Angela Burns: No, I won’t, thank you, Joyce. The ultimate woolly aspiration—your promise to hold a wider conversation about local government reform. So, are you saying that, despite the months of effort, and tonnes of wordage produced by the Williams Commission, and the First Minister personally championing local government reform in the last Assembly, this new programme for government firmly places...
Angela Burns: First Minister, given that recent reports have suggested we should have 88 epilepsy nurses in Wales and we’ve currently got nine, and given the difficulties we have in recruiting people, I’m not going to ask you to go and find 81 extra nurses overnight. However, what we could do is run specialised epilepsy clinics on a more frequent basis. Scotland has five such clinics for just over 5...
Angela Burns: Minister, thank you for your statement today. I’ve got four areas of questioning I’d like to raise with you. The first thing I’d like to talk about is co-production—this has become a watchword for many organisations, including the Welsh Government and the NHS. I would like to understand better what you’re going to be able to do with all these disparate plans to ensure that...
Angela Burns: Cabinet Secretary, would you please outline to us the chain of command in terms of decisions and sign-offs that applies in relation to the use of public money in driving forward economic development? I’d be interested to understand clearly from you your view on who deploys it, obviously from Welsh Government on down through the chain of command, who signs off and conducts the due diligence...
Angela Burns: Diolch, Lywydd. Cabinet Secretary, between 2009 and 2014, NHS expenditure on mental health ranged from 11.4 per cent to 11.9 per cent of the total NHS spend. Now, given that mental health budget lines are a catch-all for everything from child and adolescent mental health services to dementia, psychotic illnesses, perinatal services, depression and anxiety, do you believe that 12 per cent of...
Angela Burns: That was a nice slide away from my question, actually, Cabinet Secretary, because I asked about the 12 per cent spend as a percentage, and you immediately replied by saying that the services for mental health are the biggest line. But that’s exactly my point. We have cardiac lines, we have diabetes lines within the health budget, but we’ve put everything into mental health. So, yes, you...
Angela Burns: First Minister—I keep calling you First Minister; this must be an indication. Cabinet Secretary, you said again just then about delivering what the people of Wales need. And, frankly, we don’t deliver what the people of Wales need on health, on mental health. How many of us here have always talked about child and adolescent mental health services? We know that there are an awful lot of...
Angela Burns: First Minister, as you’re aware, social prescribing is highly dependent on the third sector, the community organisations and voluntary groups. However, many rural communities have faced consistent downgrading of community assets and the support networks. How will the Welsh Government, the health boards, and local government work effectively together to ensure that community assets are in...
Angela Burns: Minister, thank you for the statement today and for publishing the delivery plan yesterday on World Mental Health Day. I have a number of questions I just want to ask you about this. Going back to a question I asked the First Minister, in your statement, in the area where you have your three bullet points, you talk about emphasising the areas that are important to us and you particularly talk...
Angela Burns: Minister, thank you very much for your statement today. I think that your response and the response from Valero have been entirely reasonable, given the circumstances—no-one wanted this to happen, no-one expected it to happen, and it is very, very unfortunate, to say the least. I think that Adam Price raised some excellent points in the comments and I’d like to actually align myself with...
Angela Burns: I beg your pardon, Presiding Officer, but not west of Pembrokeshire. [Laughter.]
Angela Burns: Minister, in regard to the proposals for a nitrate-vulnerable zone along the sweep of the Cleddau and above Pendine, I’ve got great concerns because, both of those areas, you only have one direction of travel—back inland. Have you given any consideration, or what efforts have your officers done to ensure or to review the potential damage that could occur to land that is just outside of...
Angela Burns: Cabinet Secretary, I wondered how confident you are of the monitoring system that looks at the change of ownership in nurseries because, of course, a business can easily be sold to another business or individual who may not have the appropriate skills and understanding or even the appropriate checks in place, and, even if it is a hands-off transfer, I still think we need to be reassured that...
Angela Burns: Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I’d like to thank Plaid Cymru for bringing forward this debate today. The issues that you raise in your motion have been touched upon quite a lot, actually, in the Assembly in the past few weeks. But I think, like you, that it is very important to focus upon the stigma that is attached to mental health conditions, as this can affect a person for the rest...
Angela Burns: Thank you very much. Thank you for taking the intervention. I’d be very happy to supply you with a copy of a proposed draft autism Bill, and the reason we’ve brought this forward today is because, until today, we were of the belief that most of the people in this Chamber supported such an Act, so today is becoming a bit of a wake-up call, for not just this party, but a great many other people.
Angela Burns: Would you take an intervention?
Angela Burns: I do appreciate you taking the intervention. I would like to make the point that a person with additional learning needs may well improve throughout their life, and end up leaving school without having that need. A person with autism has a condition that is highly unlikely to change, which is why they need an Act that will look at them from zero to end.
Angela Burns: Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. Minister, we’re always waiting. More importantly, these people are always waiting. Nobody ever comes and sits in this Chamber at this time of night and listens to us talk about anything. But these people have, because it really is up close and personal for them. And the reason why we brought this motion today was we thought this was like a little nudge,...
Angela Burns: 2. Will the First Minister provide an update on the legislative programme for the fifth Assembly? OAQ(5)0215(FM)
Angela Burns: Thank you for that, First Minister. I wonder when you might expect to see the main policy thrusts of any new legislation that is passed during the fifth Assembly being implemented. How long would you expect it to take from Royal Assent to a policy, through statute, being implemented and being delivered on the ground? The background to this, of course, is the autism debate last week, when much...
