Thank you very much, Deputy Presiding Officer. First of all, I will make a commitment to all of you who have taken part in the debate and have raised a great number of points that we will respond in writing in an appropriate fashion, rather than I go over my time—I think I have five minutes to respond to this debate—if that's acceptable to you, and then we can continue that discussion. Could I thank the Chair of the Committee, particularly, for her opening speech? I would like to confirm what she has said—and I say this, of course, because I appear before the committee on a regular basis—and thank her for the courtesy, every time, and for the co-operation.

So, I will respond to one issue that she raised. I have looked again over the written statement that was published this morning by the Welsh Government, and the word 'additional', I am pleased to say, occurs four times in that statement. So, the £10.7 million in funding is additional to what we had provided previously. And that's very important to me, as Deputy Minister with responsibility in this area, and it's very important to the Government, because as the First Minister said so clearly in discussing international issues in a previous statement today, culture is a key part of the Welsh brand, and maintaining and developing that brand is a duty for all of us. 

There were a number of kind references made to Creative Wales. I was very pleased when I was offered this post three years ago that it was an opportunity for me to act on a recommendation that was part of the manifesto of Welsh Labour, and was supported across the parties, namely to create Creative Wales and to create it as a body that was independent, but within the Government, using, as I've explained previously to the Senedd, the model that we had developed for Cadw—again, three years ago—namely, that it was an executive body, but it was independent, with a board and a chair. The first meeting has been held—I couldn't attend because there was a tourism crisis in another direction, but I hope I can join in their next meeting. There is a board of people who have diverse talents from every part of Wales and with balanced backgrounds in terms of ethnicity and so forth on that board, and that's very important to ensure that the creativity in our communities is reflected.

Now, everyone who has spoken has referred to the detrimental impact of the pandemic on the cultural sector, and what's happened on the ground, as we know, has been very painful for individuals and for audiences. One is concerned about how we can recover audiences when that is possible. But what's very important and interesting to me is the fact that there are developments that have shown how resilient our Welsh organisations are, even during this emergency. Reference was made very positively to the Welsh media, and if there was ever an argument for the importance of ensuring media where the people of Wales, journalists and commentators can speak to Welsh audiences, this is the period that has shown the importance of that.

I do note the comments made about Golwg360, and as some of you know, I have been considering how we can develop a corresponding medium in English so that there is a new framework for independent journalism available in English, as well as what we have in Welsh—not funded directly by the Government, but at arm's length.

And two further points I wanted to make: we are operating through the cultural recovery fund, and this fund will continue to support freelancers in particular. We realised that we hadn't provided adequately for the flow of freelancers, particularly here in Cardiff, because there are so many people in the cities who have been working on a freelance basis over the years, and working for all kinds of companies in all the different kinds of sectors that are part of our culture. And therefore, that's why the £3.5 million has been added to this fund, the freelancers' fund, so that we can take the total targeted at freelancers to £10.5 million. And this funding, we hope, will continue to transform the situation.

Could I emphasise another thing that we've done, namely to establish the cultural contract? This is something that has been on my mind for many years, because it's very important that, if we do provide public funding, we can also expect a response that is creative for that funding, not just maintaining organisations and not just maintaining buildings, even though that's important, but ensuring that we do have a cultural contract that works alongside the pledge to freelance workers so that we can see issues that are treated creatively growing out of this crisis.

We are working very closely with the UK Government—