Vaughan Gething: Thank you. There is a need for a further development of primary care provision within Llanharan. There are significant housing developments planned in the area. Although there is sufficient primary care capacity at present, as those housing developments progress, more capacity will inevitably be needed, and I recognise the Member's long-standing interest in this issue.
Vaughan Gething: The Government never had a plan to close A&E consultant-led services; the health board had to deal with the reality of not being able to recruit staff. It is a matter of success for us all that the health board has successfully recruited sufficient doctors, including consultants, to make sure that that service recovers. And, actually, I should say that seeing other Members from across the Cwm...
Vaughan Gething: Thank you. Cwm Taf Morgannwg continues to respond with agility and innovation to the demand and pressure of the pandemic to maintain and improve health services. The health board is planning for the continued provision of essential and key services alongside caring for patients affected by COVID-19. And the Member will be aware of the Rhondda cluster of GPs and the way that they have managed...
Vaughan Gething: Well, I think you're asking a number of different questions there, so I'll try to deal with where we are with the implementation plan first and its relationship to the cancer quality statement. The implementation plans will have to set out how they'll meet the outcomes and standards that we have set out in the quality statement, and that's the point. So, every health board will have to set...
Vaughan Gething: Well, we have actually already started on the path of improving outcomes for people with cancer. If you look at not just the numbers but improving outcomes in Wales, we've kept pace with other parts of the UK, and, bearing in mind that Wales is an older, poorer part of the UK, you would expect to see a potential gap in that improvement in outcomes. That shows the progress we've made. You'll...
Vaughan Gething: We published 'Health and Social Care in Wales COVID-19: Looking Forward' on Monday 22 March, and the Member's already referred to that document. That sets out the approach the NHS will take to recovering services such as cancer. We've also published a quality statement for cancer that sets out the scope for continued improvement to cancer services in the years ahead. And this probably will be...
Vaughan Gething: I'm happy to say that I've discussed the matter with the constituency Member for Llanelli, my Government colleague, Lee Waters, and more broadly the challenge of investing in communities across the country. And it's a good example of how local health and care services can and should be drawn together to deliver better quality facilities, to invest within that community and to deliver better...
Vaughan Gething: Well, on the specific issues around Black and Asian origin communities here in Wales, we've done quite a lot in recognising our need to improve our services, whether that's mental health or physical health. We've learnt even more and are doing even more work through the pandemic—for example, the work of Professor Emmanuel Ogbonna in understanding more about those inequalities, the work of...
Vaughan Gething: Yes, and I think the Royal College of Physicians report is a useful reminder of the need to have cross-Government action, because most healthcare inequalities don't come from healthcare activity, they come from those determinants outside. It's why, for example, the World Health Organization has recognised the direct healthcare impact of our improvements in housing quality. The reality that...
Vaughan Gething: It is a central ambition of this Government to do everything we can to address unacceptable inequalities in health outcomes between our most and least well-off communities. We will continue to take a whole-Government approach to tackling the root causes of health inequalities.
Vaughan Gething: I think it's a rather foolish attempt to try to rewrite history on what's happened with the health service and funding and public services. I remember as a young man growing up with 18 years of the Conservatives in Government in the UK. I remember the creation of devolution, I remember the significant injection of public funds into health and other public services that came about with the...
Vaughan Gething: At the start of the pandemic, health and care and wider public services were still recovering from a decade of austerity and you'll recall the very difficult choices that the Government and Members in supporting budgets have had to make in moving money around. The prioritisation of the health service I believe was the right thing, but that caused real difficulties for local government in...
Vaughan Gething: Well, I think there are lots of lessons to learn, not just from what we're having to do today and in the days ahead around Holyhead—not the whole of the county of Anglesey, but around Holyhead, and the same in parts of Merthyr. We also have learning to take from the pilot that was undertaken with the three local authorities across Cwm Taf Morgannwg with a greater amount of community...
Vaughan Gething: With respect, I don't think we are at the point where COVID is now managed and endemic. I think that's where we will get to, but I don't think we're there yet. As I said, when critical care is still operating at over 100 per cent of its capacity, and we still have significant numbers of COVID-positive patients in our hospitals, we're not there yet. But I do think we're well on track to do so,...
Vaughan Gething: Well, the Royal College of Surgeons were at the meeting that I described with clinical leaders and actually the guidance that they've issued has been helpful in allowing some activity to continue in different parts of Wales, but it reflects the reality of where we are on the ground with, not just COVID, but with other harms that are coming in. Because I think part of this is, you're right...
Vaughan Gething: Well, those plans and detail have been worked through with clinical leaders. I was very fortunate to have a really useful conversation with clinical leaders and the NHS chief exec last week, and we went through the deliberate ways we're trying to change where we are. So, when the plan talks about needing to change some of our ways of working, it recognises that we can't go back to trying to...
Vaughan Gething: Well, I think the Member's points are broadly absurd. When it comes to the position about the referendums and our past, actually Brexit has been and done and we're out of the European Union whether we like it or not. That's the reality of where we are, and it will have an impact on our ability to recruit from current European Union member states. And I don't share the Member's view that this...
Vaughan Gething: I completely agree, and the Member's right to point out that Welsh Labour have actually done the hard yards in Government to expand medical education and training opportunities in north Wales. We've done that successfully. It's a clear, headline, direct manifesto pledge: if you vote Welsh Labour, then we will see through to a successful conclusion a medical school in north Wales—more...
Vaughan Gething: Thank you for the question. I think it's time to put the record straight on some of the allegations made by not just this, but the regular Conservative Members. Before the pandemic, we saw the best waiting times position in six years, until the year before the pandemic. We then saw not just in Wales, but in every part of the UK a decline as a direct consequence of tax and pension changes...
Vaughan Gething: Yes. In June 2020, I created a task and finish group to explore the feasibility of proposals put forward by Bangor University and Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board for a north Wales school for medical and health sciences. This work has now progressed to the development of a full business case, and, as you'll know, my party has pledged in the forthcoming election to see that to a...
