Part of 3. Questions to the Minister for Mental Health, Wellbeing and Welsh Language – in the Senedd at 2:40 pm on 24 February 2021.
Thank you very much, David. I can assure you that we've put a lot of work into—. In particular, when we come to the workforce who are on the front line, we've made sure that we've put a lot of protection in place for them, but we've gone much further than that when it comes to Working Wales. So, we have a programme, Working Wales. I think about 35 per cent of businesses and public sector areas, they have signed up to this, and they have made a commitment to really stand by their workforce to make sure they get rid of the stigma relating to mental health, and they are adapting what is happening in that space in relation to COVID. So, I'm very pleased to see that that's happening.
And, of course, the other thing we've done is we've continued to fund Time to Change, which is very different from what's been done in England, unfortunately. I think it was a huge mistake on the part of the Conservative Government to cut the funding for Time to Change just in the middle of a pandemic. It was a real shame, because, actually, the one thing that we've done in this pandemic is we've talked about mental health in a way that has now become absolutely accepted. Everybody understands that it is a societal issue that we all have to take seriously, and I'm very pleased to see that happening, and that support in the workplace is absolutely really being driven alongside that project that we have in the Welsh Government.