Part of 1. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Services – in the Senedd at 1:48 pm on 14 March 2018.
There are a couple of different points there. The first is that, of course, we've invested more than ever before on the future education and training of the non-medical workforce—£107 million that I announced—and, at a time of falling public resource, to continue to invest even more in the workforce and their future training is a significant choice to make. There is something about understanding not just about the numbers of the workforce that we need, but about how we wish them to work and a more effective way of working. The staff themselves are involved in redesigning the ways of delivering care as well as, of course, the equipment that they will need and the numbers and type of staff that we will need together as well.
In terms of the information on the workforce point that you mentioned, well, health boards themselves, as the employers, I would expect them to have the information. There's a challenge about them understanding their own information systems to understand the workforce they currently have, as well as looking to plan for the future workforce, but the introduction of Health Education and Improvement Wales has been deliberately designed to help improve workforce planning in a more integrated way and to have a national view on those areas where we need to invest in more staff.