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

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 2:47 pm on 6 March 2018.

Alert me about debates like this

Photo of Vaughan Gething Vaughan Gething Labour 2:47, 6 March 2018

Thank you for that series of questions. Again, I think the commitment of staff that we've all seen—stories of people walking miles and miles through the snow to get in—and the tremendous support of the public, with people giving lifts and going up and down roads to give staff lifts as they've seen them coming in, really is tremendously heart-warming, which, again, reinforces the public value that is placed on the service.

I'm going to deal with the range of points. On your point about whether we could fast-track treatment for NHS staff, there's a piece of work already looking at this following previous comments made in the Chamber. I do think that we need to add a note of caution about this, because if we decide to advantage groups of staff, wherever they're from—whether it's the NHS, or whether it's the emergency services, carers or whoever it may be—and if we say that it won't be their clinical need but who they work for that will see them advantaged in the system, I think we need to think very carefully about what that means.

So, I certainly wouldn't stand up in the Chamber today and say that the NHS workforce will get prioritised over and above other people, but there are challenges about the NHS as an employer in any event. Any employer should support their employees with good occupational health support either to keep them in work or to help them return to work if they're out of work, and to understand the reasons for that as well. That's a different point to, potentially, seeing them leapfrog other citizens of the country for treatment.

On the social care workforce, actually, Rebecca Evans, in her previous role, made a number of statements about promoting the social care workforce and a career path for them. You'll hear more from Huw Irranca-Davies on those points in the coming months as well. Also, that will be linked into the commitments that the Government has made in 'Prosperity for All', about the social care sector being a priority sector as part of the foundational economy. So, you will hear more about the social care workforce individually as well as together, as I've indicated in my statement about the development of skills for and with that workforce that is, understandably, integrated, and will be more so, with the national health service.

On the geographical growth in numbers of staff, some of our areas have actually done particularly well with this. In nurse recruitment, for example, Hywel Dda have done particularly well on actually recruiting more nurses in the last year or two. Part of the challenge in different grades of staff is that it can be difficult recruiting in different parts of the country—that's why 'Train. Work. Live' was designed, because you can actually have a great life living in the western parts of Wales, whether north, mid or south, and it's about how you make those opportunities available and then understand what that means for those healthcare staff and their families to move there and to make a positive choice to live in or near that part of the country.

Some of that also, though, goes back to the points that I made in my statement about the models of care that are provided, because there's something about understanding and taking on board the challenges the parliamentary review set out for all of us that if we want to try and run our current models of care, then they won't work—they won't work for the staff or the public. So, our current way of running the whole service isn't fit for the future, and changing that really does matter. And I've given previous indications in the past of models of care that have changed that have made recruitment easier. Stroke care in Gwent is a good example of where change in the way care is delivered has made it easier to recruit the right staff to deliver that improved quality of care. 

I can't tell you what the percentage of Welsh-domiciled GP trainees is, but I'll investigate to see if I can give a meaningful figure and write back to Members on that. And on band 6 and paramedics, you'll have seen that England announced a band 6 paramedic status some time ago. They've yet to agree how to get there, though, so that isn't in place there. We went through that, and, again, in social partnership we had a conversation with employers, with trade unions as well, and we not only agreed a road map for band 6—so, what that should mean—but, actually, how to get there too, because it is about new skills and those skills being consistently applied to have the band 6 pay that goes with it. Not every paramedic will want to do that. There will still be a role for band 5 paramedics within the service. So, we're in a good place, and that is money for reform and improvement. It's good for the workforce to do a job they will find interesting and the skills we will all benefit from in the public at large. We made a difficult choice to invest money in doing so, and that means there is money that we've invested there that isn't available in other parts of our workforce, but that is a choice we have made, again, for the future of the NHS and the people that it serves.