2. What steps is the Government taking to support credit unions? OQ58023

I thank you for the question. As the Member will know, credit unions are the lead responsibility of the Minister for Social Justice. The Welsh Government has invested £0.5 million annually in credit unions. During the pandemic, we provided £2 million of capital funding to ensure that credit unions could continue to support the financially vulnerable. Since December of last year, we have provided an additional £680,000 to help with marketing, expand membership and increase lending.

I thank the Minister for that response. As a Member elected for the Co-operative Party, I thought that you would be particularly interested in credit unions. But, there is an economic purpose to the question too. Credit unions have huge potential in turning around the Welsh economy. Already, they have almost 80,000 members here in Wales, lending £23 million per annum. But this is nowhere near the situation in Ireland, where 61 per cent of the population are members of credit unions. As a result, in Ireland, they can use the power of credit unions to boost the economy. There, the credit union alliance has contributed billions of euros to help the Government build thousands of homes, ensuring jobs in the industry for six years. So, do you believe that credit unions have a role to play in boosting our economy? And what steps can the Government take to ensure that they do play a more central role in developing the Welsh economy?

I should say that I'm a member of the Cardiff and Vale Credit Union myself, as well as being a proud Welsh Labour and Co-op Member. I've previously had ministerial responsibility for credit unions, and they do provide additional access to financial services for vulnerable individuals and families, but more than that, they also provide facilities for businesses too. They're part of the infrastructure that we have, but it's not as well developed or as embedded as in Ireland, where they are a mainstream part of normal financial services. You can expect, in most towns, to find credit unions with offices and facilities though the Republic, a position I know well from the other side of my family.

I do think, though, that part of our challenge is how we continue to support credit unions with the mission to help provide financial services to people who are often excluded from traditional banking, alongside what we're doing in creating a new community bank to make sure that there are viable lines of credit for individual community and business use. That's what this Government is committed to, and I'm sure that the Minister for Social Justice will be more than happy to update the Chamber on the work that we are doing to do just that.