Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 5:12 pm on 21 June 2016.
Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. Minister, I’d like to thank you for this statement. I too very much welcome some of the news contained within it. I’m delighted to see that smoking has definitely gone down to 19 per cent of adults from 26 per cent. It is interesting to note that that’s a complete correlation with the number of people who use e-cigarettes. I’m delighted to hear the comments you made to Rhun ap Iorwerth because I’m rather hoping that, with a new Cabinet Secretary in place, we might have a fresh view on this vaping issue, because, if it helps people to give up smoking, it is surely worth considering rather than the somewhat obdurate resistance to it last time around.
Turning over to the rest of the statement, I would like to particularly raise the issue of obesity to talk about diabetes. I was very surprised, actually, to read in the Welsh health survey that they said there was only a slight increase in diabetes, which does not chime with much of the rhetoric that we hear from various organisations saying that diabetes is sort of on the march in Wales. I wonder, Minister, if you would consider drilling down into those figures and perhaps seeing whether we can find out how many of those people have diabetes type 1 versus type 2, because, as you and I both know, type 2 is something that can be helped to be got rid of by having a better diet, better exercise and more advice and support, as opposed to type 1.
Also here on the correlation with young people being obese, I raised this on your statement last week about the declining amount of hours in school sports available. We need to recognise that, again, within this survey, it says that, actually, between 2004, when the survey started, and last year, 2015, the amount of exercise young people under the age of 16 take has decreased, rather than increased. So, we appear to be going backwards. So, I really would like to ask, Minister, what you’re going to be able to do to liaise with your colleague in education as to how we make sure that young people, particularly the very young, grow up with this healthy habit of good exercise that will help to combat this particular area. It can’t be done in isolation; we need an integrated view. That’s why I wonder: is that the reason why you’ve appointed a national physical activity director? Is this a new post with new money, or is this somebody who’s already in existence who’s going to be taking on this responsibility? Because, again, although I agree with the thrust of your argument here, I would have thought that, again, this is an educative role, and what we need to do is ensure that, within education, we really make young people, children, get to grips with understanding what constitutes good food, affordability, cooking skills, physical activity, getting over the bullying and the embarrassment that young women, in particular, face when they try to partake in sports. Would a national physical activity director be looking at all of that? And, again, when we look at areas of social deprivation—those are people who struggle to access sport—poverty, et cetera. So, again, I would have thought that that would have been worked through in all of the various social programmes that we have, rather than creating a whole new post. In short, should it not be embedded in Government policy, rather than having one tsar, or do you think that tsar will be able to have an effect, and how will you measure that tsar?
I thought that it was very interesting to see, again within the Welsh health survey, that they’re basically saying all our kids are pretty healthy. Yet, that’s not quite chiming with the children, young people and education’s report on the Designed to Smile programme in the last Assembly, where we found that some 41 per cent of Welsh five-year-olds have significant experience of tooth decay, some 8,000 children have to have anaesthetics in order to remove multiple decayed teeth, and you and I will both know that, in fact, it is through your mouth that you get so many illnesses, so many infections, and having bad teeth actually sets you up as an adult for ill health. So, I would like to know what you might be doing with the Designed to Smile programme and what you might be doing—because this is, if you like, a gateway into good health. Having good teeth equals good health, and I’m very surprised that it’s not been picked up in the health survey. As you’re going to be reconstituting this health survey, I wonder if you would consider whether or not you should be asking questions on the dentistry side of it.
Finally, I would like to just remark upon the fact that you are intending to relaunch this entire survey—future health surveys. You say that this is the last such Welsh health survey in this format, and I would like to know that in the new format—will you be having very similar questions so that we can still continue to plot a trajectory, or are you going to be starting from base with a whole new set, so we can’t year-on-year comparisons? I think that’s really important for us to know, because, ultimately, in our role of scrutiny, it is by being able to scrutinise your performance, year on year, that we can have a picture of the effect of the policies put forward by your Government. To be frank, Cabinet Secretary, your Government does have form in getting rid of inconvenient comparable statistics, and I would like to know if, going forward, there will still be able to be that comparative measure. Thank you.