6. What measures is the Welsh Government planning to implement in order to tackle A&E waiting times across South Wales Central? OAQ(5)0006(HWS)

I expect health boards to work with their partners to ensure people have timely access to emergency care services when they need them. The national programme for unscheduled care is driving a whole-system approach to facilitate sustainable change and improvement for unscheduled health and care services across Wales.

Thank you for that answer, Cabinet Secretary. In March, the A&E waiting times showed that 380 people had waited 12 hours or more at the University Hospital of Wales, as opposed to 111 people in January. Clearly, these figures are clearly very disturbing, and despite what you’ve just said in your first answer to me, something is going very much amiss in the delivery of A&E services here in Cardiff. What certainty can you give that those figures will not continue to go up and that, actually, people will be seen within the Welsh Government’s own targets and that we can have confidence that when we do go into the winter, the winter pressure scenario will not exacerbate these figures that I’ve just quoted to you already?

Thank you for the follow-up question. I expect that when figures are published for April, we’ll see a further improvement on 12-hour waits, and Cardiff and Vale University Local Health Board have actually done a relatively good job in driving down the number of 12-hour waits. They know, from my own point of view, that I expect to see further progress made so that there are fewer and fewer people waiting 12 hours in any of our hospitals here in Cardiff and Vale. So, progress made, but much more progress still needed to do, I think is the point.

It’s important to me that the system is in balance before we head into winter. I don’t want to see an unscheduled care system that has not recovered and is not in a stable place before we get into the winter months and inevitable winter pressure. We all know that, right across the UK family, winter pressures mean that there are changes in the numbers of people coming in and the acuity of people coming in to our unscheduled care system and the length of time it often takes to treat those people as well. We’re not uniquely facing a challenge in that sense, but it’s not just about A&E: it’s about what takes place within the community to avoid people coming into an A&E unit in the first place, and also, on delayed transfers of care, making it so that people are able to leave the hospital when it’s appropriate for them to do so as well. So, that whole-system approach has to be looked at, not just the figures in an A&E unit on our four-hour and our 12-hour figures, but to understand what we can do for the whole-system approach. As I say, I do think you’ll see an improvement again when the figures come out for April.

Cabinet Secretary, the link between accident and emergency challenges and the support for adult social care is well established. We’ve seen the crisis that’s occurred in accident and emergency admissions in England because of an 8 per cent real-terms cut in support for adult social care. What steps are the Welsh Government taking to ensure there is adequate support for adult social care in Wales to avoid the problems that are faced and caused a crisis in England occurring within Wales?

I thank the Member for the question. It highlights the fact that there are UK-wide pressures, and we’re taking different approaches to them. In England, they’ve taken an approach that has reduced funding into adult social care. We spend 7 per cent higher on health and social services per head, or £172, more in Wales than in England. We’ve also taken a different approach because of the way our health and social care services are organised. We don’t have the competitive and at times antagonistic relationship between providers in England, for example. That means that we’ve been able to take a system-wide approach to delayed transfers of care, working with a care system that has not been denuded of funds, and actually the morale of staff in England is particularly difficult. That’s why we’ve seen a fall over the last couple of months in delayed transfers here in Wales, which are at a record high in England since figures actually began. So, there are real lessons of what we’re doing here in Wales, and the positive points about that, but there’s no complacency here, because what we have done is to manage what we need to do and to understand more about what we do so that people don’t have a poor experience of going into the unscheduled care system, and equally they move into an appropriate place within the care system that meets their needs and understands what we could and should do to support them to maintain as much independence as possible. Much of that is how we prevent people from going into a hospital in the first place.

And finally question 7—Rhianon Passmore.