Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 2:26 pm on 10 January 2017.
Cabinet Secretary, the fact that the vice-president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine in Wales says patient safety is compromised and staff are struggling to cope with the intense demands should deeply concern us all. Rightly or wrongly, the Red Cross described the situation across the border as a humanitarian crisis and Dr Roop says that in some areas performance is as bad as, if not worse than, England. The Welsh Government has allocated additional funds to alleviate winter pressures, but these pressures exist all year round and if we have a major flu outbreak this winter we are in real trouble. Cabinet Secretary, in addition to funding announced to tackle winter pressures, how do you plan to address the capacity issues in the rest of the NHS, which are impacting upon emergency care? We know that there are people in hospital that can’t go home because of the fact that they are home alone and they are taking up bed space, which is quite needless, really, had we had an alternative to accommodate people. I have met over the Christmas period with a voluntary organisation that is seeking to help us, but I will discuss this in further detail at another time. Thank you.