Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:41 pm on 13 March 2018.
I made this specific point when I opened my remarks by saying that there has been progress on ambulance response times in certain categories, but it is undeniable that, week after week, we are seeing cases, both in the press and reported here in the Chamber, of extreme waits that are hugely distressing to the paramedics, the teams who manage the ambulance service and, importantly, the patients and families who have called the ambulances to come in their hour of need.
The issue that I highlighted with you with the constituent in Cowbridge—actually, on Monday morning, at the Princess of Wales Hospital, they were actually using the bereavement room to stack trolleys with patients on because the pressure in A&E was so great. Now, we highlighted to you over the weekend that, over the last three years, the equivalent of 1,000 nurses have been lost to the Welsh NHS, from freedom of information request information that we've received from the local health boards. If you haven't got the staff on the front line, how on earth are you able to deal with the patients coming through the front door and the increased demand on the NHS, so that, ultimately, the 999 service can respond instead of being parked in car parks around the country?