2. In light of today's announcement by the UK Government to increase pay for over a million NHS staff in England, will the Cabinet Secretary make a statement on the Welsh Government's plans for NHS pay in Wales? 158

I am pleased that the United Kingdom Government has listened to my repeated calls to lift the public sector pay cap and provide additional funding to reward NHS staff right across the United Kingdom. The NHS Wales Partnership Forum is meeting tomorrow to offer advice on how any consequentials could be used in Wales. 

Lifting this pay cap has been long awaited by all political parties, and we wholeheartedly welcome this announcement, which gives recognition to the front-line staff who work tirelessly to deliver world-class services. From today, staff such as nurses, porters and paramedics will receive an average 6.5 per cent increase in their pay packets over the next few years, with many of the lowest paid workers in the health service receiving the largest increases in their pay, which will certainly help us to promote our equality and fairness agendas. Along with yesterday's announcement, you will know that the UK Government are going to establish five new medical schools in parts of the country.

England is not alone in facing these recruitment challenges, and what they're doing will really help to make their health service more resilient. In Wales we spend almost £14 million a month on agency staff, and have seen the equivalent of one nurse a day leave our health service. Health services cannot run the risk of losing more of our exceptional front-line staff, or our newly trained students.

Now, we know that you, the Welsh Government, will receive consequential funding from the Treasury to mitigate this increase, so Welsh Government will get the normal share of an extra £4.2 billion for the NHS pay changes over the next three years. Will you please confirm that you will actually put the consequential to the pay awards here in Wales? And could I also ask you whether or not you will be considering the fact that the pay deal so far is looking at how the deal can reduce the high rates of sickness that we see in the NHS across the United Kingdom? It's not just in Wales. We lose over 900 full-time years to sickness every year, and if we can get these people back into work more quickly and incentivise them and perhaps give them priority treatment, then that in itself will help to alleviate some of the human resource pressure we find in our NHS here. We all welcome the lifting of this pay cap, but I do want to hear what you're going to be able to do with this consequential and whether you'll be applying it to our staff.  

I have a few comments to make in response. I genuinely welcome the fact that the pay cap has been lifted, but there are significant challenges that we should not forget that face partners of the national health service in other public services that still face a realistic pay cap as a direct result of eight years of austerity and continuing. We should remind ourselves that, for 'Agenda for Change' staff, it's a real-terms pay cut for most of them of 14 per cent since 2010. So, the move that England have announced will go some way towards resolving that, and I am happy to confirm that any consequential for NHS pay will go into NHS pay here in Wales—clear-cut and no nonsense around the side. That builds on commitments made by both the First Minister and, indeed, the Cabinet Secretary for Finance.

I would just remind people that the comments that you made, Angela Burns, about moving on low pay—those are challenges for NHS England to move on. We made further progress. She may not be in the room, but Dawn Bowden was part of the negotiating team on the trade union side, where we made progress for our lowest paid NHS workers in Wales some years ago. So, I'm pleased to see England catch up on some of that progress. We will have a negotiation with NHS employers and the trade union side to decide how to deploy any consequential that is coming to Wales to go into NHS pay, and that will be properly negotiated in the partnership approach that we wish to take here in Wales.

I do recognise the challenges you mentioned about NHS nursing numbers. There's a real challenge right across the UK in getting enough nurses in. The biggest problem is in England. They have the biggest numbers, not just in volume but in percentage terms, and you will recognise that the Nursing and Midwifery Council for the first time said that there are fewer nurses in the NHS in England than the year before. That's the first time in history that that's happened. We don't have that situation here, but we should not be complacent about the reality of the pay cap and a range of other measures about the way that nurses feel in England.

Also, we will continue to discuss with our partners how to improve attendance rates, how to improve return to work from sickness, how people are supported to stay in work or to return to work. Those are matters that we regularly discuss between employers and the trade union side. So, I do look forward to being able to come back to this place to confirm any agreement that will be reached by the employer side and trade unions on how we expect to reward NHS staff here within NHS Wales.

It's not nice watching Wales playing catch-up again; it's the second time in health in two days with that announcement from Jeremy Hunt about the opening of five medical schools in England yesterday. I look forward to us catching up with that eventually. Plaid Cymru, of course, on the pay cap issue, have long made it clear that we believe that the pay cap should have been raised previously, and people, I think, will remember that Labour in Government in Wales were not able to be proactive in seeking ways of raising that cap earlier. But we are where we are, and our hard-working staff in the NHS will now finally, it seems, get that pay rise that they have long deserved. I'm pleased to hear, Cabinet Secretary, you saying that you expect that consequential to go into lifting that cap.

Will you agree, though, that lifting the cap in itself isn't enough, and can we have an assurance that, alongside that long-awaited review of pay, we will also see a new concerted effort to put a workforce plan in place for the NHS as a whole and ensure that everything is done on the recruitment front as well? Addressing pay is one thing, but it doesn't in itself address the issue of the unacceptable pressure that there is on staff within many parts of the NHS because of shortages in the workforce.

The Deputy Presiding Officer (Ann Jones) took the Chair.

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. 

Caroline Jones.

Diolch, Dirprwy Lywydd. [Interruption.]

But calling him a liar is—[Inaudible.] 

Excuse me. I have called another speaker. Caroline Jones. 

Diolch, Dirprwy Lywydd. Cabinet Secretary, it is past time we lifted the pay cap for NHS staff who work under tremendous pressures, particularly relating to staff shortages. The deal in England covers staff on the Agenda for Change contract, which excludes doctors. So, whilst I welcome the previously announced increase in pay for our GPs, what consideration have you given to increasing the pay of NHS doctors and dentists?

Doctors and dentists are covered by a separate review body process. Agenda for Change staff do not include those particular professionals. We are awaiting advice from the doctors and dentists review body, and we will, of course, report back to this place when we have that advice and a decision for us to make. 

Thank you very much, Cabinet Secretary.