7. Will the Minister make a statement on the financial support available for those affected by local coronavirus restrictions? OQ55719

The Welsh Government has introduced a range of measures to support communities across Wales, including almost £300 million that has now been made available to support businesses during the firebreak. We are particularly focused on supporting businesses and working with local authorities to address the needs of people in Wales. 

Thank you for that answer, Minister. It's not just businesses that have borne the brunt of the restrictions that have been imposed across Wales in recent months. We know that the national health service has seen waiting times absolutely balloon in recent months, and of course, in north Wales in particular, we already had the worst waiting times in the country. Can I ask you what specific support you're going to make available from the Welsh Government's budget to support the NHS to deal with this huge backlog of patients waiting for appointments and treatments? And specifically, will you support the Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board with any strategy that it brings forward in order to eradicate those waiting lists and get back on top of them?

Thank you for raising this important issue. As Darren Millar will know, the Welsh Government has recently announced a stabilisation package for the NHS here in Wales, and that's an £800 million package of support that should allow health boards and others across Wales to be able to get to that point at the end of the financial year where they've been able to meet all of those additional pressures put on them by COVID, but also stabilise the other parts of the NHS, which, of course, are so important as well. So, that funding is there. I provided a block of funding rather than having to have a situation where the health Minister had to keep coming to individual meetings to discuss different parts of the health service. I felt that a significant injection of funding to the health department was the best way to go in terms of giving him the ability then to pass on that funding and certainty more quickly. Because I think one of the things that we always try to do during this pandemic is provide funding as quickly as we can, and I felt that that was the appropriate way to go forward. I have been having some discussions in my regular bilateral meetings with the Minister for health in terms of support for Betsi Cadwaladr and those discussions are currently ongoing.