National Assembly for Wales

The Welsh Government continues to work closely with the UK Government, other Devolved Governments and partners on plans to mark the 80th anniversary of VJ Day. It is important that we mark this historic milestone appropriately in Wales and plans for national commemorations will be announced in due course. I would encourage communities to come together and mark this significant milestone.

In the past five years, the Welsh Government has awarded a total of £3,835,073.40 to 16 different Welsh groups with partners in Uganda.

In the past 10 years, the Welsh Government has made no payments to the Ugandan Government other than for visitors visas.

Medr was responsible for allocating the £18.5m of one-off additional capital funding provided for the higher education sector in February in recognition of financial challenges affecting the sector.

The Cabinet Secretary and I remitted the funding to Medr to support universities to make necessary investments for long-term financial stability. Medr allocated the funding to universities specifically to support strategic priorities including Net Zero/Decarbonisation, improving facilities and progressing the digitalisation agenda.

Medr will undertake a monitoring exercise later this year to ensure that the funding has been used as intended, and to provide an update on the impact that the investment has had.

According to water company data, approximately half of households in Wales have a water meter installed.

We will review our statutory guidance and consider any changes to our social tariff policy after the Independent Water Commission has published its findings and recommendations.

Natural Resources Wales expect to release the report in the latter part of this Summer.

The Welsh Government strongly supports a public health approach to addressing the harms caused by gambling. We know that population-level interventions, as well as direct support for individuals are needed to tackle the health inequalities caused by gambling.

We are working closely with the Scottish and UK Governments to implement the statutory levy on gambling operators that came into effect on 6 April 2025. This will support the gambling prevention and treatment systems we want to establish for Wales. I plan to update Members soon on this work, in addition to how we are working with GambleAware and supporting their important work on tackling stigma.

In relation to gambling advertising and sponsorship, this area is the responsibility of the UK Government, but I continue to press for the industry to operate responsible practices and prevent young and vulnerable people being exposed to gambling advertising.

The Welsh Government strongly supports a public health approach to addressing the harms caused by gambling. We know that population-level interventions, as well as direct support for individuals are needed to tackle the health inequalities caused by gambling.

We are working closely with the Scottish and UK Governments to implement the statutory levy on gambling operators that came into effect on 6 April 2025. This will support the gambling prevention and treatment systems we want to establish for Wales. I plan to update Members soon on this work, in addition to how we are working with GambleAware and supporting their important work on tackling stigma.

In relation to gambling advertising and sponsorship, this area is the responsibility of the UK Government, but I continue to press for the industry to operate responsible practices and prevent young and vulnerable people being exposed to gambling advertising.

The Welsh Government strongly supports a public health approach to addressing the harms caused by gambling. We know that population-level interventions, as well as direct support for individuals are needed to tackle the health inequalities caused by gambling.

We are working closely with the Scottish and UK Governments to implement the statutory levy on gambling operators that came into effect on 6 April 2025. This will support the gambling prevention and treatment systems we want to establish for Wales. I plan to update Members soon on this work, in addition to how we are working with GambleAware and supporting their important work on tackling stigma.

In relation to gambling advertising and sponsorship, this area is the responsibility of the UK Government, but I continue to press for the industry to operate responsible practices and prevent young and vulnerable people being exposed to gambling advertising.

The Welsh Government strongly supports a public health approach to addressing the harms caused by gambling. We know that population-level interventions, as well as direct support for individuals are needed to tackle the health inequalities caused by gambling.

We are working closely with the Scottish and UK Governments to implement the statutory levy on gambling operators that came into effect on 6 April 2025. This will support the gambling prevention and treatment systems we want to establish for Wales. I plan to update Members soon on this work, in addition to how we are working with GambleAware and supporting their important work on tackling stigma.

In relation to gambling advertising and sponsorship, this area is the responsibility of the UK Government, but I continue to press for the industry to operate responsible practices and prevent young and vulnerable people being exposed to gambling advertising.

The Welsh Government strongly supports a public health approach to addressing the harms caused by gambling. We know that population-level interventions, as well as direct support for individuals are needed to tackle the health inequalities caused by gambling.

We are working closely with the Scottish and UK Governments to implement the statutory levy on gambling operators that came into effect on 6 April 2025. This will support the gambling prevention and treatment systems we want to establish for Wales. I plan to update Members soon on this work, in addition to how we are working with GambleAware and supporting their important work on tackling stigma.

