3. Statement by the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Services: A Healthier Wales: Update on the Transformation Fund

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 2:50 pm on 23 October 2018.

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Photo of Angela Burns Angela Burns Conservative 2:50, 23 October 2018

I'd like to thank the Cabinet Secretary for his statement on the transformation fund. It is very eagerly anticipated, because I have heard this transformation fund being claimed by so many people as a panacea for much within the NHS, so I'm very pleased, actually, to read about the general points that you make about the criteria. Perhaps you could actually just give us a little bit more expansion about the criteria for a project going ahead to the transformation fund. Who's going to be making the decision? Will it be just the regional boards putting forward the projects and then Andrew Goodall's team making the final decision, or will it be at a slightly lower level?

I'm a little bit concerned that only two projects so far have been agreed and we're coming towards the end of 2018. I appreciate it's a new fund—I'm not unrealistic—but given that the money is only available until 2020, are you confident that you'll be able to deploy that £100 million within the next, well, just over two years, and not only deploy it, but actually have it working and have the results of an evaluation so that we know whether or not those projects are then worth rolling out throughout the rest of the NHS?

Are you able to give us any indication of the projects that you have had in—the six where you have not yet said 'yes' or 'no', and whether that's actually because they're a 'no' or because you're still evaluating them—and can you confirm whether or not there is equity of application across Wales? The reason why I ask that is, of course, Betsi Cadwaladr is in special measures, Hywel Dda is undergoing a fairly rigorous transformation programme, and I am quite concerned that health boards—and there may be others, not just those two—don't miss out on this opportunity because they're so busy doing their day-to-day other jobs. So, can you assure us as to whether or not we are going to have that equity of application?

A couple of very quick questions, in particular: projects that you are looking at—will you be giving an extra weighting towards the primary and community sector? I ask that because, of course, the entire drive of the parliamentary review was talking about how we need to move away from the secondary sector. When I talk to health boards, I get the impression an awful lot of the application is going towards firefighting or trying to make things happen in the secondary sector. And so, this primary and community sector, which we're putting so much faith in to transform the way we deliver the NHS services over the next decade or two decades—we need to make sure that there are projects there that are going to be rolled out. Will you be able to assure us that there will be checks and balances across all of this spend and that it doesn't simply get sucked into either existing debt or fixed overheads or additional administrative personnel, so that it actually does hit the boots on the ground?

I would be interested to know if this is new money that you talk about in your statement. You talk about a very welcome, as ever, £30 million for the regional transformation boards, and an extra £60 million to support the IMTPs. Is this redeployed money or completely new money on top of the £100 million?

Finally, do you have a system of time framing your pilots to ensure that those pilots have a kill switch—they're either successful or unsuccessful? How long are you going to give them? Because, if they turn out to be unsuccessful—and I appreciate that we're not going to be able to be successful in every single one—then we need to be able to recognise that writing very, very quickly and move on to the next project so that we can maximise that amount of money as much as possible, to transform the NHS in the way we need to.