Diolch, Llywydd. The first supplementary budget for this financial year sets out how we have initially reshaped our budget to respond to the coronavirus pandemic. Normally, supplementary budgets are relatively small-scale, primarily technical events, covering modest adjustments to our budgets to reflect the impact of the UK Government's spend on Wales. The evolving response to the coronavirus pandemic, however, has required levels of Government investment at a pace and scale without rival in the post-war era.

This supplementary budget increases the overall Welsh resources by £2.1 billion. This is 10 per cent more than set out in the final budget just four months ago. I would like to take this opportunity to thank the Finance Committee for their consideration of this budget and the publication of their report. Whilst I will provide a detailed response in due course, I am minded to accept the recommendations.

I welcome the committee's recognition of the ongoing work required with the UK Government, both in respect of additional funding and the ability to maximise the use of financial flexibilities. I'm continuing to press the UK Government to provide greater fiscal flexibility to help us manage in these unprecedented times. We're calling for full access to the resources in the reserve this year, if required, and the ability to carry forward more resource and capital at the end of the financial year.

The decisions we have taken have resulted in unprecedented changes to our spending plans, and the supplementary budget confirms that over £2.4 billion is being dedicated to the Welsh Government's response to coronavirus. It comes from three main sources: funding that comes to Wales as the result of spending committed to measures in England, the Wales coronavirus reserve, which I have created by urgently reprioritising budgets across the Welsh Government, and from repurposed EU funding.

Our first priority has been to ensure that our healthcare system is able to cope with the unprecedented strain that the pandemic is placing on it, and we have provided additional funding to increase our normal capacity. Funding of £166 million has been provided to open field hospitals across Wales, a crucial part of our strategy to respond to the COVID-19 outbreak. Thirty million pounds has been allocated for the use of all six private hospitals in Wales and a further £6 million is being allocated to provide additional mental health in-patient capacity.

We have also needed to urgently increase staff resource within the NHS to cope with the extra demand. Ninety-one million pounds has been made available to maximise the service contribution that can be made by healthcare students and those returning to service. We have also allocated £100 million to provide the personal protective equipment that our health and social care staff need to carry out their work safely, both for themselves and their patients. Testing is a vital part of our plan to reduce harm from COVID-19 and to help the public and professionals get back to their daily lives. Fifty-seven million pounds has been allocated to support our test, trace, protect strategy. 

It has also financed crucial action to help those who need it most, because it's clear that the crisis is having a greater impact on those who are already vulnerable—people who live in poor housing or are homeless, or who struggle on low incomes and are most likely to have seen those incomes cut even further. Our response to the coronavirus pandemic and the additional funding we have made available is not just an immediate response to the direct health harms caused by the pandemic itself, but it is designed to alleviate the wider impacts caused by the unprecedented social and economic measures we have taken as a Government to protect people's lives and reduce the spread of coronavirus.

We were the first part of the UK to extend free school meals throughout the Easter period and for summer holidays. We have committed £40 million to providing front-line social care workers with an additional £500 payment. Despite the pandemic, our local authorities are continuing to provide social care, education and other vital public services and are playing their part in working urgently to protect their essential local services within the community. At the same time, there are inevitable increased costs and lost income as a result of the necessary actions that we're having to take to protect public health.

We have made available £188.5 million through our local authority hardship fund in recognition of their wider role in the community during this crisis. And we have prioritised protecting the Welsh economy, providing the most generous business support package anywhere in the UK, with help for businesses that are not eligible for other forms of Government assistance. We have provided more than £1 billion that local government is distributing on our behalf in non-domestic rates relief and associated grants to businesses in the retail, leisure and hospitality sectors. To date, local authorities have issued over 50,700 business rates grants totalling over £625 million.

Our £500 million economic resilience fund has already provided grants to more than 6,000 SMEs and loans to 1,000 more, giving vital support for businesses, particularly those micro, small and medium-sized firms at the heart of our economy, alongside charities and social enterprises. Although the sums of money that we are talking about are large, so too is the magnitude of the challenge. Getting the right support to our public services, businesses and communities has involved balancing tough decisions every day. We have been and will continue to be guided by a sense of what is fair when public finances are facing such enormous pressure.

We have also taken urgent action to respond to the emerging and evolving disproportionate impact that this pandemic is having on some of the most disadvantaged people in Wales, with funding allocations, including an initial £15 million for a direct food delivery scheme to those shielding due to having medical conditions that make them extremely vulnerable to COVID-19, and who have no other access to necessary supplies, and a £24 million third sector COVID-19 response fund to support the Welsh voluntary sector.

This debate focuses on the decisions that we've already taken and are reflected in the first supplementary budget. There will be the opportunity on 15 July to discuss the difficult choices we will need to make for our upcoming 2021-22 budget priorities. These are linked to recovery from the pandemic, and how we may also need to respond to the risk of the UK leaving the EU without a trade deal. This is alongside the difficult choices that we will continue to make in our 2021 plans, and I will provide an update on the exercise to reprioritise capital spending at the earliest opportunity.

Over the coming months, I will of course carefully monitor and manage our financial position and intend to table a second supplementary budget later in the year. So, Llywydd, I ask Members to support this motion.