Rhun ap Iorwerth: 3. Will the Minister make a statement on the steps available to local government to prevent second homes being registered as businesses? OAQ55010
Rhun ap Iorwerth: I was in Rhosneigr at a coffee morning recently, and a group of ladies who were busy making me a cuppa at the time said, 'Can we have a public meeting to discuss the red bins issue?' I wasn't sure what they meant, so they explained: 'Oh, you know, when people register their holiday homes as businesses, they have their domestic bins changed for business ones, red ones. There are more and more...
Rhun ap Iorwerth: A holiday home.
Rhun ap Iorwerth: No, it's not—[Inaudible.]
Rhun ap Iorwerth: I do welcome your appeal for everyone to have some perspective on this issue. Of course we need to take it seriously, but we also need to be realistic as to the level of the risk. I will ask this: is it a good time now to remind people and perhaps provide some resource into general aspects of personal hygiene and infection control? And not only in hospitals, but also in other institutions,...
Rhun ap Iorwerth: Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to formally move the motion in the name of Siân Gwenllian. It was a great temptation here today to rehash an old speech for this debate, because even though I have been away from this health portfolio for a year and a half now, far too many things, I'm afraid, haven't changed in my absence.
Rhun ap Iorwerth: Too many things, on return to the health portfolio after a brief absence, remain the same. The poor performance of the NHS I think has been the equivalent of a chronic condition for the current Government. It's debilitating, causing Government problems in planning for the long term, but still, we're not seeing the kind of drastic changes that we'd like to see. In many other countries facing a...
Rhun ap Iorwerth: Of course.
Rhun ap Iorwerth: Okay. But it's clear, is it not, that where we have the Conservatives suggesting somehow that we can't be focusing on the damage caused by lack of investment in social care, we've only got to look to England to see what Conservative Governments there did in starving local authorities of funding and the devastating impact that that had on hospitals, especially accident and emergency, in...
Rhun ap Iorwerth: Thank you very much, Deputy Presiding Officer. Thank you to everyone who's taken part in the debate. Thank you for the response of the Deputy Minister. I feel for you, in many ways, having to defend the indefensible in this place. A series of excuses and spin, that's what I heard, I'm afraid, from the Government, going through the targets that she claims are being met, and the challenges...
Rhun ap Iorwerth: 'regrets that social care has been under-funded'
Rhun ap Iorwerth: But don't we agree that social care has been underfunded? Perhaps you're embarrassed as a party about the impact the decisions made by Conservative Governments in Westminster have had on the health service because of cuts to social care services in England.
Rhun ap Iorwerth: But the point I make is that we have to aim towards redeploying that money from health to social care; that's the rebalancing that we need to work towards.
Rhun ap Iorwerth: Thank you to Llyr for the comments with regard to the state of the service in north Wales, and for focusing on that. What’s striking, of course, is that this is the board where the Welsh Government has the responsibility and the greatest influence, indeed. I agree entirely with the Member for Cardiff Central about the need to look at what we can do, and that’s why we’re focusing on...
Rhun ap Iorwerth: Will the First Minister make a statement on recruiting and training dentists?
Rhun ap Iorwerth: I'm not entirely sure what you've announced today, to be honest with you. Maybe you can give us a bit more information about this conversation that you're keen to start today and what form that conversation might take. There are references in your statement to all sorts of international models for paying for care. I read it that you want to have some sort of conversation, as I say, about...
Rhun ap Iorwerth: There are plenty of yardsticks in the way that we in Plaid Cymru assess the budget of a Labour Government. Fundamentally, the question that we ask is: is the Government using its fiscal resources in the most efficient and effective way possible to transform Wales? Can the Government tell us that there is funding here that is innovative and that drives not only improvement in the way that...
Rhun ap Iorwerth: In a second.
Rhun ap Iorwerth: And the main weakness that she's identified is the lack of assessment of how the funding allocated is likely to make a difference.
Rhun ap Iorwerth: Okay. It's up to Government to show it is prioritising through its budget, and, if we listen to what the future generations commissioner has said, this is what she said in an article for the Institute of Welsh Affairs last month: 'can the whole infrastructure of Government answer the question of whether its spend increases or decreases carbon emissions in Wales? From what I have seen the...
