Part of 1. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Services – in the Senedd at 1:51 pm on 14 March 2018.
Diolch, Llywydd. I'd like to begin, if I could, by correcting some comments made yesterday by the leader of the Conservatives, who claimed the ambulance waiting times in Wales were improving. In fact, the median response times to red calls are worse this winter than last winter—fewer are arriving within the target eight minutes. When it comes to amber calls, almost half are now taking longer than 30 minutes to arrive—almost twice as bad as last winter. And our excellent paramedics tell me that they're really, really losing heart. Why are ambulances taking longer to arrive now, in emergency and in urgent, amber call cases, than in previous years?