Jenny Rathbone: Thank you, Minister, for your honest statement and also for your achievements, despite everything that you're having to do in the health field. I just wanted to share with Members the discussion that took place in the women's health cross-party group in December, where we discussed the five gynae cancers. One of the speakers was a completely excellent patient campaigner who you may have heard...
Jenny Rathbone: Darren Millar and Tom Giffard make some important points about the level of engagement with the whole population. I think it's really important that we have that conversation, but that we ensure that all parts of the population are involved where possible. There are three issues that the interim report highlights that are really not working at the moment: policing and justice, rail...
Jenny Rathbone: Given reports that UK Government Ministers may relax rules for foreign students, to allow them to work more hours, does the Minister have any plans to discuss this with the UK Government, so that foreign students who want to work can help fill the labour shortage experienced by Cardiff's hospitality industry?
Jenny Rathbone: Thank you. Following the budget scrutiny that took place in the Equality and Social Justice Committee, I wrote to the Minister for Social Justice to ask how much of the capital allocation for the Gypsy and Traveller sites—£3.7 million in this current financial year—had been spent. Unfortunately, the Minister has responded that none of it has been spent, and none is forecast to be spent...
Jenny Rathbone: Thank you, Trefnydd. You won't be surprised to know that I am focusing on our food and vegetable supplies. I'm acutely aware that only twice in the last three months have I been able to obtain the boxes of fruit and vegetables that I want to give to our local food bank. That reflects the lack of affordable food that is reaching the wholesale market, on which all the independent retailers,...
Jenny Rathbone: 4. What is the Welsh Government doing to strengthen food security in Wales? OQ59061
Jenny Rathbone: Thank you for that. Would you agree, though, that not every one of our constituents needs to see a GP? They can see the pharmacist, they can see the nurse, and if they've got diabetes they're much better off with a diabetes service. So, it really isn't about salaried or not salaried GPs, but that's an important discussion.
Jenny Rathbone: —just to complete on this, Deputy Presiding Officer—is that we are now using the electronic scheduling system that was tested in the pilot in Cwm Taf and elsewhere, so that we know exactly who is going to do what, all done by algorithm, as well as capturing the caseloads that are being managed in that community so we know exactly what resources we need to put into my constituency in...
Jenny Rathbone: Yes.
Jenny Rathbone: Okay. It would be useful to know which health board, but, anyway, I'm sure you can tell the Minister after this debate. I really think that both the Conservatives and Plaid, who say they want to find more money to pay the nurses, need to say which bit of our budget we are going to raid in order to do that, unless there is movement from the UK Government who control the purse strings. Now, a...
Jenny Rathbone: Unallocated? Well, I think it's not useful to continue that line of enquiry, simply because I haven't read what you've produced and we can have that debate another day. But the reason why have vacancy levels is—. The fact that we have vacancy levels is serious, but the sole point of interest to me is to explore a bit further the point made by Heledd, which is a hospital in the South Wales...
Jenny Rathbone: Yes.
Jenny Rathbone: Well, I haven't seen it, and we haven't had the opportunity to look at it, and there are no new ideas in anything that you said, Rhun. You want us to pay NHS staff more, and I absolutely agree that they deserve to be paid more, but you say nothing about where we're going to get it. Is it because we've got some Roneo machine in Cathays Park?
Jenny Rathbone: Yes.
Jenny Rathbone: Thank you, Llywydd. Well, it's 25 January today, and it feels like the twenty-fifth iteration of the debate by the opposition on what we should be doing but we're not doing in the NHS. But any real insights into what we should be doing seems to be lacking. It always just seems to be like groundhog day. So, I thought it was a really poor introduction by Rhun ap Iorwerth. As the health...
Jenny Rathbone: Will you take an intervention?
Jenny Rathbone: I appreciate the work you're doing in the Petitions Committee, and I know you investigate the background to any petition. So, in the work that you probably will do, once you close the petition, could you investigate whether any swimming pools in Wales are actually operating with renewable energy? Because obviously, if they're not, they are going to be hugely vulnerable.
Jenny Rathbone: I completely agree it's a disaster for the 730 staff who are employed there, but I think we have to ask some hard questions about this company as well, because in the past, as you said, Minister, there has been a serious outbreak of COVID, and eight years ago there were serious allegations of breaches of environmental health standards, which, when investigated by the Food Standards Agency,...
Jenny Rathbone: I don't doubt what you're saying about Ieuan Evans being an excellent individual, but I'm just wondering whether, on his own, he's going to be able to turn this around. Because it's over a year ago that Amanda Blanc warned in her resignation speech that there was a time bomb of sexism and racism in the WRU, which has now exploded. So, in the light of the damage done to Wales, to our...
Jenny Rathbone: Thank you, Minister. We both attended the Royal National Institute of Blind People event last week here in the Senedd, and we heard patients from four different health boards provide a catalogue of woe about their struggle to get the services that they need and deserve. These testimonies were backed up by a recent survey by the RNIB, which indicated that one in three blind or partially...
