens of incredible, diverse businesses in manufacturing, construction, professional services, high-street retailers and more right across the length and breadth of the Ogmore consistency. We've been urging people to use these local businesses in the run-up to Christmas, but also throughout the year, whether it's buying the annual festive lunch or preparing the annual tax return or building that new extension too. So, First Minister, if we're going to build this stronger, greener, fairer Wales, it's important that small businesses are playing their part too and supported to do so, so the funding announced last week by the economy Minister to our small businesses to help them develop, decarbonise and grow is really important. What assessment have you made of the impact that this £45 million fund will have on small businesses in Wales and in boosting our greener and fairer economic recovery?

I thank Huw Irranca-Davies for that. I, like him, look forward to being with small businesses on Saturday next—Small Business Saturday—and to be talking to businesses about the help that they've received already from the Welsh Government and the new help that was announced by my colleague Vaughan Gething last week. The point of that assistance, Llywydd, is to help those businesses to reinvest to create the conditions in which, post pandemic, they will be able to develop and grow. And as the Member will know, it's a key partnership with our local authorities that are there on the ground—very pleased to see that Labour-led Bridgend had advertised the new grant scheme on their website immediately on its publication and drew attention to the particular focus of the scheme on creating new and local supply chains so that small businesses can reinforce one another and help one another on that path to recovery.

Alongside all of that, Llywydd, we go on doing the other things that the Government does to make sure that we support economic recovery here in Wales, whether that's the young person's guarantee—and we know that many small businesses are the first place where a young person may get their footing on the ladder into employment—or in the continued investment we make in the foundational economy here in Wales, those businesses that are there day in, day out, year in, year out on our high streets and that provide not just valuable employment and very important economic opportunities, but, as we've often heard here in the Chamber, give those towns and those localities their character, make them places where people want to go and want to be. And I look forward very much, as I know Huw Irranca-Davies does, to being out there on Saturday in support of that whole agenda.

First Minister, as we look ahead to Small Business Saturday, as you have, I'd like to acknowledge as well the amazing perseverance of small businesses here in Wales, particularly in my region of South Wales West. These companies, many of which are family-run, turn over approximately £46 billion each year, which is more than double the entire Welsh Government's annual budget. As well as providing 62.5 per cent of all employment in Wales, small businesses also reinvest a higher rate of the revenue back into the local economy, which boosts the overall prosperity of an area. So, with that in mind, I think it's disappointing to see Welsh companies still paying the highest business rates in the whole of Great Britain, with Wales applying a higher multiplier on rateable value than either England or Scotland. How can it possibly be in keeping with the spirit of Small Business Saturday to leave Welsh companies at a competitive disadvantage to their UK counterparts?

At a time when our small businesses and high streets are attempting to recover from the pandemic and many are facing increased competition from online retailers as well, we simply can't afford to stifle small and family-owned companies with higher taxes. So, whilst the temporary COVID support from Welsh Government is welcome, by its very nature, it is temporary. So, what action is the Welsh Government taking to reduce the burden of business rates on small businesses in Wales to allow them to thrive?

Well, Llywydd, I don't agree with what the Member said. Wales has the most generous scheme of business rate support anywhere in the United Kingdom, and that isn't just at the moment, when Welsh businesses have had a year's guarantee of a holiday from business rates compared to the six months that they were offered in England, but that is at any time—70 per cent of small businesses in Wales don't pay business rates at all. And we are committed—and I know the finance Minister has already made this clear—to using the consumer prices index, not the retail price index, as the way in which we will gear business rates in the future, and that will bring many tens of millions of pounds of relief to small businesses here in Wales.

Where I will agree with what the Member has said, Llywydd, in his phrase, is the 'amazing persistence' of small businesses and the actions that they've taken to deal with the pandemic. On Friday last week, before going to Carmarthen, I was in Llanelli, Llywydd, and I visited Jenkins Bakery there to help celebrate their one hundredth anniversary; it's a firm established exactly 100 years ago this year. It was very heartening to hear from the company of the way in which, despite the real challenges that they faced at the height of the pandemic and the difficult decisions they'd had to make to keep their business afloat, by now they were reinvesting, rehiring, making a future for that business so that it will last well into the next century. That is a tribute to the amazing persistence of the people who run the company and the people who work for it, and I'm quite sure that that is emblematic of the way that so many small businesses in Wales have worked to keep going and find a future, despite the astonishing challenges we've all had to face.