In today’s Welsh Conservative debate calling for an independent public inquiry into the handling of the COVID-19 pandemic in Wales, North Wales MS Mark Isherwood said Labour Welsh Government need to be held accountable for their decisions over the past 16 months, which he stressed “failed many North Wales businesses”.
Speaking in the Senedd Chamber this afternoon, Mr Isherwood said he has been inundated by desperate businesses across the region excluded from Welsh Government support and struggling to survive the pandemic.
He said:
“Yes, we need a UK-wide inquiry, but the people of Wales also need their Welsh Government to be held accountable. Welsh Government handling of the pandemic has failed many North Wales businesses – and I say this not as a Party political soundbite, but because I have been inundated by desperate businesses telling me this.”
Referring to small Bed and Breakfast businesses, whose plight he has repeatedly raised with Ministers, he said:
“Each time the Welsh Government has announced financial support to help businesses survive the pandemic, it has excluded small Bed and Breakfast Businesses. On each occasion, I have been contacted by despairing small B&B businesses, unable to understand why this vital part of Local Tourism economies has been denied support.
“On each occasion I have raised this with the Welsh Government, to zero effect. Ambiguous Welsh Government Guidance following revised criteria for the payment of business grants to holiday letting businesses allowed one North Wales Council to take a position which directly contradicted the practice confirmed in writing by every other North Wales Council.
“This also directly contradicted the position made clear by Welsh Government Ministers from the outset, on the record, namely that if a business has been unable to satisfy the criteria, but can prove they are a legitimate business, the local authority still has discretion to pay the grant out. Many of these businesses asked for my help. All subsequently received their grants in 5 North Wales Counties, but struggling legitimate businesses in Flintshire are still being denied the help they would have received if located elsewhere. Yet poor Public Administration by the Welsh Government has allowed this.
“Since the May election, I have continued to receive emails from many other struggling North Wales businesses, condemning the Welsh Government’s lack of financial support throughout the pandemic - stating, for example, that the Welsh Government had ‘stabbed them in the back’ and that the Welsh Government grant announcement was a ‘slap in the face’.
Mr Isherwood also expressed concern that the Office of Budget Responsibility forecasts that Wales’ output will not recover to pre-COVID-19 levels until months after the UK next year, having lagged behind the rest of the UK before the pandemic struck, and highlighted the failings of the Welsh Government when it comes to the vaccination programme in Wales.
He said:
“Thanks to the UK Government’s decision to procure vaccines swiftly - and the fantastic delivery of jabs into arms - Governments across the UK have now been able to safely ease the most stringent of restrictions. However, the Welsh Government, which is responsible for the vaccination programme in Wales, only prioritised this after we highlighted that it was running massively behind the rest of the UK on both first and second jabs.
“Even then, constituents contacted me with comments such as: ‘I've received a letter today and I will have my second vaccination. I will still be up to four weeks behind my contemporaries in England in particular. I still feel that the Welsh Government is trying to win a first vaccination race, whereas elsewhere in the UK the idea is to stop the new variant getting hold in the first place’. Whenever life doesn’t fit this Welsh Government’s comfortable theories, it isn’t the theories they doubt, it’s real life. This reinforces the need for an independent public inquiry into the handling of the COVID-19 pandemic in Wales.”