5. Will the First Minister make a statement on primary care provision? OAQ(5)0345(FM)

Yes. Health boards are collaborating with partners to invest in primary care as the mainstay of our health and care system, working in communities to tackle poor health, to support people to stay healthy and to do what matters to them, and to diagnose and treat problems where they occur.

Can I thank you for that response, First Minister? I've received a number of complaints since Christmas regarding primary care provision, basically in two practices within Swansea East, about not being able to make an appointment, being told to phone back the next morning, doctors unwilling to make an appointment, difficulty in getting vaccinations, unwillingness to make home visits. I also know of the excellent patient provision that the other surgeries cover in my constituency. What can the Government do to standardise the quality of provision and bring all doctors’ surgeries up to the level of the best?

It's a point that the Member makes, and it is a point that, like him, I hear from people on occasion. They ask why the services aren’t consistent. Well, those services that are provided directly by health boards are able to be consistent, but we know that most GPs are independent contractors, and that's the way the situation will be for some years to come. It is important, of course, for the public to be able to access services when they need them. I do expect local GP practices and health boards to be focusing on this, working together locally across practices and in their 64 local primary care clusters with other key professionals. There is money on the table; there's the primary care fund of £43 million. That is there in order to improve ways of delivering services: for example, developing the role of nurses, so that people don't feel that they have to visit the GP every time, and placing pharmacists, physiotherapists and social workers alongside GP teams, as we're seeing more and more across Wales, so people can get the right professional that they need rather than having to see a GP who isn't able to help them and has to refer them, and then having to wait for longer.

You make the absolutely fundamentally correct point that we need more of the allied healthcare professionals in place in general practices in order to help to maintain a good quality of service for staff. So, my question to you, First Minister, is that, last year, there was an absolutely right focus on getting more doctors into Wales, whether it was secondary or primary care. This year, will you be able to look towards how we may recruit more people into the allied healthcare professions, how we might have adequate training places for them, how we might encourage young people that this would be a very useful career path for them and show them that there’s a real career development? Because we’re not going to solve our primary care issues without having that broad structure of competent individuals offering holistic services to people.

Yes, absolutely. We launched the first phase of the national and international recruitment campaign last October, aimed at attracting doctors, particularly GPs, to train, work and live in Wales, and the indications are that the number of applications for GP training has increased, including in those areas where we have introduced an incentive-based approach. I can say that the Cabinet Secretary agreed plans for phase 2 of the recruitment campaign earlier this week, aimed at other healthcare professionals in primary care.

With emergency departments in our hospitals in crisis—the Royal College of Emergency Medicine’s words, rather than my words—would the First Minister agree that the erosion that there has been in the percentage of NHS funding provided to primary care and the stress that that places on our GP surgeries causes problems for our A&E departments? And does the First Minister agree, therefore, that it is now time to look again at how health funding is allocated in Wales in order to ensure fair funding for primary care in order to maintain a sustainable NHS for the future?

Well, two things: first of all, I don’t think it’s just about having more and more doctors. We need to ensure that people do go to the relevant professional for them. That could be a pharmacist or it could be a nurse or a physiotherapist. It’s right to say that we do need to ensure that we do maintain the right number of doctors, but it’s not just about having doctors.

The other side, of course, is that it’s important that people don’t remain in hospital for too long. We’ve seen the problems that have arisen in England because they have cut back on expenditure on social services, and social care in particular. In Wales, of course, we maintained the level of funding to ensure that that didn’t happen here. It’s true to say that there are pressures in our health service. That happens every year, especially in our emergency departments. There have been plans put in place and those have worked despite the pressure that has been placed on doctors, and may I pay tribute, once again, to all those who work in our health service, especially those who work in the emergency services, for the excellent work that they do, especially at this time of year?