12. What consideration does the Minister give to mental health when allocating funding to the mental health, wellbeing and Welsh language portfolio? OQ56461

During the pandemic, we've invested an extra £9.9 million to support mental health services. Building on this, we're investing an additional £42 million in mental health next year. This makes our total spending on mental health more than £780 million in 2021-22.

Thank you for that reply. Obviously, during the pandemic and before that, we know that mental health services have been squeezed and have often in the past been seen as cinderella services, but I know elements of that have changed, as you've exemplified in your answer to me today. But I've done a lot with eating disorders over the years, and obviously the service review recommendations will require significant investment, and I've also in the last year or so been doing work on maternal mental health. Some of the changes there will need significant investment. What would you say to a future Government in relation to the allocation of funds for these most important areas of development?

In our discussions when we were developing the budget for 2021-22, we were very clear very early on that health had to remain a priority for the Welsh Government in terms of our investment, and that's why we've provided significant additional funding for the core health budget for the next financial year. Now, clearly there will be opportunities for a future Minister to look at prioritising in areas such as those that you've described. I've been very clear and very careful to ensure that our core funding for the NHS is able to do its day-to-day work, and is separate from our additional funding for COVID response. That really is to ensure that those things such as eating disorders, which are important parts of our response, aren't lost in our COVID response, which is clearly at the forefront of many minds at the moment. So, it's important that a future Government does have that clarity between COVID response, and the work that we just have to keep doing. That applies to the eating disorders work, but of course goes on across cancer, diabetes and all of the other important areas of spend as well.

Thank you, Minister.

Excellent work—all your questions answered in your final questions session in this Senedd. Over to you now, Minister for Education—see if you can keep to that record.