Part of 1. 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:59 pm on 24 January 2017.
What happens in the winter is that, even though numbers in A&E actually drop, for the people coming in, their conditions tend to be longer term respiratory conditions and they’re older. In the summer, actually, A&E admissions tend to be higher, but they tend to be injuries, for example, which don’t need as much time in A&E. The issues that we face are these: we need to make sure, as we have done, that social care spending is kept high—and it is higher than it is in England. They’re reaping an unfortunate whirlwind in England on that at the moment. It is true to say that the demand is high and I do pay tribute to those who work in the service for the services that they provide. But every consultant in A&E will tell you—and, indeed, it was said again today—that there are too many people going into A&E who don’t need to be there. And so what we say to people is: ‘Go to see the pharmacist, go to see a GP, and there’s out-of-hours GP cover. All these are alternatives—don’t just default to A&E simply because A&E can’t turn you away’. People are triaged when they get to A&E. If people are not urgent cases, then they do wait longer—that is the reality of it; the urgent cases get treated first. So, yes, people need to make their own choices, their own proper choices, and we will continue to make sure that we fund our hospitals and A&E departments to meet a demand that has been increasing at the rate of 7 per cent a year.