7. Will the First Minister provide an update on ambulance service performance in south Wales? OAQ(5)0311(FM)

Ambulance performance across Wales since the introduction of the clinical response model pilot has been extremely positive, exceeding the target in every month in the first year—the national target, that is—in every month in the first year of the pilot.

I welcome that news, and it is extremely positive. It’s vitally important to my constituents because the response time for those that are life-threatening issues makes, clearly, a major difference to their lives, but also to their families as well, knowing that they have that reassurance that an ambulance, on a red call, will be there in due time.

It’s noticeable, however, that we still have this ongoing problem in England, Wales and Northern Ireland with the wastage of time of ambulances at A&E units. It’s not unique to Wales and it’s been long and enduring. I think the same freedom of information request suggested that over 500,000 hours within the UK were actually wasted. Of course, these are ambulances that could be out doing the good work that they need to do very efficiently. I wonder what you can say in terms of how we address this issue, not only now as the winter pressures also come on top of us, but in years to come as well. There are tremendous inroads that we’ve done into the red-call response time, but how do we actually deal with those wasted hours that are sitting there outside A&E? It’s not just a Wales issue. How do we do this right across all the different nations as well?

There are several ways of doing it. One is to make sure that people are properly assessed when they arrive in terms of where they go for treatment, making sure that ambulances are able to get away as quickly as possible. That means focusing A&E in particular centres across Wales. We’re able to provide a certain degree of specialisation—that’s been difficult—but nevertheless we know that it provides people with a better outcome. I would say that we see the improvement in terms of ambulance waiting times at A&E through the response times to the most immediately life-threatening calls. The fact that more and more of these calls are being got to within the time allocated is a sign that ambulances are getting away more quickly as a general rule from A&E departments. Yes, there will be some pressures now and again on some dates, where a larger number of people unexpectedly do come through. But he’s right, if you look at the most immediately life-threatening calls, response time in Northern Ireland 51.2 per cent; in England around about 65 per cent; Scotland 66.4 per cent; and Wales 79.5 per cent. That’s a tribute to the paramedics that we have in Wales and indeed the Welsh Ambulance Services NHS Trust.