Local Member of the Welsh Parliament for Monmouth, Nick Ramsay, contributed to the business statement in the Senedd on 9th March when he raised the need to support the tourism industry in Wales and promote our rich cultural heritage.

Addressing Rebecca Evans MS Nick said: “The BBC documentary The Story of Welsh Art aired recently. I'm not sure how many Members saw it. That featured Abergavenny's world-renowned Jesse tree, a fifteenth-century sculpture at St Mary's priory church Abergavenny depicting the lineage of Christ from the Bible. Other Welsh treasures from across Wales were part of that programme. Wales is blessed with cultural treasures that have attracted tourists to Wales for many years and can do so again in the future. So, I wonder if we could have a framework or an update from the Minister, as we come out of lockdown, as to how Wales's cultural heritage can be used to kick start the tourism economy again across Wales, so that as we build back better and grow back greener, we also grow back culturally stronger and we put the treasures of Wales at the centre of that growing-back process.”

Rebecca Evans MS replied: “I completely agree that our cultural treasures have huge potential for us in terms of helping us with the recovery, both in terms of the kind of tourism that we would want to see from elsewhere within the UK, but also our own staycations and our own tourism that we will probably want to undertake within our own country over the course of the summer. Because I think if the coronavirus has taught us anything, it's about valuing those things that we have here on our doorstep. I think that those cultural treasures such as the Jesse tree at St Mary's, which Nick Ramsay has described, serve to be very good examples of that. I can see that the Minister is listening again carefully to the suggestion about the role that these treasures can play in our recovery.”