7. What consideration did the Minister give to supporting businesses to deal with the impact of COVID-19 when allocating funding to the economy portfolio? OQ57550

Since the start of the pandemic, we've used every lever at our disposal to support Welsh businesses, providing more than £2.8 billion and safeguarding over 160,000 Welsh jobs. We will continue to support the sectors most directly impacted, including through our £116 million retail, leisure and hospitality rates relief scheme.

Thank you, Minister. Many businesses in Cynon Valley benefitted from the COVID recovery fund to help them make adaptations to enable social distancing and carry out other interventions in response to coronavirus—businesses like Cheryl's Fruit and Veg in Abercynon, Aberdare market cafe, Temple Bar in Aberaman and Penaluna's Famous Fish and Chips in Hirwaun. I want to thank Welsh Government and Rhondda Cynon Taf County Borough Council for funding and administering the scheme respectively. But could you outline how you're building similar support into the budget so that businesses can not only survive, but also thrive as we go forward?

Thank you very much for that, and also for giving me the chance, like you, to echo our thanks to RCT and other councils across Wales who worked so hard to get that funding into the bank accounts of businesses as swiftly and as smoothly as possible. I think that they've done incredible work, especially alongside all the other things that we're asking them to do in terms of self-isolation support payments and all the work we're asking them to do of in respect of the £200 payment to households experiencing fuel poverty and so on. So, they've done an absolutely incredible job and I'm glad that we have this chance this afternoon to say 'thank you' for that.

In terms of the budget, I think that the work that we're doing to ensure that retail, hospitality and leisure businesses will have a 50 per cent rate relief next year is important. It's also worth putting on record that we've invested £20 million more in that than we received in consequential funding from the UK Government. That's because of the nature of our business tax base here in Wales, but we've been pleased to do that to ensure that no-one misses out. And we're also looking to see what we can do to invest in communities through our Transforming Towns programme. So, that will be providing £136 million to further support the economic and social recovery of town centres across Wales, and I think that will be a really important intervention. I know there are some great examples in Vikki Howells's constituency, including funding towards the refurbishment of the Mountain Ash town hall building, which is really important, as is the redevelopment of the former Barclays bank in Mountain Ash as well. So, lots of good examples particularly, I think, in Vikki Howells's constituency, and I know she's a strong advocate for businesses in her area.