Part of 2. Questions to the Minister for Economy – in the Senedd at 2:36 pm on 19 October 2022.
I think there are a couple of things I'd say in response to the Member. A range of the statements I've made about the economy has certainly had a direct impact on some of the choices we're looking to make on promoting the visitor economy, which is a significant sector of employment and a sector that is under real pressure. People's discretionary spend reducing, as it's likely to do, further, because of the well-advertised issues following the mini-budget less than four weeks ago, has a real impact on this sector in particular. And when I held the recent economic summit, we certainly did talk about the visitor economy and some of the challenges that it faces.
I think it's also worth pointing out that it may seem novel to Conservative politicians, but, actually, we stood on a manifesto that we intend to implement. We've published a programme for government and we've discussed additions to it with our co-operation agreement partners, and I'm not going to apologise for being a strong and stable Government acting in the national interest, as opposed to the coalition of chaos we see in Westminster. We're going to deliver on the pledges that we made. The big challenge in delivering on our pledges is the significant change in the economic picture and the spending to both support public services and the economy.
And when it comes to your final point, about members of the forces or disabled people, I think you need to reflect that not all of those people need special rates and special treatment. I just think that—. I'll give you an example. I visited tourist accommodation that we've helped the owners to improve, and they actually said that the rooms that they had the most consistent and busy bookings on—and this is a five-star offer—were actually the disabled-access rooms. And that's because the market has both shrunk, in terms of the number of rooms that are genuinely accessible—. And when I visited a four-star offer in Swansea, they also said they'd had lots of interest in their accessible rooms. So, actually, there's a challenge there about having enough access to the sector, not about saying those people need help with the costs. They actually want to be able to go and enjoy themselves as visitors, and have the ability to go to good-quality facilities to do so. And actually, our challenge is having an offer that is varied enough and is sustainable for everyone to have the opportunity to enjoy what Wales has to offer, right across the country.
We'll continue to take forward a consultation on delivering our manifesto pledges, and to do so in a way that balances the interests of the visitor economy and indeed those communities that host significant chunks of our visitor economy, in both rural, coastal, and city and town settings.