Vaughan Gething: I welcome the health boards’ commitment to jointly lead this collaboration, working closely with university and local authority partners. The Welsh Government has provided £1.2 million to support this innovative new collaboration, which has made good progress during the last year.
Vaughan Gething: I refer to the answer I gave to WAQ72042—that we are currently reviewing the guidance and associated regulations relating to the charging of overseas patients healthcare.
Vaughan Gething: My priority is to provide the people of west Wales with health services that deliver the best possible outcomes for patients. We will be guided by the best and most up-to-date clinical evidence and advice to deliver high-quality care that the people of west Wales deserve.
Vaughan Gething: Last week, I announced a £95 million funding package to support a wide range of education and training programmes for healthcare professionals. This included a 13 per cent increase in nurse training places, a 40 per cent increase in midwifery training places and enables more than 3,000 new students to undertake study in Wales.
Vaughan Gething: We recognise how important community pharmacies are in all parts of Wales. We will continue to invest in strengthening the role of community pharmacies as an integral part of a modernised primary and community care team.
Vaughan Gething: I recognise the vital role midwives play in supporting women through their childbirth experience. On 20 February, I announced a £95 million funding package to support education and training programmes for healthcare professionals, which included a 40 per cent increase in midwifery training places. This is the highest level of midwifery training places commissioned since devolution.
Vaughan Gething: Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. On 13 February this year, I published the updated stroke delivery plan. This plan reaffirms our continued commitment for all people of all ages to have the lowest possible risk of having a stroke. When stroke does occur, we want people to have an excellent chance of surviving and returning to independence as quickly as possible. The delivery plan sets out...
Vaughan Gething: Thank you for that series of questions. I recognise what you had to say at the start about new technology, but I don’t think the better treatment that you refer to is a simple matter of accident, or that it’s inevitable. Those are deliberate choices that our clinicians are making. And actually, bringing together the stroke delivery plan and the implementation group has actually helped to...
Vaughan Gething: Thank you for the series of questions. I wouldn’t say that your questions spin from you; I’ve got to say they flow from you. I wouldn’t want to have any adverse—[Inaudible.]—about spin at this point in time. But I recognise the points that you make on a range of different improvement measures, and in particular the significant additional risk measures for some groups within our...
Vaughan Gething: Thank you for the very particular comments and questions. I, too, enjoyed, and learnt a lot at the visit to Bryncethin. I learn an awful lot when going around meeting front-line staff, and I’m robustly confident that in the last two weeks I’ve now met more than 100 front-line staff within the ambulance service, and they’ve all been very honest with me on what they think has worked, and,...
Vaughan Gething: I thank you for the broad welcome for the work that is being undertaken, and, in particular, for the recognition of the significant number of strokes that are preventable. Depending on which particular piece of research you look at, 70 to 75 per cent of strokes are preventable because they are down to lifestyle choices and behaviours. I don’t think we’re ever going to get to a point where...
Vaughan Gething: I’ll deal with the last point first. We haven’t taken an approach of saying there are specific conditions where we’ll think, in particular in ‘Together for Mental Health’, about the mental health needs of that individual, because I think the challenge will be, we could easily parcel up money and activities in a way that would actually dissipate our resource, rather than add to it....
Vaughan Gething: Formally.
Vaughan Gething: Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I’d like to thank Members for tabling a debate on this important and wide-ranging topic. I’m happy to confirm the Government supports all of the amendments. We launched the Healthy Child Wales programme in October last year, for all children and their families, to improve health, social and educational development and long-term physical, mental and...
Vaughan Gething: Thank you for the question. The servers were provided by a third-party company named Landauer. They informed Velindre NHS Trust on 17 January 2017 that they had been subject to cybersecurity attack on 6 October 2016 and that staff information had been accessed. Landauer has confirmed that the breach occurred on its UK servers at its headquarters in Oxfordshire, and full details of the...
Vaughan Gething: Thank you for that series of questions. Presiding Officer, it might be of help to confirm that I will issue a written statement to Members during the course of this week to provide some fuller detail, which I don’t think we’ll be able to deal with in today’s urgent question. I appreciate that a number of Members will have a range of questions and interests for their own constituents....
Vaughan Gething: There are transparently serious consequences that flow from the data breach, and, for example, the national insurance numbers were used in order to have a unique identifier for individuals, because this is about tracking the individual’s exposure to radiation. So, you need a unique identifier, and there are challenges to review, again, how that is done. I also accept that there are...
Vaughan Gething: I do try to be constructive in response, Presiding Officer, but I think that much of what was just said was deeply unhelpful. The accusation that the NHS cannot be trusted with information and then trying to draw a link between a data breach from a criminal act, where, of course, we want to ensure that cybersecurity on sensitive information is appropriate and up-to-date, as far as possible,...
Vaughan Gething: I thank the Member for pointing out the balance to be struck in ensuring that people are informed as soon as possible and, at the same time, that there is accuracy in those people that are informed. You’re right; over 3,000 NHS staff have been affected, but there are a number of people outside the NHS affected as well. I do think that other health organisations could look at what Velindre...
Vaughan Gething: I thank the Member for the series of questions. I believe that the figures published are accurate. They identify the—. Our understanding is that over 4,700 staff in Wales had their data stolen from the server of the private contractor—as I say, from their servers based in Oxfordshire. I’m not aware of those affected in Scotland or in England. Those are matters for colleagues in the UK...
