6. What steps is the Welsh Government taking to support and encourage young entrepreneurs in Denbighshire? OQ58275

Llywydd, last week, the Minister for Economy announced further investment to support 1,200 young people to start their own businesses. In addition to direct financial help, the scheme also provides one-to-one advice and guidance, for example, through the Achieve programme, available to young people in Denbighshire.

I appreciate that answer, First Minister. I recently visited the Blue Lion pub situated in Cwm, near Dyserth in Denbighshire, which has been taken on by new owners earlier this month. The pub, reportedly being the second oldest free house in Wales, has been reopened by young entrepreneurs, Jonathan White, aged 27, and Megan Banks, aged 25, who have worked locally in the food and hospitality industry for a number of years and have now taken the leap into managing their own establishment, contributing to the local economy and providing jobs for others. I'd like to congratulate both Jonathan and Megan for taking on this endeavour, and wish them and their team at the Blue Lion every success, and to ask you, First Minister, with approximately 4,800 young people in Denbighshire unemployed as of December 2021, and one fifth of people in Denbighshire living in workless households, what is the Welsh Government doing to encourage more young people in Denbighshire to follow in the footsteps of my constituents in pursuing and sustaining their own businesses?

Well, I thank the Member for that question. I wouldn't like to get into a contest with him on pub visiting, but I visited a pub in Burry Port recently, which had equally been taken over by two young people, and making an enormous success of it. So, I congratulate his constituents for the work that they are doing and all those young people in Wales who have that initiative and that drive to make sure that, where they have contributions that they want to make, they find ways of doing it. And that was exactly the point of the statement that Vaughan Gething made last week, to make sure that those young people in Denbighshire and in other parts of Wales who have an idea, who have an ambition, that they will now have £2,000 available to them, via the Welsh Government, to support them in that. And in some ways even more importantly, Llywydd, they will have pre and post-starter advice: business planning, financial management, peer support, mentorship. I'm very glad to say that, of the people who we have recruited to help with the scheme, 25 per cent are Welsh speaking and 46 per cent of them are women. We want young people in Wales, wherever they live and whatever their backgrounds, to feel that if they have that business idea that they want to promote, they know that there will be help and advice available to them.

Self-employment and entrepreneurship have played a larger part in the development of the UK economy in the last decade. A great deal of that is strong growth, it draws disproportionately on people with university degrees, but we also know that not every job in that part of the economy is the sort of job that we would want it to be. We know that there is insecurity and there is exploitation as well. Our scheme is designed to make sure that we do the best that we can in the area of self-employment and that young people in Wales are supported in doing so.