Business support and investment

Harry Thompson

18 September 2024, Economy, Trade, and Rural Affairs Committee

The Foundational Economy - Panel 1

…it’s really interesting. I’ve mentioned before that fair work needs to be completely wrapped into this foundational economy agenda. We have a specific list of asks when it comes to fair work that are really, really clear in terms of trade union recognition, trade union access as a minimum, real…

Tagged for: “foundational economy”Official Record

Jenny RathboneLabour

18 September 2024, Economy, Trade, and Rural Affairs Committee

The Foundational Economy - Panel 1

…things like the real living wage, the shorter working week, the emphasis on good jobs in the foundational economy that you’ve all talked about previously? How do we actually get Government focusing on this, as opposed to some of the other things that they’re being asked to do?

Tagged for: “foundational economy”Official Record

Yr Athro Karel Williams

18 September 2024, Economy, Trade, and Rural Affairs Committee

The Foundational Economy - Panel 1

That goes back to Keith Edwards and i2i. You essentially behave as a capitalist business does. You decide what you want to do and then you take legal advice on how you can do it within the framework of the law. It needs somebody to write specimen contracts, which others use.

Tagged from the title of its item or question: “Foundational Economy”Official Record

Jenny RathboneLabour

18 September 2024, Economy, Trade, and Rural Affairs Committee

The Foundational Economy - Panel 1

But how do we do that without coming across the rules? I know we’re no longer in the EU, but nevertheless there are procurement rules that don’t allow you to say, ‘You’ve got to be local.’

Tagged from the title of its item or question: “Foundational Economy”Official Record

Yr Athro Karel Williams

18 September 2024, Economy, Trade, and Rural Affairs Committee

The Foundational Economy - Panel 1

We’ve already got to the point where, in the case of a few housing associations, people are using SimplyDo, artificial intelligence, data-scraping techniques to identify the supply base of potential suppliers. The second step is to actually screen those suppliers. There’s a very interesting exercise…

Tagged from the title of its item or question: “Foundational Economy”Official Record

Jenny RathboneLabour

18 September 2024, Economy, Trade, and Rural Affairs Committee

The Foundational Economy - Panel 1

Thank you. That’s really useful. You talk about smarter procurement, rather than postcode localisation. Could you just explain a little bit more? How do we do smarter procurement? Because we have a system in place at the moment and breaking into that seems really difficult.

Tagged from the title of its item or question: “Foundational Economy”Official Record

Yr Athro Karel Williams

18 September 2024, Economy, Trade, and Rural Affairs Committee

The Foundational Economy - Panel 1

Wales has a considerable advantage here in that we have two regionally based food service distributors, and Castell Howell is an absolute shining light in terms of social innovation. Of course it responds to demand, but it wants to do differently. When we reported on food processing and SMEs, one of…

Tagged from the title of its item or question: “Foundational Economy”Official Record

Jenny RathboneLabour

18 September 2024, Economy, Trade, and Rural Affairs Committee

The Foundational Economy - Panel 1

If we’re talking about values, we’re up against the multinational companies who want to continue to sell us ultra-processed food that’s sending us all to an early death. So, how are we going to overcome that, given that they spend billions on telling you to go and eat something that’s not good for…

Tagged from the title of its item or question: “Foundational Economy”Official Record

Yr Athro Karel Williams

18 September 2024, Economy, Trade, and Rural Affairs Committee

The Foundational Economy - Panel 1

What Kevin has been banging on about for years is that it's not food because we don't have the volume, but the food we serve in our schools, prisons and hospitals is a test of our civilisation and a way in which we can change diet. This is very interesting, because of course it does require…

Tagged from the title of its item or question: “Foundational Economy”Official Record

Yr Athro Karel Williams

18 September 2024, Economy, Trade, and Rural Affairs Committee

The Foundational Economy - Panel 1

Food is a classic example where we need to be strategic but we also need to recognise the importance of social innovation. If you look at food, for example, before the current school meals, when we reported on SMEs and food processing in Wales for the Welsh Government, we found that the total Welsh…

Tagged from the title of its item or question: “Foundational Economy”Official Record

Jenny RathboneLabour

18 September 2024, Economy, Trade, and Rural Affairs Committee

The Foundational Economy - Panel 1

Professor Williams, Caerphilly never stops mentioning Woosnam's farm as a way in which they helped a small business become a supplier, but the procurement process is so complicated, how would any small local organisation ever break their way into it, given that they're never going to be able to do…

Tagged from the title of its item or question: “Foundational Economy”Official Record

Yr Athro Anne Green

18 September 2024, Economy, Trade, and Rural Affairs Committee

The Foundational Economy - Panel 1

I think a lot of it is about, in organisations themselves, thinking about all the frameworks that are there for procurement, and how different and smaller and more local actors can get on those frameworks, and how we can perhaps, across different organisations, do procurement perhaps together and…

Tagged from the title of its item or question: “Foundational Economy”Official Record