Part of 2. Questions to the Minister for Health and Social Services – in the Senedd at 2:39 pm on 9 June 2021.
Well, thanks very much, and can I also congratulate Russell George once again? I think I congratulated prematurely last time. First of all, I'm sure you, like me, welcome that £1 billion extra that we are going to be putting in specifically to try and tackle the issues that have arisen as a result of the pandemic. There is, as the Member knows, a significant backlog of work that needs to be tackled, and, let's face it, we're still not out of the COVID pandemic at the moment. So, there are still some severe restrictions on our ability to get back to a normal service.
We have already announced that £100 million. That has been distributed throughout all the health boards in Wales. I have asked the health authorities now to come forward with their proposals for how they think we should be addressing the backlog. So, those proposals are being analysed by my officials at the moment. We'll be drawing up annual plans with them, and, on the back of that, we will be making a request to the finance Minister for the additional funding to be released. So, we've got to get the balance right between being very specific about what it is we're going to do, how we're going to make sure that there's a geographic coverage, but also that we're actually getting to the most difficult and clinical priority cases as soon as we can as well. So, that additional funding, I'm very keen to get spending, as you can imagine, but we have to work in partnership with the health boards and make sure we understand what their priorities are as well.