3. Will the Minister make a statement on the funding of healthcare in North Wales? OAQ53334

The Welsh Government continues to invest in the health service in north Wales, as demonstrated by the £1.4 billion allocation in 2018-19. We've provided specific additional support this year, totalling nearly £20 million to support performance, winter pressures, capacity and capability within the organisation.

Well, a fifth of the patients at the Countess of Chester Hospital come from Wales, and last week I questioned your colleague the finance Minister after the Countess of Chester Hospital reported in December that delayed transfers of care—better known to some people as bedblocking—for patients from Wales had gone up 26 per cent compared to the previous year, whilst falling 24 per cent for patients in west Wales. And their chief finance officer said there's extra capacity that the west Cheshire system is putting in and we've got to see some extra capacity being put in by Wales. The finance Minister said that she would refer that to you.

Only this morning, I and five other AMs received an e-mail from a whistleblower describing themselves as 'a concerned Betsi Cadwaladr NHS supporter', which said that the health board has unsurprisingly failed to break even in any of the years since being placed in special measures by you, and that management was wasting valuable resources and public money on IT systems such as the health roster clinical activity management IT system, which has cost over £200,000. No analysis was done on the initial trial, there was no proper business case carried out, the project failure has been hidden from the public, this had been trialled unsuccessfully in 2015 with negative feedback, and the consensus from medical experts was the system wasn't fit for purpose but it still went ahead. As I concluded last week when questioning the finance Minister, what is going on, Minister, because the buck really does stop with you?

Well, obviously, I can't comment on an e-mail you've had today from a whistleblower about his perspective, but we want to take seriously any and everybody who provide concerns about the use of money. But, actually, the project you mentioned there does not go into the first part of your question and the disagreement between the Countess of Chester trust and the health and care system in north Wales. Actually, the facts are that we have seen a significant fall in the amount of delayed transfers of care within north Wales. That is because health and social care have worked together on achieving that. I had to have personal meetings with health and local government over the last few years, and I'm delighted to see real and sustained achievement. We should recognise that and not so easily fall for a line of argument from the Countess of Chester trust. If you look at their financial challenges themselves, it is precious little to do with the health and care system here in Wales. To give you an example, if the Countess of Chester trust's deficit was transferred into Betsi Cadwaladr, it would nearly double the deficit in Betsi Cadwaladr. Their financial challenges are not the problem of Wales. My patience with the way in which they seek to shift blame for their challenges to north Wales is wearing thin. I want to see a health and care system that works for the person—a genuinely collaborative partnership across the border, but that does require a different level of conduct and behaviour from colleagues in Chester. 

Llyr Gruffydd.

Disgraceful.

Diolch, Llywydd.

It is disgraceful, you're right.

Well, if they have finished barracking across the Chamber, I will ask my question.

Nursing students at Bangor are concerned about a possible threat to their courses because of cuts at the university. At a time when we need far more nurses in north Wales to fill hundreds of vacancies, there are questions arising as to whether departments within the Government here are speaking to each other, because, without sufficient funding for universities for lecturers, there will be fewer nurses, and the reliance of the health service in north Wales on agency staff and locums, which are expensive, will intensify. So, isn't this an example of a lack of collaboration across Government, which, as a result, is making a difficult situation worse?

We have nursing courses provided in Bangor that we pay for. They're part of the numbers and the training numbers that I've invested in, which I referred to in my answer to Neil Hamilton. I expect both the numbers to be delivered and the quality of training and care to be delivered. If there are real and serious concerns, as you've mentioned, I'd be very pleased to hear from you direct about the detail of that, because I want to make sure, as I say, the numbers and the quality are safeguarded. This is the workforce of the future that we're investing in after all.