Vaughan Gething: Thank you for the series of questions. I would like to acknowledge the good news on smoking, in particular, although it’s not fair to say that it’s simply a direct correlation with e-cigarette use. As I said earlier, a part of the issue is that there are more and more young people becoming adults who don’t smoke, and that really does affect smoking prevalence rates—a really welcome...
Vaughan Gething: Thank you for those particular points and questions. On the selling of school playing fields, this is a Government that is investing in the infrastructure of our school estates, and I’ve visited a whole number of areas where we’re actually seeing an improvement in people’s ability to use outdoor space in particular for physical activity and recreation. There’s no excuse to be given...
Vaughan Gething: Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I’m grateful to Plaid Cymru for bringing forward this debate and for the generally constructive manner in which Members across parties have engaged. In Wales, we recognise that more than a quarter of our population are over 50, and this is due to rise by more than a third in the next 20 years. Inevitably, our ageing population will increase demand and...
Vaughan Gething: Thank you, Chair. I formally move the motion for debate, and I’m pleased to present the Welsh Government’s second delivery plan in support of our 10-year mental health strategy, ‘Together for Mental Health’. Since the launch of the strategy in 2012, there’s been significant progress across a number of areas. Much of that progress can, of course, go largely unnoticed, but every day...
Vaughan Gething: I’ll briefly deal with the amendment now. The Government has no problem with the amendment and will support it. I acknowledge that an integrated demand and capacity planning model to understand where services should be provided or modernised where resources are allocated is helpful, and I don’t see this approach as being in any way contradictory or an alternative to a ring fence that sets...
Vaughan Gething: Thank you, Presiding Officer. I’d like to thank Members for the constructive manner in which everyone’s engaged in today’s debate, and also for this Chamber continuing to prioritise issues around mental health. I’ll try and deal with a range of the comments. I’m pleased that so many people spoke and made so many points, but I won’t have time to deal with all of them. As I said...
Vaughan Gething: I’ll just finish this point. That was taken forward in the recent Together for Children and Young People programme, and the conference that I spoke to remotely—I couldn’t attend there on the day. This is something we have to work through at both ends is the point that I’m trying to make. I don’t mind who intervenes first. [Interruption.] Well, Angela Burns I heard first, and then...
Vaughan Gething: I think there’s a point about seeing the whole person, rather than one particular condition, but if you write to me on that particular issue, I can offer something more helpful on it. I’ll try and make some progress. Again, the UKIP spokesperson made a number of constructive points. The only thing that I would say in particular is, on the call for more money, I have indicated we’re...
Vaughan Gething: As I said, we announced significant additional investment last year of £7.65 million, and I indicated that in my opening remarks as well. So, I don’t accept that there has been a reduction in funding for CAMHS; that isn’t the challenge that we face. In fact, we wouldn’t have been able to recruit new people into the service to do something about addressing long waiting times—certainly...
Vaughan Gething: Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. In our manifesto, we made a commitment to improve the introduction of innovative treatments by establishing a new treatment fund in Wales. We also agreed with Plaid Cymru, as part of the compact to move Wales forward, to undertake an independent review of the individual patient funding request process, otherwise known as IPFR. In Wales, we are proud to...
Vaughan Gething: Can I thank you for that series of questions? I’ll start with the new treatment fund. We expect the financial envelope that we have announced and placed upon it to be adequate to deal with the medications we would expect. That’s based on our previous experience and some horizon scanning of likely treatments that can come on board and the high-cost medications we’ve dealt with in the...
Vaughan Gething: Thank you for the questions and comments. Again, I’m pleased for the constructive manner in which you have engaged in the conversation, and your welcome for the review. The IPFR review is exactly that: it is a review. I’m not asking people to sign up to what comes from it. The report will have recommendations. I’m just going to deal first with your point about the practical delivery. I...
Vaughan Gething: Thank you for that, again, constructive contribution and also for the conversations that we’ve had with other spokespeople leading up to today. Again, I welcome the recognition about the IPFR review, that it’s the right thing to be doing. The one point of disagreement I have is about the cancer drugs fund saving lives. We don’t have any evidence that the cancer drugs fund saved lives....
Vaughan Gething: Thank you for the question. I’m pleased with the significant progress made by the Welsh Ambulance Services NHS Trust in implementing the organisational changes to the service recommended by the McClelland review. In May, the target for responses to the red category of the most life-threatening emergencies had been met or exceeded for the eighth month in a row with 75.5 per cent being...
Vaughan Gething: Thank you for the question. I think it is important to try and understand how best to deal with concerns people raise when ringing call handlers. I can’t speak for every other emergency service and the way they deal with matters—of course, one of them is not currently devolved—but I do expect that, in examining all the information of the ambulance quality indicators and looking at the...
Vaughan Gething: Yes. Thank you for the question. You make a completely fair point about how we encourage and equip the public to make more informed choices, to access healthcare appropriately so that if you don’t need the precious resource of an emergency ambulance response, there are other alternatives available to you and how you access those is easily understood and available. So, there is more work...
Vaughan Gething: I expect to see further improvements in response times in every single health board area—
Vaughan Gething: And I expect, when we see the next series of quality indicators in the next quarterly report at the end of July, that you’ll see I’m optimistic that Hywel Dda will have hit its response times, because it hasn’t always done so at the start of the pilot. This was part of the recognition of where we are. Across the whole of Wales, we’re hitting the target. The challenge is, in those...
Vaughan Gething: I thank the Member for the question. I am encouraged to see further improvements in performance against the four-hour target and a reduction in lengthy waits during May. Despite daily attendances rising by 8 per cent when compared with the previous month, eight out of 10 patients spent fewer than eight hours in emergency departments from arrival until admission, transfer or discharge. I have...
Vaughan Gething: Thank you for the question. I think it’s fair to say we need a whole-system response to the challenges that are being faced. So, it’s about: how are people conveyed to an emergency department, going back to Dawn Bowden's question earlier, to ensure people make an informed choice about what to do? It’s also about how primary care have tooled up to deal with unscheduled care, to make sure...
