Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:44 pm on 25 September 2018.
Well, First Minister, this is a health board that has been under direct Welsh Government control for almost three and a half years. What is there to show for your staged improvement and transformation plans? Well, the record speaks for itself: 1,900 patients waited longer than 12 hours at A&E services in north Wales—this is more than all the other health boards combined; this summer, more than 5,000 hours were lost because ambulances were delayed handing over patients at north Wales hospitals; in the last 12 months, 26,000 patient safety incidents were recorded, 10,000 more than in Cardiff, and 233 of these have been severe incidents, more than double those in Cardiff; in the last three years, the health board has overspent by £88 million and has more than 2,000 patients waiting over a year for treatment. These are shocking statistics, and behind these figures are real people who are suffering as a result of your sheer incompetence to help this health board improve. For three years you have been responsible for these services and have set benchmarks to see this health board improve. You are clearly failing the people of north Wales, so can you now tell us what you and your Government are going to do about this? What specific measures are you now going to take to start addressing this very serious situation?