Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:33 pm on 17 September 2019.
It was right to reform the scheme. When the scheme was first introduced in 2004-05, over 800,000 swims took place by young people under the scheme. Last year, it had fallen to 126,000. If you don't think that those figures deserved a review, then I don't think that would be a fair conclusion to draw. And yet the number of swims by young people has gone up in Wales over that period. So, the idea that, by removing the scheme as it currently stands, it automatically leads to the unintended, and, as I see it, not to be realised consequences, doesn't stand up to examination. More people under the age of 16 are swimming in Wales than ever before, and yet fewer and fewer and fewer of them were taking advantage of the free swimming initiative.
The money that is not being devoted by the sports council of Wales to this scheme is being spent by them instead on a series of healthy and active fund projects. Four of those new projects will be happening on the island of Anglesey. It's not that money is being taken away from these purposes; it's just that it's going to be spent in a different way, precisely in order to deliver the sorts of outcomes that Rhun ap Iorwerth referred to in his supplementary question.