3. Statement by the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Services: Valuing the NHS Workforce

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 2:43 pm on 6 March 2018.

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Photo of Suzy Davies Suzy Davies Conservative 2:43, 6 March 2018

Thank you very, very much for your statement, Cabinet Secretary. Apologies that I'm not Angela Burns for you today. Can I just associate myself with your remarks thanking the NHS staff for their work, particularly during this last week? I think we've all been surprised and delighted in some ways by the pictures of people stumbling through the snow in order to fulfil what they think are their duties to the population of Wales. 

I think one obvious way perhaps to recognise that commitment would be to fast track the staff in the NHS when they need the services of the NHS, not least so that they can get the quickest treatment or attention that they need for themselves, but because of the potential effect of that in making them able to come back into the workforce as soon as possible in order to offer their services, perhaps, in so doing, reducing the strain and stress on health boards when they're having to consider taking on agency staff. We know that 330,000 days were lost to stress-related conditions only last year, 2016-17, and, if those could have been acted on a little bit sooner, perhaps it would have been quicker or easier for those members of staff to come back into the workforce and continue offering the exemplary care to the people of Wales. I think agency staff cost £178.8 million last year. That's quite a big saving, if you can get people back into work as quickly as they would like. And, if you're worried at all that this sounds like preferential treatment, I'd ask you to consider the effect of behaving in this particular way, because it means that those NHS staff are back in work sooner and offering their services to the people who need them. 

We also talked about—. I appreciate that this is a statement on the NHS workforce here, but, following the parliamentary review, I think it's become a little bit less meaningful, if I can put it like that, to talk about the NHS workforce in isolation from the social care workforce. I certainly welcome the investment in the training places for the prevention and rehabilitation professions, and for those training in medical care, but if you're looking at a seamless service—you mentioned it in your statement—I think these kinds of statements need to start talking also now about the impact and career paths of those in non-medical care. So, I was wondering whether we might have a similar statement fairly soon on the social care workforce, not just the NHS workforce.

I'm very, very pleased to hear about the growth in the NHS workforce, but could you give us an indication of where that growth has been concentrated geographically? Where are the staff in certain disciplines, and has reconfiguration and some of the noises off that we've heard fairly recently, not least with Hywel Dda, already been seen to have an effect on where people are interested in working, particularly in the hospital setting but not specifically?

Yes, we certainly do need more staff in certain professions and specialities. The role of the deanery has come up several times in arguments on this in the past, and I'm wondering whether you can give us some indication of whether there's a specific issue—I'll call it that, as there's not necessarily a problem—with the deanery promoting those specialisms that we need at the moment.

Just two more, if you'll bear with me, please, Llywydd. Obviously, I'm very pleased to see that more people are doing their GP training in Wales. Can you tell us how many of those people are actually from Wales and what we're doing to keep them once they've been trained here?

Then, finally, paramedic training—I was very pleased to see that. Can you confirm whether the pay rise that paramedics have recently been proffered, if you like, is conditional in any way on the particular training that you've referred to? Is it a generic pay rise or is it specifically allied to this new training that you mentioned in your statement? Thank you.