1. Will the First Minister make a statement on community hospitals in North Wales? OAQ53824

Thank you, Llywydd. Moving services from acute to community settings is central to the future of the Welsh NHS. In north Wales, that means rethinking and remodelling the contribution of community hospitals, as demonstrated in plans to invest £40 million in a new north Denbighshire community hospital in Rhyl.

Would you agree with me that a private hospital that’s about to be built in the St Asaph area shows that the closure of community hospitals back in 2013 was a mistake? Because some 50 beds were lost when the community hospitals were lost in Flint, Llangollen, Prestatyn and Blaenau Ffestiniog. Now, many of us warned, as did many GPs and others, at the time that that step-up, step-down provision was required, particularly with an ageing population in north Wales. But the health board and your Government insisted on the closure of those hospitals. And now we see a private hospital with 63 beds to be built not a stone's throw from Ysbyty Glan Clwyd, just to fill that gap that was left. And it’s not me saying that; it’s the developers themselves who are saying that. So, what we’re seeing, to all intents and purposes, is the privatisation of another layer of the health service in Wales because of the closure of those community hospitals. Now, isn’t that scandalous, and shouldn’t you and the health board explain to the people of north Wales why you’ve allowed this to happen?

Well, Llywydd, I don’t agree with what the Member has said in any way whatsoever. It’s crucial for the future of health services in north Wales that we modernise and that we move services closer to people and where they live, and, where we retain services in the community, we need to modernise them, as we have done in Blaenau Ffestiniog, for example, where more services are now available to local people, and certainly more than was the case when the Member’s party was trying to stop what the local board was trying to do in that area. And the fact that a private hospital has submitted a bid doesn’t mean anything about the privatisation of the services that we provide in north Wales. If a private hospital wants to try to build services in north Wales, it’s up to people who wish to support that private hospital. But that private hospital doesn’t rely on work coming from the public sector, because we are providing services through NHS services in north Wales, and the services we provide are the services that are as close as possible to where people live, and services that will succeed in the future.

First Minister, hospitals at all levels, to include our community hospitals, rely on teams of hard-working staff, who, as you know, are facing an additional increase in pressures. I am really sad to stand here today, though, noting that staff are facing a further challenge. Shockingly, Wales Online has discovered that assaults on hospital staff have reached record high levels in Wales, with attacks taking place on average 10 times every single day. First Minister, there were 3,805 physical assaults against staff reported by Welsh health boards in 2017-18, with this representing a 70 per cent increase since 2010. What action will you take to support those already having been affected by assaults whilst in work, working in our hospitals? And also, how will you support our hard-working front-line health workers from further risks as regards violence, going forward?

Llywydd, can I begin by agreeing with what Janet Finch-Saunders has said about the utter unacceptability of people facing assaults as part of their daily work? And those figures are shocking. I think the Member will agree with me that, in part, they are because of the greater willingness of people to report and record those incidents, which previously they may simply have accepted as part of the nature of the job that they do. That was never the right thing. And the actions that have been taken have been supported across the Chamber, to make it absolutely clear that people who work in our NHS deserve to go about the important work they do without the risk of being assaulted by people. It is, we understand, that NHS staff are often dealing with people who are distressed. They can be dealing with people who have problems of mental health, they can be dealing with people who have problems of substance misuse, and sometimes people's behaviour is inherently unpredictable. In those circumstances, staff always, I know, want to work with people to resolve those difficulties. But staff also face difficulties from people who have been drinking, who come in to accident and emergency departments, for example, worse for wear for drink, and, in those circumstances, a zero-tolerance policy towards behaviour that leads to these difficulties is part of the way we deal with it in the NHS. We deal with it with our partners in the police service, with our colleagues in the trade union movement, because reporting, recording and then responding to those incidents is absolutely the way that we want to see those incidents eliminated.