Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 2:38 pm on 7 December 2021.
Trefnydd, you may have seen in the press the furore around the owner of Aberdare Market and Town Hall Company invoking a mid-nineteenth-century Act of Parliament to effectively threaten charitable and fund-raising Christmas fairs from taking place in my constituency. This included planned events at St Elvan's Church, at the new Welsh Government-funded Cynon Linc community hub and in Aberaman band club—all of which would have brought additional footfall and helped regenerate and sustain Aberdare. Now, it's clear that stallholders in Aberdare market don't support this draconian intervention, so I hope none of the bad feeling generated by this will reflect on them. But I would welcome a statement from Welsh Government setting out Ministers' views on this case, and their reflections as to the impact of such prohibitive and outdated private Acts of Parliament, which run contrary to wider economic and regeneration policies.