Part of 2. Questions to the Minister for Health and Social Services – in the Senedd at 2:50 pm on 6 February 2019.
That's true for some patients, and others take a rather different view. If you look at what we're doing and, actually, if you look at the NHS England plan, for example, when they talk about the way that they want general practice to work together, it sounds and looks a lot like clusters here in Wales. They may not give us credit for it, but they're actually copying a number of the things that we're doing because the workforce of the future will be different, and, when I think about agency and locum, I absolutely think about primary care—the ability to recruit enough general practitioners, the training that we have, the achievement over the last two years and doing very well on filling our GP training places, but, more than that, about the environment they're going to work within with different forms of staff.
And there's a different number of GPs working in a different way with other healthcare professionals. That's why the record investment we're making in other healthcare professional training, the £114 million we're investing—. Even in a time of austerity, a £7 million increase in that form of training, for more staff, for the physios, the nurses, the paramedics. That's the challenge that we have to confront. And, actually, our GP workforce are broadly supportive of the direction that we are taking. The challenge, as ever, is: are we able to move fast enough to keep services open, up and running, and to persuade enough people to actually come on board to work in a different way? And, within that, I accept I'm not the most persuasive voice. A general practitioner is more likely to listen to a fellow GP about the way that they have changed their practice, working with different professionals, than to any politician within this place. And, actually, we do have a range of leaders within general practice who are making that bid and showing real leadership with their peers. So, actually, for all the challenge that we have, there is real room for optimism about the path we're on, and, indeed, the flattery of NHS England largely copying significant parts of what we're already doing in Wales.