Part of 1. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Services – in the Senedd at 1:57 pm on 14 March 2018.
How dare you say that I should be embarrassed? How dare you say that I should be embarrassed for suggesting that your system is broken? It is NHS staff on the front line, be it in ambulances or in accident and emergency units, who are telling me that the system is broken. You're in charge of the system, and we want a better system for the patients that deserve that, frankly, here in Wales.
It's deeply upsetting for ambulance staff, whether in control centres, or paramedics on the road, to witness and deal with cases where they wanted to and could have made a difference but they were unable to because they were parked, because of the system, outside hospitals. It's perhaps no surprise that ambulance staff have the highest rates of staff sickness out of all NHS staff. I want that to change, and one thing we have to be doing here is involving the staff much more in debates about the future of our service. It's the staff on the front line who themselves know how the service can be improved. So, will you give an undertaking to engage much more—[Interruption.]—to engage much more with staff on the front line—maybe you don't care; I do—