Questions Without Notice from Party Spokespeople

Part of 2. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Services – in the Senedd at 2:36 pm on 19 September 2018.

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Photo of Angela Burns Angela Burns Conservative 2:36, 19 September 2018

Actually, I'm really glad to hear you say that you're not going to expect every single bid to be successful, because the key to being able to achieve this recalibration of the NHS is that we've got to be prepared to accept failure, and there will be some failures along the way in all of these projects. But you are talking about the projects—you're talking about the transformation fund and the moneys coming out of it, but, of course, the parliamentary review was about so much more than that, because it actually talked about a cultural transformation within the NHS, about this shift towards a much more staff-focused empowering, enabling person-centred care to really work in its ultimate sense. So, whilst all those projects are going on and you're using the transformation money to fund the 40 or so specific projects, how else is this message being transported throughout the NHS? How else are you getting the buy-in from the rank-and-file staff who've got to be able to cleave to that national vision of: this is where we want our NHS to be in 10 years' time; this is how we want it to focus? The old specialist centres, the silo mentality—it's all got to go. We've got to look at it in a different way, and that affects everyone from the porter all the way through to the most specialised consultant that we currently employ and, of course, through all the management strata.

So, whilst the transformation fund is welcome—and the projects—it can't work in isolation, because you're only going to be fixing little bits of the problem as we go along. You've got to be able to take that entire structure all the way through and that's what I don't see and I don't quite get a feel of: where the people are coming from to enable that, because that's not always a cost element. It's all about cultural change and about re-working how people are doing specific jobs today, and it's not something that necessarily has to go into a project to go and get some money from the Welsh Government to make happen.