Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. We are 12 months into delivering our refreshed 'Together for Mental Health' delivery plan, and I want to provide an update on our progress. The delivery plan was revised in light of the pandemic, realising the need for it to adapt to evolving levels of need. The plan is ambitious, and establishes the absolute need for cross-Government, multi-agency working to deliver on the agreed actions. To assure us and our partners on progress, we have commissioned an evaluation of our 10-year strategy. This will provide an independent, evidence-based assessment of our progress and will inform next steps.

The pandemic has brought into sharper focus the actions in the delivery plan that needed to be accelerated. We have strengthened support for low-level mental health issues in response to the higher levels of anxiety that we have seen. We have expanded our CALL helpline, which supports over a 100 people a day, providing advice, support and often just someone to talk to. For the first time in Wales, we have rolled out online cognitive behavioural therapy. This digital support is overseen by clinicians and has received over 12,000 sign-ups in the first 12 months. It does not need a referral from a health professional, so it can be accessed when it is needed, providing timely access to support, taking pressure off more specialist services.

Health boards are reporting higher acuity and complexity of patient need and an increased demand for non-clinical support for lower level mental health issues. The ministerial delivery and oversight board, which I chair, is critical to understand the latest evidence and operational intelligence to ensure services can meet changing mental health needs. We are transforming the response to crisis care and are on track to establish single points of contact to respond to mental health crisis in all health board areas by April 2022. These will be for anyone to use, regardless of age or circumstance, and will provide individuals with immediate access to signposting, a trained mental health worker or a referral into specialist services. We have also improved mental health conveyance as part of the crisis care pathway, with a pilot run by St John Cymru. This support has already provided transport for over 400 people, with an average response time of one hour. It has the potential to reduce pressure on the police, ambulance service and mental health community staff whilst providing appropriate and compassionate transport for our most vulnerable people.

We have delivered the specialist perinatal mother and baby unit in Tonna, and it is already making a significant difference to new mothers who need this support and who can now access that closer to home. There is more to do, and I'm determined to see an increase in the pace of health boards achieving the Royal College of Psychiatrists standards for both community and in-patient perinatal mental health services. We must ensure that we have specialist mother and baby provision that is easily accessible for mothers from north Wales, and I am determined to see this put in place as soon as possible.

The delivery plan also includes actions on suicide prevention, and we are working with the police, the NHS and Public Health Wales to establish a real-time surveillance system for Wales. This will be hosted by Public Health Wales, and this approach will be crucial to our efforts to prevent suicide but also to ensure a timely and appropriate response for those bereaved by suicide in Wales.

All of these improvements have been supported by an increase in investment of almost £128 million over the past five years into the mental health ring-fenced budget. This year alone, we have provided an additional £42 million, and our programme for government continues our commitment to prioritise investment in mental health.

We know that the workforce are the lifeblood of our NHS services, and workforce pressures are a real challenge to progress. Health Education and Improvement Wales and Social Care Wales are on course to consult on a long-term mental health workforce strategy by the end of this year, as well as securing more immediate solutions to respond to demand.

Specialist mental health services are vitally important for those who need that higher level of support. Our delivery plan highlights actions we are taking to develop a secure in-patient strategy and further support for early intervention in psychosis services. However, specialist provision is only one part of the challenge to provide the right support at the right time in the right place. By taking an early intervention and prevention approach, we can meet this challenge and reduce demand on specialist services.

All Cabinet colleagues have agreed that mental health impacts will be considered and support embedded across Government. Our whole-system approach is a good example of this in practice, where I am working closely with the Minister for Education and the Welsh Language to drive progress. This work, along with the implementation of our NEST framework through regional partnership boards, underpins our longer term, preventative approach.

In employment, we are progressing action around employability as a key protective factor for mental health. We continue to provide advice and support to employers through the Healthy Working Wales programme and we have expanded our in-work and out-of-work health employability programmes as the pandemic has progressed. These will become more important as support like furlough comes to an end.

In housing, we have ensured that mental health is integrated as part of key programmes, including the rapid rehousing through homelessness scheme. Poverty and financial hardship are drivers of poor mental health, and we are integrating our approach to mental health and debt support provision. During the first year of the single advice fund it secured almost £44 million of additional welfare benefits, and this includes supporting people with mental health issues.

In terms of legislation, we have discussed widely with partners and stakeholders the potential benefits to Wales of the proposed reforms of the UK Mental Health Act 1983. I will be writing to the UK Secretary of State for Health to explore whether legislation brought forward to reform the Act should be extended to Wales, with the exception of those proposals where we have existing or more robust safeguards already in place—for instance, for care and treatment planning in Wales. This, of course, would have to be done in a way that respected the devolution settlement and the Sewel convention. It would be subject to the Senedd passing a legislative consent motion.

Welsh Government will also be consulting shortly on new regulations for Wales to support the implementation of the liberty protection safeguards, which will replace the current deprivation of liberty safeguards. These important safeguards will provide a more effective system, putting the person deprived of liberty at the heart of the decision-making process, and will better integrate the LPS into everyday care, support and treatment planning.

I have provided a snapshot of delivery here today. Overall, whilst there remains a significant challenge to services, we are making constructive progress on our 'Together for Mental Health' delivery plan. And whilst I am encouraged by this progress, I do not underestimate the ongoing challenge ahead. However, I am committed to driving actions across Government and with stakeholders to improve the mental health and well-being of the nation as part of our wider approach to recover from this very difficult time. Diolch yn fawr.