In relation to gambling advertising and sponsorship, this area is the responsibility of the UK Government, but I continue to press for the industry to operate responsible practices and prevent young and vulnerable people being exposed to gambling advertising.

I expect every person in need of emergency care to be triaged by a clinician at the earliest opportunity to assess their condition and ensure they are treated in order of their clinical priority, supporting equitable outcomes. These expectations are set out in our Quality Statement for Care in Emergency Departments.

To support health boards to better match the right capacity with demand in their emergency departments, the national Six Goals for Urgent and Emergency Care programme is working with the GIRFT (getting it right first time) emergency medicine team.

A national summary emergency department information table ‘SEDIT’ tool which allows benchmarking with more than 190 other emergency departments across the UK has been established, and we expect health boards to use this information to right size their emergency department services to provide quality care.

Each health board has developed an improvement plan for each emergency department based on the priority areas within the quality statement and GIRFT recommendations, and the Six Goals programme is providing active support to enable delivery. This includes targeted work to improve the median time to clinical assessment, for example, through the use of senior decision makers as early as possible in a person’s emergency department journey via rapid assessment and treatment areas.

I expect every person in need of emergency care to be triaged by a clinician at the earliest opportunity to assess their condition and ensure they are treated in order of their clinical priority, supporting equitable outcomes. These expectations are set out in our Quality Statement for Care in Emergency Departments.

To support health boards to better match the right capacity with demand in their emergency departments, the national Six Goals for Urgent and Emergency Care programme is working with the GIRFT (getting it right first time) emergency medicine team.

A national summary emergency department information table ‘SEDIT’ tool which allows benchmarking with more than 190 other emergency departments across the UK has been established, and we expect health boards to use this information to right size their emergency department services to provide quality care.

Each health board has developed an improvement plan for each emergency department based on the priority areas within the quality statement and GIRFT recommendations, and the Six Goals programme is providing active support to enable delivery. This includes targeted work to improve the median time to clinical assessment, for example, through the use of senior decision makers as early as possible in a person’s emergency department journey via rapid assessment and treatment areas.

Current and historic NHS salaries, for NHS staff are published on the link below.

NHS Pay and Conditions - NHS Wales

The Welsh Government values the hard work and contribution pharmacists, pharmacy technicians and pharmacy teams make to delivering NHS services in Wales, this is why we are making record levels of investment in the sector.

In 2024-25, Community Pharmacy Contractual Framework (CPCF) funding was increased by 9.9m (6%) recurrently with a further additional £6m available as a one-off stabilisation payment at the end of the 2024-25 financial year.

This considerable investment supports the long-term sustainability of pharmacies, helping to ensure the NHS maximises the use of the skills and expertise of pharmacists, pharmacy technicians and the wider pharmacy team in every community in Wales.

Officials are working with health boards to progress the recommendations made in the 2022 Review of Dispensing Volumes report, in particular the recommendation to increase prescription periods of treatment and good progress has been made to increase periods of treatment in some areas.

Negotiations are currently underway for the 2025-26 CPCF and a further update will be provided in due course on the detail of the agreement reached between Community Pharmacy Wales, NHS Wales and the Welsh Government.

Health boards are required to assess the pharmaceutical needs of their populations and ensure pharmaceutical services are available to meet those needs. Where there is a significant change in the pharmaceutical provision, the health board must review the availability of pharmaceutical services in the area to ensure they continue to meet needs and act accordingly.

During 2024-25 we made up to £0.7m in capital grants available to pharmacies to invest in automation, improve their premises, and add new private consultation areas, supporting them to deliver the type of pharmacy services people in Wales need. This capital investment scheme has launched again for 2025-26, making a further £0.7m of capital grants available to the sector.

In previous years, capital funding has supported 30 pharmacies across all areas of Wales to install prescription collection machines, ensuring that convenient prescription collection is available to the public when these pharmacies are closed.

Substantive response.

The Social Partnership and Public Procurement (Wales) Act 2023 further embeds the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015 into public procurement. This includes the globally responsible well-being goal. As part of our engagement with social partners and external stakeholders, we have met with several human rights and environmental organisations to explore how best to reflect the UN Guiding Principles, and global responsibility, in the statutory guidance on socially responsible procurement. We plan to consult on the draft guidance later this year.