Rhun ap Iorwerth: It's not nice watching Wales playing catch-up again; it's the second time in health in two days with that announcement from Jeremy Hunt about the opening of five medical schools in England yesterday. I look forward to us catching up with that eventually. Plaid Cymru, of course, on the pay cap issue, have long made it clear that we believe that the pay cap should have been raised previously,...
Rhun ap Iorwerth: I would like to ask for two statements, if I may—the first from the Minister for Environment on the response to the flooding in Anglesey in November. One of the most important action points to be taken in the case of the Llangefni floods, certainly, was that monitoring should now happen in order to understand how the river Cefni behaves so that we can plan flood prevention measures for the...
Rhun ap Iorwerth: As much as in any discussion that we’ve had, I think that Angela Burns and I have thought along exactly the same lines, in terms of the questions arising from this statement, but I’m sure that there are a couple of things left that we would wish to ask. I’d like to thank the team chaired by the CMO that did this very important work, because it is an important area. We have seen, through...
Rhun ap Iorwerth: I was very pleased that the Welsh Government had agreed to support a Plaid Cymru amendment to the public health Bill recently, which means that a strategy to tackle obesity is being developed at the moment. Now, given that we know that obesity can lead to type 2 diabetes, and that diabetes takes up so much of the funding of the health service—as much as 10 per cent of all the money spent on...
Rhun ap Iorwerth: Thank you. I'm grateful to you, Dirprwy Lywydd, for allowing me a moment or two, or just a moment perhaps to be more accurate—[Laughter.]—just with a quick word and a question in relation to electric vehicles. We discussed the regulation of vehicles and limiting traffic and bringing in speed limits as if we have no intention of tackling the prevalence of the internal combustion engine....
Rhun ap Iorwerth: Thank you. I’m in close contact with campaigners who are very concerned about consultations on the closure of a number of rural schools on Anglesey. I do understand the pressure on the council and I would like you to consider one element of those pressures, namely that one set of your officials, to all intents and purposes, is promoting the closure of rural schools by suggesting that...
Rhun ap Iorwerth: Thank you, Llywydd. Cabinet Secretary, England and Scotland publish data regularly on cancelled surgery. Is there any reason why you don’t do that for Wales?
Rhun ap Iorwerth: It is something that concerns my constituents. In January, you apologised for cancelled surgery, saying, at that point, that is was the onset of winter, which came from somewhere, that was to blame. But surgery is still being cancelled week on week. I’ve had a number of constituents coming to see me recently to tell me about treatments being cancelled not once, not twice, not three times,...
Rhun ap Iorwerth: You talk about patients cancelling their own operations, and it is something that we hear from you and your Government quite often, that it's often the patient's fault for turning up in hospital when they shouldn't and for being ill perhaps when they shouldn't. I can tell you about stories of people having their operation cancelled when they're on the trolley at the door of the theatre, and...
Rhun ap Iorwerth: Will you take an intervention?
Rhun ap Iorwerth: Thank you for giving way. I'm a republican myself, but as a monarchist, would you not recognise that perhaps the person most embarrassed by all of this is the Prince of Wales?
Rhun ap Iorwerth: Another sign of the pressure on primary care was when those figures last week showed the number of GPs working full-time in our primary care surgeries in Wales hitting a low of more than 10 years. And, I'm sorry, but I'm not as relaxed as you are about that. You said again today, as we've heard from Government in the past, 'Don't worry about the number of full-time GPs; we've got plenty of...
Rhun ap Iorwerth: 4. What legal advice has the Counsel General provided to the Welsh Government regarding the debate on the Permanent Secretary's inquiry report held on Wednesday 18 April 2018? OAQ52087
Rhun ap Iorwerth: Thank you for that response. The record will show, of course, that the Assembly didn’t actually cede to the threat of legal challenge at that time, and indeed that the Government didn’t proceed with launching that legal challenge. The Government argued, and you argued at the time, that a dangerous precedent would be established here. But the truth is that there is plenty of precedent in...
Rhun ap Iorwerth: Can I have a point of order? A point of order under Standing Order 13.9. I heard an accusation made a few minutes ago that there had been behaviour tantamount to racism in this Chamber. Now, we don't know who that is targeted at, but it tars all of us. Could we have a judgment from the Llywydd on that, please?
Rhun ap Iorwerth: Diolch yn fawr iawn. I'll begin on that point: we have come a long way. It's an argument that Mick Antoniw also made, and certainly when it comes to clause 11, we certainly started off in a very dodgy station on this particular journey, and there's no doubt that as the journey moved on, we moved to a better place. But I cannot feel any other way than to see that the Government has decided...
Rhun ap Iorwerth: Thank you for your statement today, Cabinet Secretary, but you've read, I'm sure, the statement issued by the Tawel Fan families group in response to the HASCAS report's publication: 'we cannot and will not accept the findings', they say. They say that what they've read in this report doesn't stack up compared with all else that has gone before it—the experiences of the families...
Rhun ap Iorwerth: May I thank the Cabinet Secretary for the statement? And I thank those women as well who showed such bravery and commitment in working tirelessly, as you said, to underline this issue. And, yes, women have suffered complications that have changed their lives. I welcome elements in the report relating to several elements of this: the need to work proactively on the preventative aspect to...
Rhun ap Iorwerth: The report highlights that some women, having described their symptoms, were dismissed by medical professionals who had wrongly ascribed symptoms to normal post-operative pain, perhaps. Many women felt they were patronised as a result of that, describing their battles, frankly, to be taken seriously. And this isn't the first time that we've seen this kind of thing; we remember, back in the...
Rhun ap Iorwerth: 1. Will the Cabinet Secretary make a statement on how planning policy considers the local market in permitting housing developments? OAQ52146
