, Economy, Trade, and Rural Affairs Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2022-23: Evidence session with the Minister for Economy
I think that it's well beyond the remit of this conversation to talk about whether there should be one port in Pembrokeshire. Regardless of how yourself or Paul Davies might feel about a possible location for a single port, I think it would be really…
, Economy, Trade, and Rural Affairs Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2022-23: Evidence session with the Minister for Economy
We're still having conversations with that as our preferred location, but we need to understand whether the reduction in trade is permanent or temporary, because it makes a difference about whether you could site border control facilities within the port area…
, Economy, Trade, and Rural Affairs Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2022-23: Evidence session with the Minister for Economy
Yes, we have a preferred location.
, Economy, Trade, and Rural Affairs Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2022-23: Evidence session with the Minister for Economy
That isn't what the funding statements, the funding principles, actually say. Where there are new costs that arise from choices made by the UK Government, and there are direct and material costs that fall into devolved areas, the UK Government is supposed to…
, Economy, Trade, and Rural Affairs Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2022-23: Evidence session with the Minister for Economy
No, because we're still in the process of building the border control posts. So, I gave a written statement update on where we are recently. The move of sanitary and phytosanitary checks has come to July. We're phasing how those checks take place, so we're…
, Economy, Trade, and Rural Affairs Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2022-23: Evidence session with the Minister for Economy
I think the starting point is that new free trade agreements can provide extra opportunities for Welsh businesses. And so we don't have a—. Our approach is to support new free trade agreements being agreed, but to make sure that Welsh businesses and interests…
, Economy, Trade, and Rural Affairs Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2022-23: Evidence session with the Minister for Economy
We think we've made not just a material contribution and we're confident that we can make it work as much as possible. The challenge, I guess, is what is sufficient, in anyone's terms. Like I said, if we had more money, I'm sure we could do more, but this is…
, Economy, Trade, and Rural Affairs Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2022-23: Evidence session with the Minister for Economy
For the £4.7 million, it's mostly against the delivery of the export action plan. That's £4.5 million allocated to deliver the export action plan to support businesses to continue exporting, as well as to want to grow Welsh exports in the longer term. You'll…
, Economy, Trade, and Rural Affairs Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2022-23: Evidence session with the Minister for Economy
Yes, and we'll need to see if we're seeing a rate of growth in each of the years. So, of course we'll look at it within each year to see what we've done, but I haven't set a target to say that, within year 1, this is how many additional employee-owned…
, Economy, Trade, and Rural Affairs Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2022-23: Evidence session with the Minister for Economy
We've got a programme for government commitment to double the size of employee-owned businesses across Wales. It was part of a debate in the Chamber, led by Huw Irranca-Davies, about the conversation we need to carry on about how practically it would work…
, Economy, Trade, and Rural Affairs Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2022-23: Evidence session with the Minister for Economy
We've got a development phase revenue funding of £150,000 in the financial year. I'm looking to get the bank established; that's my responsibility as Minister, which is why I delivered the statement and why I've had the initial discussions around this. It'll…
, Economy, Trade, and Rural Affairs Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2022-23: Evidence session with the Minister for Economy
We're looking at how we can, in each of our areas, look at where economic development is most needed. For example, in the capital region, there are a range of areas we look at. The work I'm particularly looking to do is around the Heads of the Valleys areas…
, Economy, Trade, and Rural Affairs Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2022-23: Evidence session with the Minister for Economy
Within the well-being goals, of course, economic well-being is one of the significant chunks that we have within the Act, and what we always try to do is to see how we advance the economy nationally and within regions. Thinking about my previous role in the…
, Economy, Trade, and Rural Affairs Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2022-23: Evidence session with the Minister for Economy
No doubt.
, Economy, Trade, and Rural Affairs Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2022-23: Evidence session with the Minister for Economy
I don't think we are going to publish regional indicative budgets, because we're in an entirely different world, I'm afraid. Not just because we have less money available, but actually, the money that we would have been allocating and looking to provide…
, Economy, Trade, and Rural Affairs Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2022-23: Evidence session with the Minister for Economy
I again refer back to the conversations I pointed out about the education committee in Northern Ireland, where they're anticipating a significant gap, and they're saying there are reductions in skills spend, and they think they may need to reduce skills…
, Economy, Trade, and Rural Affairs Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2022-23: Evidence session with the Minister for Economy
I'm quite open-minded about a levy and what it could do. I know that there are mixed views, and some Members on this committee don't share my view, but when you look around the world, there are versions of a tourism levy in North America and in Europe. If you…
, Economy, Trade, and Rural Affairs Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2022-23: Evidence session with the Minister for Economy
I don't think I could point to you that there is a pot of money that is deliberately set aside for the retail strategy, but it is about how we use the resources and what it looks like. Because, when you think about where we are with retail, some of it is…
, Economy, Trade, and Rural Affairs Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2022-23: Evidence session with the Minister for Economy
It's been really difficult, because we did give—. It was a very difficult conversation internally, as well as with stakeholders, about our ability to provide more money from a resource point of view, but then about trying to make sure that, if we could we do…
, Economy, Trade, and Rural Affairs Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2022-23: Evidence session with the Minister for Economy
Excellent.
, Economy, Trade, and Rural Affairs Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2022-23: Evidence session with the Minister for Economy
Well, actually, it's about trying to deliver and get back to our plan in 'Let's Shape the Future' and have a robust recovery for our tourism and visitor economy in Wales. And the support we're providing now is really important to maintain businesses that are…
, Economy, Trade, and Rural Affairs Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2022-23: Evidence session with the Minister for Economy
Well, I think the challenge about a COVID recovery fund is what the parameters are. Is it sector agnostic, or is it essentially something like a broad-based non-domestic rates support, where you can provide grants and money to people regardless of their…
, Economy, Trade, and Rural Affairs Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2022-23: Evidence session with the Minister for Economy
Well, outside my portfolio, because the finance Minister makes the choice, there is the continuing business rate relief. So, we've matched what's going to be on offer in England—that's an extra £160 million that should support a wide range of businesses with…
, Economy, Trade, and Rural Affairs Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2022-23: Evidence session with the Minister for Economy
And to be fair, we do regularly listen to and talk with businesses in all sectors. I've been at the shadow social partnership council today—business voices there, together with trade unions and others. Yesterday, I had a meeting with people across businesses…
, Economy, Trade, and Rural Affairs Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2022-23: Evidence session with the Minister for Economy
So, the events sector should be able to get some support from the cultural recovery fund if they meet the criteria, and hair and beauty would be non-essential retail. So, actually, some of the support we've provided should be available to them, particularly…
