6. Will the First Minister make a statement on the provision of healthcare services in Mid and West Wales? OAQ52100

We continue to invest in healthcare services in Mid and West Wales, including £3 million recently for Withybush General Hospital and £25 million for Glangwili General Hospital. We are also investing £6.6 million in Llandrindod Wells County War Memorial Hospital. We will continue to work with health boards in the region to provide healthcare services that deliver the best possible outcomes for all patients.

I'm grateful to the leader of the house for that reply. She may know that I've raised the provision of health service facilities in the Welsh uplands, based on Blaenau Ffestiniog, in the Assembly on many occasions. The cottage hospital there was closed some years ago and has recently been replaced by a new office building—plenty of desks, but no beds. There is a continuing problem with GP recruitment, of course, and retention, and in other ways as well.

There is significant dissatisfaction amongst local people in Blaenau Ffestiniog and the surrounding area, and they recently submitted a petition to the Assembly to call for an independent inquiry into the provision of health services in the Welsh uplands. Tonight, there is a meeting of people from Blaenau Ffestiniog and Dolwyddelan to consider the possibility of taking legal action to compel an independent inquiry. I wonder whether the Welsh Government would see it as advantageous to facilitate an independent inquiry, because it couldn't possibly prejudice the provision of health service facilities in the area, but it could do a great deal to alleviate public concern.

No, and I think the Member undermined his own argument by referring to a health centre as an office building. That doesn't really assist the—

It is an office building.

—the free flow of information. 

It's not an office building. Have you been in there? Have you been inside?

I think that it's very important to get the facts out when we're discussing health, which is always in emotive subject—

Who's First Minister here?

I don't think the leader of the house requires any support from her ministerial colleagues. Leader of the house—

Member for Blaenau Ffestiniog who knows what he's talking about.

There are many Members—there are at least five Members for Blaenau Ffestiniog in this Chamber, something that has been central to the respect we have as Assembly Members in this Chamber from the start. Leader of the house.

As I was saying, there are a range of fervently held opinions on the subject, and a large variety of them expressed, as we've just seen, Llywydd, in the Chamber itself. But I think that the Cabinet Secretary has this well under control and has already answered several questions on the subject, as the Member himself said.

Leader of the house, I have raised my concerns over the future of west Wales health services on numerous occasions in this Chamber. For my pains, I've been accused by members of the Government and backbenchers of scaremongering, talking down the health services and harming staff recruitment—all by myself, I've harmed staff recruitment.

The current Cabinet Secretary approached the Welsh Conservatives to take part in a parliamentary review, which we did with great pleasure. One of the aims of that was to help to depoliticise the NHS in order to try to look for a strong future for the whole of Wales in the NHS. So, imagine that wave of cynicism that swept over me this weekend when I saw Labour Assembly Members, Labour MPs and the Labour political party campaigning outside Withybush and Llanelli to save our hospitals. Do tell me, please, leader of the house, in your role as chief whip, what are we to look forward to? Will the name-calling of us here, if we have the temerity to argue about this, end? Will it continue? Will you be talking to your colleagues? Above all, are we going to look for rational debate, or will the Labour Party continue to scrabble for votes in a desperate attempt to try to mitigate the problems they know they're facing with a health service that they've been in charge of for the last two decades? I'm really cross, Vaughan, because you want us to be depoliticised—that lot, get a grip.

The Member makes a very good point about the conduct of public affairs. I personally do not indulge in any of the behaviours that she mentioned. I don't agree with politicising—

Let's hear the leader of the house, please.

However, there is an open—. As I said, I know that the Member feels very fervently, as do I, that, sometimes, politics is unnecessarily divisive and political, and I do not agree with personal remarks being made about others in any way, shape or form, and I know that she agrees with that. However, there are, as I said, a range of fervently held views on any healthcare reform. There is an open consultation at the moment. A large number of people across the political spectrum have fervently held views on that subject and are making them known during the consultation period. The consultation period has a large number of weeks yet to run. I'm sure there will be more demonstrations and fervently held views expressed in that way during the course of the consultation, and then, once the consultation is closed, we will have the opportunity to discuss the outcome of the consultation, once the responses have been analysed.