Trefnydd, there are serious question marks about the future of peer mentoring services for people with drug, alcohol and mental health issues in Wales. Some in the sector believe that services could collapse over the summer as the new contract is yet to be put out to tender and may not be in place until October or November of this year. This means that peer mentoring services will not be able to accept new clients from the beginning of next month, and that mentors, many of whom will have had personal experience of addiction, and are therefore vulnerable themselves, will be out of work at the end of August. 

Your Government's response to this matter has been to call on service providers to run the service without funding until it is eventually tendered out later this year. I've been told that this could well be illegal as it would mean that charities are subsidising the Welsh Government. I raised the matter with the Deputy Minister—and I see the Deputy Minister is here as well—in correspondence at the end of last week, but the situation is so pressing, it needs dealing with urgently. Can we therefore have an urgent Government statement on this issue, with a view to providing a solution to the problem that does not imperil vulnerable clients, vulnerable staff, and risk the sustainability of charities that have worked so diligently and effectively over the length of the current contract?