Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:53 pm on 2 April 2019.
Llywydd, let me put on the record for Members something of the discussions that we have had with GPC Wales over the last month, and indeed with Dr Jones, with whom I've worked, and I know the current health Minister has worked, very closely and very constructively over the many years that she has provided leadership to the GP community in Wales. So, the Welsh Government first provided a set of proposals to the GPC in Wales at the beginning of March. Initial comments were received from GPC Wales on 11 March and again on 13 March. Further discussions went on and by 25 March, GPC wished to explore an alternative set of ideas with us. We remain ready to do that. We look forward to a further meeting with them. The leader of the opposition is quite wrong when he suggests that GPC Wales have rejected the state-backed indemnity scheme that we have proposed. It's as a result of their coming to us to talk about the pressures that indemnity insurance places on GPs that we have developed such a scheme, and done it in very close negotiation with his Government in England, who have proposed a very similar scheme for GPs there. We look forward to those discussions continuing and them coming to a successful conclusion.
In relation to the second point that the Member raised, Llywydd, last week there were figures published for staffing in the Welsh NHS. In 2017, for the first time, the number of people employed in the Welsh NHS went above the 90,000 mark. The figures published most recently show that that's 92,500 people, and a further significant increase in the number of doctors, in the number of consultants, in the number of therapists, in the number of scientific and technical staff who work in the NHS, in the number of ambulance staff. I notice the Member doesn't mention any of these. He doesn't mention any of those groups where we have had significant rises in the number of staff in the NHS. The figures show a very small reduction in the number of nurses and midwives, and we are very confident that the training programmes we have in place, which have very significantly increased the numbers of nurses and midwives in training, will reverse that trend and that there will be increases in those staffing numbers as well in the coming 12 months.