I concur with much that’s been said already across the Chamber, and it’s wonderful to hear so many Members championing their local businesses today, and rightly so. We are blessed with a plethora of diverse, wonderful small businesses across my region of South Wales East, and it’s so important too that we support them in any which way we can, and lead by example.

Small businesses are the backbone of our Welsh economy and the beating heart of communities across Wales. With Small Business Saturday looming this weekend, I hope that we see a new record of spending within small businesses to surpass last year’s £1.1 billion in our villages, towns and cities. This weekend is our chance to repay our small businesses and say, 'Thank you for being there when our communities needed you the most.' Small businesses have suffered heavily over the last 18 months, but have shown enormous resilience, and how they have adapted during the pandemic has been incredible. For example, rapidly seeing takeaway and delivery services popping up everywhere, and also businesses adapting to what their communities need. It’s been genuinely wonderful and impressive to see people adapting in the way that they have been.

But, sadly, we’re not supporting small businesses in the best way possible here in Wales. The pandemic support package was welcome, but Wales still has the shameful title of having the highest business rate in the UK at 53.5p. This is just not good enough. As small businesses try to rebound from the pandemic, I call on this Labour Government to ditch the punitive taxes outlined by my colleagues earlier, and create a low-tax, market-led environment for businesses to thrive in. It is imperative that we listen to our business owners, work with them, and work towards creating a friendly environment for small businesses to thrive in so that Wales doesn’t become a petri dish for socialist ideas. It is important that the Government continues to work with local authorities to regenerate our high streets. It’s imperative that we work with our local businesses to give them the best chance to thrive and grow and compete against those retail giants outlined by my colleague, James Evans, earlier, such as Amazon. That is the biggest threat that our high streets face. We need to make it just as easy and just as attractive to shop local.

We need to do more to promote the quality and uniqueness of the products that we are seeing from our small businesses. There are examples of best practices of how our chamber of commerce and councils are working across Wales, and we need to hone in on those examples, and roll them out across our country. There's some brilliant, innovative working that’s been going on in local councils in my own region.

I would actively encourage anyone that can shop local this Christmas to do so and, as other Members have said, to continue that trend all year round.