NHS Pay in Wales

Part of 3. Topical Questions – in the Senedd at 3:29 pm on 21 March 2018.

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Photo of Vaughan Gething Vaughan Gething Labour 3:29, 21 March 2018

I'll happily deal with that last point first. We expect to improve our ability to plan for the current and future workforce through the creation of Health Education and Improvement Wales—we talked about that previously—and the way in which we're trying to pool the ability to do so between health boards and other organisations like the deanery and others too. That's a positive step forward to having a more strategic approach to planning for our future workforce need. As well as looking at the numbers of staff that we need and in different groups of staff, we of course need to look at the ways in which we expect them to work, and the ways we expect them to be trained to then work within the service of today and the future. That's why the parliamentary review matters so much. We need to have models of care that are attractive for people to work in, and to get us the best prospect of people wanting to come and make their career in Wales. You may say to train here, to live here and to work here, of course. 

Now, I want to go back to your starting points about the pay cap. I've been incredibly disappointed about the way in which Plaid Cymru have been quite happy to give the Tories a free pass on this. The reason why Wales could not move on the pay cap before was because of our budgetary position, because of eight years of austerity. That is the clear and unalloyed truth, and the way in which those matters have been handled here have been very clear. We have always been clear that this was an issue for the United Kingdom Government to raise the pay cap and to fund raising the pay cap from the UK Treasury, as they have done today, at last. But the war of words between us will not stop because, unfortunately, Jeremy Hunt compounded previous statements that are simply not factually true by saying in the House of Commons that the health service in Wales would be £1 billion pounds better off if we had taken decisions as they have done. That is just a straight lie. And if we're going to have a properly informed debate about the future funding of the national health service, then there needs to be a more honest discourse between parliaments and governments, and with the public, and I will not hesitate from calling Jeremy Hunt out for what he is when he makes untrue, and knowingly untrue statements about NHS finance here in Wales.