Part of 4. Topical Questions – in the Senedd at 3:43 pm on 24 January 2018.
You've set great store, Cabinet Secretary, as did the First Minister yesterday, by the parliamentary review but, of course, the parliamentary review was published too late to influence these proposals from Hywel Dda. So, will you join me today in urging Hywel Dda to withdraw these proposals until we have had time to consider the parliamentary review—how it might be applied throughout Wales, and how this mature conversation that you're seeking for us to have can be had on that basis without us dealing with individual proposals to close hospitals, which, to be frank, will not allow any of us to engage in that sort of mature debate that you're urging us to do? It would be far better, would it not, for us to consider that parliamentary review, which was only published last week, and to do that and to urge all health boards to look at how we consider the review and then to implement a series of consultations with their local populations, based on the principles of that review? You're putting the cart before the horse if you now allow Hywel Dda to go ahead with a series of consultations, some of which will be highly contentious, that are not able to be influenced by that parliamentary review at all. And you are at risk, therefore, of losing some of that widespread sharing of concern and support that you've built up around the parliamentary review.
I would also like to invite you to join with your own Labour colleagues in Preseli Pembrokeshire. Paul Miller, the candidate in 2015, stood on a platform of restoring the paediatric services to Withybush; indeed, I remember him saying that he'd had three meetings with Steve Moore—incredible; three meetings, just imagine it, with Steve Moore—to discuss how they could be restored. We were all waiting for those paediatric services to be restored. They had been taken away temporarily, if I can remind you—not as a decision of a consultation, but temporarily taken away due to recruitment difficulties. Surely, to restore some sort of trust of local people to allow us to have the serious debate that you're asking to emerge from the parliamentary review, you would first restore the paediatric services at Withybush so that people have the trust back again and then ask Hywel Dda not to proceed with this consultation until we've fully considered the parliamentary review.