Welsh Labour

Speeches and questions

Speeches and questions in Plenary and in committees, newest first. The Llywydd's and deputies' chairing of Plenary is left out.

581 speeches and questions

20 February 2024Plenary
Statement by the Deputy Minister for Mental Health and Well-being: The Mental Health and Well-being and Suicide and Self-Harm Prevention Strategies
A key theme in our engagement so far is not to medicalise mental health. Mental health has become a term that is used to describe a wide range of circumstances. We want to see a shift in how we talk about and support mental health issues to better reflect the…
20 February 2024Plenary
Statement by the Deputy Minister for Mental Health and Well-being: The Mental Health and Well-being and Suicide and Self-Harm Prevention Strategies
Thank you, Deputy Llywydd. Today I am delighted to launch the mental health and well-being strategy, and our new suicide and self-harm prevention strategy for consultation. The strategies aim to build upon 'Together for Mental Health' and 'Talk to me 2'. The…
7 February 2024Plenary
Questions to the Minister for Health and Social Services
Thank you very much, Vikki. I entirely share your concerns about the rising prevalence of youth vaping. As you've highlighted, Public Health Wales have been working very hard in this area. They established an incident response group to look at youth vaping…
7 February 2024Plenary
Questions to the Minister for Health and Social Services
Thank you. We are working with the other UK nations to take collective action on smoking and youth vaping and intend to legislate to create a smoke-free generation. This will make it an offence for anyone born on or after 1 January 2009 to be sold tobacco…
7 February 2024Plenary
Questions to the Minister for Health and Social Services
Thank you very much, Altaf. I know how committed you are to Brynawel, and I've been very pleased to visit there on two occasions myself. You'll be aware that we've provided investment to Brynawel ourselves, including a very significant capital investment to…
7 February 2024Plenary
Questions to the Minister for Health and Social Services
Can I thank Sioned Williams for that question? As I said, we have prioritised substance misuse services in Wales. We have protected funding for those services, and even for the next coming year, when, as you know, the budget has been so very difficult, we are…
7 February 2024Plenary
Questions to the Minister for Health and Social Services
We are committed to reducing the harm caused by substance misuse in Wales. We currently invest over £67 million in our substance misuse agenda, of which over £39 million goes to our area planning boards to commission local services in response to need.
7 February 2024Plenary
Questions to the Minister for Health and Social Services
Can I thank you, Darren, for that supplementary question? And I listened carefully to your exchange with the First Minister yesterday, and I know that he gave you assurances, and I would like to repeat those assurances. We're waiting for the HIW report to…
7 February 2024Plenary
Questions to the Minister for Health and Social Services
As part of the special measures escalation, a comprehensive programme of work has been agreed to ensure that the health board is able to make the sustained progress required in mental health services.
17 January 2024Health and Social Care Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2024-2025: evidence session with the Minister for Health and Social Services, the Deputy Minister for Social Services and the Deputy Minister for Mental Health and Well-being
And we do lots of work around measuring likely increases in demand, but we're also equally focused on prevention and trying to make sure that we get upstream of that level of demand, because that's clearly where we need to be as a Government.
17 January 2024Health and Social Care Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2024-2025: evidence session with the Minister for Health and Social Services, the Deputy Minister for Social Services and the Deputy Minister for Mental Health and Well-being
Well, I think it's about prioritising mental health. The ring fence isn't the only money that we provide for mental health. The ring fence is taking account of things like inflation et cetera as well. I'll bring Hywel in.
17 January 2024Health and Social Care Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2024-2025: evidence session with the Minister for Health and Social Services, the Deputy Minister for Social Services and the Deputy Minister for Mental Health and Well-being
—local authorities, and, obviously, they'll have taken that money from their discretionary NHS allocations, and they'll have done that on the basis of prioritising mental health. We know that mental health demand is rising and that there are significant…
17 January 2024Health and Social Care Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2024-2025: evidence session with the Minister for Health and Social Services, the Deputy Minister for Social Services and the Deputy Minister for Mental Health and Well-being
Well, it was health boards rather than—
17 January 2024Health and Social Care Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2024-2025: evidence session with the Minister for Health and Social Services, the Deputy Minister for Social Services and the Deputy Minister for Mental Health and Well-being
