4. Will the First Minister set out the Welsh Government’s priorities for supporting the retail sector in Cynon Valley? OQ57456

I thank Vikki Howells for that question. Our priorities for the retail sector in Cynon Valley, as elsewhere, include a clear commitment to fair work policies and career progression in order to attract the workforce that will be needed in the future. We also focus on the importance of local retail services rooted in those local communities and the foundational economy.

Thank you, First Minister, for your answer. The Association of Convenience Stores published their 2022 Welsh local shop report last week, and this highlighted the important role that the almost 3,000 convenience stores in Wales have in their local communities, in the Welsh economy, and as the providers of over 25,000 jobs. We know that many of these stores have played a crucial role during the pandemic, so what is the Welsh Government doing to support this sector specifically and enable it to play a full role as part of the foundational economy?

I thank Vikki Howells for that. I've had a chance myself to look at the report of the Association of Convenience Stores and it does, as Vikki Howells said, make really interesting reading. Wales has more shops per head of the population than any other UK nation, and you'll see in that report that 70 per cent of workers in those local stores are women. And that's why, in my original answer, I put an emphasis on the fair work agenda, because that's really important there. The long daily opening hours of those shops—when it says 'convenience stores', they are convenience stores; they're in those local communities and their importance in the pandemic has come home to everybody, as people have relied upon them more. And so many of them provide services beyond what you might think of as the basic retail offer. Thirty per cent of them provide post office services alongside everything else they do, nearly half of them offer free-to-use ATMs, making sure that people can get access to cash in communities where cash is still a very important part of the way that the economy operates. And that's what I mean by being part of the foundational economy. They're there in the communities, in the localities, where you need those services on the high street or in the village to allow people to go on having access to other parts of daily life. The Welsh Government is absolutely committed to playing our part. We will publish a new retail strategy in March of this year, and local shopping and the contribution of the association, alongside others, will be powerfully represented in the strategy that we will lay out.