Questions Without Notice from Party Spokespeople

Part of 2. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Services – in the Senedd at 2:50 pm on 17 October 2018.

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Photo of Angela Burns Angela Burns Conservative 2:50, 17 October 2018

What I'd also like to try to drill down to is this issue of funding, because that's exactly what I wanted to determine from you today. You've just mentioned, and I believe that I quote you correctly, that you're going to put an additional £35 million into the mental health budget. To be frank, the budget is so opaque that it's very difficult to discern all of the lines—it's difficult to understand whether the ring fence for mental health still exists. 

I believe that you said, in some written evidence to our committee, that you were going to be taking money for crisis and out-of-hours care into mental health out of the £100 million save-everything-in-the-NHS transformation fund—that's what was in the written evidence. Is this additional money of £35 million going to pay for that crisis and out-of-hours intervention uplift, or is that coming out of the transformation fund?

I believe that you're bringing a statement forward on the transformation fund, and I would like to see a list of where all of this money is going, because that £100 million has got so many people saying they're having money out of it that there's a real, real difficulty in discerning exactly where the funds are going. After all, it is our job to scrutinise the spend and to ensure the outcomes are achieved, so clarity on this matter would be most appreciated.