Baroness Mair Eluned Morgan: Formally.
Baroness Mair Eluned Morgan: Thank you very much. In terms of the booster, I'm pleased to say that, on the seventeenth of this month, 471,488 people had received the booster. We have a target of 75 per cent. I'm pleased to say that, if you're in a care home, we're up to 74 per cent already. So, that is well on the way to our target. We are somewhat concerned about staff working in care homes and staff working in the...
Baroness Mair Eluned Morgan: Thank you very much, Russell. We have, throughout the pandemic, been following the advice of the JCVI, which, as you know, is embedded in science and a clinically led approach, and we will continue to do that. Obviously, if there are times when we need to work at pace, they have also demonstrated, during the pandemic, that they can also work at pace. I think we'd have to have quite a good...
Baroness Mair Eluned Morgan: The framework commits to building a core immunisation resource in health boards. It changes governance structures to ensure that there is appropriate, integrated oversight and management of all vaccination programmes and work streams to transform the digital infrastructure for vaccination, which presents huge opportunities for services and citizens. Another significant commitment within the...
Baroness Mair Eluned Morgan: Diolch yn fawr. Today, I am publishing our new national immunisation framework. Vaccination has long been a critical part of NHS Wales's delivery to protect our citizens and our communities. The pandemic required us to think differently about the deployment of vaccination, in particular the need to maximise uptake and to ensure equity. We must learn these lessons and apply them to our future...
Baroness Mair Eluned Morgan: In last week's cancer conference, health boards were eager to accept the offer of the Wales Cancer Alliance for resources and support for patients waiting on cancer pathways. More generally, our programme for transforming and modernising care was planned and published in April of this year, and it notes that we will develop and establish a prehabilitation programme to improve outcomes. So,...
Baroness Mair Eluned Morgan: Diolch yn fawr. Thank you to Altaf Hussain, who is my secret special adviser in the NHS, for bringing forward this short debate and for his recent invitation to Cwm Taf Morgannwg to meet with clinicians delivering those prehabilitation services. I very much look forward to our joint visit next month. I recognise how important it is to help people get ready for their cancer treatment and for...
Baroness Mair Eluned Morgan: So, just to be clear, the petition calls for better collection of data on metastatic cancer, and I hope that the petitioners will be pleased to hear that I've approved additional funding to introduce a national clinical audit of metastatic breast cancer in Wales. Providing a better service in terms of planning data is one of the reasons why we're investing £11 million in a new cancer...
Baroness Mair Eluned Morgan: We have noted our broader approach in the quality statement for cancer. The statement includes an expectation that the cancer workforce will be planned to meet the anticipated demand, particularly in clinical and medical oncology, specialist cancer nurses, physical medicine, radiographers and therapeutics. We are now working with the health service through the planning and accountability...
Baroness Mair Eluned Morgan: Specialist clinicians in the Wales Cancer Network have also noted how patients should be treated across Wales in a pathway that's agreed at a national level. Next year, we will introduce a national clinical audit of metastatic breast cancer services in order to help improve the care that people receive.
Baroness Mair Eluned Morgan: Diolch yn fawr, Dirprwy Lywydd. Thank you to the Petitions Committee for bringing forward this debate during Breast Cancer Awareness Month. I'd like to welcome the petitioners to the Chamber, Tassia in particular, and others who have campaigned so vigorously on this matter. I'd like to thank the Chair of petitions, Jack Sargeant, and also the chair of the cross-party group on cancer, David...
Baroness Mair Eluned Morgan: Thank you very much.
Baroness Mair Eluned Morgan: Thank you. Rhun, you asked about hospital beds. Well, we've got considerably more hospital beds in Wales, according to the Nuffield Trust, than they do in England. There are 270 beds per 100,000 in Wales; 170 beds per 100,000 in England. But what we're keen to do is to make sure that we get into that reablement space that you talked about. It's not just about hospital beds, it's about...
Baroness Mair Eluned Morgan: Gareth, I would absolutely love to do that, that is absolutely our ambition as a Government, it's in our manifesto, that's what we want to see, it's just that your Government has just made that a hell of a lot more difficult. We've just had a £207 million bill for energy that we weren't expecting, and we've got a bit of a rebate from the UK Government—maybe £100 million—but that leaves...
Baroness Mair Eluned Morgan: I'll take an intervention.
Baroness Mair Eluned Morgan: Of course.
Baroness Mair Eluned Morgan: Altaf, you'll understand that the real challenge is not actually infrastructure, it's staffing. So, that's the issue, and we know that the staffing issue is something that is challenging everywhere, but particularly social care. So, we want people to go home, we want that support in the community, and we're having difficulty with recruitment. Part of that difficulty in recruitment, I think we...
Baroness Mair Eluned Morgan: Diolch yn fawr. I welcome the report, and I'd like to commend the committee on its really thorough approach to the review. The report explores a wide spectrum of areas that can impact patient flow through our hospitals, and ultimately on to discharge and recovery. What we've heard today is how complex the situation is. It has got to be a whole-system approach, because unless we do it as a...
Baroness Mair Eluned Morgan: Okay, so, when you write a law, you've got to comply with the law, and if the law says, 'You've got have x many nurses in a particular ward', you've got to comply with that law. If you can't do that because you don’t have the nurses, you're in breach of the law. So, what's the point of writing a law that you know you can't comply with? And at the moment, it's really difficult for us to...
Baroness Mair Eluned Morgan: Thank you very much. This is an area that I have asked my officials to focus on. It's difficult to do it, because, as you can imagine, in terms of retention, if you have 1,000 people off sick with COVID, what are you going to do to fill those vacancies? How are you going to take the pressure off those people who have to make up for that sick leave? And if we don't use agency nurses, then the...
