Questions Without Notice from Party Spokespeople

Part of 2. Questions to the Minister for Health and Social Services – in the Senedd at 2:48 pm on 9 January 2019.

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Photo of Vaughan Gething Vaughan Gething Labour 2:48, 9 January 2019

With respect, I think they are two different points. The first is about our system that we wish to have here within Wales and our strategic oversight, and about the level of resource that we could and should commit to maintaining our current systems. That is, in itself, a significant undertaking in addition to our ability and the resource that we put into reform and innovation. Of course, we'll respond to the PAC report and I expect that to be a regular topic of conversation now and in the future.

The point about EMIS is not so much that this is an example of people who have great innovative ideas who have been taken out of the system and that there is a disconnect, but actually what took place with EMIS and GP systems is that there was a tender exercise and they chose to submit a bid that did not comply with the basics of the tender. That decision not then to allow them to nevertheless carry on as a potential supplier was not simply made by the Government; it was actually supported by the general practice committee of the British Medical Association themselves. A representative group of doctors agreed that, given that EMIS had refused to comply with the tender, they should not therefore be rewarded in any event and be allowed to come back into the system. And unusually—because there were questions in the Chamber at the time from people from more than one party—since that time, there has not been a significant amount of complaint about it because we provided the support that we said would be made available, and broadly the GP community have accepted that we made the right choice in not allowing EMIS into the system when they'd refused to comply with the tender details.