Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:21 pm on 20 March 2018.
On 8 December, the Cabinet Secretary announced a £107 million investment package to support education and training programmes for healthcare professionals in Wales. That represents an increase of £12 million compared with 2017-18. That means that more than 3,500 new students will join those already studying healthcare education programmes across Wales, and the total number of people in education and training places in 2018-19 will be 9,490, compared to 8,573. There will be a 10 per cent increase in nurse training places across all four nursing fields, and 161 nurse training places in 2018-19. Now, the mistake that has been made, to my mind, by Plaid Cymru is looking at doctors in isolation. You cannot look at doctors in isolation; you have to look at the entire range of healthcare staff, and that means, of course, nurses, it means looking at those working in social care, it means making sure there are enough people to make sure that delayed transfers of care continue to go down and, of course, to make sure that you have staff like physiotherapists, who are able to provide the services that people need.
If we look at our recruitment campaign, it has been hugely successful in bringing doctors into Wales. It will never be the case, in any developed health service in Europe, that all the doctors in that health service are only trained within that health service. We want to attract the best people from around the world, and that's why, of course, our recruitment campaign has been so successful.