3. Statement by the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Services: The Seventieth Anniversary of the NHS

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:31 pm on 3 July 2018.

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Photo of Vaughan Gething Vaughan Gething Labour 3:31, 3 July 2018

Yes, and I want to recognise in particular the point about the contaminated blood inquiry, because the impact of the health service is so great because we recognise the challenges we would have without it. That also means that there are times when healthcare goes wrong and has a huge impact on people's lives too. And there is always learning to be taken from complaints and from when we get things wrong. And, actually, the contaminated blood scandal has led to a significant improvement in the safety and the traceability of the use of blood and blood products within our health service. We can be really proud of the work that is being undertaken by the Welsh Blood Service in pioneering a different range of ways to deliver medical benefit. The challenge then, looking back, is not just how we learn lessons but this challenge of understanding what really happened, because that's the biggest grievance that I think people have, that they don't ever think they've been told the truth and they never got to the truth. So, I welcome not just the inquiry, but the way that Sir Brian Langstaff has gone about the inquiry as the appointed Chair—a recently retired judge and a man of significant integrity. I think he's developed trust from a community who weren't really sure they could trust the inquiry itself. And I also think it was helpful to move the sponsor department from the UK Department of health to the UK Cabinet Office as well, and I welcome the move that was taken to do so. 

So, we do want to encourage people to give evidence. My officials continue to have regular conversations with Haemophilia Wales and other stakeholders here in Wales about their expectations for the inquiry and the practical business of how we support them to give evidence to the inquiry, including here in Wales, which we have asked for and I think will happen. And our challenge is how we have a conversation with not just the Cabinet Office, but the inquiry itself about how it goes about its business to make sure people really can tell their story and ask questions where they think they've not been answered before. And, in that regard, I'm very pleased that Sir Brian has indicated that he expects to have additional experts for particular parts of the inquiry. So, they haven't ruled out having an additional wing members to sit with him when it comes to deliberations, but, in the evidence-gathering part of it, he is looking to make use of additional expertise for different parts of what went wrong at the time, and I think that is a real advantage. So, I approach this with some cautious optimism at the outset, but we will, of course, continue to listen to and work with stakeholders here in Wales.