Questions Without Notice from Party Spokespeople

Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Economy – in the Senedd at 1:48 pm on 8 March 2023.

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Photo of Vaughan Gething Vaughan Gething Labour 1:48, 8 March 2023

Yes, I'm more than happy to update—and actually, when we had a consultation event, which I attended together with the Deputy Minister for Social Partnership, with the British Retail Consortium and the Welsh Retail Consortium, and, indeed, with the trade union side, led by USDAW, it was a deliberate further engagement in our social partnership way of working. So, we looked at what this would mean for workers as well as for businesses and, actually, the survey they had at the time highlighted some of the points you've made. There's still a challenge in footfall. That isn't evenly spread out though. So, Cardiff city centre had actually done better, relative to other Welsh centres. There was also a much more significant recovery at some of the out-of-town centres as well.

So, again, it highlights some of our policy dilemmas and challenges about wanting to have vibrant city centres and high streets, and actually, that goes into some of the comments we have about where we site public services. It's one of the reasons—only one of the reasons—why, as health Minister, I was keen to invest in community pharmacy and optometry: it provides greater access to patients, but actually footfall for those centres as well. When it comes to the delivery plan for the retail strategy, I expect to publish that shortly after Easter, so early after the Easter recess, you can expect to have that published, and that will set out how we expect to deliver and how we expect to measure the success of that strategy that we have co-produced between the Government, businesses themselves and trade unions too.