2. Will the Cabinet Secretary make a statement on the establishment of Health Education and Improvement Wales as a special health authority? (OAQ51095)

In July, I issued a written statement detailing the plans for Health Education and Improvement Wales. The legislation to establish HEIW as a special health authority was laid on 13 September and, subject to the will of the Assembly, is due to come into force on 5 October.

I note, also, that the Cabinet Secretary has been advertising for non-executive members of the board for this health authority and did quite a lot of work in terms of these reports from Mel Evans and Professor Williams that we had before. I just wonder if he can say what he is doing to ensure that the board will operate truly independently at arm’s length from Welsh Government, and also to ensure that the various professional interests are properly represented within that board. I think at least three of the non-execs must be Welsh speakers. What is he doing to ensure that particular professions are considered properly by that board, for instance nursing, where this Assembly has put such emphasis on the necessity of safer staffing ratios?

Thank you for the question. I think it’s a helpful opportunity to clarify the point and the purpose of the board, because the board isn’t going to be a representational board, made up of different interest groups. If we do that, we’ll have different groups fighting and competing with each other, rather than actually having a board with sufficient expertise to actually undertake the workforce planning and function of Health Education and Improvement Wales. If I have a nursing representative, I’ll have a lobby for a doctor’s representative, we’ll have a lobby for consultants and primary care clinicians to have different representatives, and allied healthcare professionals and others. That’s the wrong way to look at it. We’ll quickly get into a position where to fulfil all those separate needs we’d need a board that would be significantly bigger, and board meetings would be mini conferences.

My expectation is that Health Education and Improvement Wales will be able to acquire, in its chief executive, its senior officers and the independent members of the board, sufficient expertise to help the health service to properly understand workforce planning, by bringing together the different disparate bodies, which both the Evans and Williams reports recognise exist, into a more coherent whole. And that’s the point of the creation of Health Education and Improvement Wales. It is being set up on a proper basis in which the chair, after my initial appointment, will go through a proper public appointments process, and that should guarantee for Members on all sides the quality and also the independence of those members in undertaking this challenge and their functions for all of us.