Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:35 pm on 6 February 2018.
We have some challenges here, though, that we should honestly recognise. Part of that is that, actually, even though we think there should be some professional responsibility on people to do this and there is an interest for people in the social care sector from a business continuity point of view to ensure that their staff can come in to work as well as make sure that they don't impact on the people they're caring for, within social care and within the health service, it's quite difficult to say, 'You must' and in particular to say, 'You must have the flu jab.'
There's still a conversation about how we have even more uptake. This year, I've been encouraged, comparing this year to last year—and I won't take credit for this year's campaign because, as I say, Rebecca Evans was the Minister at the start of this—we've had an increase in uptake amongst our staff. We still need to do more and more and more to try and make sure that staff realise that it's a good thing for them and the people they care for to continue not just to have the flu jab but to have it in greater numbers as well so that it becomes something that is accepted culturally rather than us having to fight to persuade people to actually have the flu jab. Some of the myths about this year's vaccine not being effective—that gets said almost every year, and yet we know it is the best front-line protection against the flu, which has serious consequences for a whole range of vulnerable people, from neonates to the very old and everyone in between.
On your point about an ageing population, again, the report highlights figures given in other reports, including the parliamentary review and the previous Nuffield and Health Foundation work about the rise in the age of our population, and in particular the proportion of our population who will be over 65 and over 75 and the increasing demand in health and in social care in particular. Part of our challenge is that, as we make budget choices—again, that we will debate, discuss and, no doubt disagree with—whatever the sum we have and whether or not it's through times of austerity when our overall budget is decreasing, we have to make a choice about what we put into each area. At the moment that means that we have a real challenge in matching the demand in health and in social care.
We've actually met the health challenge in the way that Nuffield and the Health Foundation suggested we needed to. So, we've met that particular part of it, but social care is part of our real concern, highlighted again by the parliamentary review. That's why I think it's particularly important that we're prepared to engage in—. The debate on austerity is difficult because we take entirely different views about it, but on the debate around what we do in the medium term, there should, I hope, be an opportunity within this place and outside it to try and engage in the conversation about the social care levy proposed by Gerry Holtham. I think it's well worth pursuing because, if we're going to have a long-term funding answer, 'as we are now' isn't going to get us there, and it will be every single constituency, every single community that will be affected. If we can't resolve the longer term funding challenge for social care, we will have lots and lots of our older citizens, who we all want to see cared for with dignity—we'll find ourselves in a completely compromised position. So, it's in all of our interests to reach there.
There's something here for each party to do on that and for us to demonstrate some leadership on, but also it's a conversation with the UK Government as well. It doesn't matter what shade the UK Government is. I hope it's a different colour in the near future, but in any event the UK Government have to be part of the conversation because what we cannot get into is that if we introduce a social care levy and people then receive money to pay for their social care out of, if it works, if all those things happen, if the Treasury then say, 'Actually, that's effectively income', that will then affect people's ability to have income from other benefits as well. That's a really serious point, so the work that Dilnot and others have done—we have to get back to that and we have to make sure that our colleagues in the UK Parliament are prepared to have, again, a sensible and grown-up conversation about this too, because this is an issue for Wales, but it's absolutely an issue across the United Kingdom too.
On cancer outcomes, actually, on survivorship, we have a good story to tell. We've had statistically significant and material increases in survivorship. One-year survival is now at 73 per cent; five-year survival is at 57 per cent. But our challenge is that when we look at ourselves and England, for example, we actually have statistically similar survivorship rates between Wales and England, and you would actually not expect that to be the case, because the English population is healthier and wealthier. You'd expect the cancer survivorship rates to be materially different, but they're not. And there's something there to celebrate, actually, from Wales's point of view—that we're not seeing a statistical difference in Wales's and England's survivorship rates. But actually the bigger challenge isn't to say, 'We're not any worse than England' or 'We're as good as England'; it's actually to say that, on an international basis, when you look at other countries across Europe, every single nation in the UK doesn't do well enough at all. So, we actually still have a significant step forward to make in any event, and that's our challenge. Otherwise, we'll just persuade ourselves to narrow down our ambition and where we should be.
So, that's why I'm interested in the single pathway. It'll change the way that cancer is measured. We've got further work being done on that. It's also about the point about early diagnosis. It's also why we have this conversation about drugs and effective medication being available. It's why some of the debate has been about a cancer drugs fund and why we have a new treatment fund that is evidence based. But, in particular, for curative options, you're talking about surgery and radiotherapy, and we hardly ever talk about those when we talk or have a debate about improving cancer outcomes; we almost always talk about diagnostics and medication. So, actually, we need to spend more time and focus on that.
And on the work about gambling, the CMO is leading work on gambling with a group of stakeholders, and I'll be more than happy—some Members have asked for a meeting with the CMO, and I'll be more than happy to provide an update in this place or in writing. And, of course, when the CMO comes to the health committee—I think he normally does; I'm just looking at the Chair—I'm sure that he'll be happy to set out more detail on the work that is already in train and proposals to use the powers that will come to Wales in April of this year.