Part of 3. Topical Questions – in the Senedd at 3:24 pm on 11 July 2018.
Thank you. It's important to note that this is keeping the pledge that we made to come back with a decision, and the indication that I gave that we thought we'd be able to do something on expanding them—expanding opportunities in different parts of Wales—in previous questions. I've always been keen to talk about the fact that this is good news both for north Wales but also west Wales, because, as you correctly point out, there are recruitment challenges in west Wales as well as the north. There is a small amount of capital that we'll need to deploy to make this happen, but doing this this way, in collaboration between four universities, will mean that we're able to make faster progress on increasing numbers and increasing opportunities in different parts of Wales, because there's lots of evidence we're more likely to have people stay in west Wales and north Wales if they undertake large amounts of their training there.
It does come on the back of an agreement we reached on how we use some money with Plaid Cymru in the budget, but that two-year amount won't be enough to train someone over the course of a whole medical degree. So, we've made the choice within Government to support this whole programme of study and to have a permanent increase in the additional numbers of medical training places. So, it goes beyond the agreement we reached about exploring this issue with Plaid Cymru. It is a permanent addition, and I look forward to understanding more about not just when people can undertake all of their study in north and west Wales, but also our ability to then see what more we can do to have the right sort of medical and fellow health and care professionals here in the service in Wales.