6. How does the First Minister ensure that Welsh Government spend provides value for money? OQ55711

I thank Angela Burns, Llywydd, for that question. Amongst the measures taken are mandatory finance training for all staff within the Welsh Government and additional intensive training for all senior staff. Securing best value for public money underpins the comprehensive guide, 'Managing Welsh Public Money', which deals with all aspects of our financial management.

An interesting response, and I ask this question because there are a number of areas where there does not seem to be value for money for the Welsh taxpayer. The sustainable management scheme clearly states its aim is to support collaborative action that improves natural resources. The scheme has just received a further allocation of £3 million, despite the fact that only £6 million of its previous £25 million allocation has been spent to date, and the £3 million has been awarded despite the fact that the scheme has not been evaluated. Another example is the enabling natural resources and well-being scheme. It has a budget allocation of £26 million. In September a further £16.5 million was given to that scheme, and yet not a single penny has been spent and there has been no evaluation of the scheme.

First Minister, can you explain to me how these kinds of awards, with this lack of oversight or intent to actually use the money as per the awarding requirement, show and demonstrate value for money for the Welsh taxpayer?

Llywydd, I don't see how the Member draws the conclusion in the second part of what she said from the evidence that she provided in the first part. This Government provides 11,000 grant award letters every year to over 400 grant schemes. All grant schemes have evaluation built into them, and many of our grant schemes in this extraordinary year have not been able to spend money in the way that they had originally intended. The Member will know that it was a key priority of this Government in last year's budget-making round to make biodiversity schemes across the Welsh Government properly funded. We funded another £140 million for the sort of sustainable and enabling schemes in the environment to which she referred. Quite a lot of that money has not been capable of being spent during the pandemic, but we are looking, wherever we can, to restore those schemes, alongside the third sector organisations that we rely upon so much in this field, and who will have had their own ability to raise their own funds and to put staff into the field made far more difficult by the pandemic.

So, I want to give her an assurance that those are very important schemes to this Welsh Government. We are looking to find ways of continuing to fund activity that is safe and that can be carried out by people in a coronavirus environment. A number of those schemes were sadly set back over recent months, but where there are new opportunities in the remainder of this financial year to recover some of that ground, that is exactly what I am encouraging my ministerial colleagues to do, and to find ways of working with our partners in the field in order to achieve that.