Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:00 pm on 20 September 2022.
I thank Hefin David. There are two different sums of money that are available through the Welsh Government. There is the Welsh public interest journalism fund, and nine awards have been made from it already. The Caerphilly Observer was one of the beneficiaries of it, along with organisations like Llanelli Online and Wrexham.com, all of which were very regular participants in the series of news conferences that we held during the COVID crisis and which did a very good job indeed of keeping their readers informed of those hyperlocal issues.
There then is another sum of £100,000, set aside as a result of the co-operation agreement. As Hefin David said, there is a group working on the best way in which that money can be deployed. I know that they are looking at the issue of how, through combining purchasing power, more money from the Welsh Government's advertising budget can be drawn down towards them. The Minister will have heard the remarks that the Member has made this afternoon, and I'm quite sure that they will be conveyed to that working group. And, of course, we look forward to being able to draw properly on their expertise.