Mark Drakeford: Good afternoon, Deputy Presiding Officer, and I thank the Member for the question.
Mark Drakeford: For over a decade, the Welsh Government has funded the Holocaust Educational Trust to provide its Lessons from Auschwitz programme in Wales. That, and other actions to address antisemitism, will be reflected in our anti-racist Wales action plan, to be published later this year.
Mark Drakeford: The Welsh Government supports the sector to extend the tourism season, to bring tourists to new parts of Wales and to increase spend from visitors. North Wales features prominently in Visit Wales’s promotional activities and in our capital investment programme for tourism.
Mark Drakeford: We want to plant 43,000 hectares of new woodland by 2030. We are creating a national forest for Wales and have started implementing the recommendations of the deep-dive exercise into removing the barriers to planting trees.
Mark Drakeford: The Minister for Health and Social Services has discussed this review with the Welsh Ambulance Services NHS Trust. However, this remains an operational matter for the trust. Members, and others, have received a briefing from the trust’s chief executive, who has offered to discuss the implications for their constituencies.
Mark Drakeford: We are committed to improving the quality of life for people who live and work in our former coalfield communities including our Transforming Towns and Tech Valleys programme, and through funding the Coalfield Regeneration Trust. We will bring forward a coal tips safety Bill during this Senedd term.
Mark Drakeford: Llywydd, I do take seriously the points that the Member has raised. As I explained earlier, the Welsh Government's role is to fund the service, and we are doing that with additional investment next year. It is then for local health boards to carry out the direct negotiations with the people who provide those services. There are choices that dentists will be able to make, as I explained in my...
Mark Drakeford: I thank Paul Davies for the question, Llywydd. Immediate priorities for the health service in Pembrokeshire include delivery of the latest phase of the COVID vaccination programme and the continued restoration of wider, more routine services.
Mark Drakeford: Llywydd, I thank Carolyn Thomas for the welcome that she has given to the latest actions that the Welsh Government is able to take. I visited a school in my own constituency on Friday last week in a very challenged community, where the welcome for the £100 extra per child was very warm indeed. It really will allow families to participate in the opportunities that the school can provide in a...
Mark Drakeford: Llywydd, our access fund, helping families with the cost of the school day, will enter its fifth year next month. Over that time, it has been progressively expanded. The latest development, a £100 uplift per child to help address this year’s cost-of-living crisis, was announced by my colleague the education Minister on 14 March.
Mark Drakeford: Well, Llywydd, I congratulate Jack Sargeant on the work that he's carried out himself with young people, and the points he makes have surely been given even more urgency in this last week by the actions of employers at P&O. There'll be people from his constituency, there in the north-east of Wales, who have earned their living in Liverpool, where P&O operate. I heard the former Conservative...
Mark Drakeford: I thank Jack Sargeant, Llywydd, for that. Implementing the young person's guarantee, investing in skills, funding personal learning accounts, and making Wales a fair work nation are amongst the actions we are taking to support young workers in every part of Wales.
Mark Drakeford: Well, Llywydd, I thank Ken Skates for that powerful additional question. Of course, he is right: in the spring statement tomorrow, the Chancellor of the Exchequer has an opportunity to do those practical things that would make the biggest difference in the lives of those people who need that help the most. My colleagues Jane Hutt and Julie James wrote, together, to the Secretary of State at...
Mark Drakeford: Llywydd, the cost-of-living crisis is affecting people across Wales, including in Clwyd South. Tomorrow’s spring statement must include actions to provide help for those least able to manage the crisis in the most essential aspects of daily life, widening access to food and to fuel for those who otherwise will be forced to go without.
Mark Drakeford: Well, I thank the Member for that. I think the last time he asked me a question of this sort, I was able to tell him that there were plans to recruit new GPs to support the service in Holyhead, and I'm at least pleased to be able to tell him today that the three GPs who were expected to be recruited at that time have now all been recruited, the last one joining in January. I'm also glad to...
Mark Drakeford: I thank Rhun ap Iorwerth. Llywydd, we are committed to investing in a new generation of integrated health and social care centres across Wales. In these centres, front-line health and social care centres will be co-located with other services. The project board leading discussion on such a development in Holyhead continues to meet monthly.
Mark Drakeford: Well, I do congratulate Newport council. Over the last decade, it has stood out as one of those authorities that has taken a range of actions to focus on helping families get through those difficult times that all families face, and where the repair of that damage, rather than rescuing children from it, is in the long-term interests of the child. And what they're doing in Project Perthyn is a...
Mark Drakeford: Well, Llywydd, there are already things that we are doing as a Government. That includes the focus that my colleague Julie Morgan has brought to do this over the last three years. It includes working with the ADSS, the Association of Directors of Social Services, to promote the things that we know work in different parts of Wales. It's striking to me that in Carmarthenshire, which we...
Mark Drakeford: Well, thank you very much to Rhys ab Owen.
Mark Drakeford: This is a really very significant matter of public policy here in Wales and he's absolutely right: the difference between different local authorities in Wales is absolutely striking and, to my mind, answers the point that is sometimes made that what the figures reflect are just different socioeconomic conditions in different parts of Wales. If that were the case, how would that explain the...
