1. Will the Cabinet Secretary make a statement on the GP professional indemnity scheme for Wales, following the announcement on Monday? 175

Thank you for the question. A state-backed scheme will be introduced to provide clinical negligence indemnity insurance for GPs in Wales. The scheme, which is planned to come into force from April 2019, will cover all contracted GPs and other health professionals working in NHS general practice.

Thank you, Cabinet Secretary. Both the British Medical Association and the Royal College of General Practitioners have responded positively to this move from the Welsh Government, and, indeed, I had a personal e-mail from the BMA just this morning saying how delighted they were with the move, which I know will also be warmly welcomed by GPs in my constituency too. When will you be in a position to provide AMs with a further update on the working of any future scheme?

Thank you for that follow-up question. I'm delighted for the acknowledgement of the support and the welcome that GPs have provided both through the Royal College of General Practitioners and in particular through the British Medical Association. We've worked alongside the BMA, as the trade union for general practitioners, to work through not just the challenges of indemnity, but how we actually provide an answer. We've got two particular potential choices: one is to potentially have a Wales-only scheme. The second is to work alongside a scheme across England and Wales. What we need to make sure is that a scheme is affordable, that a scheme is in the best interests of GPs and their patients here in Wales, and that scheme, as I say, will cover all healthcare professionals, including locums and other health professionals working in general practice. So, over the coming months, my officials will work with GPC Wales, the General Practitioners Committee of the BMA, medical defence organisations, the Welsh Risk Pool, and the UK department of health and social services, and I will be in a position to provide a further update to Members in September of this year.

Further to the question, can I thank the Cabinet Secretary for health for responding? I mean, these are huge costs borne personally by GPs. You may recall I did raise this matter under business statements last week, and I'm grateful that some of my questions in this Chamber have elicited a positive response from a Cabinet Secretary. So, I'm grateful for that, but, more importantly, I'm grateful for medical colleagues everywhere in Wales who responded in a very positive fashion to this, raising the huge cost burdens and putting people off going part-time working as locums and, in fact, positively encouraging early retirement unless there was an indemnity solution to this whole personal cost situation. So, I'm very grateful for a positive response from a Cabinet Secretary.

Well, this has been work that has been ongoing over many months through direct engagement with the ministerial taskforce that I set up to look at primary care, not just about recruitment issues, but a wider range of issues, and I look forward to the BMA coming back to present matters in the coming months for that meeting. And there's something here about the time that Ministers engage in in trying to lead and deliver answers, and I've spoken, of course, to the Member for Cynon Valley about local healthcare challenges in her own constituency where she's been elected, as well as this broader challenge across the whole country, and it should lead to GPs being able to remain in general practice, in full-time, in part-time, or doing out-of-hours or as a locum. It should be positive, not only for them, but ultimately for the people of Wales who rely on the national health service.

Cabinet Secretary, as you know, I've raised this issue with you several times in the past and I'm delighted that you've introduced this scheme in Wales. It helps address one of the big concerns of many of our hard-working GPs. Cabinet Secretary, you said in your written statement that the Welsh scheme will be aligned as far as possible to the English scheme so as not to affect cross-border activity or recruitment. What consideration have you given to offering an enhanced scheme in Wales in order to attract more GPs to work in Wales? 

We'll be looking for the best scheme possible, bearing in mind the interests of the service, the staff who work in it and, of course, the people who rely upon it. I want to make sure that GPs in Wales are certainly not disadvantaged compared to their counterparts in England. Any of these questions, though, must rely on us doing the due diligence to look at the potential liabilities that may be transferred from medical defence organisations, who themselves have welcomed our announcement here in Wales. But we also need to think about some of the wider changes as well, for example the change to the personal injury discount rate, announced by the Lord Chancellor in February, which provides real challenges in a range of these different areas, in particular about the significant increases that led to in premium costs as well. So, I remain true to my commitment that I've made both today and previously, and in the written statement: GPs in Wales will not be disadvantaged compared to counterparts in England. This is about having a good deal for them and, of course, as I said, on more than one occasion, for the people who rely on local healthcare services here in Wales. 

Thank you very much, Cabinet Secretary.