Suzy Davies: Can we just leave it at the end? I’m sorry. I will take it if I have time. I’m saying that this prison is part of stopping re-offending. These outdated prisons, with dark corridors and cramped conditions, will not help offenders turn their back on crime, and nor do they provide our professional and dedicated—[Interruption.]—I’ll come to that—dedicated prison officers with the...
Suzy Davies: I’m looking forward to what you are going to say, but I hope you will provide evidence for what you are about to assert.
Suzy Davies: First of all, thank you for the hard work that you’ve done on this as well, and also for highlighting why CHCs are so important to our local communities. There’s been some difficulty in getting a new public meeting together to update the community on this, partly because of the unwillingness of representatives of the practice to attend, but the reasons they give for their unwillingness to...
Suzy Davies: Well, it’s three years since the expert panel was set up to consider the location of the new unit, and, in that time, neither Cardiff nor Bristol have got any closer to Aberystwyth or Haverfordwest, let alone places in my region. The head of the independent panel, as we heard, is now speaking of moving the burns unit from Morriston to Cardiff and that, for me, raises questions about quite...
Suzy Davies: As we are about to enter discussions on the Minister’s Welsh language White Paper, there are still some outstanding matters regarding standards that need completing, and I’m wondering whether we could have an early statement, please, on the timetable for publication of the Welsh language standards in health services.
Suzy Davies: The code of practice, of course, sets out actions to tackle illegal and unfair employment practices. And, as Huw Irranca-Davies indicated, paying less than the living wage is unfair employment practice, and we are all aware of allegations made in both the care and the hospitality sectors, because services from those sectors can be procured by public services, of course. Is it possible that...
Suzy Davies: I wholeheartedly concur with that last sentiment expressed by the Chair of our committee. Can I thank everyone who was involved in this inquiry and, in particular, our witnesses, who might actually be surprised by some of the comments in this report? Wales, as we’ve heard, has received far more per capita in terms of economic development money than other parts of the UK, but even so, it was...
Suzy Davies: Will you take an intervention?
Suzy Davies: I’m very grateful to you for taking the intervention. I wonder if you can just give us a flavour of who those partners are. I’m not expecting a long list, but perhaps just one or two examples.
Suzy Davies: I call on the Cabinet Secretary for Environment and Rural Affairs to reply to the debate.
Suzy Davies: Thank you. That brings today’s proceedings to close.
Suzy Davies: First Minister, last week, I visited Severn Trent’s testing labs in Bridgend—you may know them already—and most of the senior team there were women. They weren’t educated recently in Wales, I’m afraid, so it doesn’t help you on Andrew’s question, but, even so, it is a great example of women getting into good STEM careers. They’re also a good example of where, in a facility...
Suzy Davies: Thank you very much for taking the intervention. I was just wondering, on the point that you’ve just made there, whether you’ve said that the Wales Tourism Alliance, which of course is the body representing most tourism views in Wales, makes exactly the same point that you do.
Suzy Davies: Thank you very much, Deputy Presiding Officer, and I move the amendments in the name of Paul Davies. May I thank the Minister for opening the debate today and Plaid for their amendments? We support a number of them. Now, the first thing I’d want to say is that the Welsh Conservatives support the three core objectives of this legislation: value for money, reducing bureaucracy in the...
Suzy Davies: Thank you for taking the intervention, as I didn’t get a chance to speak in my submission here. On the point of private companies, obviously, we’re a small and medium enterprise country. Do you think that the requirement for any standards to be reasonable and proportionate is enough to ensure that those small and medium enterprises are protected against the possibilities that you were...
Suzy Davies: Minister, in a statement back in April, which referred, at least in part, to promoting the use of the Welsh language, you explained how you’d like to focus on co-ordinating and commissioning practical support to facilitate the use of the Welsh language amongst small businesses. Now, about £4 million from the main education budget came to the Welsh language budget this year towards...
Suzy Davies: Diolch yn fawr. Minister, phase 2 of the Regulation and Inspection of Social Care (Wales) Act 2016 is due to bite in April, and we heard in the cross-party group on nursing and midwifery last night that both commissioners and providers need to plan for this, and it will actually need some planning. We also heard that, while there had been stakeholder engagement, plans to dilute the presence...
Suzy Davies: Well, thank you for that answer. ‘Coming weeks’ can mean anything, so I’m hoping that it will be very few weeks before you are able to do that. As you know, the stakeholder consultation raised grave concerns about the effective removal of 24-hour nursing presence in nursing homes and moving to a remote supervision of nursing care by a responsible person, who would be a nurse, who could...
Suzy Davies: That’s useful to know. That’s taking some evidence, but we haven’t gone quite the full way to an assessment of the likely impact on district nurses, which I think is perhaps something you may want to consider. But you did allude then to the staffing needs of any given nursing home, and the make-up of any team in a nursing home is critical to the success of the care it offers. The...
Suzy Davies: You just mentioned Western Bay there, and I’m sure you’re aware that the Swansea bay city deal is very well placed to nurture companies who want to actually develop these tech interventions for reablement and other social care, particularly at home. The opportunity has already been spotted. I’m just wondering, then, what conversations you might have had with the Cabinet Secretary for...