Just very quickly to say that we've largely protected substance misuse services. So, the substance misuse action fund, which goes out to the area planning boards to commission things like the services you've described at Brynawel—we've got a £2 million…
17 January 2024Health and Social Care Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2024-2025: evidence session with the Minister for Health and Social Services, the Deputy Minister for Social Services and the Deputy Minister for Mental Health and Well-being
Oh, substance misuse—
17 January 2024Health and Social Care Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2024-2025: evidence session with the Minister for Health and Social Services, the Deputy Minister for Social Services and the Deputy Minister for Mental Health and Well-being
Okay, thank you. Well, I think it's important, with the ring fence, to recognise that it's a floor, it's not a maximum we want health boards to spend. So, if I give you the example of 2021-22, the ring fence that year was £726 million, but health boards…
17 January 2024Health and Social Care Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2024-2025: evidence session with the Minister for Health and Social Services, the Deputy Minister for Social Services and the Deputy Minister for Mental Health and Well-being
Okay, thank you, Sarah. Well, what we've chosen to do is prioritise front-line services, and as you've highlighted, the mental health ring fence in the draft budget is increasing by £25 million to £800 million. What we have had to do to balance that is…
17 January 2024Health and Social Care Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2024-2025: evidence session with the Minister for Health and Social Services, the Deputy Minister for Social Services and the Deputy Minister for Mental Health and Well-being
Can I just add as well, in terms of Jenny's question—and I know that diabetes is an area that you're very concerned about—just to let the committee know that we've continued funding for the all-Wales diabetes prevention programme? We're seeing really good…
17 January 2024Health and Social Care Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2024-2025: evidence session with the Minister for Health and Social Services, the Deputy Minister for Social Services and the Deputy Minister for Mental Health and Well-being
Yes, absolutely. We've protected resources for prevention, whether that's 'Healthy Weight: Healthy Wales', our work to reduce smoking, our work around vaping. The budget for Public Health Wales—and all their work is really focused on prevention—is £150…
17 January 2024Health and Social Care Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2024-2025: evidence session with the Minister for Health and Social Services, the Deputy Minister for Social Services and the Deputy Minister for Mental Health and Well-being
Yes. As Irfon said, public health officials are working closely with education officials around free school meals, and we've been very clear that, if we're going to make this big investment in free school meals, then we have to make sure they're as healthy as…
17 January 2024Health and Social Care Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2024-2025: evidence session with the Minister for Health and Social Services, the Deputy Minister for Social Services and the Deputy Minister for Mental Health and Well-being
We have done a lot of work, and we've brought health visitors together, and we've also developed bite-sized training for health visitors and midwives, so that they are much more familiar with the scheme now, and we're starting to see the benefits of that in…
17 January 2024Health and Social Care Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2024-2025: evidence session with the Minister for Health and Social Services, the Deputy Minister for Social Services and the Deputy Minister for Mental Health and Well-being
Over 70 per cent.
17 January 2024Health and Social Care Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2024-2025: evidence session with the Minister for Health and Social Services, the Deputy Minister for Social Services and the Deputy Minister for Mental Health and Well-being
Well, I mean, you raise a really important point, don't you, about people being able to cook with healthy items. One of the things that we've continued to invest in, and I'll bring Irfon in here, is Nutrition Skills for Life, isn't it, which is also about…
17 January 2024Health and Social Care Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2024-2025: evidence session with the Minister for Health and Social Services, the Deputy Minister for Social Services and the Deputy Minister for Mental Health and Well-being
I mean, obviously, you've highlighted a really important issue and it's linked to the awful cost-of-living crisis that we are all living through, and Welsh Government is doing everything that we can to mitigate the impact of that, whether that's in direct…
17 January 2024Health and Social Care Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2024-2025: evidence session with the Minister for Health and Social Services, the Deputy Minister for Social Services and the Deputy Minister for Mental Health and Well-being
Minister, shall I start on that, then?