Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Finance and Trefnydd – in the Senedd at 1:51 pm on 17 March 2021.
I'm demonstrating to Mark Isherwood that we are not a post box for consequential funding from the UK Government. The consequential funding comes in a block of funding that we are then able to allocate as per the needs here in Wales.
Now, the funding that we allocated to hospices here in Wales was on the basis that we had discussions with the hospice sector to understand the financial need that they identified, and the pot of funding was allocated accordingly. And those are the discussions that my colleague the health Minister's department were having with the hospice sector here in Wales. And, of course, our hospice sector here in Wales is smaller than the sector across the border. So, it's not the case that every penny of consequential funding we receive goes to exactly the same spending area.
Now, if it is the case that hospices are telling you that the funding that they receive isn't meeting the needs, then obviously we would want to have those discussions with the hospice sector, and I'm sure that my colleague the health Minister will pick that up with the sector, to understand their needs for the next financial year. But, as I say, the funding package that we did put in place for the sector was done so in discussion and consultation with the sector.