Caroline Jones: I would like to thank the Welsh Conservatives for tabling this debate today and Angela for opening the debate and for her eloquent contribution. Unfortunately, mental health still does not get the attention it deserves within our NHS. I welcome the additional £20 million for the mental health ring-fenced budget, which raises the total to £649 million. However, this is still simply not...
Caroline Jones: Leader of the house, the Stay Well in Wales survey highlighted that doctors and nurses are not the primary source of health information, probably due to the difficulty in getting an appointment with a GP or practice nurse. The situation is being made much worse by short-sighted decisions by local government. Bridgend council intend to cut bus subsidies, which put an end to services covering a...
Caroline Jones: Thank you for your statement, Cabinet Secretary. Like many of the respondents to the consultation paper, I am generally supportive of the intent behind your White Paper. I fully support the intention to introduce a legal duty of candour that will extend to other parts of the health and social care system, the same codes of conduct that apply to doctors and nurses. This will also ensure that...
Caroline Jones: Thank you for your statement, Cabinet Secretary. We in UKIP Wales welcome your announcement of £3 million in support of Wales's brightest and most talented pupils. It is important to nurture talent and identify who our brightest pupils are at the earliest possible stage. So, because this needs to be done earlier than at sixth-form level it is a good initiative for the Seren network to embark...
Caroline Jones: Cabinet Secretary, the backlog of road repairs is having a detrimental effect on the people in my region, South Wales West. One of my constituents is unable to take his wheelchair-bound wife out because of the state of the pavements around their home. When he called the council, they simply said that he was at the bottom of a very long list of repairs. So, how does your Government plan to...
Caroline Jones: Diolch, Dirprwy Lywydd. Leader of the house, Wales is facing a huge demographic shift in the near future, with the number of over-65s set to rocket, and the number of those of working age set to plummet. This presents enormous challenges for public services, particularly health and social care. Increased use of digital technologies can help address these problems, but only if we have the...
Caroline Jones: Thank you for that answer, leader of the house, because I was coming on to telemedicine, which is fast becoming a solution for healthcare in rural areas and widely seen as a solution to the shortages that we have in primary care. Unfortunately, those same rural areas are poorly provisioned in both broadband and mobile reception. So, if we are to address health inequalities in rural parts of...
Caroline Jones: Thank you, once again, for those answers, leader of the house. Our digital infrastructure depends not only upon cables and radio transmitters, but also highly trained personnel, particularly in cyber security and data management. Cyber attacks and data centre outages have wreaked havoc on the NHS in recent times, highlighting the fact that computer scientists are as vital to our NHS as the...
Caroline Jones: 7. Will the Leader of the House outline how the Welsh Government plans to improve support for victims of domestic abuse? OAQ51794
Caroline Jones: Thank you for that answer, leader of the house. However, victims of domestic abuse in Wales are being turned away from some refuges due to lack of space, and funding changes imposed by the UK Government threaten the closure of many refuges across the country. What is your Government doing to protect refuges in Wales, and how will you increase the number of available spaces?
Caroline Jones: Thank you very much, Simon, for raising this important issue on electrical charging points on the Assembly estate. Following our previous commitment to install charging points, it’s my pleasure to confirm that this work is ongoing in order to put in place the charging points on the Assembly estate by the end of March 2018. There are currently a small number of EV users on the estate, and we...
Caroline Jones: I thank the Member for his positive response and I hope that we can progress from here. When we did the survey, there was only one person who had an electric vehicle, so we are now implementing two power points that will, hopefully, encourage us to lessen the carbon footprint and we can look further. When we see the response to having these points in place, we can then look forward to...
Caroline Jones: Will the Leader of the House outline the Welsh Government's plans to improve Wales's digital infrastructure?
Caroline Jones: First Minister, many local authorities appear to be struggling to meet their obligations under the Social Services and Well-being Act (Wales) 2014. For example, many carers across the country have not received carer assessments. The end of the independent living grant places additional pressures on local authority social services. First Minister, can you guarantee that those in receipt of the...
Caroline Jones: Thank you for your statement, Cabinet Secretary. The past weekend highlighted just what amazing people we have working in our NHS and the wider health and social care sector: doctors and nurses doing double shifts, GPs sleeping in their surgeries, staff walking miles in blizzard conditions, all to ensure that patients continued to receive world-class care, despite sub-zero temperatures and...
Caroline Jones: Cabinet Secretary, the education improvement grant is there to assist the regional consortia to improve the outcomes for all learners. My region is home to the best comprehensive school in Wales, Pontarddulais, but it is also home to one of the worst-performing schools, just a few miles down the road. So, how does your Government plan to eliminate such huge disparity in attainment within...
Caroline Jones: 2. Will the Cabinet Secretary outline the action the Welsh Government is taking to develop the life sciences sector in Wales? OAQ51861
Caroline Jones: Thank you. Cabinet Secretary, I want to congratulate you on the work you are doing with the pharmaceutical sector in Wales, and welcome the announcement you made earlier today at the BioWales 2018 conference. The future of the pharmaceutical sector in Wales is not in the manufacturing of drugs but in the researching of new medicines. What is your Government doing to support increased links...
Caroline Jones: I would like to thank the Petitions Committee for their work on this petition, everyone who signed it and RSPCA Cymru for leading on the petition. I fully support the petition, as do nearly three quarters of the Welsh public. The use of wild animals for human pleasure is barbaric and needs to be outlawed as soon as possible. Thankfully, just two circuses in the UK have wild animal licenses,...
Caroline Jones: Thank you for your statement, Cabinet Secretary, and thank you to the individuals who have suffered and campaigned avidly on this topic. I welcome the appointment of Mr Justice Langstaff and the fact that he will be a full-time chair of the inquiry. The contaminated blood scandal is one of the darkest periods in the history of our NHS. The fact that people who sought help from the health...
