00:00The way we engage with our culture can have a direct impact on our well-being as a nation,
00:08including on our health. Access to culture shouldn't be seen as a nice-to-have. In fact,
00:12our cultural heritage is something we celebrate in music, in theatre, in dance, in literature,
00:18in Welsh and in English, the land of song. Even our national anthem celebrates it, Gwlad
00:23Beirdd a Chantorion. And we should build on our strengths as well. The cultural sector
00:27employs 80,000 people in Wales, but the lack of government support for the sector is deeply
00:33worrying. Being a government means you need to make tough decisions and you need to prioritise.
00:41We took some tough decisions last year when it came to culture and we decided that we
00:47needed to put more money into the health service. Of course, priorities need to be shuffled
00:53around and things like the NHS is a key place to increase funding where possible. But plied
00:58Cymru leader, Strinath Yardworth, thinks that the level of cuts to the arts has been far
01:02too much and has meant Wales, the land of song, has had some of the lowest arts funding
01:06in Europe. I find it troubling that the First Minister doesn't feel a sense of shame or
01:11regret about this and she seems to be in denial about the impact that government decisions
01:18have had. And this certainly isn't something that was about a tough spending round last
01:23year. The truth is that under successive Labour governments, Wales has slipped to the bottom
01:29of the European League table on cultural spend. As I say, decisions have to be made. There's
01:35an allocation for this financial year, £30 million, to the Arts Council of Wales and
01:43there was that additional money that came in, as I suggested. But on top of this, we've
01:47given job protection funding, resilience fund, an extra £1 million in resilience fund
01:54to support organisation resilience.
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