Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Finance and Local Government – in the Senedd at 1:43 pm on 28 September 2022.
Well, we are very sceptical about the benefits that investment zones could bring, precisely because we disagree with your analysis in the sense that we believe that investment zones do have the propensity to draw investment away from some areas, and so displacing economic activity from the areas that it's most needed in. And that was one of our concerns over the free ports as well.
We are open, of course, to having discussions with the UK Government to hear them out on this issue to see exactly what their proposal is. I do think it's a shame that they didn't have discussions with us ahead of the announcement, bearing in mind that if they want to deliver this policy in Wales, they're going to need Welsh Government to work with them in the sense that non-domestic rates are devolved to Wales, land transaction tax is devolved to Wales, planning is devolved to Wales. So, they will need all of those tools to deliver those investment zones. Of course we'll have the conversations, but I think our starting point is that we're sceptical about the benefits that they can bring.