Part of 3. 2. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Health, Well-being and Sport – in the Senedd at 2:41 pm on 19 July 2017.
This goes back to the conundrum that we discussed in actually setting up and agreeing the terms of reference for the parliamentary review. Not just yourselves, but the spokesperson for Plaid Cymru also raised the point about, ‘Will the review mean that you will stop doing things you need to do now and kick things into the long grass?’ You have to look at the balance, in saying, ‘Do we want to put something off until the review comes up with their recommendations?’ There’s a balance to be struck, but I still think that where there is a clear case for services needing to change, and there is a clear case for different parts of the service needing to work more closely together, then that should happen. So, for example, on elective care, Hywel Dda health board and Abertawe Bro Morgannwg have had a joint planning meeting. I expect those to be a regular occurrence. The health boards in south-east Wales—Cwm Taf, Aneurin Bevan and Cardiff and Vale—are having joint planning meetings as well. So, there has to be an understanding of what needs to take place now under that, and not simply waiting and putting everything off for the parliamentary review to report. Because the challenge you raised in your first question about the cultural challenges—they exist among clinicians, they exist among the public and, indeed, politicians in our ability and our willingness to support and get behind change. So, I don’t think there is a need to put off the drivers to try and discuss and talk about change, but there is a need to properly understand what the parliamentary review will come forward with in a number of months—and I think they will go quite quickly—and then to understand how we do what they suggest and understand what we think works and then to do so rapidly and at scale across the national health service.