2. Statement by the First Minister: Coronavirus (COVID-19)

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 2:12 pm on 20 May 2020.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 2:12, 20 May 2020

Thank you, Llywydd. I thank Lynne Neagle for that. Our own chief medical officer has emphasised, right through the coronavirus crisis, that it is more than just a physical illness. And while we can count, so sadly, the number of people who've been admitted to hospital or gone to critical care or, indeed, have died from the virus, it's more difficult to count the impact on people's mental health and well-being, but that harm is very real as well.

I thank Lynne Neagle for what she said in welcoming the £3.75 million. As she knows, it extends help lower down the age range. To be six years old and to have gone through three months of coronavirus is a huge proportion of your lifetime, and the impact on that young person, that child's life, will indeed, I think, last long beyond the current crisis. So, that's why we were keen to put that investment in now and to do it exactly in the way that Lynne Neagle has said: in a way consistent with all the other measures we have taken in recent years to make the whole-school approach, to put the mental health and well-being of young people at the centre of the way that we think about public services and their needs for the future, and that's exactly what we intend to do.