Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:54 pm on 8 January 2019.
Llywydd, I'm not going to take any lessons from the First Minister on investing in our health service, because it was his party that actually cut health service funding some years ago. In 2016, my party put forward a comprehensive plan for change in NHS Wales, a vision for a Welsh NHS that's better resourced, more accountable to patients, and delivers better results for those who use the services. This included plans to establish a £100 million health transformation fund to support the modernisation of services, to ensure mental health crisis teams are available 24 hours a day at all major emergency departments, to support innovation in healthcare by providing £50 million in match funding for research into new treatments and cures, and to implement specialist plans to guarantee improved outcomes in the fight against Wales's four biggest killers—cancer, heart disease, dementia and stroke—much of which has been echoed in the plan published yesterday by the UK Government.
First Minister, I know that the Welsh Government has adopted our plan to implement a £100 million transformation fund, but we are still lacking a plan from your Government as to how you will modernise our services in future to bring down waiting times, to speed up diagnostic times and to dramatically improve our mental health services. Considering that Wales's health and social services will receive the greatest uplift in funding since devolution, will you now publish a strategy for NHS Wales, outlining how the additional funding will be used to modernise our services and deliver the timely, fit-for-purpose care that the people of Wales so rightly deserve?