Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:22 pm on 6 November 2018.
Seven hours ago today, one of my constituents, sadly, has passed away, through waiting for an ambulance for over four hours and bled to death. A 37-year-old constituent. That is just one of many people that I'm dealing with. Another lady, who had a very bad fall in Conwy, waited three hours for an ambulance then waited for 10 hours for treatment. She was taken to Llandudno hospital, and then, such was her bleeding on her leg, and it was a replacement knee joint, they had to cut her jeans off her, 10 hours later. So, she wrote to the chief executive. To date, she wrote to the chief executive in July. I followed it up, asking him where the response was, in August. We're now in November—no response.
We have dozens and dozens of complaints. You know, because sometimes, I get very frustrated because my constituents come to me in all good faith and they say to me, 'Janet, we don't want to get anyone into trouble, we don't want to criticise, we just want the people at the top running things to know just how bad things are', and they don't receive any response.
And I just find, if a chief executive or anybody working within a senior management team cannot put pen to an e-mail, a standard response even saying, 'I'm very sorry to learn of your experiences, but your information coming back helps us to improve the service'—. There's nothing like that. I've asked Gary Doherty, I've asked Andy Scotson, and, you know, things are so bad for my constituents that now we have a weekly phone session with a member of my staff to go through all the cases where they are just massively delayed.
I had an e-mail when I was sat in Plenary about four weeks ago. An elderly gentleman has been waiting four and a half years for a hip operation. He's in agony. He said he finds it hard getting out of bed. These are people who are not being supported by care. He lives alone. He just needs—. He's been told by the doctor, his GP, he's been told by his consultant he needs a hip operation. Luckily, as a result of him contacting me, they are now prioritising him some treatment. So, please God that he gets his operation, and I think it's going to be fairly imminent.
But people are coming to me, and I want them to, but there's an awful lot of people out there who are not coming. There has not been any improvement, honestly, Cabinet Secretary, as regards their complaint processes.
Now, I know that the senior management team—