In First Minister’s questions, I raised with the First Minister this damning report that’s come from the auditor general around the way that Cardiff and Vale University Local Health Board has recruited someone to a senior position within its structures at director level, has engaged in carrying over considerable sums of public money—over £300,000 of public money—that there does seem to be little or no accountability over and an inability to provide invoices for. You’ll find real anger amongst the workforce of the Cardiff and Vale LHB area. I do believe that this report requires an immediate response from the Welsh Government so that we can understand exactly how the Welsh Government will work with the health board to meet these responses that are required to build confidence back in the LHB.

As I said in my question of the First Minister, this LHB is facing a financial deficit in this financial year to the tune of £30 million to £35 million, and, when you see it engaging in employing consultants in the first instance on a £1,000 a day plus expenses plus VAT, and then agreeing an employment contract and seeking the Welsh Government’s permission to extend the pay banding up to £150,000 from the Welsh Government’s own ceiling of £136,000, there does need to be a response from the Welsh Government to reinvigorate the confidence that staff may have lost, because of this report, in the ability of the management and the directors to actually have good governance and look after the well-being of the LHB. So, I’d be grateful to the leader of the house if she could elicit either a statement or a letter to Assembly Members from the Cabinet Secretary for health to clearly outline how the department of health in the Welsh Government are dealing with this report.